An international branch campus (IBC) is a form of international higher education whereby one or more partnering institutions establishes a physical presence in a foreign location for the purpose of expanding global outreach and student exchange. Generally named for their "home" institution and offering undergraduate and graduate programs, graduating students are conferred degrees from one or all partnering institutions, dependent on the agreement.Wilkins, S. (2010). Higher education in the United Arab Emirates: an analysis of the outcomes of significant increases in supply and competition. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 32(4), 389-400 Instruction most often occurs in properties owned or leased by the foreign institution, sometimes with a local partner, and may also include additional services and facilities to mirror Western universities. IBCs are delivered in many formats and currently exist all over the world. While they have been around in some form since at least the 1930s, they have gained much popularity over the last two decades. there are 384 international branch campuses worldwide meeting the Cross-Border Education Research Team definition.
Background
While the internationalization of higher education is considered a contemporary phenomenon, it has a variety of historical roots. During the colonial era, the practice of setting up "branch" institutions in foreign countries or sponsoring schools in the colonies was commonplace, serving the most basic purposes characteristic of the period. This practice included institutions established by the British and French in Africa and Asia, by the Dutch in Indonesia, by the Roman Catholic organizations (particularly the Jesuits) in Latin America and the Philippines, and, in the nineteenth century, by American Protestant missionaries. These established colleges grounded in the US model in countries such as Egypt, Turkey and Lebanon, practices from which the American University of Beirut was founded.Altbach, P. G. (2004). Globalisation and the university: Myths and realities in an unequal world.Tertiary Education & Management, 10(1), 3-25.
Codrington College in Barbados and Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, both established on English lines by Anglican missionaries, were affiliated to Durham University in the UK from 1875 to 1965 and from 1876 to 1967 respectively, allowing students there to study for degrees on the same basis as students in England. While students across the British Empire had been able to study for external degrees of the University of London prior to this, four students at Codrington were, in 1877, the first overseas students to gain English degrees after following a residential course. Another early example of international affiliation is the establishment of medical and nursing training at Peking Union Medical College Hospital by Johns Hopkins University in the US in the 1910s. In a broader sense, higher education institutions have long held global orientations, in that they served international students, employed professors from different countries, and, in medieval Europe, functioned chiefly in the common language of Latin.
Close resemblances of the contemporary branch campus model emerged in the early twentieth century. At this time, these campuses functioned primarily to serve US military and civilian personnel in the US-owned Canal Zone.Lane, J. E. (2011). Global expansion of international branch campuses: Managerial and leadership challenges. New Directions for Higher Education, 2011(155), 5-17. Florida State University, among other institutions, began providing this type of cross-border program as early 1933. In the 1950s, Johns Hopkins University opened a branch campus in Italy, the Bologna Center, which is now considered the oldest established branch campus still in operation,Lane, J. E. (2011). Importing private higher education: International branch campuses. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 13(4), 367-381. meeting the modern definition of an IBC from 1961. In 1969 the British Institute in Paris, established in 1895 as the Franco-British Guild, became part of the University of London and is considered the oldest established branch campus of a non-US institution still in operation. ESCP Business School established campuses in Germany and the UK in 1973.
The first concentration of branch campuses in a single country was established in Japan during the 1980s for various diplomatic reasons. Wanting to improve the relationship between Japan and the United States, the Japanese government recruited several US universities to establish branch campuses on its soil, of which nearly 30 did in cooperation with Japanese institutions or private companies. Only one of these campuses (Temple University, Japan Campus) remains ; the rest mostly closing due to inconvenient locations and difficulties in English language instruction. ESMOD, a French fashion university, also established a campus in Tokyo in 1984. ESMOD added campuses in Tunisia in 1988, Norway in 1990 and Indonesia in 1996. The only other non-US IBC established before 1990 was the University of Sheffield International Faculty in Greece in 1989, which transitioned between 2022 and 2024 to become the CITY College, University of York Europe Campus.
International branch campuses began to proliferate in the mid-1990s and further into the twenty-first century. The 1990s saw a wave of diversifying institutions expanding abroad, primarily from Australia, Mexico, Chile, Ireland, Canada, Italy, the UK, and Sweden; to target areas in Africa, Southeast and East Asia, the Middle East and South America. There were approximately 50 IBCs at the end of the '90s boom (not including those in the Japanese bubble), reaching 183 in 2011.C-BERT. (2014). Branch campus listing. http://www.globalhighered.org/branchcampuses.php . Some have seen the development of the IBCs an extraordinary form of privatization in the public sector (largely due to the geographic separation from the state); however, Jason E. Lane and Kevin Kinser have argued that the extent of an IBCs privatization should also be assessed in relation to fulfilling public purposes in the host country. there were 384 international branch campuses worldwide meeting the Cross-Border Education Research Team definition.
Globalization and higher education The growth of branch campuses and internationalizing activities in the 1990s can be largely attributed to the forces of globalization. Though there were plenty of opponents against the idea that higher education should be subject to the types of free trade agreements that were applied toward commercial goods and services within the global economy,Ross, A. (2008). Global U. The university against itself: The NYU strike and the future of the academic workplace, 211-223. counterarguments offer the perspective that trade had already been present in higher education for some time, evidenced in the increasing numbers of students seeking education overseas. In fact, this trade was seen in many ways as a tool for international relations and soft power.Sidhu, R. (2007). GATS and the new developmentalism: Governing transnational education. Comparative Education Review, 51(2), 203-227. International branch campuses may expand access to learning opportunities to students who are unable to go overseas to earn a degree.
One development which was of particular significance to the globalization of education was the finalization of the Uruguay round of trade talks in 1994, from which the World Trade Organization, the body that monitors and promotes free trade, was formed. The Uruguay round also saw the creation of new trade agreements, such as the General Agreement on Trade in Services and Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. The significance of these trade agreements was that they expanded the notion of trading in goods to include trading in services.Spring, Joel. Globalization of Education: An Introduction. New York & London: Routledge, 2009.
Geographic locations Most international branch campuses are located throughout Asia and the Middle East. IBCs have developed in dense pockets in regions such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Malaysia. Both the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have transformed themselves as educational hubs (a collection of campuses from multiple institutions in a common space, creating educational 'hubs', 'cities,' or 'parks'), with Saudi Arabia and Malaysia following closely behind. These academic reforms are mostly market-driven; approximately two-thirds of the new universities in the Arab Middle East are private and nearly half are branches of Western institutions, mostly from the United States,Romani, V. (2009). The politics of higher education in the Middle East: Problems and prospects. Middle East Brief, 36, 1-8. and others from Australia and the United Kingdom.Owens, T. L., & Lane, J. E. (2014). Cross‐border higher education: Global and local tensions within competition and economic development. New Directions for Higher Education, 2014(168), 69-82.McBurnie, G. (2015). International branch campuses: Australian case studies. International Higher Education, (29).
Many of the countries with the most IBCs (United Arab Emirates, Qatar, China, Malaysia and Singapore) have struggled with the problem of brain drain.Lien, D. (2008). Economic analysis of transnational education. Education Economics, 16(2), 149-166.Marginson, S. (2006). Dynamics of national and global competition in higher education. Higher education, 52(1), 1-39.Mazzarol, T., Soutar, G. N., & Seng, M. S. Y. (2003). The third wave: Future trends in international education. The International Journal of Educational Management, 17(2/3), 90–99. The logic of hosting a foreign institution's branch campus is to prevent local students from actually studying abroad by luring them to stay by receiving a foreign degree at home and at a considerably lower cost. Hosting a foreign branch campus can also enhance links with industry, as in some cases programs offered at the campus are aligned by the government to reflect the nation's industry needs; in other cases, such as typically in the Arab Middle East, IBCs help expedite the process of transitioning from an oil economy to a knowledge economy.
List of the institutions Just over a quarter of the IBCs in operation are from American institutions, with the United Kingdom, Russia and France also accounting for over 10 per cent each. For many institutions, the establishment of a branch campus abroad is an opportunity to improve international relationships, ability to attract foreign talent, increase prestige and tuition revenue, and expand opportunities for external funding.Lien, D., & Wang, Y. (2012). The effects of a branch campus. Education economics, 20(4), 386-401.
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