From transnational to multinational education

Emerging trends in international higher education

Transnational, or cross-border, education is attracting increasing interest, as universities extend their reach across borders to open up huge new markets. Based on analysis of case students of transnational partnerships, this paper argues that the current definition of transnational education, namely that the degree-awarding university is in a different country from the students being educated, fails to do justice to the multidimensional nature of contemporary transnational partnerships. It argues that the location of the degree-awarding body is, increasingly, of peripheral interest. Of much greater interest is the multinational nature of transnational providers’ stakeholders – the owners, managers, staff, students and regulatory and accrediting bodies. It concludes that it is time to retitle the leading edge in the internationalisation of higher education as ‘multinational education’.