Transnational higher education for capacity development? An analysis of British degree programmes in Hong Kong

Abstract

Drawing upon a project on British transnational education (TNE) programmes offered in Hong Kong, this paper interrogates the capacity development impact of TNE on the students, the Hong Kong Government and the programme providers. It addresses the questions: ‘What capacity is being developed in TNE operations?’ and ‘For whom?’ Our findings reveal multiple capacities at play. As TNE has been traded between British and Hong Kong universities and facilitated by the Hong Kong Government's laissez-faire doctrine, as a commodity in the neoliberal trade-in-education regime, students' interests are often sidelined. This paper calls for a critical reflection on this TNE model.

Keywords:

• transnational education
• higher education
• capacity development
• Hong Kong
• UK

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all interviewees for participating in our research, Yutin Ki for his excellent work and the British Council for its support. We would also like to thank our anonymous referees for their constructive comments and suggestions.

Funding

This project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) and the Research Grants Council (Hong Kong) [RES-000-22-3000].

Notes

1. We use ‘capacity development’ as the term ‘capacity building’ implies that capacities do not yet exist and need to be built up from scratch (OECD 2006; Walters 2007), which is problematic. The term ‘capacity building’ is applied, however, when it is used as such in the cited source.

2. Registration is exempted when non-local courses are conducted in collaboration with local institutions of higher education funded by the Hong Kong University Grants Committee.

3. For our more focused, deeper analyses of the relationship between students' in situ learning experiences and the accumulation of (or lack thereof) cultural and social capital, refer to Waters and Leung (2012, 2013).

4. See Waters and Leung (2013) for a more detailed analysis.

Additional information

Funding

Funding: This project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) and the Research Grants Council (Hong Kong) [RES-000-22-3000].