The Optimal Global Integration–Local Responsiveness Tradeoff for an International Branch Campus

Nigel Martin Healey ()
Additional contact information
Nigel Martin Healey: Fiji National University

Research in Higher Education, 2018, vol. 59, issue 5, No 4, 623-649

Abstract: Abstract The growth in the number of international branch campuses (IBCs) has been one of the most striking developments in the internationalization of higher education in recent years. IBCs are overwhelmingly branches of universities in the developed ‘West’. The United States, the United Kingdom and Australia dominate provision. In contrast, IBCs are concentrated in the Middle-East and Asia. The cultural distance between the home and host countries of many IBCs is considerable. This distance poses a major challenge for the successful management of an IBC. Should it localize its curriculum and pedagogy to better meet the learning styles and educational needs of its students or should it provide an educational experience that is comparable to that enjoyed by students on the home campus? This paper takes as its theoretical framework the global integration–local responsiveness (I–R) paradigm. Using an exploratory research design, it finds that the I–R paradigm can be operationalized for IBCs, to predict how faculty, the curriculum and research are likely to be localized in response to pressure from an IBC’s main internal and external stakeholders.

Keywords: Cross-border education; Transnational education; International branch campus; Internationalization of higher education; Global integration; Local responsiveness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11162-017-9480-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:reihed:v:59:y:2018:i:5:d:10.1007_s11162-017-9480-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11162

DOI: 10.1007/s11162-017-9480-0

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Higher Education is currently edited by Robert K. Toutkoushian

More articles in Research in Higher Education from Springer, Association for Institutional Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().