Fewer international tie-ups reflect change of emphasis in TNE

China’s Ministry of Education (MOE) has released its latest list of approvals for joint university projects with foreign institutions, with their programmes slated to start in September this year. But with just half a dozen approvals coming after a long hiatus of almost a year when no approvals for new Sino-foreign university projects were publicly announced, the limited list has caused some surprise.

The latest approvals include the previously flagged City University of Hong Kong branch campus in Dongguan in China’s Southern Guangdong province, an independent legal entity with international university status that does not require a mainland partner – making it just the 12th such international university in China.

When the new campus opens its doors in September it will initially offer mainly engineering and computer science degrees. The Hong Kong university already announced the approval on 20 April. The first phase of the campus construction has reportedly been completed.

Of the other approvals, half were for dual degrees with universities in the United Kingdom, a strong provider of transnational education (TNE) in China, delivering degrees from its universities.

The British universities include the University of Leicester, which is setting up medical-related degrees in Chongqing. The University of Birmingham is establishing a dual degree in pharmacy with Huazhong University of Science and Technology at the Chinese university’s new international campus in Wuhan in Hubei province. And Swansea University will deliver an LLB in maritime law in Dalian, Liaoning province.

Others were the United States’ Drake University, in collaboration with Qingdao University in Shandong province; Lincoln University in New Zealand with Huazhong Agricultural University in Hubei; and Italy’s Politecnico di Torino with Harbin Institute of Technology in Heilongjiang province. All the collaborations are for dual degree undergraduate programmes.

The approvals come after a long gap – in the past the ministry announced approvals twice a year. “But this year all applications lodged in 2023 were released on 24 May. This is very late compared to previous years,” said Charles Sun, co-founder and managing director of Beijing-based China Education International, a consultancy service specialising in TNE.

There were also far fewer institutions and just three joint education programmes. “This is much less compared to 59 joint education programmes starting in 2023 and 66 starting in 2022,” Sun told University World News.

“Because of the pandemic it is reasonable that there would be fewer applications [to the ministry], though we are expecting more applications from now because new initiatives will have started only after the pandemic,” he said.

New higher requirements

Sun also noted that the late release of results this year was “mainly because of arguments within the MOE [on] how and when the new higher requirements should be implemented”.

“The other factor is that the central government as a whole has decided that there is a good number [of TNE programmes] already, but now they want to increase the quality of TNE, so they will be imposing a higher requirement for entrants for the new approvals,” he said.

In June 2020 the MOE and seven other central ministries issued a directive requiring enhancement of international education in China and for TNE to import “better international education resources”.

This followed the culling of hundreds of partnerships that were unsustainable or of low quality.

Sun pointed out that new announcements from the MOE on this matter were likely within the next two months. “We are expecting clearer instructions from the ministry,” he noted.

He said the MOE looks at several aspects to indicate quality, including the ranking of the foreign university. “There is no clear indication yet what the actual requirement is, but it has been decided for many years that there will be higher requirements.”

Cheryl Yu, co-founder of education consultancy Higher Education Connected and its China strategy specialist, told University World News that the slowdown in approvals was partly due to personnel changes currently under way in the ministry and the Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange, the official organisation under MOE that provides overseas credential evaluation and recognition services in China.

Further, there is a general move from quantity to quality. “They are becoming more selective and the same applies to TNE. It is much more strict,” she said. She also noted “a wider geographic spread of approved programmes, indicating support for less developed regions” of China.

Additionally, there is a strong move towards China’s strategic priorities, Yu said. “For the last few years art and design was very popular, but now they [the MOE] have stopped approving art and design and they want to look to STEM and medicine and agriculture – those disciplines related to China’s strategic development, and [those] that link to student employability.”

She pointed to a recent TNE project put forward for MOE approval by the University for the Creative Arts in the UK with a university in Zhejiang province. “Even though they went through the whole process and got quite a lot of positive responses, in the end it was not approved,” she said. Yu believes this is also in part due to greater reliance by the MOE on global rankings as an indicator of ‘quality’.

Earlier this year, a proposal for a tie-up by London’s prestigious Royal College of Art with Shanghai’s Donghua University, which specialises in textiles, was announced by the Shanghai municipality.

According to Yu, it stands a better chance of MOE approval because it is much higher ranked internationally – ranked first in the art and design category by QS World University Rankings for eight consecutive years – but it will also be a test of China’s new priorities whether or not it is approved.

Geographic location matters

Sun pointed out that requirements are different for different regions of China. “In the western area, where there is less TNE now, the requirement will be lower, but in the more developed areas like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen – where there are many TNE [programmes] already – the requirement will be much higher,” he said.

He also noted that the ranking in the specific subject offered would be taken into account. He pointed to computer science degrees. “There are many computer science programmes already, so if you are not in the top 50, for example, there might be no chance. But in agriculture, where there are fewer programmes right now, you will maybe have a good chance as long as you are in the top 200, for example,” he said.

Sun pointed to Hainan, which is trying to attract top universities. “Nowadays, global top 50 universities or universities with globally top 10 programmes would be highly encouraged to apply,” he said.

Who is not on the list?

Experts have noted the absence from the list of Australian universities – a strong TNE partner all over Asia – as well as Russian universities with whom China has been building relations.

Sun said: “There have been no applications [from Australian universities] as far as I know.”

“The problem with Australia is that the political relationship was low for a period of time. And then the Chinese ministry indicated, though not officially, that they will have a close look at the Australian programmes. Two or three years ago they said they will be having a special audit of the Australian programme,” Sun explained.

Others pointed out that Australia’s 2018 anti-foreign influence bill has added an extra layer of procedures and vetting for universities wanting to cooperate with a foreign university, including Chinese universities. That extra layer of scrutiny may have put off Chinese universities intending to partner with Australian institutions.

But Sun emphasised that the Chinese government has no special limitations on cooperation with Australian universities: “They say ‘we encourage good universities from anywhere to cooperate with China’.”

Yu pointed to concerns in Australia that setting up TNE dual degrees in China may mean they lose students, who they prefer to recruit to Australia directly. She also noted that the MOE is no longer approving joint degrees that require a year or two years at the overseas campus in order to obtain a dual degree with the international partner university.

“All the MOE approvals are for 4+0 – that means students have the option of all four years in China. Within this framework if students want to choose 2+1, 2+2 then it is an institutional collaboration decision,” she said.

According to Yu, TNE programmes that require a year or more in the partner university overseas are now less than 10% of the TNE applications to MOE.

More Russian programmes expected

Reports from Russia, around the time when President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping held a summit in Beijing in mid-May, indicated that Russia and China would establish four joint universities in the coming years. Work is already underway by Russia’s Ministry of Science and Higher Education, for announcements later this year and the joint universities will open in China in 2025.

Russia and China currently have one joint university in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Shenzhen MSU-BIT University was established in 2016 as a joint project of the Beijing Institute of Technology, Moscow State University and the Shenzhen municipal government.

The university’s main aims include training young specialists in China based on Russian educational programmes necessary for the realisation of Chinese and Russian economic projects in the Asia-Pacific region, according to Russian sources.

A branch campus of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, to specialise in aviation and aerospace teaching and research, is scheduled to open mid-2025 as an independent international university without a Chinese partner.

According to Russia’s TASS news agency, the laying of the foundation stone ceremony took place in late January in Wenchang City, in Hainan’s free-trade zone, and will draw on Russia’s decades of expertise in space

Last year, the MOE approved a new joint institute between Guangdong Ocean University and St Petersburg State Marine Technical University – Russia’s top marine engineering university.

Sun noted that the Russians have been “pretty active” in the past few years, but the projects are still in the pipeline. “They have not yet got to the stage of making the application to MOE. I believe that will be in the next year or the year after,” he said.

Sun noted that even with Russian universities, teaching will still need to be in English. “If you only teach in Chinese and Russian, students might not like it,” he said, referring to employment prospects for graduates. “There are many Russian programmes in China already, but the language issue might be a problem which will need to be overcome,” he added.

Experts said they expect a shakedown of TNE programmes in China in the coming months.

“Some of the programmes would be excluded or shut down,” Yu said. “For example, the less good ones, if they have a problem recruiting students, or the lower ranked if their quality is not good – some of those would be eliminated gradually as well,” she said.

“There will always be new ones coming in and old ones going out under the new system. Before it was more like everybody could come in,” she added.

According to experts, the ministry is also looking at revising the approval process, accelerating the current process with an expert panel involved in the pre-application stage to prepare host universities to apply.