In spite of Texas A&M’s recent announcement that it intends to pull out of Qatar and end its 20-year partnership, a well-known Canadian education futurist says that offshore partnerships are destined to grow in the coming years.
Ken Steele from Eduvation said that in spite of Texas A&M’s announcement, all signs point to more growth and scope of transnational approaches.
On February 8, the Texas A&M board cited heightened instability in the Middle East as the reason to end its contract with the Qatar Foundation to run the branch campus. The current contract was renewed in 2021 and was set to expire in 2033. The vote means the school will start winding down the campus over the next four years before officially closing its doors.
“In general terms, I actually expect to see a resurgence of interest in transnational education partnerships and delivery – whether online on in person,” said Steele. “Last fall Navitas forecasted 9.5 million internationally mobile students around the world by 2030, but 40 million in the latent transnational market – four times as much!”
Steele also indicated that particularly in light of countries like Canada (and Australia) making visas harder to come by, transnational approaches may grow in popularity even beyond what Navitas had predicted. Though many college and university partnerships in the Middle East have ended in financial losses due to one-sided contracts with foreign governments, unforeseen enrolment challenges or cost inflation, Steele expects institutions have learned from those experiences and will be revisiting those agreements again now that other sources of student revenue are harder to realize.
“Transnational approaches might offer a much-needed alternative revenue stream,” said Steele. “But clearly, the nature of those partnerships and the countries in which they occur matter, in a world increasingly embroiled in geopolitical turbulence.”
A press release after the board vote indicated that Texas A&M would focus on matters closer to home.
“The Board has decided that the core mission of Texas A&M should be advanced primarily within Texas and the United States. By the middle of the 21st century the university will not necessarily need a campus infrastructure 8,000 miles away to support education and research collaborations.”
The Qatar Foundation called the decision deeply disappointing. In an article in The Texas Tribune, it was indicated that the Qatar Foundation feel the board is being influenced by a disinformation campaign aimed at harming the interests of the Qatar Foundation.
