Report Says Number of Overseas Branch Campuses Continues to Climb

A new report says the number of international branch campuses being established worldwide continues to grow, although at a “stately rate, rather than with a headlong rush.” The paper, by the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, a Britain-based research group, counted some 200 branch campuses—defined as a degree-granting higher-education institution with a physical presence in a country other than that of the institution that operates it—around the globe. American universities operate the largest number of branch campuses worldwide, 78, the report says, and there are 13 additional U.S. outposts in the planning stages. Those trends suggest it’s “too soon to conclude that the U.S. is losing interest in [international branch campuses],” the authors write, even as the failure of some recent high-profile efforts had led observers to wonder if American institutions would be wary of establishing overseas ventures. The observatory conducted a similar census in 2006, although the two studies aren’t directly comparable because of changes in how a branch campus is defined.