Foreign-Backed Universities

A Development-Oriented Format of Cross-Border Higher Education

The paper presents a particular format of cross-border higher education – the foreign-backed university. The characteristics of this type of international university are explained and a comparative overview of relevant institutions in the world is provided. The overview is complemented by four case studies (The American University in Bulgaria, The British University in Egypt, The Université Française en Arménie, and The Oman-German University of Technology). Foreign-backed universities are newly set up private or public higher education institutions, which affiliate themselves to one or several institutions from other countries in order to receive assistance in their academic development. They can typically be found in developing higher education systems or in systems undergoing modernisation, where sufficient financial resources are available to set up universities and to buy in academic expertise. It is argued that foreign-backed provision offers particularly sustainable support to the development of receiving higher education systems, but at the same time requires more extensive bi-national coordination than other cross-border formats.