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 continued into the nineteenth century by American Protestant missionaries, who established colleges grounded in the U.S. model in countries such as Egypt, Turkey and Lebanon, practices from which the American University of Beirut was founded. [2] In a broader sense, higher education institutions have long held global orientations, in that they served international students, employed professors from different countries, and functioned chiefly in the common language of Latin. [2]
Close resemblances of the contemporary branch campus model emerged in the early twentieth century. At this time, these campuses functioned primarily to serve U.S. military and civilian personnel in the U.S.-owned Canal Zone. [3] 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 which is now considered the oldest established branch campus still in operation. [4] 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 U.S. universities to establish branch campuses on its soil, of which nearly 30 did in cooperation with Japanese institutions or private companies. [2] Only one of these campuses (Temple University, Japan Campus) remain today; the rest mostly closing due to inconvenient locations and difficulties in English language instruction. [3]
International branch campuses began to proliferate in the mid-1990s and further into the twenty-first century. The first non-American institution to establish a branch campus in the modern era was French Fashion University that opened in Norway in 1990. The rest of 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. [4] There were approximately 50 IBCs at the end of the '90s boom (not including those in the Japanese bubble), reaching 183 in 2011. [4] [5] 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. [6] As of 2023, [update] there are 333 international branch campuses worldwide meeting the Cross-Border Education Research Team definition. [7]
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, [8] 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. [9]
One development which was of particular significance to the globalization of education was the finalization of the Uruguay round of trade talks in 1995, from which the World Trade Organization (WTO), 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 (GATS) and Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). The significance of these trade agreements was that they expanded the notion of trading in goods to include trading in services. [10]
