Higher education is a global business nowadays, with an estimated market value of between $40 and $50 billion dollars, according to The World Trade organisation. Few examples illustrate this better, than the rush by British universities to open lucrative campuses in the Middle East and Asia. In China alone there is The University of Nottingham Ningbo, which is sponsored by the City of Ningbo, with cooperation from Zhejiang Wanli University, and partnerships between Leeds Metropolitan University and Zhejiang University of Technology; Queen Mary, University of London and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications; The Queen's University of Belfast and Shenzhen University; and the University of Bedfordshire and the China Agricultural University.
These franchises are worth millions to institutions and it is little surprise that UK universities face competition from the USA, Canada, and Australia in the race to secure a slice of the pie. Joint ventures bring in a lot of money, and sound great on paper, but it is essential that they do not go unchecked. Staff who work in these overseas campuses must be given the same academic freedoms, and working conditions that lecturers enjoy here in the UK, if they and students are to embrace the learning process.
On May 9th, my union, the University and College Union will join forces with half a million academics from around the world to create a series of historic, international agreements that will help safeguard standards at home and abroad. Together with unions from North America, Europe and Australasia, and Africa we will work to protect academic freedom and monitor the work of private companies in higher education. These issues are really important, as the pace 'off shoring' accelerates, and need to be brought to the public's attention.
Signatories will report abuses like those at the Singapore campus of Australia's James Cook University, where a lecturer was suspended and dragged before a court of law for wearing a pro-democracy T-shirt. This is simply unacceptable, and the new agreements will commit unions to discouraging staff from working, and sharing research, with institutions with bad overseas records. Universities that allow academic sweatshops to be set up in their name deserve to be shunned by the best minds.
These new agreements will also work on another level. As the global market in higher education has grown, so too has the involvement of the private sector. Companies like INTO, Navitas, and Study Group International have set up public-private partnerships with universities to recruit international students. We believe this is bad, as it creates a two-tier workforce in higher education, when in-house alternatives carry far less risk to the reputation, academic standards and financial wellbeing of universities. INTO, for example, has been overwhelmingly rejected by staff at every UK university that has been polled on whether or not the institution should get involved with the company.
Students deserve better. They need to be taught by staff who are employed fairly, and who have time to meet their needs. We want people to come out of university with the best qualifications and learning experience. By signing up to these international plans, we will have a global strategy for dealing with private companies, and a way of monitoring academic freedom. Universities need to be run like universities, not like businesses.
Sally Hunt is general secretary of the University and College Union, the largest union of staff in further and higher education in the UK
