"Listen to your students globally!” - Addressing the challenges of ensuring quality across TNE provision

The recent growth in Transnational Education (TNE) means more institutions than ever are seeking ways to tackle the inherent challenges of ensuring comparable standards, adapting to diverse regulatory environments, and providing a quality student experience. Here we explore how such challenges can be addressed in order to deliver high-quality, locally contextualized TNE programs.

The surge of interest in Transnational Education (TNE) in the last couple of years is due to a number of converging factors including a flattening of growth in student mobility patterns, changing political climates, and the rising cost of living globally.

In addition, key markets such as India and Indonesia, which have traditionally been reluctant to embrace TNE, have created new regulations which have allowed new TNE campuses/hubs to be established. That both countries have such a large, growing and youthful population, makes it even more attractive to potential TNE operators.

The growth of TNE, however, is not without its challenges which revolve around the comparability of standards, the quality of the student experience, and the flexibility to adapt to different operating and learning environments.

One of the main concerns around TNE is the comparability of standards. With courses and degrees delivered across borders, ensuring that the quality and standard of education is comparable to that provided by the home institution becomes critically important. It is crucial not only for the credibility and sustainability of the TNE programs themselves, but also for the employability of the graduates who need be assured that the value of a TNE program will have the same ‘market value’ as one from the home campus. But this does not mean that we are looking at identical curricula or indeed methods of delivery, be they online, hybrid or face-to-face. A transnational business course in Indonesia needs to draw on the local and regional business environment for case studies and examples - just as the same qualification in Manchester would expect to reflect the local context.

Furthermore, navigating different regulatory environments and adapting TNE operations to local contexts can be extremely complex. The diversity in legal and educational systems, cultural norms, and societal expectations across countries necessitates a flexible and responsive approach to the delivery of TNE programs without compromising the values of the awarding university. Institutions should also be aware that external environments, be they political, economic or social, can impact negatively on the viability of such partnerships or campuses. Recent decisions by Texas A&M to close their Qatar campus and the end of the Yale-NUS college in Singapore point to the inherent risks of such ventures for both the home and partner institutions when joint expectations are not met.

Another key challenge is ensuring a quality student experience across all an institution’s transnational education provision. The contexts are inevitably different from country to country and location to location. A sprawling green field campus in the UK and a downtown office block in Singapore may offer the same paper qualification, but we can't, or indeed shouldn't, expect an identical student experience. The aim is not to precisely mirror the student experience, but we should be able to ensure a comparable experience in terms of student outcomes and student satisfaction with the learning and support systems.

A key way to address these challenges is the role of student experience surveys, specifically i-graduate's Student Barometer (SB) survey. The survey, as a global benchmark for student experience, provides valuable insights into students' perceptions of their learning experience. It measures students' satisfaction across multiple aspects of their university experience, such as learning, living, support, arrival and wellbeing.

Through this survey, institutions offering TNE programs can get a clear understanding of how well they are meeting students' expectations and where improvements are needed. The feedback received through the SB survey can guide institutions in enhancing the quality of teaching and learning, improving student support services, and making the overall student experience more fulfilling. They also benefit from additional context - it's important for TNE providers to set the right expectations and KPIs for their overseas delivery, and these are likely to vary from those in their home provision. Understanding these variances allows the TNE provider to set appropriate KPIs based on evidence collected from students in the overseas nation.

Supporting Curtin’s Transnational Education success

Curtin have been long-standing partners of Tribal i-graduate, with their participation in the Student Barometer playing a key role in listening to the student voice as the university evolves its provision with campuses in Perth, Miri and Singapore. It allows them to quantify and better understand issues within the student population with the ability to interrogate the data by faculty, study level and country of origin, as well as using the open comments for deeper context; each campus is able to scrutinise issues and pinpoint areas for investigation and intervention, but in a way that is appropriate for their local context.

Barbara Lung (Director Global Curtin in Singapore) highlights why the student voice is so important to capture and how the Barometer has helped them identify and understand the areas that are important to international students.

“I think it’s incredibly important to understand where students are at and how they rate you, especially when it comes to outlier years like the pandemic years. I don’t necessarily believe that we’re going to go back to what it was; I think the pandemic has absolutely highlighted some of our weaknesses and some of our strengths, and I think it is so important to address how the pandemic has impacted students and the student experience. It’s really, really important for us to make sure that students are supported throughout their experience here.”

A critical element of the Student Barometer is the comparison of an institution’s student experience against other institutions, nationally or internationally. For TNE providers, there is the added attraction of being able to compare campuses. For Curtin’s PVC, Prof. Linley Lord, the ability to benchmark is crucial.

“We don’t just say, “Yes, that looks pretty good” because, actually, it might not look good when we compare ourselves with others. We need to find out how and what other institutions are doing, and what would make sense for us to do in our context. So that for me is the absolute value of the Student Barometer.”

Improving quality and strategic decision-making at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China

At University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC), the Student Barometer is also used to compare with UNNC’s counterpart universities - University of Nottingham in the UK, and University of Nottingham Malaysia – providing rich comparative insights into student experience performance, as well as the quality assurance regarding their provision. Ivy Sun (Deputy Director for Strategy and Performance) explains:

“The survey provides valuable insights for us to benchmark with our counterpart universities in UK and Malaysia as well as with other universities in Asia and globally. As we aim to be a borderless university, it’s important for us to capture the students' voice, especially at a time with changing international context and emerging technologies that disrupt traditional teaching and learning.

“We use the data from Student Barometer extensively to inform decision-making. It is weaved into our strategic plans and we even set the students’ satisfaction rate as one of our primary KPIs. There are initiatives and projects planned every year in response to the students’ feedback gathered.”

UNNC is also keenly aware that it’s not just about campus facilities and excellent learning provision. Social activities, introduction to campus and facilities, and introduction to clubs and societies all outperform the Asian benchmark, placing them amongst the best globally. (Full article)

Many TNE providers will have many different arrangements which might range from full blown campuses to single programme provision with partner delivery by a small local college. Running the barometer across all their global provision can give them a strategic oversight over their TNE programmes globally and act as a reassurance and early warning signal about quality issues. Often this might highlight areas in which the TNE provider actually performs better!

While the growth of TNE in higher education is fraught with challenges, they are not insurmountable. Through tools like the Student Barometer survey, institutions can address these challenges and ensure the delivery of high-quality, and locally contextualised TNE programs. As TNE continues to expand into new geographies and forms, it is vital to keep the student experience at the heart of this evolution and strive to deliver an international education that is truly beneficial for all.