Transnational Higher Education

Transnational higher education (TNE) is a subset of a broader phenomenon of international education, also known as the ‘internationalisation of education’. Although international education has existed, as a process and a practice, for hundreds of years, it is only since the 1980s that its growth has been marked. Put simply, international education involves a scenario in which ‘education is delivered across nation-state boundaries’; sometimes involving the international mobility of students, sometimes staff, and sometimes programmes. Often, all three types of mobility can be seen within the same academic institution. This, according to Clare Madge and colleagues, necessitates a more decentred perspective on learning than the focus on national education systems allows.

This introduction to TNE first discusses the internationalisation of higher education and the tendency (within ...