WEEKEND READING: Prioritising quality is the only way to grow transnational education safely

This blog was kindly authored by Shannon Stowers, Director of International Policy & Engagement at the Quality Assurance Agency.

The 2026 International Education Strategy is here, and transnational education is the game in town. But if the Government want a true success story that protects the UK’s deserved reputation for higher education internationally, planned growth must be paired with a relentless focus on quality.

The UK Government’s new International Education Strategy (IES) has been most noted in press coverage for its move away from international student recruitment and a renewed push towards expanding transnational education (TNE).  

The previous iteration of the IES, published in 2019, set ambitious targets for the recruitment of international students – targets which the higher education sector was keen and quick to meet. What followed, however, was a political climate increasingly shaped by concerns about net migration. The result has been a set of policy headwinds strong enough to reverse the tide of international student recruitment, leaving universities caught in a boom-and-bust cycle where they are penalised for achieving the very goals the government once set for them.

In terms of incoming students, the focus in the 2026 IES is on the ‘sustainable recruitment of high-quality international higher education students’ – a marked change from the growth narrative of 2019. But what’s particularly interesting here is that we are now witnessing 2019-style ambitious growth for TNE in the form of a £40 billion a year export target. However, without foregrounding quality, sustainability and equity in our approach to TNE now, we risk recreating a similar cycle all over again. We must be clear that the sustainability of TNE is dependent upon the quality of its provision.

While the Government’s strategy has indeed acknowledged the importance of maintaining the UK’s reputation for high-quality provision, there remains a great deal left unsaid about what quality assurance and enhancement should look like in a TNE context.  

In our work at QAA, we regularly engage with a network of partner quality agencies and regulators around the world. We work closely together on a number of key topics, including TNE barriers and assuring TNE quality across borders – like the Robust Quality Assurance of TNE (ROQA-TNE) project on which we are working with our European partners. We’ve often heard concerns about the UK’s approach to TNE, with some worrying that we’re doing it for the ‘wrong reasons’, especially given the well-publicised financial imperatives that our sector has been driven to. The new strategy, with its export framing, may do little to ease those anxieties – especially when partners see UK TNE expanding in their countries while we simultaneously tighten the rules on their students coming to ours (despite the IES stressing the positive point that TNE can help to mitigate overseas nation’s ‘brain drain’ by widening local access to high‑quality UK provision).

The UK’s mechanisms to underpin and enhance that quality are of course complicated by the divergence of regulatory systems across its four nations. In our overseas engagement, we see how stakeholders rarely distinguish between the nations: they see ‘UK higher education’ as a unified brand. This means that a failure in one part of the system risks undermining the reputation of all. It can sometimes be a challenge to explain our system as a coherent whole that can, and should, be trusted. This is made harder as the divergences of regulatory systems increase over time.

As the Government begins to implement its vision set out in the Post-16 Education & Training White Paper, it will be important for policymakers and the English sector to keep half an eye on this angle of UK-ness, keeping our international stakeholders in mind as a key audience of that policy work. Any unintended consequences of work that further extricates the English system from the standards and expectations of the rest of the UK – and indeed of the rest of the world – would be a hindrance to the TNE growth the Government desires.

Ultimately, our TNE students expect and deserve a high-quality experience of higher education, one comparable to that which they would experience on the home campus of their UK provider..

Set to be launched on 26th February, QAA’s UK TNE Quality Scheme will be the refreshed iteration of our Quality Evaluation and Enhancement of UK TNE (QE-TNE) Scheme. First commissioned by Universities UK and GuildHE in 2021, the scheme has already brought together more than 70 UK TNE providers to share insights, identify common challenges, and highlight effective practice. The updated version – developed through extensive consultation – has been designed to remain relevant to the opportunities and challenges of a rapidly shifting global environment. Alongside our work with the British Council and the Department for Business and Trade, it aims to strengthen the quality of UK provision and support the sustainable realisation of the vision set out in the IES, reflecting the shared ambitions of all four nations.

The risks are clear. We don’t want the next iteration of the Government’s international strategy to be mopping up the mess of an ambition for TNE growth gone wrong – if overseas governments are burned by UK TNE that had inadequate oversight, quality problems, and ultimately let down the students they claimed to serve.

The focus must be on sustainable, equitable partnerships that have quality at their heart. If we get it right, it’ll be one of the UK’s biggest success stories for strengthening global partnerships in an increasingly unstable world.