Session
â Included for all participants
Transnational education has experienced remarkable growth, from under 50 international branch campuses in 2000 to over 300 today. We now hear on a monthly basis of universities in Europe setting up branch campuses on other continents. TNE both gives opportunities and poses challenges, and we will explore those in our session. To highlight this further, we will also take a deep dive into recent empirical research on TNE partnerships from UK universities in the United Arab Emirates.
Sumara Khan is a Principal Consultant at AAAoclimited, a specialist consultancy in university franchise and validation partnership development, transnational education governance, and academic quality assurance. She also serves as Chief External Examiner for postgraduate business and management programmes, providing strategic oversight and governance consultation to subject examination boards.
With over 21 years of experience in UK higher education, Sumara holds Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) and Chartered Membership of Business Educators (CMBE). Her career has combined senior academic roles with an established consultancy practice connecting new and developing education providers with UK universities, with a track record of facilitating partnership agreements across multiple international markets and regulatory environments.
Her current consultancy portfolio includes active TNE partnership development across Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Gulf, including university articulation partnerships with Malaysian institutions and a franchise partnership for a UK institution delivering accredited programmes across multiple campuses in Pakistan. Her work spans institutional readiness assessment, due diligence, university approval process navigation, OfS registration support, and regulatory compliance across frameworks including OfS, QAA, ESFA, KHDA, CAA and HEC.
She serves as an independent Governor on the Governing Body of London Management Qualifications (LMQ), an Ofqual-recognised awarding organisation. She is also completing a PhD at Brunel University on quality assurance governance in transnational education partnerships, directly informing the themes explored in this panel.
Dr. Hilligje van’t Land, Secretary General of the International Association of Universities (IAU) serves the global higher education community. – IAU, ‘The global voice of higher education’, an international NGO with UNESCO Associate Status, and ECOSOC accreditation, celebrated its 75th Anniversary last year. For over two decades, she has fostered the key role of higher education in societal transformation. She supervises the overall programme activities of the IAU, develops the Association’s strategic plans and oversees the everyday work of the secretariat.
Hilligje van’t Land strongly believes in the importance of fair and inclusive international higher education cooperation and intercultural understanding and has developed multilateral projects related higher education and beyond.
She positioned the IAU as partner in UNESCO work on Education for sustainable development and in particular the UNESCO ESD for 2030 Programme, the UNESCO Futures of Education initiative and Mission 4.7, and is a member of the High Level Advisory Board. She fosters the positioning of higher education as a key stakeholder for the UN Agenda 2030 – Transforming our world. She represents IAU in other working groups and expert committees including at the Council of Europe, European University Alliances Advisory Boards, the Global Cooperation for a Culture of Democracy.
Hilligje van’t Land holds a PhD in comparative francophone literature, taught comaprative literature courses at Groningen University, in the Netherlands, Laval University in Québec/Canada, and at the Université d'Avignon et les Pays du Vaucluse. She speaks six languages and published on higher education issues of relevance locally and globally.
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