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Australian universities have been accused of underestimating the risks that their offshore education deals pose to the sector and the nation.

China scholar Mark Harrison said Australian institutions were signing up to overseas partnerships under conditions that would never be tolerated at home, with tacit ¡°look the other way¡± provisions allowing them to ignore state propaganda and compulsory military education implanted in Australian-branded curricula.

Harrison said threats to institutional autonomy were obscured by an extraordinary level of secrecy, which also made transnational education (TNE) fertile ground for corruption.

¡°By embedding themselves in China¡¯²õ higher education system, the leadership and governance structures of Australian universities become socialised into Chinese policy norms and values,¡± he ?in The Strategist, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute¡¯²õ online journal. ¡°They uncritically take on key ideas about China¡¯²õ national development goals and begin to accept ideological red lines.¡±

Harrison said offshore partnerships posed much more danger than the Confucius Institutes, regarded by some as vehicles for propaganda posing as benign language and cultural training institutions.

¡°Last year there were 150 joint ventures between Australian universities and China,¡± said Harrison, senior lecturer in Chinese studies at the University of Tasmania and past president of the Chinese Studies Association of Australia. ¡°This is happening on a far larger scale compared to the Confucius Institutes.¡±

A recent of the Foreign Arrangements Scheme, which requires public entities to register agreements with foreign governments or institutions, found that the deals were mostly in the university sector. Of 14,151 agreements requiring notification, 84 per cent involved universities and 43 per cent involved China. Some 11 per cent related to TNE and 10 per cent were articulation agreements between educational institutions.

Reviewer Rosemary Huxtable found that many of the educational agreements ¨C particularly those related to articulation, credit recognition and student exchange ¨C posed little risk. She recommended that the scheme be refocused on ¡°high-risk arrangements¡±, with articulation agreements specifically exempt because they ¡°represent low or no foreign policy risk¡±.

Harrison said it was the worst time for the government to reduce its scrutiny of offshore educational partnerships, because Australian universities were turning to TNE for revenue ¨C following the government¡¯²õ crackdown on onshore international education ¨C just as Beijing pressed Chinese universities to forge more joint ventures with foreign partners.

This was occurring through a policy system called ¡°¡±, designed to expose students to Western teaching expertise while ¡°protecting¡± them from Western ideas, according to Harrison. While the scheme¡¯²õ edicts are kept ¡°behind closed doors¡±, the Chinese Ministry of Education (MoE) reportedly wants to increase the country¡¯²õ TNE enrolments from 800,000 to eight million.

The MoE approved in May and another 46 in September, The Pie, which reported that China now has 15 international branch campuses, more than 300 joint colleges and over 2,400 joint education programmes.

Advocates say TNE arrangements ¨C including joint degrees, foreign degrees taught entirely in China, and programmes that start in China and finish elsewhere ¨C enable Chinese students to benefit from foreign education while minimising travel costs.

Harrison has a different view. ¡°Beijing¡­wants students to get foreign knowledge without bourgeois or liberal values,¡± he told ̽»¨ÊÓƵ. ¡°TNE works very well for China but it creates vulnerabilities for Australia.¡±

James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, said universities should be wary about joint venture campuses in China. But they jeopardised institutional autonomy and academic freedom, not national security, and should be managed by universities¡¯ governing councils rather than the government.

Laurenceson said there was little risk in universities¡¯ articulation agreements with Chinese partners. ¡°I would be¡­surprised if an Australian university would give credit for a course called ¡®Chinese civics education¡¯. How would you match up a course on Chinese civic education to something that¡¯²õ already being offered in Australia? [And] is it a threat to Australian foreign policy? Why would having an articulation agreement [make] you less fond of democracy, or more aligned with Beijing¡¯²õ claims to Taiwan?¡±

Harrison said it was difficult to know the terms of universities¡¯ agreements with foreign institutions, because most were secret. Australian universities rarely release the documents publicly.

̽»¨ÊÓƵ sought copies of three recently publicised memorandums of understanding (MOUs) ¨C RMIT University¡¯²õ with the Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, UNSW Sydney¡¯²õ with India¡¯²õ Steel Research & Technology Mission and Curtin University¡¯²õ with the Italian consulate in Perth?¨C and was told that all three documents were not publicly available.

The universities did not say why their MOUs were confidential. One source suggested that administrators did not want to risk embarrassment by failing to realise the generally vague aspirations in the agreements. Another said MOUs were ¡°preliminary, non-binding agreements of intent¡± and universities took a default approach of not publishing them in case they contained confidential clauses.

Laurenceson said he did not know why the agreements were confidential, but universities¡¯ secrecy was not confined to their relationships with China. ¡°It¡¯²õ not really about China; it¡¯²õ about Australian university governance,¡± he said.

Universities are not alone in keeping their educational agreements hidden. In mid-September, Victorian premier Jacinta Allan signed an to drive educational cooperation, including exchanges of students, teachers and ¡°advanced skills¡±. Allan that her three top priorities were ¡°education, education and education¡±.

Her MoU is a successor to a 2018 deal her predecessor, Daniel Andrews, signed with China¡¯²õ National Development and Reform Commission to promote the Belt and Road Initiative ¨C the agreement that triggered the establishment of the Foreign Arrangements Scheme.

The new Victorian MOU is yet to be released. ¡°[It] is not currently public as formal compliance processes are still under way with the commonwealth government,¡± a spokeswoman for Allan said.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com