Author Archives: Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
May 24, 2012, 12:53 pm
By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
Chinese Confucius centers in the United States are at the center of a confusing decision recently made by the U.S. government. To the surprise of nearly everyone, the State Department announced that center staff teaching language courses in primary and secondary schools required a different visa than what many currently possess. The teachers have until the end of June to get the correct visas or they will be deported – mostly back to China. This situation occurs at an interesting time in the relationship between China and the United States, having just wrapped up the delicate diplomatic negotiations which led the Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng to come to the United States.
The specifics of the visa issues are outside of our expertise, but we note that the U.S. Department of State is the nation’s chief diplomatic agency and is obviously fully aware of the current situation with …
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May 10, 2012, 4:06 pm
By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
A bit of a warning: This blog will touch on politics outside of the usual dimensions of our forum here. But we do so to address what is a constant issue for universities seeking to expand overseas: How do institutions manage risk in their foreign operations? The politics we are broaching involve the recent diplomatic tensions over Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng.
Chen Guangcheng with U.S. officials in Beijing.
Chen is a prominent civil-rights activist in China who has been under house arrest or in prison since 2005 for criticizing the enforcement of China’s one-child policy. Reports indicated that he was denied legal representation, his family was harassed, and his communication with the outside world was cut off. Chen’s dramatic escape from his home in Shandong Province to the U.S. Embassy in…
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May 2, 2012, 2:50 pm
By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
International-education initiatives are commonly seen as institutional-level activities and they still are, mostly. But we have been seeing increasing interest in the centralization of some international education activities at the system level. This growing involvement of systems makes us pause to wonder the potential merits and challenges of such initiatives.
By “system” we are thinking about multiple higher-education institutions that are coordinated through common governance and financial structures, while retaining a high degree of institutional autonomy. Our own State University of New York is one example, with 64 campuses across the state coordinated through a central system office. Systems are common in the United States, with 40 out of the 50 states operating at least one (some states, such as California, have multiple public higher-education systems). Because most…
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April 19, 2012, 3:16 pm
By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
Last fall, the Canadian government announced the creation of a new advisory panel to identify
ways to tie international education to the nation’s economic and trade policy. In Brazil, the government is providing 75,000 scholarships for students to study overseas in the next four years. Qatar has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on importing branch campuses from the United States and other western nations.
With all of this in mind, last week SUNY and OECD co-hosted a conference in New York City entitled “Internationalization for Job Creation and Economic Growth: Increasing Coherence of Government and System Policies at a Time of Global Crisis.” With more than 100 people from 17 nations in attendance, there were a variety of perspectives on this issue, but one common theme emerged: the economic impact of higher education’s international activities is attracting significant …
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April 5, 2012, 12:11 pm
By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
Two weeks ago, Jason and one of our graduate students, Christine Farrugia, were in the United Arab Emirates working on a survey of the country’s educational system. Jason’s been to the country several times over the past few years, and Christine has been there since January on a fellowship to study the legitimacy of branch-campus policies. For obvious reasons of wealth and an existing international reputation, Abu Dhabi and Dubai tend to capture most of the attention of those interested in the exciting developments in UAE education. However, those are only two of the seven emirates that comprise this small nation. In other regions of the country, things can look very different.
According to most estimates, 80 percent of the UAE’s population is expatriates. Some of these are wealthy westerners, but the vast majority represents lower socioeconomic classes from Africa and the Asian…
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March 12, 2012, 4:13 pm
By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
What role does higher education play in the relationship between nations? This question guided the conversation of a gathering of approximately 50 academics, international-education experts, and current and former foreign-service officers at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, this past Tuesday. The meeting was propelled by a growing acknowledgment that, for better or for worse, higher-education institutions are significant players in the international landscape.
But, just how significant is this for the international relations between nations?
It is widely acknowledged that higher education facilitates the movement of a large number of individuals (faculty, students, and staff) between nations and cultures. Indeed, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 3.7 million tertiary level students studied outside of their home…
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March 6, 2012, 3:49 pm
By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
Between attending the Association of International Education Administrator’s (AIEA) conference in Washington a couple of weeks ago, and preparing for a meeting we are co-sponsoring on the role of higher education in international relations this week, we’ve been thinking a lot about what is driving higher-education institutions to develop their international capacities by establishing foreign outposts or partnering with foreign providers.
From what we’ve seen in our research (and also noted frequently by others) education providers are motivated by a combination of status-seeking behavior, expectation of revenue enhancement or diversification, and the desire to internationalize the institutional culture. For exporting governments, foreign outposts of colleges and universities can provide cultural and economic connections with citizens and governments of other countries….
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February 14, 2012, 10:26 am
By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
In recent days, the actions of two higher-education institutions have raised concerns about the oversight of their internationalization activities. Last week, an audit of Dickinson State University, a public institution in North Dakota, revealed that the institution had operated as a diploma mill for hundreds of international students, awarding degrees despite the individuals not completing all degree requirements, and many not even having a basic level of English proficiency. This week, a New York Times article raised concerns about degrees being offered by Empire State College (ESC) in Albania. ESC, part of New York’s public higher-education system, was operating in cooperation with the University of New York, Tirana (a private entity registered in Albania), to offer degree-granting academic programs to local students. The Times’ investigations suggested that the students were …
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February 7, 2012, 1:46 pm
By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
Around the globe, it seems that the internationalization of higher education and economic competitiveness strategies are merging. In fact, many nations have now developed competitiveness strategies that include investment in both domestic and foreign educational institutions. As we read the latest report by the Observatory for Borderless Higher Education (OBHE) on international branch campuses (IBCs), we were struck by how rapidly IBCs seem to have emerged as tools for institutions to pursue internationalization and nations to enhance economic competitiveness.
First, we should note the status of IBCs appears to be strong. The OBHE authors suggest there are about 200 such institutions currently operating in 67 different countries. The number of such institutions appears to be growing at a fairly rapid rate, even with the publicity generated by several famous failures in recent…
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January 18, 2012, 10:15 am
By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
What, exactly, is an international branch campus (IBC)? These entities have received a great deal of media attention over the last decade, and have been the subject of four Observatory for Borderless Higher Education (OBHE) reports since 2002. Indeed, IBCs now have a cult following of proponents, critics, and curiosity seekers. The attention being given to this particular set of institutions, however, seems to be masking a broader recognition of the changing nature of multinational educational organizations.
This issue is apparent in the new OBHE report documenting the range and scope of IBCs globally (the report is available on the group’s Web site, accessible only to members or for a fee). It is by far the most comprehensive report of their four reports on the subject, with much descriptive data and documentation on the campuses and their operations that were more lightly address…
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