Australia’s universities are being encouraged to take more of their education offshore, strengthen partnerships across the Indo-Pacific and diversify their international student models. But according to the 2050 Alliance, the regulatory settings being built around transnational education (TNE) risk making that expansion harder than it needs to be.
In a statement responding to proposed new TNE reporting requirements from the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), the nine-university alliance has broadly backed greater regulatory visibility of offshore education while calling for a more proportionate approach to reporting.
TNE is increasingly being positioned as an important part of Australia’s next phase of international education. Rather than relying almost exclusively on students travelling to Australia, universities are establishing campuses, joint programs and partnerships that take Australian qualifications directly into overseas markets.
The 2050 Alliance says its members are already at the forefront of this shift, with more than 25 years of experience in offshore delivery and higher-than-average levels of offshore education. Its members are opening new campuses in countries including India and Indonesia, while expanding partnerships in Vietnam and elsewhere across the Indo-Pacific.
The next frontier for Australian international education
There is an important strategic point behind the Alliance’s response.
For years, Australian international education policy has largely been built around the idea of bringing students to Australia. That model has delivered enormous economic and social benefits, but the government has recently dampened it through changes in visa policy, migration settings, and domestic political sentiment.
TNE offers universities another potential avenue.
A student can study an Australian qualification without necessarily spending the full duration of their degree in Australia. A university can establish a campus overseas, work with a local institution on a dual degree, deliver programs jointly with industry or create pathways that move students between countries.
That makes TNE more than simply another international recruitment channel. It can become a mechanism for maintaining Australia’s educational influence while reducing the sector’s dependence on physical student mobility and changing government policy.
The Alliance describes Australia’s existing network of campuses, partnerships and academic and research programs across the Indo-Pacific as a “huge strategic advantage” at a time of increasing geopolitical competition.
That is a compelling argument. But universities now face a familiar problem: the government wants more oversight at precisely the moment it is asking universities to become more internationally ambitious.
More regulation, more reporting
Changes to the TEQSA Act in December 2025 require universities to obtain pre-authorisation before offering Australian courses offshore and to provide annual reporting on TNE activity.
The Alliance says it supports the principle of quality assurance and accepts that TEQSA needs better information as offshore activity grows. The concern is not regulation itself, but whether the proposed system captures the complexity of modern TNE and whether universities will end up reporting information regulators already possess.
TNE is no longer a straightforward model in which an Australian university establishes a campus, sends academics overseas and delivers an Australian degree.
Today’s arrangements can involve multiple universities, local institutions, third-party providers, industry partners and different modes of delivery. A single qualification might involve teaching in Australia, face-to-face delivery offshore, online learning and articulation arrangements with another institution.
The Alliance points to examples involving Western Sydney University, including delivery of its Bachelor of Business in Indonesia and Vietnam, with another Indian campus also planned. Local regulations, academic calendars and curriculum requirements can vary between locations, meaning the same degree may not look exactly the same across every jurisdiction.
Trying to squeeze those arrangements into a rigid course-level reporting framework could therefore create plenty of administrative activity without necessarily producing better regulatory intelligence.
The data problem
Perhaps the strongest point made in the submission is that TEQSA can and should make better use of information it already has before asking universities to provide more.
Universities already provide extensive information through TEQSA’s registration and notification processes, while student data is also supplied to the Department of Education. The Alliance argues that regulators should first establish what information they already hold, what they can access from other government systems and what genuinely needs to be collected.
Its proposed principle is simple: “report once and update when changed.”
It is a principle that should resonate well beyond TNE.
Australian universities have spent the past several years navigating a rapidly expanding international education regulatory environment. More reporting can make sense where it identifies genuine risks, but reporting for its own sake does little to improve quality and can divert institutional resources away from the very activities regulators are seeking to strengthen.
The Alliance also questions whether some proposed data fields have sufficient regulatory value. For example, it argues that ownership of premises is not necessarily a useful proxy for academic control, given that TNE can operate from leased, licensed, partner or shared premises. Likewise, treating a course with a small online component in the same category as a substantially online program may provide little meaningful regulatory insight.
A bigger issue than a reporting template
Behind the technical debate over spreadsheets and reporting fields sits a much bigger question about the future relationship between government and universities.
The Alliance argues that the past two years have produced some of the biggest changes to Australian international education policy and regulation in decades. It says changes to visa processing have affected TNE students and universities, including cases where students in TNE programs have reportedly been denied visas to spend periods of study in Australia. According to the Alliance, this has damaged long-standing partnerships and Australia’s reputation as an international education destination.
This is where the TNE debate intersects with the broader international education policy conversation.
Australia is simultaneously asking universities to diversify international education, deepen engagement with the Indo-Pacific and build new offshore partnerships, while introducing tighter controls over international student numbers and additional regulatory requirements.
Those objectives do not necessarily conflict. But they do require coordination, and if they are not, the consequences can be substantial.
The Alliance is effectively arguing that if government wants universities to move into a more managed and strategically focused international education system, then the relationship between government and institutions needs to change as well.
For decades, universities largely designed and funded their own TNE expansion, often cross-subsidising offshore ventures from other university revenues. The Alliance now wants a new compact between government and universities to support the next phase.
Give the system time to mature
The universities are also pushing back on the proposed 31 October 2026 deadline for the first TNE report.
They argue that if the final reporting template is not available until late August or September, institutions will have limited time to interpret the requirements and compile the necessary information.
The Alliance wants 2026-27 treated as a transition year, with limited and targeted data collection while TEQSA clarifies the framework and develops practical examples. It has also previously suggested that Table A universities with TNE operations could be exempt from the initial reporting round while TEQSA establishes what additional information it actually needs.
That approach would seem to offer a sensible test for the new regime: start with the risks, rather than starting with the spreadsheet.
TNE cannot be an afterthought
The bigger takeaway from the 2050 Alliance submission is that Australia has an opportunity to rethink what international education means.
If the sector’s future is simply about managing how many students can enter Australia, then TNE will remain a secondary consideration.
If, however, Australia wants international education to be part of its broader economic, diplomatic and Indo-Pacific strategy, offshore education needs to be treated as a central component of the system.
That means protecting quality and integrity, certainly. But it also means designing regulation that recognises the increasingly complex ways Australian universities operate internationally.
The 2050 Alliance is not arguing for less accountability. It is asking for smarter accountability: regulation that is proportionate to risk, recognises institutional maturity, avoids duplicating existing data and understands that TNE is not one uniform model.
With the federal government’s revised Strategic Framework for International Education and Skills expected later this year, the timing of the Alliance’s intervention is spot on. It is effectively asking government to decide whether Australia’s next international education strategy will continue to treat universities primarily as providers to be regulated, or as strategic partners in extending Australia’s educational reach across the region.
Photo is courtesy of WSU.
