> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://newsletters.qs.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # How is the Global South changing the direction of transnational education? - URL: https://newsletters.qs.com/how-is-the-global-south-changing-the-direction-of-transnational-education/ - Published: 2026-09-09T03:30:36.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-09T03:30:36.000Z - Description: QS Midweek Brief - September 9, 2026. Is the Global South bringing a new model of TNE to the world? And how is geopolitics, economics and technology changing internationalisation? - Author: Anton John Crace - Tags: QS Mid Week Brief Welcome! TNE is starting to shift in a big way. While the largest exporters of TNE remain predominantly Western (with the exception of Russia), the Global South is beginning to catch up. In fact, many importers, such as China and India, are themselves becoming exporters and challenging for a top five spot. This week, we explore that shift further to see if emerging players are bringing a new type of TNE model to market. In our second piece, we explore how geopolitical, economic and technological forces are shaping global higher ed. Stay insightful, Anton John Crace Editor in Chief, QS Insights Magazine QS Quacquarelli Symonds [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f1/d4/f1d411df-6f49-4c75-a302-f8c9e9f59495/content/images/2026/09/20-May---AUM-4.webp)](https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0y7GQ10?ref=newsletters.qs.com) --- ## **The Global South shift** *By Gauri Kohli* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f1/d4/f1d411df-6f49-4c75-a302-f8c9e9f59495/content/images/2026/09/The-Global-South-shift.jpg) ### **In brief** - Global South universities are disrupting higher education, evolving from student recipients into active international providers. - Emerging strategic networks from India and China use campuses for diplomacy, soft power and regional talent development. - A multipolar ecosystem requires shared governance and local co-investment to ensure equitable, sustainable global education. For decades, transnational education largely followed a North-to-South pattern. Universities from the UK, US and Australia established campuses and partnerships across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, exporting their academic brands and programmes to overseas markets. That geography is beginning to change. Universities from countries such as India and China are increasingly establishing campuses and other forms of cross-border provision outside their home markets. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has opened a campus in Abu Dhabi, while IIT Madras established its first international campus in Zanzibar. Xiamen University has operated a campus in Malaysia for more than a decade. The change is still relatively small compared with the scale of Western TNE. But it raises a bigger question: are Global South universities simply joining an established TNE market, or are they beginning to change how and why international higher education is delivered? According to 2026 data from the Cross-Border Education Research Team (C-BERT), the global footprint of international branch campuses expanded to 384 operating sites across 85 host countries, up from 333 in 2023. The traditional exporters still dominate: the US operates 97 campuses abroad, followed by the UK with 53 and Australia with 23\. But the provider base is diversifying. Indian universities currently run 19 international campuses, while China accounts for 13, placing both among a growing group of non-Western providers expanding overseas alongside Iran, Malaysia, Singapore and several African institutions. These numbers reveal a geography of TNE that is becoming far more diverse. ### **Beyond the balance sheet** Revenue is only part of the story. While financial return matters to private operators, state-backed universities in the Global South often serve as tools for talent development, soft power, research, and regional diplomacy. Governments are using cross-border higher education to build lasting economic and political ties, aligning university expansion with national priorities like India’s National Education Policy 2020, which explicitly encourages top domestic institutions to open campuses abroad. Jason Lane, Professor of Educational Policy, Organisation, and Leadership at the University of Illinois and Co-Director of C-BERT, notes that revenue is rarely the only driver in these newer configurations. “IBCs operate in what I call a third space, in which the IBC must balance the expectations of the home university and home government, alongside those of the host government and its market,” he tells QS Insights. In Professor Lane’s view, international campuses function as geopolitical infrastructure, creating long-term structural connections among governments, universities, industries, students and researchers. Foreign policy, he points out, can directly dictate physical presence — citing Hungary’s expulsion of the George Soros-supported Central European University followed by its invitation to China’s Fudan University as a clear example of diplomatic strategy overriding pure educational policy. This institutional readiness is matched by shifting regional market dynamics across the Global South. Futao Huang, Professor at the Research Institute for Higher Education at Hiroshima University, emphasises that state-backed capacity has reached a critical threshold. He observes that a growing number of universities in Asia and other parts of the Global South now possess the academic capacity, financial resources, international experience and government support necessary to become providers rather than just recipients of TNE. “At the same time, demographic growth, expanding middle classes and rapidly increasing demand for higher education in Asia, Africa and the Middle East have created new regional markets. We are, therefore, moving gradually from a predominantly North-to-South model of TNE toward a more multidirectional system,” says Professor Huang. ### **Different motives, different models?** But the question is not only why these institutions are expanding abroad. It is whether they are reproducing the Western model — or whether their different objectives are producing distinct forms of cross-border education. Rather than relying primarily on offshore tuition generation and brand licensing, several Global South exporters are framing their presence around state-to-state cooperation and local capacity building. The strategic significance of these ventures lies in how they adapt to different regional contexts: Xiamen University Malaysia, with a student enrolment of over 5,000 students from 28 countries and regions, represents a long-running, state-backed Chinese footprint in Southeast Asia; IIT Madras in Zanzibar, where local East African students comprise over 50% of enrolled cohorts, illustrates a South-South model focused on technical capacity building. On a smaller, regional scale, intra-African ventures like Mount Kenya University in Somaliland and Kampala International University in Tanzania illustrate growing cross-border demand within sub-Saharan Africa. Professor Prabhu Rajagopal, Director-in-Charge of the IIT Madras Zanzibar campus, views this initiative as a deliberate departure from the model followed by UK, US and Australian universities. He says that IIT Madras Zanzibar represents the first instance of an international technical education brand expanding within the Global South. “The key goals are indeed to advance India’s international engagement in a region that is historically close to and critical to the country’s long-term initiatives for the Global South,” he says. Established in the spirit of regional contribution, the campus is designed for regional development rather than profit, sharing lessons from India’s tech growth through practical research, industry links, student startups and environmentally-sustainable solutions. Professor Rajagopal notes the model fits because India and African host nations share similar post-colonial and demographic challenges. However, he acknowledges key friction points, such as limited availability of risk and growth capital, along with fragmented policies that can hinder startup scaling. This explicit focus on public service and diplomacy directly challenges the current view of TNE. However, other experts remain sceptical that Global South exporters are creating a fundamentally different model. Professor NV Varghese, former Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Educational Planning and Administration in New Delhi, argues that while historic initiatives like the Fulbright programme or DAAD were government-mediated, modern institutional mobility is overwhelmingly market-driven. In his assessment, branch campuses from less developed systems still operate under the same basic commercial principles as Western providers, focusing primarily on teaching and degree delivery. “Less developed countries with respectable educational institutions are establishing branch campuses in other countries. Malaysia, UAE, Doha are examples of this phenomenon. It is a market-driven process,” says Professor Varghese. Professor Rajagopal highlights a contrasting approach at IIT Madras Zanzibar. He maintains that an IIT degree is incomplete without translational research, industry engagement and a startup culture designed to boost local innovation. Whether Global South providers complement or compete with established players will ultimately depend on their fee structures, global credibility and labour market recognition. Western branch campuses in the Gulf, such as NYU Abu Dhabi or Georgetown Qatar, charge between $30,000 and $70,000 annually, compared to just $6,000 to $12,000 at regional counterparts like IIT Madras Zanzibar. Early outcomes suggest strong local absorption: IIT Madras reported a 100% industrial placement rate for its inaugural Zanzibar postgraduate cohort across global technical firms, while long-established providers like Xiamen University Malaysia maintain graduate employment rates exceeding 90% in regional tech and financial sectors. While some state-funded initiatives operate as non-profit diplomatic ventures, others function as standard commercial operations within established education hubs. ### **Sustaining multipolar equity** As South–South and intra-regional academic networks expand, the change is not simply about where campuses are located. It raises a broader question about who shapes the terms of international higher education. “One likely result is the growth of regional and South-South education networks. Student mobility may increasingly occur within Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East rather than primarily flowing from those regions to Europe, North America and Australia,” says Professor Lane. Faculty mobility and research collaboration could follow similar patterns, particularly around shared challenges such as climate adaptation, public health, food security and digital development. “An analysis a colleague and I did a few years ago showed that faculty at branch campuses tend to develop more regional research collaborations, often different from those at the home campus,” adds Professor Lane. Yet, a broader geographic spread does not automatically guarantee a more equitable system. Warning against easy assumptions, Professor Lane points out that “South-South arrangements can reproduce many of the same power imbalances found in North-South relationships. The real test will be whether these partnerships involve shared governance, reciprocal benefits and genuine investment in local institutional capacity.” At the same time, Professor Varghese warns of a threat to domestic equity. If top academic performers or affluent students opt for branch campuses at home, traditional public universities could be left serving mainly lower-income cohorts, turning cross-border education into a driver of social inequality. Addressing the issue of affordability challenges, Professor Rajagopal notes that IIT Madras Zanzibar relies on donor-backed scholarships to subsidise tuition for East African students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Amid shifting global politics, regional networks offer universities a key safety net, ensuring their international growth no longer relies solely on Western destinations. Professor Huang views these dynamics as a gradual shift toward multiple global hubs, rather than non-Western universities simply displacing Western ones. “Over the next decade, TNE may become much less centred on a small number of English-speaking exporting countries. We could see stronger Asia-Asia, Asia-Africa and Middle East-Asia educational networks,” says Professor Huang. “However, I would describe this as a process of multipolarisation rather than displacement: UK, US and Australian universities will remain highly influential, but they will operate in a much more diverse ecosystem of providers.” Ultimately, the distinction between TNE exporters and importers is becoming increasingly blurred. But whether this shift represents a lasting structural transformation depends on what happens after the initial momentum. As Professor Lane observes, opening an overseas campus is relatively straightforward compared to keeping it academically credible, financially viable and locally relevant over decades. With over 70 international branch campuses having closed historically, Professor Rajagopal argues that extensive local government co-investment and a focus on regional industrial needs could offer a more sustainable path forward for Global South models like IIT Madras Zanzibar. [Read the latest edition online.](https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0y7GKH0?ref=newsletters.qs.com) *Gauri Kohli specialises in writing and reporting on higher education news, including analysis on higher education trends, policies and the edtech sector. Her writing focuses on international education, study abroad, student recruitment trends and policies, with focus on India as a market. She has also covered workplace and hiring trends, corporate practices, work-life features, startup trends and developments, real estate for leading publications and media houses in India and abroad for the last 18 years, including* Hindustan Times*, a leading national daily newspaper in India.* [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f1/d4/f1d411df-6f49-4c75-a302-f8c9e9f59495/content/images/2026/09/Southern-Cross-University-1.webp)](https://www.scu.edu.au/graduate-school/?utm%5Fsource=ad&utm%5Fmedium=print&utm%5Fcampaign=qs%5Finsights&utm%5Fcontent=graduate%5Fschool&utm%5Fterm=null) --- ## **Beyond the classroom: How global forces are reshaping higher education** *By Borja Santos Porras* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f1/d4/f1d411df-6f49-4c75-a302-f8c9e9f59495/content/images/2026/09/Beyond-the-Classroom_-How-Global-Forces-Are-Reshaping-Higher-Education-preview.jpg) ### **In brief** - Higher education faces a defining moment as geopolitical, economic and technological crises converge to reshape the global sector. - Rising nationalism, inflationary pressures, and AI-driven job displacement are rendering traditional university models increasingly fragile and unsustainable. - Leaders must embrace geopolitical strategy and prioritise critical thinking to remain relevant in a volatile, talent-driven economy. For decades, educational institutions have benefited from an idea that was rarely questioned: the world was moving toward greater integration and cooperation. Borders were opening, international mobility was increasing and education was seen as a universal good, removed from the tensions of power. Today, that idea is being put to the test. The rivalry between great powers -- the fragmentation of globalisation, rising inflation and artificial intelligence -- is redefining the conditions under which educational institutions are accustomed to operating. What were once considered external factors — geopolitics, the global economy, technology — have become defining forces transforming education from within. As a result, educational institutions are no longer seen solely as spaces for learning and research, but are increasingly becoming tools of competitiveness and geopolitical influence. Student mobility, talent attraction and scientific and technological advancement have become elements increasingly associated with a country’s power. Nations such as the United States, China, the United Kingdom and the UAE have consequently dedicated enormous resources to attracting talent and leading the race in innovation. This is known as the talent economy: a model built on human capital, innovation and knowledge as the primary drivers of economic development. The countries that attract, develop and retain the brightest minds will be those that lead the global economy. The question, therefore, is no longer whether geopolitics, economics or technology will affect education — they already are. The real issue is whether educational institutions are capable of reading the world in front of them correctly and redefining their purpose accordingly. ### **A new era of geopolitical competition** The first signs of this shift are already becoming evident. While the number of international students worldwide grew from 2.1 million in 2000 to nearly 6.9 million in 2022, many of the main destination countries have begun tightening their immigration policies. In the United States, the Trump administration has made it more difficult to obtain a student visa. The F-1 visa rejection rate reached 35% in 2025, reducing the arrival of foreign students by 17%. [Is the university degree still fit for purpose? Read the full article online.](https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0y7GGm0?ref=newsletters.qs.com) [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f1/d4/f1d411df-6f49-4c75-a302-f8c9e9f59495/content/images/2026/09/University-of-Dubai-1.webp)](https://ud.ac.ae/?ref=newsletters.qs.com)