Internationalisation and the problem of degree recognition

British universities should wise-up to the geographically specific and long-term consequences of their educational offerings overseas, observes Tamson Pietsch
People walking on an atlas
How are degrees from British institutions overseas viewed in different parts of the world? Photograph: Luisa Ferreira/Associated Press

Internationalisation is something higher education institutions have been engaging in since the 1970s. Initially it took the form of development schemes, but as Hans de Wit has recently pointed out, in the 1980s "the direction shifted from aid to trade", with universities in the UK and Australia in particular beginning to charge full-cost fees to foreign students. Since the 1990s internationalisation has undergone yet another revolution, with universities increasingly offering education offshore.

The merits of this process have been much debated, but last week I was in Berlin to attend a workshop on the changing role of the university at the Humboldt Centre for British Studies and among the papers presented was one that cast new light on the issue.

In a qualitative study, Johanna Waters (Birmingham) and Maggi Leung (Utrecht) interviewed both the providers of British degrees in Hong Kong and also the students who undertake them. Their findings suggest that British universities would be wise to pay more attention to the geographically specific and long-term consequences of their educational offerings.

UK universities dominate the Hong Kong non-local market with 36 different higher education institutes running 625 courses in 2010. With teaching frequently delivered in partnership with the continuing education departments of local universities, these "top-up" courses can enable Hong Kong students to obtain a British degree in less than a year.

Waters and Leung's findings are revealing in two ways. First they suggest that British universities are serving a demographic that otherwise would not have access to higher education. The best students seek to enter the local Hong Kong universities. But this is extremely competitive, and a large number of students go abroad for the last years of secondary school and undertake university degrees internationally. Only those students unable to mobilise the social and economic resources necessary to do so look to locally-provided British degrees. As one of the study's interviewees commented: "These programmes [are] for the bunch of people who did not perform too well in HKCEE [examinations taken in Hong Kong at the age of 15], or their results might not take them to [a] local university directly."

With marketing conducted by their continuing education departments, these students see top-up degrees as a backdoor into prestigious local universities. However, Waters' and Leung's interviews show that they are frequently disappointed. With significantly reduced privileges, top-up students are not recognised by Hong Kong universities or by their "proper" students. As another of their interviewees told them: "It is like you have given birth, but you don't recognise your own child."

But neither are top-up degrees recognised by the government, nor other local employers. "It is a matter of discretion for individual employers to recognise any qualification to which these courses may lead," reads City University's School of Continuing and Professional Education Handbook. With certificates that are identical to those awarded to UK-based students at the end of a three-year programme, this means British degrees undertaken in the UK are not recognised either. Though both kinds of courses enable students to meet the minimum requirement for many advertised graduate-entry positions, without the language skills and embodied capital acquired through study abroad, top-up students stand little chance of getting such jobs.

The work done by UK institutions in Hong Kong undoubtedly brings higher education within the reach of many students who would otherwise not afford it, while at the same time providing a resource stream to cash-strapped British universities. But the wisdom of diminishing the perceived worth of UK degrees abroad is highly questionable. As students in the UK begin to pay £9000 for their courses, the approach of British universities to internationalisation may be one that comes home to roost.

Dr Tamson Pietsch is lecturer in imperial history at Brunel University, London. She also blogs about academics, universities and the history of the knowledge economy at Cap and Gown.


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