Overseas ventures a success

by Professor Edward Byrne AO

Although it has become almost routine to say so, we are living in a time of transformational change.  We are still in the early stages of the information revolution which is changing how we communicate with each other in ways not seen since the invention of the printing press.  We are moving from a European and North American dominated world to a globalised world where the majority of the world’s middleclass and wealthy people will live in Asia within a decade.  The challenges and opportunities presented to the university sector by both these changes are truly immense.  It may of interest to describe briefly how one large Australian university, Monash University is adapting to these changes and exploiting opportunities for the future.

Monash began over 20 years ago to develop a strategy of major international engagement with South East Asia.  It had been prominent in the Colombo Plan years in taking large numbers of students from the Asian countries and has strong alumni links throughout the region.  Building on this the opportunity came working with Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah to develop a new campus in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.  That campus the Monash University Sunway Campus is now the outstanding private university in Malaysia and one of the best offshore campuses of any western university.  It has a wide range of undergraduate degrees and well established masters and PhD programs.  It is playing a major role in nation building in Malaysia and is one of the best research intensive universities in that part of the world.  It is a fully integrated part of the Monash family and provides great opportunities for staff and student mobility.  It has become a part of the strong links between Australia and Malaysia as countries and is a success in every way.  This experience in Malaysia has paved the way for Monash to develop a number of other international on the ground initiatives which further consolidates a family of campuses throughout the Asian region.

In working out our strategy we felt that the major need for us going ahead in Asia was to establish strong links in graduate education and in research with the giant emerging Asian economies.  Monash also felt that partnership was a much more effective route to developing an effective offshore campus that going it alone.  Our approach has always been to take the best of Australian education and research and to integrate it with local approaches and customs.  This leads to a uniformly high standard of education across our campuses but recognition of local cultural aspects and needs.  Our campuses whilst also employing staff from Australia also employ a large number of their leadership staff from nationals in the countries involved.

Our first new major collaboration was established in Mumbai with IITB, arguably the leading research university in India.  This is called the Monash/IITB Academy and is building up to 350 PhD students in engineering and the sciences.  All students have co-supervision with an IITB and Monash supervisor and they are funded in the main by large companies notably Reliance, Tarta and Infosys with some scholarships funded by the Indian Government and some by Australian partners such as Orica, BHP and CSIRO.  The students that are recruited are outstanding with several thousand qualified students applying for each 40 places.  The attraction to the Indian Government of this program is that the students who are enrolled would almost certainly have gone to the States and returned to India had this opportunity not been available to them.  They will all spend up to one year in Australia and undoubtedly some of them will enter Australian industry and the university sector as their careers evolve.  This has enabled us to capture a wonderful pool of talent. 

Our campus in China has evolved in more recent times.  It was the third international university endeavour to be fully accredited by the Central Ministry of Education in Beijing and the first for ten years.  We have an accredited Graduate School which we are developing with South East University in Nanjing in the city of Suzhou, the development precinct established by the Central Government of China and the Singaporean Government.   This is one of the most exciting innovation precincts on earth and is the equivalent of Silicon Valley in the seventies.  In the first instance we will have 1,500 Masters and PhD students spread across a range of disciplines increasing that over the course of time to some thousands.  We have a superb custom built facility provided by the Chinese authorities and as the program builds up will enrol international students on that campus.  We are in the upper echelon of Chinese universities accredited by the Central Ministry in Beijing and have access to the most outstanding students in the Chinese examination system.  Many of these students will spend time in Australia.  They will all have exposure to major industry in the Suzhou area with sophisticated ICT, nano research and industry and advanced manufacturing technologies in research are centred for much of China.  From this collaboration we will have student and staff exchange, the ability to obtain research funding in China and build up a significant cohort of research active academics based on the Suzhou campus, the opportunity to interact with major international industry (over a 100 Fortune 500 companies with significant activities in Suzhou) and of course the development of a major brand exposure in China in a way that might be difficult without this very major onshore presence.  As a result of these initiatives we are moving from a model where our major engagement has been taking Asian students to our Australian campuses as international students (which will of course continue) to a more networked university of the Asia Pacific.

Our second response to globalisation has been to launch a deep university alliance with the University of Warwick in the UK where we are aligning much of our strategic capacity with the development of joint courses, a series of high level joint academic appointments and the appointment of a joint Academic Vice-President being early steps.  This alliance is modelled in part on the major alliances in the airline business such as Star Alliance and One World where major airlines keep their own identity and brand but come together to develop a global presence.  As this alliance evolves it will be possible to do a range of Monash/Warwick degrees in a range of geographical locations in a blended environment with a rich ICT component.  While this is only one of a number of possible responses to globalisation we believe it will be an effective one and consolidating our position among the world’s great universities.  We have a total commitment to introduction of a blended model, the Stanford Inverted Classroom, across all of our courses within a tight timeframe and will build up our off-campus learning platform.

Through the measures outlined above Monash University is actively repositioning for the next ten years of its journey and for ongoing growth in academic excellence.  The last five years have seen major improvements in our position on key university ranking scales and while not driven by that as the key factor Monash is confident that the measures described above will contribute to further improvement in the excellence of our university and help ensure its ongoing position as one of the great universities of the world.  This will put us in the best position we can be to graduate outstanding students who have the skillset needed for a life in which they may move through several careers and in which they are likely to work in Sydney as Shanghai.  It also explicitly recognises a belief that for many of the world’s great universities to fully develop their potential in year ahead they will have to fully adopt a strategy as global institutions.  For some this will be done from their home campus base without the need for major overseas offshoots.  For us it has involved a more explicit strategy with the development of deep global networks and of major research intensive campuses throughout the Asia Pacific region.  The next ten years for Monash will be an interesting journey.

Professor Ed Byrne AO is the Vice-Chancellor and President of Monash University.