PurposeThird-party arrangements where a university offers its degrees in collaboration with another institution are not a new phenomenon, particularly when the third-party arrangements occur in the form of a cross-border education (or widely known as transnational education). Drawing on a critical review of the literature available on quality assurance of domestic third-party arrangements and through the use of interviews with the sessional teaching staff, the paper offers theoretical as well as practical views on the domestic third-party arrangement and seeks to inform key stakeholders in the academic management of such collaboration.Design/methodology/approachThe study was undertaken with 40 sessional academics who are involved in teaching postgraduate courses at several third-party education providers and universities with metropolitan campuses in Australia. Focus group interviews were conducted with 8–10 participants in each group. The qualitative study included seven open-ended questions. Each focus group interview was between 45–60 minutes.FindingsThe study found 11 universities in Australia offering courses in third-party arrangement with a focus on international students. Online third-party arrangement is also gaining momentum. The study found the following areas that require attention: induction and professional development, quality assurance arrangements, maintenance of standards, adequacy of resources and infrastructure and risk related to academic quality.Research limitations/implicationsLimited study has been conducted on third-party arrangements where a university, usually located far from the city vicinity, works in a collaborative mode with another institution, primarily a private institution, to offer degrees at metropolitan city areas in the same country. Further research is needed with a large number of participants.Originality/valueThe study is undertaken for the first time in Australia. No research has been undertaken on the growth and quality assurance of a third-party arrangement in Australia and other developed countries. The study involves the engagement of the sessional academic staff.

Australian universities have been actively engaged in transnational education since the 1990s. The challenges of assuring quality have seen a changing regulatory framework increasingly designed to ensure equivalence of standards wherever a course of study is offered and however it is delivered. Transnational Higher Education has grown significantly and the issues that flow from operating across jurisdictions, cultures and contexts have been addressed primarily by institutions themselves in complying with regulation. This article identifies how the Australian quality agency TEQSA (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency) has revised its Standards Framework to support divergence appropriate to local culture and context, while assuring quality provision across the student life cycle. It concludes that the maturity of the quality agency may not yet reflect the provision of transnational education in practice. The article identifies a need for significant further research so that theory and practice can reflect opportunities to better serve students in a mature quality environment.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine issues academics at importing institutions face while delivering Australian degrees in Malaysia. Transnational higher education (TNE) has been widely researched. However, less widely researched is the area of understanding what academics at the offshore locations need to uphold the required academic standards of their partnered exporting universities. This area warrants close attention if Australian and other transnational education universities are to sustain their growth through a partnership model with offshore academics delivering a portion (often a substantial portion) of the teaching. Design/methodology/approach Two focus groups were conducted with a mix of long standing and newly recruited Malaysian lecturers who taught into an Australian degree through a partnership arrangement. The semi-structured questions which were used were derived from a preliminary literature review and previous internal institutional reports. Findings The findings from the focus groups indicate that TNE is largely “Australian-centric” when addressing the standard of academic quality and integrity. The findings pointed not so much to any sustained internationalisation of curriculum or administration or personnel but more as internationalisation as deemed required by the local academic. Originality/value To a greater extent, the findings highlighted that equivalent student outcomes do not necessarily equate to equivalent learning experiences or teaching workload. In fact, the frustration of the interviewees on the tension to fulfil the home institution curriculum and helping students to “comprehend” an Australian-centric curriculum translates to “additional and unrecognised workload” for the interviewees.

No abstract