Transnational education and domestic higher education in Asian-Pacific host countries

Higher education globally faces a serious productivity challenge, with universities tending to pass on higher costs to students and government through higher fees, rather than systematically reengineering the way they educate students to drive efficiency gains. The productivity challenge is particularly acute for the Asia-Pacific, where economic growth and large university-age populations are increasing the demand for higher education. Unless the productivity challenge can be overcome, the region faces a stark choice between raising tertiary participation rates and maintaining academic quality. This paper reviews the phenomenon of transnational education, the educational equivalent of the globalization of business, and asks whether allowing foreign universities to set up local operations provides a way of enhancing the quality and accelerating productivity growth in the domestic higher education systems of host countries in the Asia-Pacific.