The IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 1 - Issue 1 - Spring 2013

Are Standards-based Quality Systems a Threat to the Internationalization ofTeaching and Learning?

Scott Thompson-Whiteside

	
  

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Abstract
This paper explores the current shift in Australia’s higher education system moving toa more explicit, standards-based quality system and its potential impact oninternational partnerships in teaching and learning, particularly in Asia. The new
Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency and the underlying Higher
Education Standards Framework have the potential to threaten a large number oftransnational or cross-border programs delivered outside of Australia. With over one
hundred and fifty thousand tertiary students studying Australian programs in Asia, theimpact could be significant. It would also be significant for countries that leverage ofAustralian Universities to build human capacity within their country. The paper
highlights the current practice of assuring equivalent and comparable academic
standards in transnational education and explores how shifting to a more precise
standards framework will require more explicit demonstration of standards acrossteaching, learning and student outcomes. If equivalent or comparable standards were
to be achieved across the whole standards framework, it is likely to constrain theopportunities for internationalization and the formation of new transnational
partnerships.

Keywords: tertiary education quality, standards framework, transnational

	
  

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Introduction
Australia’s higher education system is undergoing considerable change. Since
publication of the Review of Australian Higher Education (Bradley et al., 2008),
otherwise known as the Bradley Review, there has been increasing emphasis anddebate on the notion of standards in higher education. The review stated that,“Australia must enhance its capacity to demonstrate outcomes and appropriate
standards in higher education if it is to remain internationally competitive andimplement a demand driven funding model” (p.128). The review also recommended aneed for clarification and agreed measurements of standards and for institutions todemonstrate their processes for setting, monitoring and maintaining standards. In
essence there was seen to be a need for institutions to explicitly demonstrate theirstandards for the sake of public accountability. As a consequence of the Bradley
Review, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) was
legislated in March 2011 and established in July 2011 with responsibility for
implementing a new Higher Education Standards Framework. This framework has
five components and aims to specify more precisely the standards expected frominstitutions. Institutions are expected to demonstrate achievements against those
expectations.

The more precise nature of the standards framework, in particular the teaching andlearning component of the framework, will require institutions to demonstrate a whole
range of teaching and learning standards. These standards will be assessed and judged
in a number of ways, using both qualitative and quantitative indicators. The precise
criteria for assessing teaching and learning standards has yet to be fully defined but
TEQSA’s decision to move away from institutional audits (Lane, 2011) suggests that

	
  
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more emphasis will be placed on a range of quantitative data and benchmarked
against institutional and national expectations.

The standards of teaching and the standards of students’ learning will obviously focus
on teachers and students in Australia.

However, what has yet to be publically

discussed is that it will also affect teachers and students who teach or study inAustralian programs outside of Australia. These are students studying in Australiantransnational programs. With nearly one hundred thousand students studying inAustralian higher education in transnational programs (plus a further fifty thousand
vocational education students), the need to demonstrate precise measures of teaching
and learning standards may have considerable ramifications. If the current policy
continues to mandate equivalent or comparable standards, a more precise, standardsbased quality system may restrict the ability for Australian institutions to engage intransnational partnerships. It may also constrain the types of partnerships and the way
in which curriculum, teaching and assessment is done.

This paper provides some background to the current regulation of transnational
education and in particular the notion of equivalent and comparable standards. It willthen address the new Higher Education Standards Framework and explore theimplications for Australian transnational education.

Australian Transnational Education
The growth of transnational education, also known as cross-border education, sincethe 1990s has coincided with the growing demand for internationally recognised
qualifications, the globalisation of professions and changing socio-economic

	
  
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circumstances in Asia (McBurnie and Ziguras, 2007). Australia has been well
positioned to tap into this growth. While many students choose to travel to Australia
to study, many stay in their home country, or travel to a third country to enrol in an
Australian program.

Some of these students may be studying at an Australianoffshore campus, and some may be enrolled at an institution that is in partnership with
an Australian institution. In either case, transnational students are typically enrolled in
an Australian program and upon successful completion will receive an award from theAustralian institution. For the purposes of this paper I will use UNESCO’s definitionof transnational education as,…all types and modes of delivery of higher education study
programs, or sets of courses of study, or educational services (including
those of distance education) in which the learners are located in acountry different from the one where the awarding institution is based.
Such programs may belong to the education system of a State different
from the State in which it operates, or may operate independently of any
national education system (UNESCO, 2001, p.2).

In 2009 Australian Universities were offering 889 transnational programs delivered
outside of Australia with the majority of programs based in Singapore, Malaysia,
China, Hong Kong and Vietnam (Universities Australia, 2009). The nationality ofstudents enrolled in those programs also followed the same pattern of countries (AEI,2010). This means that the majority of students studying Australian transnational
were based in their own country of nationality. Currently, Australian higher education
enrolls over 100,000 students in transnational programs and is forecast to reach over

	
  
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400,000 by 2025 (Bohm et al., 2002). With such a significant number of students, theregulation of quality and standards is critical.

The pursuit of transnational partnerships in the 1990s was largely for commercial
reasons. Partnerships were established with little understanding of the risks involved
and with little regulatory or legal framework (McBurnie and Ziguras, 2007).
Currently, the risks and benefits of transnational education are more widely known
and it is recognized that institutions need to be more strategic in their approach todeveloping new transnational partnerships (Connolly and Garton, 2007). Since the1990s there has been significant development in the quality assurance of transnational
programs and cross-border regulation. There are a range of national and international
protocols, guidelines and codes of practice, but because they span different
sovereignties, they are often voluntary.

The regulation of Transnational Education
Transnational education crosses social and cultural boundaries as well as the more
obvious geographical and national boundaries of sovereignty. Students in Australiantransnational programs are both national and international in relation to the hostcountry of study, but few are Australian. Most of the academic staff teaching the
programs are unlikely to be Australian. Students, institutions and staff are boundacross, and sometimes between, different national regulatory frameworks, protocols
and codes of practice. As a result, transnational education creates complex anddynamic tensions in the assurance and demonstration of quality and standards. Thesetensions vary between the host and awarding country depending on the mix ofstakeholders and development of each regulatory system (Verbik and Jokivirta, 2005).

	
  
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Different regulatory systems assert different levels of control over the assurance ofstandards in their home country or upon their home-based institutions.

Over time, there has been greater recognition of different regulatory systems and adrive towards the mutual recognition of national quality assurance and regulatory
systems. In turn this has driven the development of common or similar regulatory
systems.

The

internationalizationofhighereducation,

and

with

it

the

internationalization of quality assurance, has had an isomorphic effect on national
quality regulatory systems (Van der Wende, 1999, McBurnie and Ziguras, 2007).
Supranational agencies like the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies
in Higher Education (INQAAHE) and the European Network for Quality Assurance(ENQA) have emerged. While they are sharing best practice and developing quality
assurance guidelines there is a sense that these supranational agencies are also driving
a convergence of quality systems and a shared understanding of standards.

Nevertheless, these isomorphic effects also have the potential to create conflict.
Regulatory systems are generally national in their scope and are designed to protect
national interests. For transnational education, different stakeholders have different
views. Some have even considered transnational education a threat to national
standards. As Adam (2001) states,
Significant numbers of institutions view transnational education
as some sort of threat to standards and their existence. The scale andintensity of the threat is misjudged as it is currently confined to certain
sectors of educational provision. However, its rapid expansion is likely
to continue unabated and so will its impact. It needs to be subject to

	
  
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appropriate quality control mechanisms before the problems intensify.
Governments and institutions in importing countries must consider why
their students choose imported education. Fear of transnational education
should not translate into ineffective protectionism (p.47).

The general response to the growth of transnational education in the 1990s was forhost countries to increase the regulation of foreign providers or partnerships withforeign awards. However, strategies of tight regulatory protectionism had to bebalanced with trade liberalization to ensure that the host country continued to attract
high quality foreign institutions. This was a difficult balancing act and so it became
apparent that the best way to protect and uphold standards was to have tighter
regulation for institutions who award the qualifications (Harvey, 2004, Knight, 2005).
In other words, the Australian regulation of standards took precedence over any
regulation of a country in which it was being delivered. This does not negate the needfor host country regulation but ultimately the awarding institution is more likely to
pay attention to their home regulatory system.

Australian Protocols and transnational standards
In Australia, the development of a robust quality assurance and regulatory system has
been acknowledged as a critical factor in its success of transnational education(AVCC, 2005a). Whilst the quality assurance of transnational education has largely
been dealt with at an institutional level, the institutions are governed by a national
regulatory system. Through the National Protocols of Higher Education Approval
Processes, Codes of Practice, the Educational Services for Overseas Students (ESOS)
Act, and the work of the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA), Australia

	
  
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has been able to develop a transnational quality framework that is considered bestpractice (Ilieva and Goh, 2010).

In particular, it is the National Protocols of Higher Education Approval Processes,
which provided the initial settings for transnational education. Protocol section 4.2
stateed that if a program is delivered in an offshore campus operated by the Australian
university, “standards should be equivalent” to those in Australia. Alternatively, if a
program is delivered with a third party provider offshore, “standards should becomparable” to those delivered in Australia (DETYA, 2002).

The regulation of Australian transnational education reveals the complexity andambiguity of standards in higher education. There is no explicit description within the
Protocols as to what types of standard it is referring. Nor is there any explicit
information about the definition or level of tolerance within the notion of equivalenceor comparability. This ambiguity raises further questions about who sets, maintains,
and assesses standards since it assumes that the standards in Australia are appropriate
to be delivered in another country.

In April 2005, the Australian Vice Chancellors Committee (now known as
Universities Australia) developed a Code of Practice for the provision of international
students, which included guidelines for transnational education. The guidelines
suggested use of comparability rather than equivalence, broadly following the
UNESCO and OECD codes of practice developed in the same year. The AVCC codesuggested that, “the quality of academic provision and academic support services
offered under the arrangement are comparable” (AVCC, 2005b, p.5). Comparability

	
  
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is tied directly to academic provision and academic support services.

At the same time as the publication of the AVCC Code of Practice, the Australian
government published a discussion paper titled A National Quality Strategy forAustralian Transnational Education and Training (DEST, 2005). Whilst the paper
highlighted the success of Australian transnational programs, it also raised concerns
over the transparency of Australian and institutional quality assurance, accountability
and questioned the equivalence of courses/programs. In May 2005, the AVCC
responded to the discussion paper, suggesting that the government failed to recognize
existing quality assurance measures and requested clearer definitions of ‘equivalent
standards’.
A key element of the discussion paper is that qualifications
obtained offshore are equivalent to those delivered onshore in Australia.
This idea of equivalence needs to be appropriately defined. Australian
universities already address the need for equivalence between onshore
and offshore courses through adherence to Protocol 4.2. The university
interpretation of this protocol is that the equivalence is between
programs offered by the same institution. The Department of Education,
Science and Training needs to confirm that its interpretation ofequivalence, for the purposes of this paper, is equivalence between
programs offered by the same institution” (AVCC, 2005a, p.7).

In this instance, the AVCC was suggesting that equivalent standards were represented
by the fact the programs/curriculum were equivalent and therefore complied to thesame quality assurance mechanisms.

	
  
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By November 2005 an agreed Transnational Quality Strategy was published which
provided a framework for the planning and implementation of programs offshore(AEI, 2005). The Transnational Quality Strategy focused on three areas:• Better communication and promotion of Australia’s quality assurance
systems.
• Improved data collection to inform future strategies.
• A strengthened quality framework that protects and promotes the qualityof Australian transnational education.

The publication did not respond directly to AVCC’s concern of defining equivalency
but was more explicit on the issue. “Courses/programs delivered within Australia andtransnationally should be equivalent in the standard of delivery and outcomes of thecourse, as determined under nationally recognized quality assurance arrangements”(p.1). Without any significant debate, the notion of equivalent standards shifted fromcourses/programs in May 2005, to the delivery and outcomes of the courses/programsby November 2005.

The broad policy statements that developed over 2005 gave significant room forinterpretation and ambiguity. Between the National Protocols and the Transnational
Quality Strategy there was no clear policy as to what types of standards needed to beequivalent or comparable and how they should be measured. There seemed to be noreal understanding of where these different types of standards sit on a spectrum
between equivalency and comparability. The confusion was highlighted in October
2006 in a government commissioned report summarizing a study of fifteentransnational programs in Australian institutions (IEAA, 2006). The report

	
  
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Volume 1 - Issue 1 - Spring 2013highlighted poor understanding and definitions of terms such as ‘equivalence’,‘comparable’, ‘benchmarks’, or ‘standards’ and recognized that terms are often usedinterchangeably. It went further to suggest that quality assurance in transnational
education was a core concern for all stakeholders, and there was a lack ofunderstanding of how the processes of quality assurance effectively worked with adiverse range of transnational programs and partnerships to ensure standards weremaintained.

Equivalency and comparability of standards
Equivalency and comparability of standards are central components of the Australian
regulatory system for transnational education, however, it is difficult to ascertain
whether these concepts refer to programs, teaching, learning outcomes, student
support and/or experiences. The national Transnational Quality Strategy suggests thatdelivery and outcomes should be equivalent or comparable depending on whether it isan Australian campus or a partnership (AEI, 2005). Not only is there a need forclarification on what the essential anchor points are for demonstrating standards, butalso there is also a need for understanding the acceptable tolerance within equivalentand comparable standards.

Research on the interpretations of equivalence and comparability across a sample ofeighty-five participants within Australian transnational partnerships revealed thatthese terms were used in a variety of ways. “Comparability was generally used tosignify similarity (e.g. It is not of equal standard but is not far off) whereas
equivalence was used to indicate equality or sameness (e.g. It is of same standard)”(Sanderson et al., 2010, p.3). The research suggested that the terms equivalency and

	
  
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comparability were used in reference to standards, programs, assessment, student
experiences and learning outcomes. The activities of assessment were used mostfrequently when questioned about standards in transnational education. Thus, theprocesses of assessment were considered the most valid and reliable reference points
for assuring and demonstrating standards. This supports the view that assessment andthe moderation of assessment in transnational education is the most effective way todemonstrate the standards of graduates (Thompson-Whiteside, 2011a). Moderation
allows for informed judgments and a contextualization of standards.

Considering the variety of delivery models in transnational education, it is difficult tosuggest that any standards could be equivalent considering that the students aredifferent, the lecturers are different, the resources and learning environments aredifferent, and the social and cultural surrounding are different. I suggest the wordingof equivalent standards in transnational education is a misnomer.

Also implicit within the notion of equivalent standards is that one standard is higher
or better than the other. Presumably in this instance, the National Protocols imply that
the Australian standards are superior to offshore ones. The notion of equivalency andthe assumption that Australian campuses are superior to their offshore ones fails torecognize the complexities of transnational education and ultimately is unproductivein generating mutually beneficial, long-term, sustainable partnerships. Since good
partnerships are critical to the success of transnational education (Heffernan, 2005)
the notion of comparability, rather than equivalence, provides a more appropriate
framework of mutual respect and an appropriate level of flexibility. “The use ofcomparability recognises the extent of engagement of importing countries in the

	
  
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Volume 1 - Issue 1 - Spring 2013transnational endeavor. This goes some way to constructing transnational education as
a mutually productive and reciprocal engagement” (AEI, 2008, p.13). However, it isalso acknowledged that comparability leaves open the potential for too muchinterpretation and needs to be constrained.

The use of comparable standards, rather than equivalent standards, also allows forcontextualization of curriculum and teaching which is seen to positively meet the
specific needs of a diverse group of learners and good teaching practice (Leask,2007). The UNESCO/OECD Guidelines support the view that institutions are to“ensure that the programs they deliver across borders and in their home country are ofcomparable quality and that they also take into account the cultural and linguistic
sensitivities of the receiving country” (UNESCO, 2005, p.15). It suggests that thecontextualization of curriculum and teaching and learning practices are pedagogicallyand culturally appropriate. This, in turn, creates a range of tensions because if thecurriculum or teaching is not equivalent or similar, is it possible to demonstrateequivalent or comparable standards? The presumption is that because the curriculum
content is not the same, it is inferior. As Woodhouse and Carroll note, “Higher
education is a construct in which the method of delivery, which is heavily influenced
by its context, is inseparable from the quality of the outcome. Such a position brings
into sharp relief the methods by which we seek to ensure ‘equivalence’ of student
learning outcomes. These methods are still heavily influenced by notions of‘identicality’ such as common curricula and centralized examination marking”(Woodhouse and Carroll, 2006, p.85).

	
  
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These opposing views are also expressed by transnational students who have clear
expectations that curriculum should be equivalent, yet contextualized to meet theirneeds. If for example, the content is too Australian-centric, transnational students
have shown to be critical in student feedback (McLean, 2006). The result of this has
been a universalizing of content.
Removing location-specific content is often necessary to avoid
confusing offshore students, but by trying to universalize a course,
lecturers run the risk of abstracting curriculum from real-world contexts,
and thereby elevate the status of 'universal' to many locally and culturallybound ways of thinking, communicating and working. The question weare faced with is why, despite the widespread agreement on thedesirability of adapting and tailoring transnational programs to suitspecific student groups, does it seem to happen so rarely (McBurnie andZiguras, 2007, p.65).

Transnational students also want teaching standards to be equivalent to Australianstandards, yet flexible to meet their needs (Leask, 2006). When the home regulatory
system dominates, an institution is torn between meeting the demands of its
transnational students, providing what is known to be good practice, and ensuring
standards are near to equivalent by delivering exactly the same curriculum in the sameway. The notion of contextualization suggests that standards are moving away fromequivalency and therefore inferior. Navigating between notions of equivalency andcomparability for different types of standards entails risks for the institutions that
could potentially lead to a loss of reputation, loss of commercial return and closure ofa program. For some institutions, the low-risk approach means simply having

	
  
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Volume 1 - Issue 1 - Spring 2013equivalent standards across as many dimensions as feasibly possible. Whileequivalent standards in transnational education may reduce the potential risk for theawarding institution, it may not necessarily suit the needs of the host institution or its
students.

Shifting interpretation of transnational standards
For the past eight years the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) has had
the task of auditing transnational education and ensuring compliance with the
National Protocols. The audits provided a public assurance of quality. The fact thattransnational education has the potential for being ‘high-risk’, and that programs
being delivered in another country provide significant signals about the quality ofAustralian education, the government felt that AUQA should scrutinize transnational
activities more closely. In 2003 the Australian government allocated funding to audit
transnational programs, which included visiting partnerships overseas as well as
speaking to staff and students. Since 2003, AUQA has conducted between two andfour transnational audits for every university that has programs offshore.

Greater levels of scrutiny in transnational education had had some effect onuniversities. It is no coincidence that since AUQA began auditing transnational
education in 2003, the number of transnational programs dropped significantly. In
2003, Australian universities reported 1569 transnational programs. In 2007 this had
dropped to 1002 and in 2009 to 889 programs (Universities Australia, 2009). Despite
this, the number of students enrolled in these programs continued to rise between
2003 and 2009. This suggests that there was a consolidation and withdrawal ofprograms with low enrolments. Media reports suggested the withdrawal was largely

	
  
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due to potential reputational risk and the lack of commercial return (Armitage, 2007).
Of the programs that remained, AUQA auditors largely agreed that Australiantransnational education was comparable with their home institutions (Woodhouse andStella, 2008).

While there are considerable differences in opinion about the assurance of quality andthe effectiveness of external auditing (Anderson, 2006), AUQA audits were useful inthat programs and appropriate standards could be contextualized. The audits provided
a forum to consider informed judgments and different interpretations of academic
standards. The diverse social and cultural settings for transnational education make it
important to contextualize standards.

Recent changes in Australia’s regulatory system raises a number of questions of howtransnational standards will be interpreted in the future. Since 2011, AUQA has been
replaced with the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) and isdeveloping a Higher Education Standards Framework.

The Higher Education

Standards Framework (DEEWR, 2011) has five components:•

Provider Registration Standards•

Information Standards•

Qualification Standards•

Teaching and Learning Standards•

Research Standards

Subsumed within Provider Registration Standards is a sixth element called Provider
Category Standards. This section will also contain a revised set of National Protocols.

	
  
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These will describe the principles that govern each type of higher education
institution and provide a set of minimum standards. It is unclear at this stage whether
the notion of equivalence for offshore campuses and comparability for third-party
partnerships in transnational education will remain. Information standards deal withthe collection and publication of data. A website called ‘myuni’ is planned for launch
in 2012 and will contain a range of information relating to standards. Qualification
standards largely revolve around a revised Australian Qualifications Frameworkdescribing the expected graduate outcomes at different levels of education.
Underneath this may be the development of subject-level standards described aslearning outcomes but this is yet to be confirmed. This would broadly follow the UK
benchmark statements that provide external reference points for setting and assessing
standards in institutions at the subject level. Teaching and learning standards isperhaps the most difficult and contentious area. The setting and assessment ofteaching and learning standards is opaque and complex. It is not clear for example,
whether standards will be set according to institutions’ own missions and goals,
against national or international standards (Thompson-Whiteside, 2011b). Lastly there
are research standards, which are likely to be assessed through the Excellence in
Research Australia (ERA) initiative, which collects research data to assess research
performance within institutions.

While many of these standards are under development it is clear that by withdrawing
from an auditing process TEQSA will be relying much more on quantitative data andperformance indicators. A range of these potential indicators can be seen from Table
1.0 extracted from Coates (2010). The integrity and reliability of this data becomes

	
  
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paramount. As Coates argues, “it is vital that indicators are valid, relevant to key
phenomena, stable across contexts, transparent, non-trivial, responsive to change,
auditable, efficient to collect, preferably readily available, as simple as possible,
quantifiable and generalisable” (p.6).
Table 1.0 Indicators of education quality extracted from (Coates, 2010).

Higher Education
Learners

Higher education
Teachers

Higher education
institutions

Outcomes

Processes

Inputs• Graduation rates• Graduate destinations• Learning outcomes• Graduate capabilities• Work readiness• Satisfaction• Student
engagement• Retention and
Progress• Entry levels• Entry pathways• Student diversity• Student
characteristics• Student aspirations• Teaching experience• Teaching resources• Teaching processes • Staff characteristics• Course• University
management
enculturation• Support systems• Educational
resources• Curriculum• Institutional growth• Institutional
reputation• Community
engagement• Academic
governance• Academic
management• Academic culture• Staff development• Quality systems

	
  
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• Institutional
characteristics• Institutional
resources• Industry
engagement• Graduate
capabilities• Work readiness• Satisfaction

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The problem in using a range of these indicators for transnational education is thehighly contextualized nature of teaching and learning. The reliance of quantitative
indicators in transnational education raises potential problems for transnational
education for a number of reasons.
First, the collection of data in transnational education is poor (Garrett and Verbik,
2004, Verbik and Jokivirta, 2005). The fact that students are based offshore from
Australia means that the Australian government relies heavily on individual
institutions collecting the data. In some cases institutions will collect enrolment data
centrally but quite often the collection of data is done in individual departments.
While Australian institutions typically report enrolment data to the government there
is a lack of data concerning teaching and learning. Until now the public assurance ofquality was done through an auditing process and largely focused on institutional
processes. As a result the quality assurance of transnational education has largely
been framed around institutional processes of teaching, assessment and themoderation of assessment. Most of these processes do not necessarily involve thecollection of data. As a result there is little comparative data analysis between
offshore students and onshore students.

Second, one could argue that even if the data were to be collected, it would be invalid
to compare offshore students with onshore students. Comparing data across culturally
and socially diverse settings, across different locations is bound to be complex. Some
indicators are likely to be equivalent but others are likely to be different and thesedifferences can have multiplying affects. The processes of teaching and learning are
dynamic, complex processes and not easily measurable as discrete activities. Even if
some standards were stable or equivalent, it does not necessarily mean that all the

	
  
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other standards would be equivalent. For example, if entry standards and curriculum
were equivalent, it does not necessarily mean that teaching, learning or graduate
standards are equivalent. Comparisons of teaching and learning standards using
purely quantitative data have the potential to be misinterpreted.
Third, the emphasis on quantitative data has the potential to create a situation ofabsolutes. If data between onshore and offshore students are compared and notequivalent then one is presumed to be inferior. There is no contextualization of thedata. Of course, if the policy settings (e.g. the Provider Registration Standards andthe National Protocols) allow for comparable standards then the question is what
difference is acceptable? How does one interpret the differences that inevitably will
occur in the data?

The shift towards a more precise, quantifiable assessment of standards has potential
ramifications for transnational education that has to be fully understood. Where
audits allowed for a contextualization of standards, a standards-based architecture thatis more ‘light-touch’ and data driven has the potential to highlight differences thatexist for very good reasons. If equivalent data between onshore and offshore shows
equivalent standards, then logically, data that shows significant differences suggests
notions of one having inferior standards to the other.

Ensuring equivalent data

between onshore and offshore is likely to be more difficult depending on the mode ofdelivery, the level of autonomy and the amount of contextualization that takes placein the classroom.

By examining the Two Dimensional Typology in Figure 1.0

developed from Davis, Olsen and Böhm (2000), it is likely that a data-driven
standards framework will become more risky for transnational education in thebottom right quadrant.

	
  
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32

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Volume 1 - Issue 1 - Spring 2013

Conclusion
The recent shift in Australia away from quality assurance and auditing of institutions,to a more precise standards-based framework has considerable implications forAustralian transnational education. A standards framework that relies heavily on thecomparison of data has implications to drive institutional behaviour away from certain
forms of international collaborations and types of transnational delivery.

The

comparison of data does not sufficiently allow for interpretations and acontextualisation of complex teaching and learning processes in different cultural
settings. When policies require equivalent standards in transnational education, thenthe risks for transnational may be too high. Even if policy settings allow forcomparable standards, any differences in data will be considered a risk to standards.
The notion of difference and the desire to reach equivalency fails to recognize thecomplexities of transnational education and ultimately is unproductive in generating
mutually beneficial, long-term, sustainable partnerships. To minimise any potential
differences, Australian institutions are likely to constrain the types of international
partnerships, the types of transnational delivery and reduce the number of programs.
This in turn will have implications for countries that use transnational education as away of capacity building. It is likely to restrict access to Australian higher education
for students in those countries.

	
  
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