Branch Campus Counts and Country Flows in Transnational Education: A Baseline from the 2026 Programme Registry

Abstract

This report presents a baseline quantitative picture of transnational education delivery across the five major host jurisdictions tracked by the TNEstudy programme registry: Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. The data is drawn from the shared programme registry maintained at site-builds/campus-org-cn/src/data/projects.jsonl. All figures reflect the registry as of the most recent rebuild. Researchers using specific count figures for publication should confirm the registry rebuild date and, where precision is critical, verify directly against the source registers listed in the Methodology page.

Programme counts by jurisdiction

The programme registry contains 2,230 registered transnational education programme records across five host jurisdictions. The distribution is shaped by each jurisdiction’s regulatory architecture — specifically, what types of TNE activity each jurisdiction registers and makes publicly searchable.

1. Mainland China (CN) · 1,256 records · The Sino-foreign cooperative education register captures approved joint programmes and joint institutions at the bachelor’s level and above. This is the largest single register in the dataset, reflecting both the scale of China’s TNE market and the register’s scope: China’s approval-based system means every legally-operating Sino-foreign programme appears in the register.

2. Hong Kong (HK) · 498 records · The Non-local Courses Register under Cap. 493 captures non-local higher and professional education courses offered in Hong Kong. The register is course-level, not programme-level: a single degree programme from a foreign university may generate multiple register entries if it is offered through different local operators.

3. Singapore (SG) · 254 records · The CPE/SSG PEI Course Directory captures courses offered by registered private education institutions. The register’s scope is narrower than China’s in one respect (it covers only PEI-offered courses, not programmes at Singapore’s autonomous universities) but broader in another (it includes sub-degree qualifications and professional certificates).

4. Malaysia (MY) · 127 records · The MQR captures accredited programmes across all levels and all provider types. The relatively smaller count compared to China reflects Malaysia’s smaller TNE market, not a narrower register scope.

5. United Arab Emirates (AE) · 95 records · The combined federal CAA register and Dubai KHDA directory capture institutions and programmes in both onshore UAE and the Dubai free zones. The count reflects both the UAE’s relatively recent emergence as a TNE host market and the fragmentation of the regulatory framework between federal and emirate-level authorities.

[Note: Programme counts are rounded approximations derived from the registry. Precise figures should be confirmed against the most recent registry rebuild. Jurisdiction counts are not directly additive across registers: programmes approved in multiple jurisdictions are listed under each.]

Delivery forms by jurisdiction

The four principal delivery forms tracked by the registry — branch campus, joint institution, joint programme, and delivered award — distribute unevenly across jurisdictions, reflecting each jurisdiction’s regulatory appetite for different forms of TNE presence:

1. Branch campuses · Concentrated in the UAE (Dubai’s free zones, particularly Dubai International Academic City) and Malaysia. Mainland China does not currently permit foreign institutions to establish wholly-owned branch campuses under the Sino-foreign cooperative education framework — all approved institutions are joint ventures with Chinese partners. Singapore’s branch campus activity peaked in the mid-2000s (UNSW Asia, 2007; Tisch Asia, opened 2007, closed 2014) and has since contracted. Hong Kong has no foreign branch campuses.

2. Joint institutions · Predominantly a Mainland China form. The Sino-foreign cooperative education framework requires a Chinese partner institution for any degree-awarding entity operating in China. Joint institutions — standalone entities with their own governance structures — are the most institutionally complex form of Sino-foreign cooperation, requiring approval from the Ministry of Education.

3. Joint programmes · The most common form in China (the bulk of the 1,256 records are programme-level approvals, not institutional-level) and present in all five jurisdictions. A joint programme is lighter to establish than an institution but the approval attaches to that specific programme — a second discipline requires a separate application in China.

4. Delivered awards · Dominant in Hong Kong and Singapore. A delivered award is a foreign qualification taught locally by a registered operator — the regulatory burden falls on the course and its advertising rather than on a physical campus. This is the form with the lowest barrier to entry and the highest volume across the registry.

[Note: Form classification is derived from the registry’s programme-level data. A small number of records may be classified under more than one form where the programme structure spans categories. Form distributions by jurisdiction should be verified against the jurisdiction statistics in the shared dataset.]

Home-country flows

The 2,230 registered programmes involve awarding institutions from 24 home countries. The concentration is high:

1. United Kingdom · The largest single source of TNE programmes across the registry. UK universities are present in all five host jurisdictions, with the deepest presence in China (Sino-foreign joint programmes and institutions), Malaysia (branch campuses and joint programmes), and the UAE (branch campuses in Dubai).

2. Australia · The second-largest source. Australian university presence is concentrated in Singapore, Malaysia and China, with a smaller footprint in Hong Kong and the UAE. The pattern reflects both geographic proximity and the regulatory alignment between Australian and Asian qualifications frameworks.

3. United States · Present primarily in the UAE (branch campuses in Dubai and Abu Dhabi), China (Sino-foreign joint institutions), and Singapore (delivered awards and joint programmes).

4. France, Germany, Ireland · European Union member states with significant TNE activity in China, particularly through joint institutions and joint programmes. French and German presence in the UAE is concentrated in branch campuses.

The home-country distribution reflects three structural factors: colonial and linguistic ties (UK presence in Malaysia and Hong Kong; French presence in former French territories), geographic proximity (Australian presence in Southeast Asia), and the strategic use of TNE as a form of soft power and international student recruitment pipeline (all major sending countries).

[Note: Home-country classifications are derived from the registry’s awarding-institution data. A programme involving institutions from multiple home countries is classified under the lead awarding institution’s home country. Precise counts by home country should be confirmed against the registry’s origin statistics.]

Data limitations

This baseline has the following structural limits that researchers should factor into any analysis derived from it:

1. The registry is a count of registered programmes, not of enrolled students, teaching activity or revenue. A jurisdiction with many small, low-enrolment programmes may appear larger in the registry than a jurisdiction with fewer but larger programmes.

2. Not all TNE activity is captured in public registers. Some delivered-award arrangements, particularly those operating below the registration threshold in jurisdictions without mandatory registration, may not appear in the registry. The extent of unregistered TNE activity is inherently unknown.

3. Register formats are not uniform across jurisdictions. Direct comparisons of programme counts between jurisdictions should account for differences in what each register captures and how it categorises programmes.

4. The registry is a snapshot, not a time series. This baseline reports counts as of the most recent rebuild. Changes over time — openings, closures, programme modifications — require analysis across multiple rebuilds. A time-series analysis is planned for a subsequent data report.

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This report is compiled from the shared TNEstudy programme registry. The registry is rebuilt from official source registers on a regular schedule. All figures should be treated as approximate and verified against the current registry rebuild before use in publication.