Last Autumn the University of Utah opened its Asia campus in South Korea’s newly formed education hub in Incheon near Seoul. Chief Global Officer Michael Hardman talks about the challenges involved, developing partnerships in Korea and what the global campus might look like in five years’ time.
The PIE: You opened last autumn, is that right?
MH: We opened the campus officially on September 1 with 18 total students.
The PIE: And you’ll have more this spring?
MH: We’ll have 70 more in the spring.
In our first semester, it’s important to note that because our approval came later than we had anticipated we were only able to recruit at the end of the recruitment period – so many of the students who were interested in coming to the university had already committed. Other than that we had an outstanding class of 18 students, we were not positioned to recruit and we did not have our recruitment team on the ground until August, so now that our recruitment team is in full swing we anticipate them to recruit about 100 students per semester.
The PIE: And what percentage of students on the Asia campus will be Korean?
MH: The target from the Korean government is 40% Korean, 40% other Asian countries and 20% from the US.
The PIE: And this is the first time you’ve done any kind of international recruitment?
MH: For the first time the university has an Asia recruiter. Now that we have the team on the ground they help us find the agents, they help us look around where best to put our resources and where our best opportunities are going to be. It’s a leap and it’s one that has been thought through very carefully and pretty much demonstrates that we want to recruit top quality students and increase the number of international students.
The PIE: Is it important for you that you recruit from within Asia?
MH: Very, very important. Right now on our main campus, as is true with most universities, Chinese students are the predominant international student group – they constitute about 40% of our 3,000 international students, followed closely by Korean and Indian students. So we see that as a major opportunity for us, because we have a group of students already there.
“Asia is not our only area. We are really looking to expand our global operations”
I want to emphasise, Asia is not our only area. We are really looking to expand our global operations, and establish something like a hub in South or Central America. It’s likely not to be a campus, it’s likely to be a base for recruitment or a hub for us to create opportunities for students to come to the University of Utah.
The Korean partnership is very unique because of the amount of incredible financial support that the Korean government is putting into the entire international city and the free economic zone and the campus. The commitment is pretty phenomenal.
The PIE: And it’s $17m they’re providing over 10 years?
MH: If we were to spend down all of our subsidies and we had to use all of the loan, which we do not anticipate, we have backing of about US$17m over a 10 year period. But if we have our target numbers for recruitment we will, starting year four, start having positive revenue and we will stop using any loan money and then in the fifth year we will stop using any subsidy money. Ultimately the Korean government will really like to see us self sustained by then.
The PIE: The regulations are very stringent as to the programmes you can offer, aren’t they?
MH: They are very stringent, they must be the same degree programmes. Actually it’s even more than that, they must be programmes that are already successful on the main campus.
The PIE: How do you measure that?
“It’s no secret we import more students than we export”
MH: Student enrolment figures, graduation rates, accreditation, quality of the programme through internal and external reviews. The Korean Ministry of Education conducted an analysis that went through the whole programme, to see how many students we were producing a year, where were the jobs for those students, what were the opportunities for them after graduation, not just jobs, going on to graduate school; they did a very thorough job of looking into the quality of these programmes and as we expand into new areas they will do the same.
The PIE: Do you think Korea can meet its target of having 200,000 foreign students by 2020? There’s about 86,000 now.
MH: I think for them to hit it they have to be able to offer strong incentives for foreign students who want to come to Korea. It’s no secret we import more students than we export. Some of that is language based, our students are not prepared to go to another country, so there is a strong movement, not just in Korean universities but other parts of Asia as well, to offer some of the curriculum courses in English so they can attract more US students. There are also opportunities for dual degree programmes where you get both a Chinese degree and a US degree, which could be attractive for a US student who’s got an international focus.
But I think one of the biggest problems is that we have to figure out a better way to integrate global learning into the academic experience than just going to a learning abroad fair – pick your country and pick a faculty member and go. We have to do a better job at that and be able to support those students financially.
“We have to figure out a better way to integrate global learning into the academic experience than just going to a learning abroad fair – pick your country and go”
The PIE: How will it work financially for the University of Utah students who spend a year on the Asia campus?
MH: They pay the same as they would pay on the main campus. It’s no more costly except for the fact that they have to get over there and you have to live there.
The PIE: How many of your US-based students would you anticipate would spend time in Incheon?
MH: I think we would like to see some 1500 students, let’s say 10-15% of the main campus.
The PIE: Do you have partnerships with Korean universities?
MH: We are working on partnerships with several Korean universities. The campus itself is not just about attracting students to the academic experience, it’s about Korean research as well. So we’re focused right now on two major partnerships with Korean universities for research and building research centres, then connecting our degrees to them.
“As soon as you say ‘I’d like to share courses’, you have to have as many students going out to courses as students coming in, to balance out the revenue generation”
Our degrees – the way the Ministry of Education has it structured right now, there is no opportunity for a Korean partner to come in and be a part of the degree. It’s three years on the campus to meet the US university’s requirement, then one year in the US back in the main campus. The financial model is built off of that. As soon as you say ‘I’d like to share courses’, you have to have as many students going out to courses as students coming in, to balance out the revenue generation. And I think what you’re going to see on the Asian campus is that the course sharing is internal among the Asian universities initially.
Then we would like to see joint programmes. Let’s say we were able to work with a university for our social work degree, where the student would get a bachelors degree but they would be guaranteed admission into a Korean or Chinese university for their graduate work. It’s a 3+ kind of a programme, we are working on it with China right now and we would like to do it all over Asia, so that way everybody could win.
The PIE: What do you think the campus will look like five years down the line?
MH: I think five years down the line, the first four universities have to be successful. I’d be concerned about adding too many universities too soon and I think what you might see is a global campus, once the universities are interactive that the students see themselves as a Incheon global campus student, which means they participate in activities across all the universities there and they get their degree from the University of Utah. There is course sharing going on, there are experiences, and learning abroad for our Incheon campus students to be able to go to other parts of the world.
“I’d be concerned about adding too many universities too soon”
For example, we actually have a public health campus in Ghana, so we want students to have the opportunity to get part of their experience in Utah, part in Incheon and part in Ghana.
The PIE: You’re not allowed to offer the same programmes as other universities – is that tricky to negotiate?
MH: Very tricky, there’s no question about it. The plus side of it is that you’re able to collaborate in ways that do not create strong competition between each other.
The downside is that some if programmes are very strong and they want to come in and if somebody else has it, it’s an opportunity that is lost. That’s a sensitive area. Right now I think it’s important that universities keep communication open. It’s going to be a challenge because the more successful we become, the more programmes would want to come in.
