The Pros And Cons Of Transnational Education

Transnational education has a close relationship with the Bologna Declaration, its follow-up process (six objectives) and intended goals. The creation of a ‘European higher education area’ interacts with transnational education in a number of positive and negative ways. Transnational education represents opportunities as well as threats. European education providers cannot isolate themselves from external non-European transnational forces, nor is it sensible to ignore the unintended consequences that the construction of a European education space will have. Competition between European transnational education providers, as well as from non-European providers, is likely to increase.

Educational technologies have increased the scale of transnational

Robin Mason (1998) argues that, while earlier forms of educational trade may have undermined local initiatives and perpetuated a cycle of dependency, the Internet facilitates, ‘not so much an exporting as a re-engineering of the educational paradigm to include people from many countries, studying materials designed for a multicultural audience, using technologies which facilitate cross-cultural communications’ (p.45). The technology of the Internet and the Web, he argues, ‘is already breaking down traditional hierarchies and establishing a new kind of democracy about what constitutes knowledge’ (p.46). What is clear is that while traditional hierarchies may be being broken down, they are being replaced by more fluid structures, which nonetheless form patterns of inclusion and exclusion on a global scale (Castells, 1999). Against this backdrop, there has been a growing discussion in exporting countries about how one should teach to diverse groups of students located in different countries. These issues have been particularly pertinent in Australia, because 12.5 per cent of students in tertiary education are foreign citizens (second only to Switzerland) (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2000, 177) and around a third of international students in tertiary education are located offshore (Australian Education International,

It is worth remembering at the outset that the introduction of educational technologies does not necessarily transform learning, and may simply replicate pre-existing learning practices in a new medium. Educational technologies can be used in ways that rigidly circumscribe students’ options, or in ways that lead to greater flexibility for students and encourage self-directed learning and student autonomy (Laurillard,