Transnational Partnerships School

Background

With a young and expanding population of 660 million, ASEAN is the world’s fifth-largest economy after the US, China, Japan and Germany. Despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, research production in the region has grown significantly in the last few years and Southeast Asia has a strong appetite for higher education.

Malaysia (and Kuala Lumpur in particular) is one of the three main transnational education hubs in the world, being home to a highly diverse and accessible higher education offer from public and private providers. Malaysia was one of the first countries in Southeast Asia to support the development of International Branch Campuses, with the Ministry of Education inviting foreign universities to Malaysia. The 2015-2025 national Higher Education Blueprint ambitioned to target 250 000 international students by 2025.

The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, our host for the HUMANE programme, opened in September 2000. It was the first branch campus of a British University established outside the UK. Since then many international branch campuses have been established in Malaysia and in Southeast Asia.

Transnational partnerships take multiple forms from transactional to transformational initiatives, strategic partnerships between institutions, educational partnerships (for collaborative degree programmes, non-degree mobility), joint research partnerships and international branch campuses. The South East region shows a great diversity of public and private initiatives. These are developed in the context of institutional strategies for internationalisation, and they are set in the context of national (and EU) agreements to pursue national and global agendas. Developing talent and cutting-edge global research is on every university’s agenda. Transnational partnerships have become key drivers to solve the grand challenges of our times and contribute to Sustainable Developing Goals: climate change, dealing with the energy challenges, sustainable communities, poverty alleviation or healthy living.

The HUMANE Transnational Partnership School will look at the Nottingham Malaysia Campus in Kuala Lumpur, have presentations about other branch campuses and different types of transnational partnership initiatives in Malaysia and in the South East Region. It will look at partnership development, institutional journeys, delivery, the opportunities and the challenges. All through the week participants will work in small groups on multiple case studies.