Developing UREs at a Community College Branch Campus: A Collaborative Approach

Faculty in STEM and administrators at the NCC-Monroe Campus recognized the importance of undergraduate research experiences as high-impact teaching practices but were realistic about the limitations of a two-year institution. As community and institutional partnerships are important in the creation of long-standing programs, faculty sought a community grant from a local pharmaceutical company, which provided the first NCC Stem Pipeline Project for 2016–2018.

Retention Amongst Pre-University Students at a Foreign University Branch Campus in Malaysia: An Exploratory Study

Student retention is of key importance to many private higher education institutions in Malaysia. This paper discusses the factors influencing a selected group of former pre-university students’ decision to continue their undergraduate studies in the same university where they had completed their pre-university studies. In-depth interviews were conducted, and three major themes of student retention were identified namely, the educational quality at the institution, educational quality at pre-university level and the overall conducive study and support environment. The findings provide insights on retention related challenges and issues faced by this group of students. This study also suggests ways on how the university could successfully improve its student retention.

Use of a Mock Week as a Novel Tool for Evaluating and Implementing Reformed Medical Curriculum at a Nascent Branch Campus

The University of Colorado School of Medicine is implementing comprehensive curricular reform designed to produce physicians with a life-long dedication to leadership, curiosity, and commitment. The new longitudinally integrated and case-based curriculum interweaves content on basic/medical sciences, clinical skills, and health systems content such as bioethics, interprofessional skills, and social determinants of health. Simultaneously, the school is forming a branch campus in partnership with nearby Colorado State University. The newly formed branch campus faculty team wanted to test delivery of the novel curriculum, practice working together as a team, and examine the practical logistics of human and physical resources at the branch campus. Herein, we describe our approach for running a Mock Week of first year of the new curriculum. This innovative methodology involved teaching a week’s worth of the new content and garnering feedback from clinician educators, medical science faculty, and students. Our observations highlight practical insights for implementing an integrated curriculum at an inaugural branch campus. Finally, we provide recommendations for using a Mock Week as a feasible and robust tool for improving and enhancing various facets of medical education. Conflict of Interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest. Keywords: Curriculum reform, New branch campus, Mock Week

Higher Education and Public Good in East and West

The 70th year of the IAU has been marked not only by the Covid-19 pandemic but by the geopolitical tension between the United States and China. After almost four decades of cooperation, which began in shared opposition to Soviet Russia and a shared interest in China’s modernisation, the leaders of each country have become strident critics of the other. The escalating war of words has led to disruptions in trade, communications and visas and now threatens the vast and fruitful cooperation between universities and researchers. Much is at stake. Many US universities are in China, such as Stanford with its state-of-the-art centre at Peking University and NYU with a branch campus in Shanghai. Chinese universities benefit from visits in both directions, from bench-marking using American partner templates and from the return of US-trained doctoral graduates. US-China links in science are focused on crucial areas like biomedicine and epidemiology, planetary science and ecology, engineering, materials, energy, cybernetics.

Two decades of international branch campus development, 2000–2020: a review

PurposeThe research aims to assess the achievements and challenges of international branch campuses (IBCs) to date and to consider how IBC development may progress in the future.Design/methodology/approachThe article presents a review of the scholarly and grey literatures on IBCs. The commentary and discussion is structured around the objectives, perspectives and experiences of three key stakeholder groups, namely the institutions that own IBCs, students and host countries.FindingsSome IBCs have failed to achieve their student recruitment and financial targets, while others have been successful, often expanding and moving into new, larger, purpose-built campuses. In the last few years, several countries have announced their intention to become a transnational education hub, or at least to allow the establishment of IBCs. It may be reasonable to assume that when there is demand for a product, supply will eventually follow. IBCs will survive and prosper as long as they provide benefits to each of their main stakeholder groups (i.e. students, institutions and governments), and as long as the local demand for higher education places exceeds the total supply.Originality/valueThe article provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of IBC developments and research during the period 2000–2020. The findings and conclusions will be of interest to both researchers and practitioners.

Student Mobility in Transnational Higher Education: Study Abroad at International Branch Campuses

The purpose of this research is to investigate the extent to which universities actively encourage students to participate in study abroad at an international branch campus (IBC) owned by the university. We suggest that the quality of information on study abroad provided by an institution in its website may be a good indicator of the institution’s ambition (or not) to have students moving from the home university to a branch campus for study abroad. The selected institution websites were subjected to mixed-method data analysis, which included a content analysis procedure. It was found that some universities appear motivated to achieve IBC-based study abroad and demonstrate the required marketing communication competencies required, while other institutions possibly lack motivation and/or marketing competency. To effectively promote IBC-based study abroad, we advise universities to address the student decision-making process, as suggested by the hierarchy of effects model.

Examining the linkage between class attendance at university and academic performance in an International Branch Campus setting

The relationship between class attendance and academic performance has been an important area of research, with a positive association being posited between the two. The setting for our study is an International Branch Campus (IBC) of a British university that needs to demonstrate the quality of its service delivery both to the parent institution and to the fee-paying students. We employ a dataset of over 900 students in an undergraduate degree programme and subject it to statistical techniques, namely quantile regression and two-stage quantile regression. Our results show that attendance has a beneficial influence on academic performance and this benefit persists at higher percentile of grades. We propose that IBCs could consider an attendance policy that encourages students to attend classes.