For decades, our sector convinced institutions that an offshore branch campus or direct student recruitment was the gold standard. We built an entire industry around exporting: taking an established Western degree model, wrapping it in strong institutional branding, and placing it in a new geography.
Today, in conversations with university leaders, policy makers and higher education stakeholders from London to Riyadh, the same urgent questions keep surfacing about the future of degree delivery, academic capacity building and national growth.
The UK government’s ambition to grow annual education exports to £40 billion by 2030 creates a significant opportunity for the sector. Realising it will take more than inbound, campus-based recruitment alone; it calls for new, collaborative models of delivering accredited higher education.
At the same time, fast-scaling economies are no longer asking for off-the-shelf overseas degrees; they want in-country capacity built alongside local institutions and industry. In Saudi Arabia under Vision 2030, data from the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) shows AI-related job postings grew by 54% annually between 2018 and 2022, while the pool of AI-skilled workers expanded by 51% per year. National bodies are asking how technology and global partnerships can accelerate access to accredited university programmes within their own borders.
Yet the sector’s traditional answer often remains misaligned. Many of us built our careers on an export mindset, studying what worked in established university systems in order to replicate it elsewhere. When a moment demands genuine, ground-level co-creation, we often default to the old playbooks: build a physical campus that takes seven years, or recruit students away. We still gravitate toward familiar metrics: recruitment targets, brand visibility and physical real estate. That is curious. Perhaps it says something about how comfortable we have become with transactional expansion.
Many of us built our careers on an export mindset, studying what worked in established university systems in order to replicate it elsewhere
This could be the moment to stop asking how to export our universities, and start asking how to co-create higher education with the communities we serve. There are already glimpses of what that looks like:
- Agile hybrid pathways: San Diego State University‘s GlobalFlex model, delivered through SDSU Global Campus, offers an instructive example. International students complete foundational coursework remotely in their home country before progressing to on-campus study in San Diego, reducing living costs and easing visa-related barriers while maintaining full academic rigour.
- Co-created higher education frameworks: Multi-stakeholder partnerships bring together international universities, local delivery specialists and digital learning platforms to align international courseware with national qualification frameworks. The objective is not corporate training, but long-term, accredited higher education pathways at scale, without the need for costly physical infrastructure.
These models mark a fundamental shift from brand export to true co-creation. Technology and flexible academic pathways are no longer secondary options; they are the central engine for delivering accredited university impact.
The expertise our sector brings to international partnerships at conferences and receptions now needs to be applied with far greater agility: not to sell off-the-shelf programmes, but to sit down with regional partners, listen to what their academic systems actually need, and co-create something that lasts.
The case for cross-border university education is as strong as ever, and the work is happening right now, in real time. But with rising capital costs, shifting student flows and ambitious national export targets, treating higher education expansion as a transactional export business has reached its limit. Co-creation is the only path forward.
About the author: Gaganjot Kaur is director of partnerships, academic intelligence at INUNI Global. She works on the partnerships and strategies that help universities strengthen their international presence. As director, academic intelligence at INUNI Global, she brings expertise in transnational education, academic alliances, internationalisation and institutional growth, with a focus on building meaningful cross-border collaborations. Over the past decade, she has worked with universities, government bodies, innovation networks and international education organisations, including Swissnex India and the British High Commission in India. Her experience across academic, commercial and policy environments informs her work on TNE strategy, global pathways and new opportunities for institutions expanding their international reach.
