Legitimacy in Cross-Border Higher Education

Abstract

When colleges and universities set up outposts such as international branch campuses (IBCs) in foreign countries, the literature suggests that the success of that outpost can be tied to its ability to build its own legitimacy. This article investigates the process of legitimacy building by IBCs through identifying who IBCs view as their salient stakeholders and analyzing how IBCs legitimize their international presence to those stakeholders in the home country, host country, regional and global environments. Data are drawn from 45 branch campus mission statements collected from university websites. Findings indicate that IBCs embrace a global identity to legitimize themselves to both home country and host country stakeholders. Orientation to the IBC’s home country is utilized to signify quality and indicate the brand of education offered in the host country, whereas orientation to the host country is framed as furthering host country development. The findings suggest that there may be a lack of deep integration of the internationalization experience into IBC curricula and the home campus’s organizational learning. Furthermore, some IBCs have not prioritized local development needs in the host country.

Influence of the Quality Perceived of Service of a Higher Education Center on the Loyalty of Students

“…In this regard, there are many studies that show that proper management of the intangible assets owned by organizations (university) leads to achieving a better competitive position (Lev and Zarowin, 1999;Hand and Lev, 2003) and achieving both their social and economic objectives in the medium and long term (Farrugia and Lane, 2013;Hemsley-Brown et al, 2016;Plewa et al, 2016;Christensen and Gornitzka, 2017). Thus, these intangible assets become key elements for survival.…”

Two Decades of Research Into the Internationalization of Higher Education: Major Themes in the Journal of Studies in International Education (1997-2016)

“…Following Knight’s (2011) assumption of the beginning of a third distinct phase of internationalization, the topic of transnational education lingers. Issues that continue to be addressed include students’ choice of branch campuses in the United Arab Emirates (Wilkins, Balakrishnan, & Huisman, 2012), managing those campuses (Shams & Huisman, 2012), and defining their central stakeholders and legitimization strategies (Farrugia & Lane, 2013). A special issue in 2016 on transnational education illustrates its ongoing relevance.…”

Legitimations of Finnish education export – exploring the plurality of guiding principles

“…Emerging EE activities also need to be perceived as legitimate and attractive in the host country, which is a new environment for the education exporting HEIs (He and Wilkins 2018). The stakeholders of education may be partially different from those in the home country (Lönnqvist et al 2018) and have different expectations and values (Farrugia and Lane 2013). Building mutual trust with the local stakeholders (Stafford and Taylor 2016) reinforces the ability of HEIs to understand the local socio-cultural and political context (Wilkins 2017) and to ensure the legitimacy and attractiveness of EE in the host country (Farrugia and Lane 2013).…”

“…The stakeholders of education may be partially different from those in the home country (Lönnqvist et al 2018) and have different expectations and values (Farrugia and Lane 2013). Building mutual trust with the local stakeholders (Stafford and Taylor 2016) reinforces the ability of HEIs to understand the local socio-cultural and political context (Wilkins 2017) and to ensure the legitimacy and attractiveness of EE in the host country (Farrugia and Lane 2013). However, in practice, this can be a lengthy and arduous process if the local educational environment is new for the provider HEIs.…”

“…For HEIs, engaging in EE activities has raised questions about the motivation for diversifying international activity (Dervin and Simpson 2019) and about the adequacy of human resources (Lönnqvist et al 2018). Accordingly, EE activities require Finnish providers to emphasise collaboration with the domestic and foreign stakeholders (Farrugia and Lane 2013), and understand the social, cultural, and political context of the project locations (Healey 2018). Therefore, EE can potentially influence the core duties and values of HEIs, including questions of accessibility and global justice (Kosmützky and Putty 2016).…”