The Evolution of Cross Border Higher Education ... - tec.mutec.mu/pdf_downloads/confpaper/conference2011/confpaper2.pdf · Education Commission (TEC) will be analyzed. Concluding

The Evolution of Cross – Border Higher Education: The Case of Mauritius

Dr Kesseven Padachi and Aleesha Mohamudally–Boolaky

University of Technology

Mauritius

ABSTRACT

The traditional form of cross-border flows in tertiary education for Mauritius has been for

students to migrate to other countries such as UK, India, Australia, France and more

recently South Africa and South East Asian Countries. This has been the tendency till the late

1990s and it has gathered momentum with globalization. However, there has been a

structural change in the forms of cross-border higher education across Europe, Asia,

America and Australia. Increasingly students are taking advantage of this new option – that

is seeking higher education offered by a foreign university without leaving their home

country. The landscape of Mauritian Tertiary education has also witnessed similar trends

over the last decade, but more pronounced with government new policy in attracting foreign

institutions and the setting up of a new Ministry for Tertiary Education in April 2010. Thus

the primary objective of this paper is to examine the extent to which this new form of higher

education has evolved and what are its implications for the education sector. Another

objective is to look at the different policy rationales emerging from government decision to

facilitate this transition. The study will use a multi-tier approach to get a better insight into

this new form of cross-border education. Interviews will be conducted with the chief

executive officer of a sample of the foreign institutions.

Keywords: Cross Border Education; Globalisation, Mauritian Tertiary education

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1 INTRODUCTION Cross border education is defined as the movement of people, knowledge, programs,

providers and curriculum across national or regional jurisdictional borders.(OECD and World

Bank, 2007). Cross-border education can be regarded as part of the process of

internationalization of higher education in the era of globalization. For many years, cross

border education has been assimilated more particularly to the movement of students outside

their homeland to pursue further studies in Tertiary Education Institutions (TEIs) in other

countries. However, with the increase in demand for higher education around the world, new

providers, new delivery methods and new types of programs have emerged, the most

prominent one being the cross-border mobility of institutions. In fact branch campuses in

other countries are set up, bringing a foreign provider education into the student’s home

nation. Increasingly, institutions of higher education are building partnerships with

universities in other countries, delivering education using online and other technologies, and

setting up branch campuses abroad that are changing the structure and relationships that

traditionally existed in higher education.

Education in Mauritius, has contributed largely in the country’s success, since its accession to

independence. Furthermore, over the past decade, and in view of meeting new challenges, the

Mauritian economic landscape has been gearing towards a configuration where knowledge

industry emerges as a growth pole for our economy. The traditional form of cross border flow

in tertiary education has been for students to migrate to other countries such as UK, India,

Australia, France and more recently South Africa and South East Asian Countries. This has

been the tendency till the late 1990s and it has gathered momentum with globalization.

However, increasingly students are taking advantage of this new option – that is seeking

higher education offered by a foreign university without leaving their home country. The

expansion in numbers and types of entities that provide education courses and programs

across borders have been observed in many developed countries and increasingly in

Mauritius for the past few years now. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no

specific studies looking into this new form of education, especially in an era where the

government is placing lot of emphasis on tertiary education. Along this line, the government

has set the target of “one graduate per family”

The primary objective of this paper is to examine the extent to which this new form of cross

border higher education in its different forms and methods has evolved and what are its

implications for the education sector in Mauritius. Another objective is to look at the different

policy rationales emerging from government decision to facilitate this transition.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 briefly reviews the evolution of cross

border education worldwide. In section 3 the Mauritian Tertiary Education landscape will be

explored. The Regulatory framework put in place by the Government and the Tertiary

Education Commission (TEC) will be analyzed. Concluding remarks appear in the last

section.

2 EVOLUTION OF CROSS BORDER EDUCATION WORLDWIDE The biggest providers of cross border programs beyond their frontiers are primarily highly

developed countries such as Australia, US, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, UK, France and

Germany. The cross border education programs have been traditionally provided by

international tertiary education institutions. There are two main modes of the new form of

cross-border institution. One is the implementation of campus owned and built by the foreign

provider and the more common model is franchising with a local partner as provider.

According to Knight (2005), the main methods of delivery of cross border mobility programs

are as follows: Franchising is one arrangement whereby a higher education institution from a

certain country authorizes another institution from the same or another country to provide its

educational programs. Another possibility is a twinning program where a provider in source

country collaborates with a provider in another country to develop an articulation system

enabling to take course in one of the countries or both. Another arrangement exists where

providers in different countries collaborate to offer a program for which a student receives a

qualification from each provider or a joint award. Virtual learning is another arrangement

where a provider delivers courses or a program to students in different countries through

distance and online modes complemented by face to face tutoring to provide support

domestically.

Over the past decades, a new phenomenon has been witnessed in these lead exporters of

education: publishing companies or multinational Corporations, have emerged as education

program providers. For example University of Phoenix , which is one largest private

university in the USA is owned by the Apollo Group company and has implemented

programs in Latin American countries. The problem arising from the above is that there is a

risk that some corporations may view the provision of cross border education primarily as a

means of generating profits (Knight, 2006).

On the other hand, for the past decade the destination countries of cross border education

activities was mostly concentrated in the Asian pacific zone more specifically in India,

Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and China except for Spanish providers which have settled

more specifically in the Latin American region. The most important factor explaining this

phenomenon is that many Asian countries do not have the capacity to meet the exponentially

increasing local demand for tertiary level education. In fact, Daniel et al.( 2005) indicated

that there has been substantial growth of prospective students worldwide and more

specifically in Asian regions. For instance India witnessed a 100 percent increase in the

enrollment rate between 1997 and 2007, while for the period 1990/1991 to 2004/2005,

Malaysia and China witnessed 725 percent and 950 percent growth in student enrollments

respectively. This rapid growth has led to a serious problem of strained capacity in these

countries. India, for instance can only provide access to tertiary education to only 7 percent of

the prospective students and has therefore considered the expanding Open and Distance

Education which is considered to be a viable means of reaching out to large numbers.

(Uvalic-Trumbic, Daniel, and West, 2008)

Together with the increasing scope for establishment of foreign TEIs in the Asian Pacific

zone, the regulatory framework in these receiving countries has evolved to enable the proper

monitoring of the quality of cross-border education. As reported by Knight (2007), Hong

Kong was among the first to introduce a law in order to increase access to higher education

for its population by allowing more cross-border programmes but at the same time there were

clauses ensuring consumer protection. In Malaysia , all foreign providers are subject to a

national quality assurance framework regarding the standard of the programs and

accreditation processes. In China, the law requires that all foreign institutions or companies

collaborate with a local provider so that only joint ventures are authorized.

Another geographical region where transnational commercial providers have been able to

establish themselves considerably is the Middle East and more recently the Eastern African

countries. In the United Arab Emirates as well as Cyprus, the prestigious Harvard University

is developing the possibility of setting up branches campuses. Furthermore, in view of further

developing its knowledge village, Dubai has attracted the London School of Economics

amongst other international institutions to offer courses through franchise agreements and

branch campuses. Strohmer (2006) analyzed the factors that increased the demand for cross

border higher education within the Gulf countries, First, higher education of women is more

and more encouraged, for cultural reasons; therefore they prefer to obtain their degrees from

international universities without leaving their homelands. Another phenomenon that could

explain the above is that ,since 9/11 the number of Gulf students applying to US universities

has decreased dramatically. As an alternative, they demand international universities in their

home countries. Furthermore, expatriates who represent 50-80 percent of the Gulf population

are usually not admitted in public institutions leaving only the private TEIs as the option.

However as pointed out in Middle East institute report (2010), the implementing of

International universities with western style education in the Middle East has certain

implications in terms of reaching comprises by all the stakeholders due to the extremely

diverse cultural values.

In the African continent, more specifically in Eastern African countries like Kenya, Tanzania

and Uganda amongst others, cross border education has been gearing towards a different

direction In fact, public universities are mounting privately sponsored courses commonly

referred to as parallel degree programs. In fact with this type of agreements, parents have

found an alternative option that comes as a good compromise between the high cost and

affordability of private universities and their preference for more appealing international

institutions. According to Kufoniyi, (2009) the proper monitoring of public private

partnerships for cross border education is essential in the competitive global market.

3 TYPOLOGY OF PROVIDERS OF TERTIATY EDUCATION ON

MAURITIUS In Mauritius, participation at the tertiary level has, improved with enrolment hovering around

the 41,000 in 2009 with the gross tertiary enrolment rate (GTER) reaching 43.4%, compared

with 16,735 in 2000 corresponding to a GTER of 15.1%. In parallel, a significant expansion

in the different types of entities that provide Tertiary Education have been observed for the

past few years as depicted by Figure 1. Furthermore, Figure 2 shows the enrolment

distribution by the sources. In 2009, 73.6% of students chose to pursue tertiary education in

public funded or private institutions and 26.4% went overseas. There has been a slight

increase in enrolment within our borders, which was 70.9% in 2008, compared to 29.1% of

students choosing to study overseas for the same period.

Figure 1: Evolution of Enrolment in Tertiary education 2000-2009

Figure 2: Distribution of Total Tertiary Enrolment by Source, 2009

Source: TEC participation in the Tertiary Education 2009 Report (June 2009)

Currently, there are more that 60 post-secondary institutions in Mauritius: This includes 11

public institutions, 2 being national universities. And the others are private institutions

affiliated with national or foreign TEIs, the most recent one being L’Institut d’Enseignement

Supérieur of CG Management and Networks affiliated with Université de Versailles Saint

Quentin en Yvelines

The form of cross border education explored in this paper, has evolved in 2 major directions

in Mauritius: Tertiary Education services providers are affiliated with our national

Universities, the University of Mauritius (UOM) and more recently and in lesser proportion

with University of Technology Mauritius (UTM). On the other hand, a significant increase in

the number of private providers operating under the different modes discussed in the

literature review has been observed. This is in line with the Government’s initiative to cater

for the rapidly growing education demands in the region and in Mauritius by offering

attractive investment opportunities in the education sector.

3.1 PARTNERSHIPS WITH NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES

The University of Mauritius has been collaborating in many instances with local institutions

like the Mauritius Institute of Education (MIE) and the Mahatma Gandhi Institute (MGI). But

in recent years there have been agreements in view of setting academic collaborations with

international institutions. For instance, the University of Mauritius acts as awarding body for

the courses offered by private providers affiliated with international TEIs which are emerging

in the domain of education as depicted in Table 1 below.

Other types of collaborations in the area of Teaching have been developed through the setting

up of Memoranda of Understanding. Some of the examples include an academic cooperation

agreement between University of Mauritius and School of Communication & Information,

Nanyang Technological University Singapore since March 2006, a Twinning Project with the

Seychelles on e-learning.

Table 1: private institutions for which the University of Mauritius is the Awarding Body

Source: Authors compilations

Furthermore, for the current year, the University of Mauritius has announced the setting up of

a medical school in collaboration with the University of Geneva. Procedures have already

been initiated to create a Faculty of Medicine at the University. Currently the University of

Mauritius offers a degree in medical studies but students still have attend the University of

Bordeaux to complete their studies. The new medical school aims at allowing students to

complete their six years in Mauritius at a lesser cost. Other initiatives in terms of offering

international programmes locally, undertaken in 2010 include an LLM degree with the

University of Central Lancaster and Masters Degree in Public Health with Imperial College

of London.

On the other hand, D. Y. Patil Group has affiliated with the University of Technology

Mauritius (UTM) based on a Memorandum of Understanding signed in June 2009. The

college is working in collaboration with Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital for the clinical training

for the 28 local and foreign postgraduate students currently enrolled.

3.2 PRIVATE PROVIDERS AFFILIATED WITH INTERNATIONAL TEIS

The private higher education sector has grown exponentially in the last decade with easier

and more established framework for private companies to open and run higher education

institutes. In Mauritius the majority of private providers are affiliated with recognized

overseas international institutions mainly in UK and India. Table 2 below depicts the

characteristics of major private providers with a student population of more than 50 currently

operating locally. More recently, several projects facilitated by the Board of Investment

(BOI) in the knowledge sector have materialized including Middlesex University, Amity

University.

As indicated in Table 2, some of the private providers Affiliated with overseas Tertiary TEIs

use a mixture of distance Education and face to face tutorials in delivering courses. In many

instances, the Mauritius Examinations Syndicate (MES) supervises the examinations

sometimes in collaboration with the foreign awarding bodies. The publicly funded institutions

are also aiming at increasing access to tertiary education at more affordable rates and with

more flexible arrangements. In fact, the Open University will take up the assets of the

Mauritius College of the Air to boost up open learning to new levels by collaborating with

regional and international TEIs.

Table 2: Private education services providers affiliated with international TEIS with student

population of > 50 in 2009.

Source: Authors compilations

4 THE REGULATORY FRAMEWORK FOR CROSS BORDER EDUCATION

IN MAURITIUS In 1997, Mauritius was among the 69 signatories to the General Agreement on Trade in

Services (GATS) whose objective is to liberalize and regulate social services, including

education, by trade rules. One of the principles of the GATS agreement is the market access

which covers four modes of supply for the delivery of services in cross-border trade.1 The

government conscious of the importance of education to the economic development of the

country has over the years streamlined the procedures to transform Mauritius into a

knowledge hub and a centre for Higher Learning and for attracting foreign direct investments

(FDIs). Along this line, the Ministry of Education and Human Resources has prepared a

National Policy Framework for the Tertiary Education Sector. This framework provides clear

and strict guidelines that potential providers have to comply with, when setting up tertiary

institutions in Mauritius. For instance foreign institutions wishing to implement branch

campuses have to be recognized accredited/deemed university in the home country and offer

programmes of same standards in the branch campus. Also, provisions have to be made to

facilitate exchange of academic staff from parent campus to branch campus. For local or

foreign greenfield investment in higher education, the provider needs to ensure international

recognition of the degrees. The internationalization and globalization of higher education has

increased the importance attached to cross border education as a mode to bridge the gap

between supply and demand in developing countries, and has underlined the need to establish

robust frameworks for the setting up of foreign campus and to ensure quality assurance in

Tertiary Education. The challenges which cross-border education entail have to be addressed

with appropriate local strategies or regulatory framework for foreign education provision.

These frameworks should encompass issues of accreditation, quality assurance, recognition

of foreign qualifications, access to finance for institutions and students among others. As per

the regulatory framework for postsecondary education provided in the Education and

Training Act 2005, TEC has the responsibility to make recommendations to the Minister of

Education on all applications received for the establishment of private institutions, or

branches, centers or campuses of overseas institutions offering postsecondary education in

Mauritius. Furthermore, no postsecondary educational institution can operate without

appropriate approval and that the institution has been registered and its programmes

accredited by the TEC. Thus, the setting up and operation of a private institution, or branch or

centre or campus of an overseas institution offering postsecondary education involves a

multi-step process comprising approval for establishment, registration and accreditation as

summarized in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Regulations for the registration of private institutions or branches, centers or campuses of

oversees institutions offering post secondary education

Source: Authors’ compilations

5 CONCLUSION The landscape of the Mauritian sector has evolved over the past decade with significant

increase in the enrollment ratio. This has become a reality through the continuous support

which Government has given to increase access to Tertiary Education, with a set objective of

“one graduate per family” and the setting up of a new Ministry for Tertiary Education. In this

process, a diversity of providers, affiliated with local or international TEIs mainly from UK,

India Australia and South Africa under different modes of delivery have emerged. This study

gives a first insight on the different aspects surrounding this new form of cross border

education in the Mauritian Tertiary Sector and opens gateways for further research. In fact

the evolution of this mode of education could be further explored from the perspectives of the

service providers, regulatory bodies and the students through focus groups, surveys and

interviews. This would allow key stakeholders to uncover the challenges, the policy

implications and other relevant issues for cross border education in view of highlighting

potential areas that may require closer monitoring and identifying appropriate measures to

harmonize the standard of this form of education in Mauritius.

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Education? A Developing World Perspective. Paper presented at the International Network of Quality

Assurance Agencies in Higher Education; Final Plenary Session: Quality Assurance in Transnational

Issues, Wellington, New Zealand

[2] Knight, J. (2005), “Borderless, Offshore, Transnational and Crossborder Education- Definition

and Data Dilemmas.” report of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education. London.

[3] Knight J. (2006), “Higher Education Crossing Borders: Issues and Implications of GATS” , Draft

of Executive Summary of a Report prepared for the Commonwealth of Learning and UNESCO

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Education : A way Towards Capacity Development, OECD, World Bank and NUFFIC. Paris, France

pp 21-46.

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Development, OECD, Paris, ISBN 978-92-64-03363-4.

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