Transnational education for regional economic development? Understanding Malaysia's and Singapore's strategic coupling in global higher education

Abstract

Fostering innovation and upskilling labour pools have become key goals in national economic development plans and education and training system reforms since the mid‐1990s. For their transformation into knowledge‐based economies, countries in Southeast Asia have relied on importing transnational higher education providers and have envisioned themselves as international education hubs. As existing research from transnational education and higher education governance studies as well as economic geography and regional studies has not sufficiently addressed this nexus of transnational education and regional economic development, this paper investigates the role of foreign higher education institutions in economic development strategies in Malaysia and Singapore. It explores why and how states have strategically coupled their higher education systems with transnational education. The comparative case analysis draws on empirical evidence from 42 semi‐structured interviews. It finds that despite the two states' ostensibly similar ambitions to attract foreign higher education institutions, policies and outcomes differ strongly. Whereas in Malaysia a structural coupling led foreign subsidiaries to provide foreign degrees to domestic students and generate revenue in the private higher education sector, in Singapore foreign subsidiaries have been deployed strategically to upgrade the talent pool and public higher education system of the city‐state via functional coupling. Conceptualizing transnational education policies as forms of strategic coupling contributes to understanding their embeddedness within states' broader, historically formed economic development strategies.

Exploring the geographies of transnational higher education in China

“…This "spatial fix" strategy enables HEIs to bypass the regulations and restrictions of their home countries and claim higher revenues from segmented geographical markets using price discrimination strategies (Kleibert, 2021). Most of these transnational education projects are organised through cooperation between foreign and local HEIs; for the former, partnerships with domestic shareholders can lower their initial investment costs and risks (Schulze & Kleibert, 2021); for the latter, partnerships offer a shortcut to improving their academic reputation and enlarging their student bases (He, 2016). In short, neoliberal critiques attribute the expansion of TNHE to a series of market-related transformations (that is, privatisation, commercialisation, and corporatisation) of the education system and highlight the imbalanced socioeconomic impacts of this globalisation process.…”

“…As a response to the pressures of global competition and knowledge-based economic transformation, internationalisation of higher education has become one of the most widely adopted strategies in many developmental states. Singapore and Malaysia, for instance, have pursued ambitions to become international education hubs by strategically coupling their higher education systems with transnational education providers (Schulze & Kleibert, 2021). The Japanese government has established a Global 30 plan aimed at transforming 30 universities into world-class HEIs to attract more international students (Ho et al, 2015).…”

“…In the case of China, international higher education policy has played a key role in the advancement of national economic and political goals, particularly after the country’s opening‐up in the 1980s (Zheng & Kapoor, 2021). As Schulze and Kleibert (2021, p. 365) have pointed out, the ways in which these states engage with TNHE differ substantially according to their “historically formed economic structures,” “past regional economic development policies,” and “positioning in the context of economic globalization,” ascribing different roles to international education in their domestic higher education and training systems. Although the literature has examined the instrumentalisation of TNHE policies in some national contexts, the geographical expressions and consequences of these state‐initiated programs remain largely unexplored.…”

“…Scholars have attempted to unravel the complex geographies of TNHE by referring to perspectives held by students, researchers, and institutions (Jöns & Hoyler, 2013). Focal points of research include transnational mobilities of students and academic staff (Pietsch, 2010; Sidhu et al, 2021); offshoring expansion of HEIs (Kleibert, 2021); transference of (commercialised) academic knowledge with the marketisation of universities (Larner, 2015; Paasi, 2005); and the nexus of transnational education and regional economic development (Schulze & Kleibert, 2021). At the conceptual level, two theoretical anchors—educational neoliberalism and academic hegemonies—are often deployed to understand higher education’s transnationalisation process.…”

Gateway cities for transnational higher education? Doha, Dubai and Ras al‐Khaimah as regional amplifiers in networks of the ‘global knowledge‐based economy’

“…The ways in which governments in the Gulf incorporate TNE into their knowledge-based economy projects continues established policy strategies for regional and urban economic development linking universities to industries for producing commercialisable innovation and spin-off companies (Benneworth, 2020;Goddard et al, 2014). There is a broad range of literature on how internationalized types of higher education are mobilized to position certain cities as key nodes in the global knowledge-based economy (Atkinson & Easthope, 2008;May & Perry, 2011;Schulze and Kleibert, 2021;Yigitcanlar & Sarimin, 2011). Governments across the peninsula aim to 'leapfrog' (Ewers & Malecki, 2010) towards high-value-added knowledge-intensive industries via importing foreign knowledge-producing institutions and higher-skilled labour.…”