Apart the inevitable end of 14 chaotic years of various shades of Tory government, beginning with David Cameron and austerity and ending with Brexit, Boris and the Conservatives going down to their biggest election defeat in living memory, my highlights of 2024 included having a defibrillator fitted inside my left chest on my birthday and travelling to Manchester for my first in-person conference for over a year to talk about transnational education, or TNE as it is generally known.

Going into hospital to have a 6cm cardiac defibrillator (ICD) implanted under your skin might not be everyone’s idea of fun, but thankfully I was sedated (yet still wide-awake) during the hour-long operation which, honestly, wasn’t as bad as it sounds. See my recent blog if you want to know more!

The bionic booster is wired to my heart and linked, via Bluetooth, to my mobile phone and designed to deliver a strong electrical shock should the need arise after my diagnosis last year with heart failure and clogged arteries.

Confidence booster

On the plus side, it’s given me the confidence to venture gradually back into the real world.

In November, I attended my first international higher education gathering in-person since being told I had heart problems and associated health issues.

The medics reckon my previous life-style in journalism and public relations, plus having chemo and radiotherapy for bowel cancer a decade ago, probably contributed to my current health issues.

I’m under pretty strict instructions to up the swimming sessions and cut down on the alcohol and foods heavy in saturated fats, like my beloved cheese.

As well as a daily dose of a dozen or more tablets – and maintaining my weight at around a stone lighter than I was a year ago – I’ve been able to continue writing and keeping up-to-date with their latest twists and turns in international higher education, albeit working Covid-pandemic style from my home office.

‘Deep Dialogue’

So when Janet Ilieva, the founder and globe-trotting director of Education Insight, who knows everybody and everything about student mobility and international higher education, invited me to join a three-day British Council ‘Deep Dialogue’ on UK TNE, I agreed to end my splendid-isolation.

Janet was co-hosting the event in Manchester with the British Council and UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. 

It was just a two-hour direct train ride away and most of the ‘big names’ from the world of UK TNE were billed to speak. I only knew most of them from LinkedIn or emails and thought it would the ideal opportunity to meet the people I regularly interview online for stories in my capacity as a freelance higher education reporter.

If you are unfamiliar with TNE, or transnational education, it is the catch-all term for exporting British education by teaching courses in foreign countries rather than recruiting international students to come to the UK for their education.

It is probably best known in the form of a university branch campus, but more often it is carried out through partnership arrangements with a locally-based provider or by franchising British courses to an in-country private higher education institution.

Diplomats and HE reps

The Manchester ‘Deep Dialogue’ attracted an interesting array of diplomats and higher education representatives from 19 countries, ranging from Albania and Armenia to Uzbekistan and Vietnam, taking in Saudi Arabia, Ghana and Peru on the way as well as the good and great from the UK TNE community. 

And there was no holding back the foreign contingent from having their say and giving advice to their British hosts, as I’ve mentioned in this report of the event for University World News, headlined Global appetite for UK TNE shows no sign of diminishing.

The discussions certainly helped me understand how UK TNE is perceived around the world and how British higher education can maintain and expand its influence, even if the number of internationally-mobile students coming to the UK starts to drop from its recent record-high level.

There’s clearly a demand in many countries for UK universities and other bodies like the QAA to help increase higher education places and the quality of provision as their tertiary education systems develop. Uzbekistan is an example, which I have looked into in some depth.

TNE numbers soaring

With the new Labour government requiring more time to work out how to help the much talked-about cash crisis facing many UK universities, it could be tempting to see TNE as an an easy way to make up for falling student numbers at base camp.

And it certainly seems likely that UK TNE could overtake the number of international student recruitment coming to British within a few years.

The number of UK TNE students grew by nearly 9% in 2022-23 to reach over 600,000.

That compares with 760,000 foreign students coming to the UK to study last year  – a figure almost certain to fall, especially from Nigeria and India following a ban on foreign on one-year master’s students bringing dependants with them.

So, transnational higher education can no longer be thought of as a fringe activity. 

But to become more sustainable, it must be mutually beneficial to both the countries hosting UK TNE as well as helping the UK to drive exports 

I plan to return to the subject of how transnational education fits into a future international higher education strategy and offer more reflections from the British Council ‘Deep Dialogue’ in a future blog. 

  • Main image shows Dr Janet Ilieva from Education Insight. Photo from British Council