During the month of March, we will highlight the topic of the globalization of higher education and how it impacts domestic universities.

The dissemination of knowledge on a global scale has the potential to
transform peoples’ lives in significant ways. Today, technology provides this powerful capability and facilitates access to information that is no longer constrained by physical boundaries. Progressive universities and their savvy 21st-century consumers are reaping the benefits of globalization, which is the most important and game-changing trend in higher education today. The globalization of post-secondary education has the potential to reshape our world.

Former Governor Jeb Bush spoke on the subject and said, “Expanding the reach of American higher education to serve millions of students around the world is an imperative if we hope to improve standards of living, stimulate economic growth, and achieve sustainability for our universities.”

Academic Partnerships Chairman and CEO, Randy Best, recently wrote on the topic of “Going Global:”

Globalization is rapidly becoming the most important trend in American higher education. It is being powered by technology and the increased use of the Internet for the delivery of instruction by leading U.S. universities. This growing globalization movement, uninhibited by borders and geography, will soon change universities’ view of the world, altering how they plan and operate as export becomes fundamental to their future success.

Exporting American higher education can take U.S. institutions to a new level of global brand awareness, making them virtually unassailable competitors in many regions of the world. Like Google and Apple, they can become the brands of choice for millions of global citizens. Globalization can also become the principal platform for realizing the pent up value of U.S. brands and could bring a sustainable business model to American universities for a generation while transforming the lives of countless global citizens.

The globalization movement founded on the premise of exporting U.S. higher education at scale is fundamentally different from our traditional process of “importing” a limited number of foreign students who can afford an on-campus experience in the United States. The 818,000 students from around the world who enrolled in American institutions last year and the $24 billion they contributed was insignificant in relationship to the number of students and the revenue that could be generated through exporting the knowledge contained within U.S. universities.

These institutions have the ability to serve millions of post-secondary consumers in fast growing economies around the world, and we believe that our recently-announced AP Specializations initiative, which allows partner institutions to offer a new credential that represents a concentration of relevant knowledge in high-demand fields of global interest to people all over the world, will help them do so.

We are committed to helping our partner institutions lead the globalization movement in higher education and look forward to keeping you updated on this exciting initiative.

Stay tuned as we delve even deeper into the topic of the globalization of higher education.