International Education: quality assurance and standards in offshore teaching: exemplars and problems

The massification of university education is being replicated in many emergent and newly-industrialised countries, as universities from older economies have begun to offer educational services overseas. Initially, these were small-group programmes, but in recent years many more subjects, programmes and degrees have been taught offshore to increasingly large groups. This kind of education is dissimilar both to distance education and to local (campus) education, and provides particular challenges for those ensuring and assuring quality from a global perspective. Drawing on the significant experience of the authors, this paper takes a case-study approach to investigating the principles and processes of assuring quality and ensuring standards and to identifying elements that can prove fruitful in achieving high quality and standards.