Abstract:

All universities are now involved in the delivery of transnational educational degree programmes. Within the UK offering named degrees abroad is a significant part of universities’ business and revenue. As identified in the literature, transnational educational partnerships (TNE) present many challenges including; context and environment (Bordogna, 2019), teaching approaches (Healy, 2018), self-confidence (Keay, 2014), and student assumptions (Heffernan, 2018), expressed through the lens of multiple franchised stakeholders. This paper develops the narrative by offering a unique insight from a qualitative investigation that identifies the key management challenges relating to the delivery of 11 undergraduate and post-graduate Business and Management programmes, with approximately 800 students per annum in a franchised partnership institution, providing a voice from the often overlooked lens of the in-country TNE lecturer. The discussion and findings analyse 6 interviews with Singaporean lecturers identifying themes relating to: teaching and learning style and delivery approaches, interpretation of academic content, context/environmental awareness and TNE tutor self-confidence. The clustering of these emerging themes inform the development of the pillars represented in the Transnational Education Management Model that is being presented as an enabler for effective partnership management. The model identifies the key processes and operations required to create a mutually supportive management framework that would assist in the transparency of the partnership requirements for all staff in both institutions facilitating a clear understanding of roles and activities. This is illustrated through the 5 management pillars in the model representing the management role, relationship development opportunities, staff and student support, staff development, and quality assurance, with an underlying context of teaching and learning, and research and enterprise. The paper will discuss the importance of the inter-relationship between the TNE and UK Partnership Managers as being critical to embedding a consistent management model for all collaborations, with examples of how this has been successfully implemented. The model will demonstrate a valuable insight and, underpinned by informing literature, will show its adoption as an essential management tool for communicating, discussing and working with TNE partnership staff, including academics and administrators. The paper contributes to the discourse on the importance of developing and maintaining cooperative transnational academic partnerships, with the model indirectly benefitting the TNE student experience, staff engagement and ongoing support whilst protecting an increasingly important University activity stream.

Keywords:

Transnational, franchise, management model, collaborative relationships.