The Transnationalization of Business Education

Introduction

Adam Smith (1976), often considered the father of modern economics, claimed that humans have an intrinsic propensity to “truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another” (p. 17)—that is to say, to trade. This propensity to trade is so basic, he continued, that it probably developed in concert with the ability to speak. As summarized by Bernstein (2008), “[w]hile other animals, particularly primates, groom and share food with each other, systematic exchanges of goods and services, particularly over great distances, have not been observed in any species besides Home Sapiens” (p. 8).

Trade among humans has occurred for thousands of years. Indeed, documents from present-day Turkey allude to a 19th century BCE Assyrian merchant colony near Capadoccia (Stearns & Langer, 2001). International trade—defined here as the voluntary exchange of products (goods or services) which occurs between two countries—has likewise existed for millennia. Evidence “of the exchange of shells, arrowheads, and other goods over long distances…goes back well before any written record” (Pomeranz & Topik, 2013, p. 3). Perhaps the most famous manifestation of this international trade is the Silk Road, which was established during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE) to facilitate the exchange of spices and other exotic goods from the Far East in Europe.

Today, international trade accounts for more than 25% of the gross world product, according to the World Trade Organization, whose members imported and exported US$17.3 trillion in merchandise in 2012 (WTO, 2014). More than 50,000 merchant ships ply the oceans with bulk cargo (Hellenic Shipping News, 2013). And many small countries lacking resources of their own—Singapore, for example—punch well above their weight because of international trade (Ministry of Trade and Industry Singapore, 2014). Channeling both Bernstein (2008) and Pomeranz and Topik (2013), international trade and the history of the world economy go hand in hand.

It ought not to be surprising, therefore, that higher education has also come to be traded internationally. Full fee-paying foreign students, for example, play an important role in higher education, triggered to a large degree by countries such as the USA, the United Kingdom, and Australia, all of which deregulated and restructured their economies in the 1980s (Chadee and Naidoo, 2009). Between 2006 and 2009, the number of foreign branch campuses increased by 43% to 162 (Altbach, 2010; Morgan, 2010). And the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the virtualisation of higher education, for degree-seekers, and likewise in the context of both non-degree executive education and employee training.

TNHE is especially common in business schools. Indeed, according to Altbach (2010), the most popular transnationalized programs are in business, due to the low start-up costs and to the significant worldwide demand for these programs, some of which are especially profitable (Wood et al., 2005). English has doubtless become the language of business schools, especially as more and more students choose to study abroad. It is also said that business schools live and die by the league tables which, in recent years, have become more and more global in nature. And this global competition also extends to the recruitment of students, which now includes fairs, road shows, and other courting rituals which occur from Singapore to São Paulo.

The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to review the transnationalization of business education. The chapter begins by situating transnational higher education within the internationalization of higher education more broadly. It then characterizes transnational higher education, enumerating various definitions and transnationalization modes. Finally, it rationalizes transnational higher education from a geo-political/economic perspective.