Current Research Programme

 

A Guide to UK HE Partnerships for Overseas Universities

This Guide will be aimed primarily at leaders and senior staff of overseas universities. It will summarise succinctly and intelligently the main features of the UK HE system, the basic forms of teaching and research collaborations, and a how-to section on working with UK universities for mutual benefit. Its core objectives are to inform international universities as to the opportunities that exist to collaborate with UK universities and to facilitate the formation of such partnerships.

The Guide will be published in English as well as a number of languages from key target markets. In the first instance, these are Mandarin (Chinese), Arabic and Korean. Guides in Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish will be published later, in the 2010-11 fiscal year.

English-language Guides will be distributed to UK universities and other sector stakeholders, as normal. The translated Guides will be distributed in two ways: on an ad hoc basis to UK university staff when they are travelling to those countries (for them to distribute to their contacts there) and directly to universities in the target countries via the British Council offices.

 

A Guide to Staffing Strategies in TNE and Overseas Operations

This project will draw on the experiences of universities in the UK, USA and Australia in staffing their offshore activities. It will provide institutional leaders and managers with a bank of experience to draw on and will identify the key strategic and operational issues they need to consider. The aim is that the final report will give leaders some solutions (drawn from case studies) as well as alerting them to some of the problems. Specific issues that will be considered are:

• Alternative short and long term staffing strategies, in the set up and operational phases.
• Options for salary policies for home academic staff, locally employed academic staff and international academic staff.
• Employment and benefits packages and conditions of service for all three categories of academic staff.
• The impact of host country regulatory, immigration and tax practices on the ability to recruit and retain good staff.
• Maintenance of the quality of learning and teaching and ensuring that students’ experience is similar to that on the home campus.
• How to provide staff with the potential for research activity overseas in the short and long term.
• Managing the risks faced in sending staff overseas, due to unfamiliarity with the legal system, cultural norms and the personnel legislation.
• Legal and contractual issues (with reference to the recent International Unit publication on international partnerships)

Proposed publication date: February 2011