The Reality of Cross-Border Delivery in Higher Education:
Challenge, Myth and Opportunity
2006 International Investment Forum for Private Higher Education
International Finance Corporation Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
3 February 2006
Presented by:
Sir John Daniel
President & CEO
Commonwealth of Learning
Introduction
Thank you for the opportunity to address this conference a second time. My title today is The Realities of Cross-Border Delivery in Higher Education: Challenges, Opportunities and Myths. My emphasis will be on the developing world because that is where the challenges, the opportunities and the myths about cross-border higher education are most prevalent.
Although other speakers have talked about cross-border higher education I shall begin by saying what I mean by it. Then I shall ask what role it plays in the diversifying scene of higher education? What are the challenges, the opportunities and the myths associated with it?
From my perspective the central challenge is whether cross-border higher education can help developing countries provide higher education for their citizens. The principal myth is that the rich world is swamping the poor world with cross-border provision. This is the reverse of the truth. Today the role of cross border higher education in most developing countries is numerically negligible. We shall examine three examples on three continents: India, Jamaica and Sierra Leone. The main contemporary opportunity, which might enable cross-border to play a larger role, is the combination of improving connectivity and open educational resources.
Let me define cross-border higher education and then justify these three assertions.
What is cross-border higher education?
First, what is cross-border higher education? UNESCO and the OECD, in their Guidelines for Quality Provision in Cross-Border Higher Education, state that:
'Cross-border higher education includes higher education that takes place when students follow a course or programme of study that has been produced, and is continuing to be maintained, in a country different from the one in which they are residing. Cross-border higher education may include higher education by private and/or for-profit providers.'
The term 'cross-border' implies an acceptance of national borders that might have seemed strange to the academic nomads of medieval Europe. Accepting borders implies recognition of the roles and responsibilities of national governments within their jurisdictions, not simply for deciding whom to let into their country but also for overseeing the national HE system. The border is also a symbol for the special political, social and cultural identity found within the national space.
National sovereignty over higher education has been reinforced by the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organisation. Seeing trade ministers make offers to trade higher education services has alarmed some academics and heightened awareness - and also fear - of cross-border HE, which is clearly a spin-off of globalisation. Some worry that cross-border higher education, like other manifestations of globalisation, will have greater impact, notably a greater harmful impact, on developing countries
Cross-border higher education can originate from various sources, not just from conventional or open universities, but also from media companies, multinational companies, corporate universities, networks of universities, professional organizations, and IT companies1.
The GATS, the General Agreement on Trade in Services, recognises four modes of trade. First there is consumption abroad, where students travel to another country to study. Second, there is the presence of natural persons, which in academic terms means visiting scholars or teachers. Although people cross borders in both cases, neither of these traditional forms of academic exchange falls within the UNESCO/OECD definition. That focuses on the other two forms of trade, defined by the GATS as cross-border supply and commercial presence, but better known to us as distance education and the establishment of branch campuses. These are the forms of cross-border higher education that have created a polarised debate by raising fears of cultural imperialism and loss of sovereignty.
Are these fears justified? There is no doubt that responding to burgeoning demand is the main challenge for higher education in the developing world. For the developing world the challenge begins, as it usually does, with demography. Forecasts indicate a population of 7 - 8 billion people in the developing countries in 2025 - more than half of them young people.
We have already crossed the threshold of 100 million students worldwide, and numbers are forecast to grow to 125 million before 2020. But this forecast may be too modest. China has recently doubled enrolments in higher education in a short period. Today the five largest national systems of higher education (China, U.S.A., India, Russia and Japan) account for 53.1 million students, which is more than half the world total.
The challenge of absolute numbers is made worse by the great discrepancy between the proportions of people in developing and developed countries who have access to higher education. 40-50% age participation rates are becoming the norm in developed countries, whereas in some developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, APRs remain below 5%2. Yet people in developing countries want higher education.
The Challenge
So, let us examine the challenge. What must happen to enable cross-border provision to increase access to higher education in the developing world? For cross border provision to help the developing world it needs a new approach that addresses the three 'A's' of accessibility, affordability and availability.
Accessibility
Access to quality higher education continues to be a major challenge in the developing world. Decreasing public spending and increasing demand have set the stage for a diverse range of providers, including rogue providers. Countries like India with large and well-developed distance education systems will not provide easy and sustainable pickings for overseas providers. For different reasons, neither will countries with inadequate infrastructure and low bandwidth such as Sierra Leone.
That is because access to higher education also requires access to the technology and allied infrastructure through which education is delivered.
Only 1% of African people are online and 50% of them are in South Africa. Access to technology in Bangladesh is 0.1%. So what success can online provision have in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia? Despite the great need to throw open access, cross-border education has yet to capture the imagination of the developing world.
Affordability
Costs are a major deterrent. Conventional distance education is well developed in Asia and costs much less than traditional education. Foreign providers with higher costs cannot compete with local education provision. To succeed, cross-border providers must devise a business model that can take them beyond the elite to reach out to the masses.
The early history of the African Virtual University illustrates this point. At first it delivered, by satellite, programmes sourced from outside the continent at high cost. This proved not to be viable. Eventually the AVU had to establish itself in Africa and create partnerships with local universities in order to expand its enrolment. The presence of a market does not ensure consumption, because products have to be designed so that needs are converted into sustainable demand.
India has transformed higher education from an elite system to a mass system aimed at the needs of a vibrant democracy. Instead of bucking this trend, overseas providers should flow with the mainstream of national developments. We shall suggest how they might do this in a moment.
Availability
The subjects offered by cross-border providers are limited and liberal education is often a casualty of the demand for more market-driven courses. Programmes are mostly in the areas of Business and Information Technology. Students from different cultures and linguistic backgrounds study the identical courses as in the country of origin, with no recognition of social, cultural and ethnic diversity.
When asked to identify its needs in tertiary education, Samoa listed 'agriculture, health and social development'. St Kitts and Nevis says that its priorities include 'courses built on culture, heritage, health care, teacher training, natural environment and industries'3. Cross border education provision will become relevant only when it endeavours to respond to such country priorities.
Responding effectively requires strong partnerships between the overseas provider and local institutions, not just in logistics, but more importantly in determining the content, its relevance and the methods of delivery. For example, the University of West Indies offers a programme in Tourism and Hotel Management, which is a priority area for the region. The cross-border providers do not.
Similarly, a national publicly-funded institution in Sierra Leone offers Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, not the overseas providers. Unless providers take national priorities into account, they will always be vulnerable to the charge of 'academic dumping'. Cross-border providers could identify niche areas - just as the Tamil Virtual University has done by offering Tamil language courses to the Tamil diaspora from Kuala Lumpur to California.
Cross-border Education at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Cross-border education should learn from the findings of C.K. Prahalad and his colleagues about 'The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid'4. Addressing themselves to multi-national corporations, they point out that there are four billion poor people in the world who aspire to better lives. They urge these corporations to look at their globalisation strategies through a new lens of inclusive capitalism since, 'for companies with the resources and persistence to compete at the bottom of the world economic pyramid, the prospective rewards include growth, profits and incalculable contributions to humankind'4.
Looking at these four billion people through the lens of tertiary education, we note that if they were to achieve an APR of 35% there would 150 million additional students to serve, far more than total current enrolments worldwide. Higher education would, however, face the same challenge as business in serving these people. It would require 'radical innovations in technology and business models'; changing from the ideal of "bigger is better" to 'an ideal of highly distributed small scale operations married to world-scale capabilities'; and 'helping people improve their lives by producing and distributing products and services in culturally sensitive, environmentally sustainable and economically profitable ways'.
Business has found that it requires multiple partners to operate successfully in this environment. Likewise higher education providers would need partnerships with local government authorities, communities, NGOs and financial institutions.
Fortunately one development is greatly helping both business and education to serve the poor. The growing availability of telephone and Internet connections is uniting the world's rich and poor and transforming the digital divide into a digital dividend. Communication links are altering dramatically the way that poor villages in the developing world function. There is a huge opportunity for HE providers, including cross-border providers, to develop new business models and bring education to millions.
By establishing economies of scope they would be able to reach out to the Bottom of the Pyramid and achieve economies of scale. As Prahalad says 'We have proved to the world that if you build a market for the rich, the poor wouldn't participate. If you build a market for the poor, the rich would participate'4.
Cross-Border Education: The Current Reality
What is the reality today? Earlier I asserted that cross border higher education in the developing world is a myth. What is the evidence for that assertion?
History is instructive. In the 1980's many low-end American universities established branch campuses in Japan, but because of lack of interest from the locals they 'quietly folded their tents... and melted away'. South Africa was likewise an attractive destination for foreign providers in the mid 1990's. But of the 38 foreign providers who moved in, only two survive today's strict accreditation procedures.
Let us look at the cases of three other countries, on three continents that are positioned at various points on the development spectrum: India, Jamaica and Sierra Leone
Despite having the third largest HE system in the world5, India can only provide access to 7% of the 18-23 age group. For India to catch up with its neighbours Thailand and Singapore that have APRs of 20% and 34% respectively, it has to find cost-effective mechanisms for expanding access.
Open and distance education is a good way of reaching out to large numbers and today 23% of all HE enrolments in India are in distance education; specifically in 11 open universities and 102 dual-mode institutions. The government's target is that by 2010, 40% of all HE participation will be through distance education.
The number of privately managed institutions is also increasing in India, especially in professional disciplines6. However, on current trends the target of 14 million students, or a 10% APR by 2007/8, will elude India. Yet the additional market of 5 million students should be tempting for major providers. Could cross-border provision respond to this market?
The number of cross-border providers in India has indeed increased from 27 in 2000 to 114 in 2004. But note that a third of these institutions are not recognised or accredited in their country of origin. An equal number of their Indian collaborators are not part of the formal higher education system either. Even when the foreign providers are universities, they are not in the premier league and have lowly reputations in their own countries. Neither branch campuses nor franchise agreements have had much success. The only exceptions are 61 twinning and articulation arrangements that allow students to go to the source country in the final year and stay on for employment purposes7.
With such figures it is little wonder that cross border HE is a non-issue in India. The enrolments it attracts are negligible in the Indian context
In Jamaica the existing tertiary institutions cater to 14.7% of the conventional age group. The average APR for the Caribbean region is 18%8. Jamaica has announced plans to double access to tertiary education by 2010 in three ways: by increasing the provision of distance education; by expanding franchised qualifications from the University of the West Indies to local community colleges; and by collaboration with universities outside the Caribbean. Existing unmet demand opens the door for cross-border tertiary education and 31 providers are already in the country9.
Sierra Leone, a country recently emerged from conflict, has one university (with four constituent colleges) and six teacher training colleges and polytechnics. As well as these public institutions there are private technical and vocational institutions.
The total number of enrolments at the University of Sierra Leone was 5445 in 2002-3; with 5394 in the six other tertiary education institutions put together10. The gross tertiary enrolment rates for Sierra Leone are 2.0 %11. Comparing this with the 4% enrolment figure for Africa, the National Education Master Plan rightly envisages the need for the 'reorganization and expansion of tertiary education by 2007'.
Despite limited facilities and an infrastructure wrecked by eleven years of Civil war, Sierra Leone can also be an attractive destination for cross-border providers. Some are already in the country, such as the little-known St Clements University, an offshore company registered in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean, which offers courses in Management, Information Technology and Development Studies. Providers from the UK, USA and Australia advertise distance learning courses at degree level in the local papers.
What common features emerge from these three country summaries? First, huge unsatisfied demand calls for expansion of access. Second, for-profit cross-border providers are active. Third, these providers are of low quality despite the high costs of their offerings. They tend to cater to an elite market and have low numbers of enrolments.
Data regarding enrolments in cross-border provision are hard to find and are usually underestimates. The UK's HE Statistics Agency, HESA, recorded 101,645 enrolments of UK transnational delivery (by franchise, branch campuses, and distance learning) in 191 countries across the world in 2002-3. Even if the absolute numbers have a margin of error, looking at their distribution across the world probably gives a fair picture of where cross-border providers concentrate their efforts.
The highest numbers of cross-border students were living in well-developed countries: as measured by their rankings in UNDP's Human Development Index. The largest UK numbers were found in Hong Kong SAR (26th place in the HDI) followed by Singapore (28th) and Malaysia (58th). These are also the main markets for Australian cross-border providers. By contrast, enrolments were 1203 in India, 777 in Jamaica and less than 100 in 30 African countries taken together (excluding South Africa).[i]
We conclude that cross-border enrolments in countries with low rankings on the Human Development Index are minimal. Indeed, given the unmet demand in those countries, they are practically negligible.[ii] The obverse of the coin is that there is now significant and successful cross-border activity among the developed countries. Yet cross-border provision from the developed to the developing world is insignificant.
The Opportunity
So there is clearly an opportunity. How can we seize it? If we are ambitious and want to pick up Prahalad's challenge about the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid we have a very big challenge but a potentially huge pay-off. He implicitly challenges cross-border education radically to change its cost structures and logistical capabilities in order to serve millions of people who are now deprived of higher education.
How might such radical changes occur? The electronic delivery of services is changing business models dramatically. Electronic delivery could transform cross-border HE - provided that it exploits the breakthrough of open source software in the management of learning and the use of learning objects.
One encouraging sign is the growing exports from one developing country to another. The University of South Africa, UNISA, seems set to become a major provider across Africa and India's Indira Gandhi National Open University, IGNOU, is already targeting niche markets of the Indian diaspora in the Middle East and elsewhere. Cross-border activities now show a north-south divide; but can they become a global phenomenon?
Just as cheap shampoo sachets and brand names can appeal to the poor constituencies, low-cost, high quality and need-based education can reach out to the millions that live below the poverty line but still aspire to education and training for a better future. Costs are critical in developing economies and cross-border providers must address that challenge.
New Technologies for Cross-Border Education
Fortunately, a series of developments in the ways that technology is used hold the promise of making the dramatic reduction in educational costs that is required. These developments combine steadily widening access to information and communications technology, which we call connectivity, with new ways of using connectivity in education. We refer not simply to eLearning, but to the blossoming of the Free Open Source Software movement and its application to eLearning.
Institutions wishing to introduce eLearning now have available a range of open source Learning Management Systems, which is the term for software platforms that support eLearning. Even more importantly, teachers and institutions around the world are creating and sharing learning materials and courses for use on these platforms, which are known generically as 'reusable learning objects'.
This combination of expanding connectivity and the growing reservoir of open education resources is a revolution and you can learn more about it on the COL website. (See, for example, http://www.col.org/lor/index.htm). Previously the use of technology in developing countries often resulted in a transfer of wealth to the developed world: the rich got richer and the poor became poorer. Those days could soon be over.
Expanding higher education through ICTs and on-line provision is a global trend. Developing countries like Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria and Iran see it as a way to meet growing demand while reducing the brain drain. Some link eLearning to the development agenda, as in the cyber universities in South Korea, the Nigerian University Network and initiatives such as the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (see: http://www.col.org/virtualu_invite.htm).
What does it take?
The role of governments
So what does it take to make this happen? Who must do what? First, what should governments do and not do?
Failed projects like the UK's e-Universities venture suggest that government agencies should not operate eLearning programmes. Governments' role is rather to create the context in which eLearning can flourish. This is crucial in developing countries, where the context for eLearning is usually unfavourable.
What are the barriers to eLearning that governments could surmount? The primary obstacle is that telecommunications legislation and telecom company monopolies limit the availability of bandwidth. Poor access to telecommunications handicaps developing countries. Their institutions can pay over 100 times more for Internet access than in the industrialised world. An individual in an OECD country may have a 500-kilobit home Internet connection, whereas in a developing country a 500-kilobit line is all that an institution can afford for sharing by hundreds of users. Making good Internet bandwidth affordable to institutions is an absolute necessity for any country aspiring to quality post-secondary education. Governments should ensure that their telecoms suppliers provide it. Expensive connectivity handicaps institutions and countries.
Second, what must institutions do? When they club together to buy bandwidth in bulk, the price drops. In South Africa, for example, a small non-profit entity buys bandwidth for nearly 50 institutions at once. To gain this kind of negotiating power institutional leaders and IT departments must cooperate. There is never enough bandwidth and solving these problems will take time. Meanwhile, institutional managers should use bandwidth sensibly by defining acceptable use.
Such policies are an essential stepping stone to technical strategies that maximise the benefits of bandwidth, both day and night. To guarantee bandwidth during the day for research and study, management must focus on those functions. Demand for bandwidth is usually very low at night so it can be used other tasks.
Learners in developing countries do not usually have computers and Internet links at home. They go instead to Internet kiosks or cafés where access is very expensive in terms of local salaries. Students are unlikely to connect for long enough, at the low Internet speeds available, to gain much information. Institutions should therefore provide Internet access on campus over extended hours from early morning until late at night.
Institutions also face important non-technical issues in developing eLearning. In 2003 UNESCO's International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) conducted a series of case studies on the creation of virtual universities on six continents (http://www.unesco.org/iiep/virtualuniversity/). This work, conducted by Susan D'Antoni, highlighted four issues that become particularly sensitive as institutions develop policies on open educational resources.
Institutional development and organisation
The first issue is institutional organisation. Face-to-face teaching institutions may find it difficult to develop general policy on eLearning because their existing policies and procedures were conceived for a different learning environment. However, although distance-teaching institutions may already have a general policy framework that is appropriate for eLearning, they may find that developing a policy on OERs is a serious challenge.
Academic issues
Second there are various academic issues, beginning with the choice of the right programmes. A feasibility study may help to identify subjects that are in demand and for which eLearning is appropriate. ELearning is often touted as student centred. To make this true requires careful planning of student services and student aid. Some services will need to be available continuously (24/7) and developing countries will need study centres.
National and international environment
Third, expanding eLearning has national and international implications. The high cost of developing eLearning argues for national and international partnerships and cooperation in its production and provision. This is what motivated the ministers of education of the small states of the Commonwealth to call for the creation of a virtual university as a network in which they could work together to create courses and programmes, thus avoiding total dependence on larger states.
Management
Finally, there are plenty of challenges for management. One hot issue is the choice between proprietary and open source software? This is a strategic matter that is at the heart of management's core function of getting the best results with the available resources.
Australia's Northern Territory Government announced recently that it had been able to put 1,000 more terminals in schools by saving $1 million through a move to open source software. This shows that significant sums are at stake. Institutions in developing countries do not have money to burn!
Managers must overcome their reluctance to challenge their technical specialists and engage with the issue themselves in a systematic way. Prescribing choices between open source and proprietary software is not appropriate because each institutional situation must be reviewed on its merits.
Conclusion
It is time to conclude. We have explored some of the reality of cross border higher education.
We face a nice challenge because cross-border delivery could help to create the increased access to higher education that people and their governments want. We have argued that in taking up this challenge we should be truly ambitious and try to bring higher education to the billions at the bottom of the world's economic pyramid.
That is the challenge. We have exploded the myth that countries, institutions and private providers are already rising to the challenge. For the moment the contribution of cross-border delivery to higher education in the less developed countries is negligible. But we have shown that there is an opportunity to change this. The combination of increasing connectivity and open educational resources holds out the prospect of changing radically the modes of cross-border delivery with dramatic reductions in its cost.
I leave you to answer the question of whether public or private providers are likely to take advantage of this new opportunity to double global enrolments in higher education.
Finally, this papers draws heavily on previous papers that I have prepared with the help of my colleagues Asha Kanwar and Paul West of the Commonwealth of Learning and Susan D'Antoni and Stamenka Uvaliæ-Trumbiæ of UNESCO. I thank them for their contribution and I thank you for your attention.
Notes
1. See Higher Education in a Globalised Society, Education Position Paper, UNESCO 2004.
2. Synthesis Report on trends and developments in higher education since the World Conference on Higher Education (1998-2003), in Final Report, Meeting of Higher Education Partners, UNESCO, Paris 2003
3. COL commissioned Report on the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth, 2005.
4. CK Prahalad and Stuart Hart, (2002) 'The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid', Stategy+Business Issue 26.
5. 330 university-level institutions, over 15,000 colleges and 9.2 million students
6. Of the 977 engineering and technology colleges in India, 764 are private. Likewise 1028 out of the 1349 medical and health science institutions are private in K B Powar (2004) 'Implications of WTO/GATS on HE in India' (unpublished)
7. K B Powar and R Mukand, (2004). International Providers of HE in India: Results of Second Survey, Jan-Apr 2004 (unpublished) Amity Foundation for Higher Learning, N Delhi and NAAC, Bangalore.
8. There are three universities: University of Technology, University of West Indies (Mona Campus) and Northern Caribbean University, a private institution established in 2001 and 38 Tertiary level institutions. Both UWI and UTech offer distance education courses. COL-UNESCO Report (2003).Robin Middlehurst & Steve Woodfield, ' The Role of Transnational, Private and For-Profit Provision in meeting Global demand for Tertiary Education: Mapping, Regulation and Impact'.
9. 8 twinning arrangements, 1 external DE, 22 private providers offer education in Business, Information Technology and Law. In E P Brandon (2003) New External Providers of TE in the Caribbean. Prepared for IESALC
10. COL commissioned Environmental Scan on Education in Sierra Leone (2005), p 48
11. Constructing Knowledge Societies: New Challenges for Tertiary Education World Bank, 2002, p 188
12. quoted in Richard Garrett, 'Does Crossborder HE make sense for Africa?' Paper for the 11th General Conference of the AAU, Cape Town, February 2005, p 15
13. UK Education flourishes most in high HDI countries (65,139) followed by medium HDI countries (33, 534) and finally low HDI countries (2662). Jamaica is ranked 78, India 127 and Sierra Leone 175 in the Human Development Report 2003.
![[pdf]](/colweb/jsp/jahia/templates/myjahiasite/corporate_portal_templates/images/icons/standard/pdf.gif){kind=icon}
