Transnational education: A good-news story

ByLynnel Hoare. The motivations behind the delivery of Australian transnational education have been interpreted as being everything from altruistic to neocolonial.
On the one hand, Australian universities are cast in the role of intellectual aid providers, delivering developing countries from the economic and social disadvantages resulting from a paucity of skilled human capital and supplementing overburdened higher education institutions that are currently at capacity. At the other extreme, delivery can resemble the dumping of uncontextualised material into foreign contexts with scant consideration for anything other than profit margins.
Whatever the espoused and the actual motivations for Australia’s delivery of transnational education (TNE) may be, it is common knowledge that sector growth has been rapid, is increasingly complex and continues apace.