NZs Offshore Public Tertiary Education Programmes
Over recent years there has been a significant increase in New Zealand's public tertiary providers' involvement in offshore activities. The Government's Export Education Strategy foreshadowed further work by the Ministry of Education on policy issues surrounding the growth of offshore education programmes offered by New Zealand providers. An initial stocktake of offshore activity by New Zealand's public tertiary providers has been completed and an analysis of results is outlined in the report below.
What is `offshore education?
3. `Offshore education' is a component of `export education'. There are a variety of ways in which export education can be defined. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), APEC and other international bodies use the following four classifications:
a. Consumption abroad, in which the student moves to the country of the supplier to receive education (eg. an international student studying in New Zealand);
b. Cross-border supply (or distance education), in which an educational service is provided across borders but without the movement internationally of either student or teacher (eg. an international student enrolled in a `correspondence' or distance course through a New Zealand provider, but studying from their home country);
c. Commercial presence, in which the provider establishes a presence in the country in which the student resides, for example through a twinning programme or establishment of an offshore campus; and
d. Presence of natural persons, in which the educator moves to the country of residence of the student to provide the service.
4. In practical application, these types of services are often combined. For example, twinning programmes normally involve elements of both `commercial presence' offshore and some `consumption abroad'. There may also be an element of provision via distance education (eg. over the Internet or by traditional `correspondence' learning), and staff from the provider country may travel to the student's country to deliver or assure quality in some of the course. In this sense, the term `offshore education' is used in this report as a short-hand term to encompass all modes of delivery other than `consumption abroad'[1].