By Peter A. Coclanis and Ronald P. Strauss

Today almost every American university that can afford official letterhead seems to have an international strategy. Although such strategies differ widely, one common element in many is an interest in establishing a branch campus in another part of the world.

But it is neither cheap nor easy to do so. And a significant number of branch campuses are in trouble, with some even shutting down. We propose that university leaders need to consider an alternative to branch campuses: partnerships with overseas institutions.

Such partnerships are often viewed as a lesser form of internationalization—one preferred by risk-averse administrators and nonentrepreneurial universities—and we want to correct that misconception.

Our experience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has shown that partnerships are—or at least can be—as bold a strategy for internationalizing as establishing a campus off-shore.

To be sure, creating a branch campus has some potential upsides. An institution will most likely have more control and be able to guarantee the quality of its courses. But that assumes it can find the adequate resources, students, and foreign government support. Those are often dicey assumptions, however, as a number of go-it-alone universities have learned the hard way.

Moreover, there are other impediments that need to be overcome should an American institution decide to go the branch-campus route. First and foremost in this regard is the matter of what economists call opportunity cost; that is, the value of that which must be forsaken in order to obtain, acquire, or achieve something else. In the case of universities, what must be forsaken on the home campus to establish a credible and viable branch campus abroad?

Such opportunity costs in some cases have been reduced through subsidies and incentives by foreign partners eager to land prominent American institutions. Indeed, in a few instances, highly prestigious colleges in the United States have even made money by establishing branches abroad. But just as there are no free lunches in the real world, there are few "revenue neutral" international branch campuses in higher education and even fewer instances where international branches have served as consistent cash generators.

To be clear, both of us are committed to international education. But we are strong proponents of the development of strategic international partnerships or networks with compatible foreign universities.

As JoAnn S. McCarthy, an American international-education consultant and a former assistant provost for international affairs at the University of Pennsylvania, argued several years ago in an influential piece in The Chronicle Review, an institution's "successful internationalization will flow from its core values and mission. ... It will take the institution's basic identity and project it onto a global stage." Our university's core values and mission, which have made it a force for progressive social change for the better part of a century, are in the process of being modernized. Luckily for us, our international-partnership strategy fits nicely with both our traditional values and mission as well as with contemporary goals.

No Piece of Cake

Even so, strategic partnerships internationally are hardly a piece of cake. The so-called discovery process, whereby potential partners are identified (or identify themselves) is difficult, prone to false starts, often adventitious, and certainly can't be modeled. If and when a possible partner emerges, based on shared strategic interests—and compatibility in terms of institutional mission, values, goals, and quality—considerable time and effort must be expended to get to know one another, to build confidence, and to establish a relationship based on trust and at least some common history.

During this trial phase, both institutions learn a great deal about the opportunities and challenges of working with their potential counterparts, and in a small number of cases the "fit" between two institutions will lead them to enter into a close alliance.

The exact definition of such a partnership will differ from case to case. But it often includes the sense that the partnership extends to several departments at a university, if not across the entire university; involves faculty members, graduate students, undergraduates, and others; and is multidimensional, with research, teaching, and possibly even service components.

No two partnerships are alike—universities engage different institutions for different reasons—and our strategic partners include institutions as diverse as King's College London, and San Francisco de Quito University, in Ecuador.

As an example, we'll look at North Carolina at Chapel Hill's relationship with the National University of Singapore, one of our closest partners. According to many measurements and rankings, Singapore is generally considered one of the best universities in Asia, and among the best in the world. It is a public institution with a very diverse portfolio of schools, an ambitious research agenda, a commitment to both undergraduate and graduate teaching, and a sense of service to society. As such, it resembles in many ways our home institution.

Our relationship with the National University of Singapore began over 20 years ago, the result of direct efforts by people at both institutions, fortuitous circumstances, and blind luck. For example, in the early 1990s one of the authors of this essay had a Fulbright fellowship in Southeast Asia. While in the region, he established scholarly relationships with academics at Singapore, and, once back in North Carolina, kept them up. Over time, he introduced people from each university to one another, and such introductions often led to fruitful partnerships and collaborations, albeit only after a fair amount of work in each case.

Intellectual Arbitrage

Today the two universities are involved in joint research and teaching projects, host respective faculty members for short and long-term visits, cosponsor conferences, exchange students, sometimes write grants together, share institutional information, and have even attempted some joint fund raising. Given our distinct strengths, geographical remoteness, and institutional compatibility, we are able in many cases to help each other and, at times, to engage in acts of intellectual arbitrage, as it were, with scholars from each institution sharing perspectives and knowledge while working together on common problems.

The building of the partnership between the two institutions was not easy. Although NUS and UNC-Chapel Hill possessed important core similarities, numerous differences still had to be overcome before the relationship began to bloom. Obviously, faculty members and administrators from both institutions—smart, articulate people with strongly held views—had to become comfortable with one another, and it took both time and money (the latter to facilitate relatively frequent face-to-face contact).

More importantly, differences in institutional cultures had to be acknowledged and accommodated, especially early on. The National University of Singapore grew out of the English university tradition with three-year degrees, tutorials, and the like. Chapel Hill followed the American model. As a result, our collaborations almost always reflect compromises between different educational systems. (It should be noted, though, that in recent years Singapore has been moving more and more toward the American. system, so in the future this particular problem should prove less pressing.)

Both the possibilities and the efficiencies in the partnership can be seen in the joint undergraduate-degree program established by the two institutions in 2007. This program, developed by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Singapore and the College of Arts and Sciences at Chapel Hill, involves students in five departments: economics, English, geography, history, and political science. Students from both colleges complete common curricular requirements devised especially for the program, and spend considerable periods of time—between one and two years—at the partner institution. Students fulfilling the requirements receive a special diploma with the crests of both institutions. Because the two universities have different, but complementary strengths in the disciplines involved, each is able, through the partnership, to serve students' curricular needs—and then some—without breaking the bank.

Sharing Our Strengths

In the case of history, for example, NUS has huge strengths in Southeast Asia, and Asia more generally, but less depth in other parts of the world. Chapel Hill is very strong in American, European, and Latin American history, but in a relative sense devotes fewer resources to coverage of other geographic areas. Given resource constraints, it makes more sense for the National University of Singapore to encourage the relatively small number of Singaporean students interested in Western history to study at Chapel Hill. Conversely, UNC students interested in the history of Southeast Asia—a small number, to be sure—could not do better than to study at Singapore, particularly since Chapel Hill has been without a full-time Southeast Asian historian for some time.

From our vantage point, the best collaborations involve partners such as Singapore that seek reciprocity and balance in a relationship. Our preference for partnerships differs sharply from the planting-the-flag mentality that often drives American universities to establish branch campuses abroad. The latter strategy, critics charge, is often invested with neocolonial overtones—we take your money, attract your most talented students (eventually luring them to the United States), and build stand-alone institutions that take little account of local cultures. Such charges are often difficult to refute. For these reasons and because of our history and traditions, when we expand our global portfolio, we welcome collaboration with global universities, but do not seek to establish campuses abroad.

Peter A. Coclanis is a professor of history and director of the Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ronald P. Strauss is a professor of dental ecology and social medicine and executive associate provost at Chapel Hill.