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Chris Payne, King’s College London, US

King’s College London has ambitious international goals and was one of three universities to launch a tri-continental alliance earlier this year to drive global research, student mobility and a pioneering model for joint degrees. Chris Payne, head of the North America office for King’s, shares some of the goals of the PLuS Alliance and talks about the “almighty pull” of the US as a study destination for UK students.

The PIE: What kind of partnerships does King’s have in the US?

Chris Payne, King's College London

"It needs to have that investment and that drive for these institutions to say they are doing this"

CP: We have 14 or so US partners, a whole range, one of our oldest and biggest partners is the University [of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill. That is a very long history of a partnership that started off with mobility and now has become a whole latitude of different things that we are working on together, which is really interesting.

“The US for us, outside of Europe, is the most popular destination for our students”

We have a whole suite of mobility partners, providing access for our students to go abroad, which is part of the international strategy at King’s. Even though India and China, the new powerhouses, are interesting and people do want to go and study there to learn about those cultures, the US still has an almighty pull.

The US for us, outside of Europe, is the most popular destination for our students.

The PIE: How many King’s students come to the US to study?

CP: It was over a hundred last year, which for one country for us is pretty high.

We also we launched a global internship programme as a pilot last year, we offered India, China and the US – we only offered ten spots on an international programme last year in DC and over 50% of the applications were for the United States. We were not expecting 300 applications for ten spots to come to DC to do an internship, which again shows the relationship between the two countries.

Hopefully, what we are doing here as part of our office is providing that ambassadorial role, that lightening rod opportunity whereby we continue to build these relationships. And what might start off being a mobility relationship and then through regular communication and regular sharing of insight and intrigue, other things develop.

The PIE: What are some of the initiatives you’re working on at the moment?

“We were not expecting 300 applications for ten spots to come to DC to do an internship”

CP: The big one we are working on at the moment is something called the PLuS Alliance. We are working with Arizona State University and the University of New South Wales and really looking at bringing the three universities together.

The big things we are looking at at the moment are leadership, global health, sustainability, social justice and technology and innovation. On the research side, how can three institutions come together to help solve these issues? And on the teaching side, how can we provide access to education?

It is really exciting, because it is not just one or two joint dual degrees or one or two independent research projects; it is effectively creating a larger university, combining three others into something which is going to be charged with bringing about a whole range of research initiatives and also new academic content as well, on a global scale.

The PIE: So what is the alliance going to look like for the student?

CP: It is going to be in phases, so for current students that are already in each of our institutions, it means they are going to have access to different courses in different degrees at their institutions.

A lot of this is going to be online so it is going to be a seamless experience – they can take a module at NSW in London, for example, that counts towards their degree, or they may want to spend a semester in Phoenix as part of their programme. So it is providing opportunities for learning without the barrier of having to travel.

As we move forward in developing programmes, the idea is having different exit and entry points. You might start your programme at Phoenix, you might decide in a two year graduate degree, I want to spend a year at ASU and then I want to do a semester at NSW or King’s.

“The idea is then to create new degrees which are going to be more unique in the sense of building them from scratch”

Or you might want to base yourself primarily at ASU and do online at the other two institutions. It really provides multiple ways to experience three universities rather than just the traditional mobility piece.

The PIE: When will the first programmes look like?

CP: Phase one of this project is looking at what we are currently offering and by combining our current programmes, what can we offer for the breadth or depth of that particular discipline, that we don’t currently independently offer by ourselves. That might essentially be a particular degree as part of that – you can go off in a slightly different direction and take one of your courses at ASU, that would count towards your King’s degree in global health, for example.

As we move forward from that, the idea is then to create new degrees which are going to be more unique in the sense of building them from scratch. And from 2017 onwards we will be adding more and more degrees. Most of them will be blended with different exit points, so you can either come on campus or do them online, and that’s working with our existing students.

The PIE: How are you overcoming the challenge of credit recognition?

CP: At the moment, we are looking at launching a whole suite of degrees where we are going to have to cross-credit the degrees, so each university recognises each other’s credits. And then if we develop new programme, that is obviously going to become somewhat easier because they are being created from the beginning under this umbrella.

But it is essentially recognising each other’s credits and identifying where the programmes complement each other in the discipline areas we are identifying: global health, social justice, sustainability, those kinds of areas.

The PIE: If a student did an arrangement like this, spent time in London and then both Sydney and Arizona and then went back to London, would they graduate with a degree from London?

CP: If we are looking at the ultimate aim, you would get a degree from all, so it is like a joint degree. So there will be a certain requirement, a percentage of your programme to be completed with each partner, whether that be in person or taking courses online.

If you are talking about taking one or two courses and having access to the portfolio – which is also an enriching experience – obviously your degree would come from your home institution, and it would be more like a traditional study abroad experience. A number of students will indeed want to do that but I guess that is not the overall aspiration. It is to think big and to really provide something unique on scale.

“It is providing opportunities for learning without the barrier of having to travel”

That’s the bigger driving force behind the initiative, to really contribute to society in a very tangible way, so lots of people are trying to do things now on a global scale. If you’ve got three universities coming together that can go to funding bodies say we’re strategically aligning our resources and our research strengths, what does that mean, not only for the funding body but for us and for the people we are trying to help?

The PIE: How will fees be structured?

CP: I think that’s one of the biggest challenges when you are trying to do a programme, particularly when you bring in a US partner, because the cost of education in the US versus UK and Australia is completely different tuition fee models. The idea for the joint programmes is that it is going to have to find a way to offer a hybrid tuition model – that is something that is an ongoing conversation at the moment.

The existing portfolio of programmes we are offering for stage one, where you can take courses but you will be paying your home institution for them, that is pretty traditional in its approach. The bigger question is when we do those brand new programmes, what is the tuition? And if you truly want to make it accessible en masse, you need different price points for different audiences.

Obviously if you are working with a government and they are offering it to thousands of their students it is very different proposition to a one-to-one offering with a particular student as well, so those are all the things we are thinking about at the moment.

The PIE: Talk me some of the other projects King’s is working on in the US.

CP: A completely different one is what we’re working on with the Georgian papers project. We are working with the Royal Archives to digitalise over 350,000 pages from the whole Georgian period.

The first release is going to be in January and we have just signed with the Library of Congress here in DC, which is going to be helping us exhibit and work on the documents, providing access to the public on these papers and building education programmes around that as well.

We’re also working with Georgetown University in London, we’re working with them on a transnational legal centre with transnational legal studies, so again it is showing that interest between the UK and the US.

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