Since the 1990s, China has enacted state policy that has encouraged Chinese institutions of higher learning to cooperate with foreign institutions of higher learning, setting up joint programmes and institutes, which now reach over 1,400 active partnerships at the bachelor’s degree level and above. This is known as ‘Chinese-foreign cooperation in running schools’ in China and transnational education (TNE) in the UK.
UK universities have become partners of choice for Chinese universities in the development of joint institutes and joint programmes, but the relative weight of the UK is decreasing. While cooperation with UK partners accounted for more than one fifth of all Chinese-foreign joint programmes and institutes at the end of 2019 – it represented only 12 per cent of approvals from 2020 onwards.
Does this slowdown mark an end to a golden era of higher education collaborations between China and the UK? Not necessarily. We argue that it is more an indicator of the transforming nature of educational co-operations, and that policy makers and universities need to consider these changes in their planning.
The first transformation is related to quality. The policy of openness to international collaboration was partly driven by a desire to build capacity in higher education in China – or in other words, to enhance the quality of the education provided to students through alignment with international learning and teaching quality standards.
