One of the fastest evolving areas in the higher education sector is undoubtedly Transnational Education (TNE). In the UK alone, TNE has seen unprecedented growth of almost ten per cent annually over the last five years.
For student markets such as India – with a hefty young population and a fast-growing middle class – TNE provides widened access and a much-needed supply of high-quality tertiary education. TNE plays an important role in addressing local labour market shortages, enhancing and enriching local institutions, and slowing down outbound mobility. Governments are therefore increasingly introducing favourable policies to make TNE partnerships as accessible to foreign universities as possible.
While TNE is a complex undertaking, it can be highly advantageous to partner institutions wanting to expand their international footprints, and is increasingly becoming a core internationalisation strategy for many universities.
Benefits to partner institutions include:
- A new revenue stream independent of visas and migration policies
- Pathways into on-campus recruitment
- Increased international brand footprint
- An offshore alumni base
- Scalable growth without partner-university estate expansion
- Diversification away from single-market dependency
Institutions in key English-speaking study destinations are facing rising structural pressures. Volatile migration policies make long-term planning and forecasting of international student cohorts challenging. This puts institutions in a precarious position, as they are often highly dependent on international tuition fee income. Furthermore agent-driven recruitment margins are also rising, adding to the pressure.
At the same time, countries like India are offering a promising way around these issues with notably favourable policies designed to support foreign universities to operate locally through TNE partnerships. In India, regulation now allows foreign universities to establish teaching operations, branch campuses and joint degree delivery under new education reforms.
Furthermore, the British Council is actively supporting TNE with a bold mission for their Transnational Education Strategy 2025-27: to position the UK as a partner of choice for TNE globally, delivering mutual benefit, contributing to sustainable development, and fostering intercultural understanding.
While China and the Middle East are already thriving TNE hubs, Southeast Asia is one of the fastest growing TNE markets. According to the British Council, TNE continues to see robust growth with an increasing number of students studying for a UK qualification overseas year-on-year. In 2024/25, 663,970 international students were studying for a UK qualification abroad – a 7.8 per cent increase on the previous year.
On paper TNE presents a win-win scenario, but the complex nature of establishing TNE partnerships can be prohibitive. Challenges may include a lack of regulatory consistency around TNE, uncertainty around quality assurance and maintaining academic integrity, a lack of transparency around costs and risk management.
How Market-Entry Partners Support Universities with TNE
This is where market-entry partners like Infinite Group come in to help universities mitigate risk and overcome these challenges by securely establishing and scaling TNE operations. Infinite Group – the trusted in-market partner for 200+ universities around the world – uses a three-tiered approach to support universities, serving as:
- Strategic Advisor: Focused on feasibility, regulation and partner identification
- Delivery Operator: Supporting with campus setup, staffing, operations and compliance
- Investment Partner: Sharing financial risk and capital participation
This model allows a university to enter a market without carrying full operational or financial exposure. Furthermore, quality assurance and upholding academic integrity are also managed by Infinite Group to align with UK (or other) expectations. This includes:
- OfS and QAA Expectations: Full alignment with UK regulatory frameworks
- UK Degree Equivalence: Assessment moderation and external examiner integration
- Academic Governance Committees: Structured oversight and periodic review frameworks
In India, Infinite Group supports institutions with a variety of TNE partnerships, including IBC/ International branch campus models, twinning programmes, articulation pathways and embedded foundation and pre-master’s delivery.
In China – one of the most stable TNE markets and the largest for the UK – Infinite Group supports institutions with joint institute creation, dual degree programmes, 3+1 articulation structures and English-taught degree delivery.
Spotlight: Operationalising TNE in India
While the theoretical benefits of TNE are clear, successful execution requires deep local integration. To understand how these partnerships function on the ground, we look at EmpowerEdu – a strategic vertical of Infinite Group – which specialises in creating seamless academic pathways between India and the world.
Namrata Katyal, Director of EmpowerEdu, says that EmpowerEdu offers universities around the world the opportunity to embed their academic models in India, while securing predictable, high-quality progression into their campuses through a fully integrated TNE framework.
“We at EmpowerEdu are offering predictable and scalable growth to partner universities. Our new model will enable highly qualified Indian students to enrol to an undergraduate course offered by a partner university from September 2027. Students will complete their first year in India, before moving abroad (to where the partner university is situated) to commence their second and third years,” says Namrata.
The EmpowerEdu team will work closely with partner universities to ensure that first-year course content is mapped, tailored and matched to the university’s curriculum. This content will then be delivered by EmpowerEdu’s course leaders, ensuring full academic alignment with the partner university. Students that come via EmpowerEdu will be able to seamlessly progress to their second and third years abroad to complete their undergraduate degrees.
Currently EmpowerEdu focuses on two subject areas: Entrepreneurship & Innovation and Artificial Intelligence, enabling universities that offer aligned undergraduate degrees to participate. During their first year in India, students will study 80% in-person and 20% online, and partner universities will be invited to present guest lectures during this year.
Namrata explains what EmpowerEdu’s model will mean to partner universities in practice.
Benefits to Partner Universities
- Direct Access to 1000+ High Schools: A major drawcard for partner universities is having direct access to highly qualified students from over 1000 upper-secondary schools across India. EmpowerEdu will have offices located on the campuses of these 1000+ school campuses, providing unrivalled access and a competitive advantage to partner universities. Partner universities will be able to offer regular seminars, information sessions, career counselling and career mapping sessions within these schools, thereby creating an early and controlled pipeline for student enrolment.
- Full-Funnel Support: EmpowerEdu’s model reduces reliance on traditional recruitment agents and ensures a more academically-aligned approach in which students are supported all the way from high school through to completing their undergraduate degree.
- Predictable Pipeline: Students pay upfront for their first-year studies and 50% of their second-year studies, leading to the vast majority of students going on to complete their bachelor’s degree through the EmpowerEdu model. University partners therefore benefit from a much more reliable and predictable enrolment pipeline, because once a student commences their first-year studies in India, partner universities will know how many EmpowerEdu students to expect on their in-country campuses for second and third year. This ensures a more stable revenue stream for universities.
- High Student Calibre: The EmpowerEdu team partners with screened high schools where students are academically aligned with partner-university expectations. Students meet all academic requirements, there are no English-language barriers and they are financially able to pursue an undergraduate degree.
- Higher Retention Rates: The strategic pathway of EmpowerEdu’s model in which a significant share of fees is paid upfront, coupled with the focus on high-calibre student enrolment, ensures a low dropout rate and higher completion rates.
- Brand Equity: EmpowerEdu’s model enables partner universities to own substantial market presence and build a direct footprint within high schools across India. This can be achieved without the need for agents and ensures a much more reliable marketing strategy to enrol pre-qualified and academically aligned students.
Leveraging Infinite Group’s Ecosystem
EmpowerEdu serves as a strategic vertical within Infinite Group’s broader eco-system. Namrata explains that an important part of EmpowerEdu’s focus is the student-recruitment pipeline aimed at generating high-quality leads and applications on the ground. These are then passed onto Infinite Group’s dedicated and centralised operations team who manages the funnel operationally. This includes everything from application management to compliance alignment. Furthermore, Infinite Group’s IUnite platform, an AI-driven student lifecycle management platform, provides partner universities with real-time visibility into the student lifecycle, including enquiry source, application progress, document status, offer stage and conversion activity.
This interconnected system offers a seamless process for partner universities with faster turnaround times, higher conversion efficiency and reduced operational friction.
A Win-Win Expansion: Strengthening Partnerships and Access
Considering the many benefits to partner universities as well as the student markets in which they operate, TNE is projected to grow substantially over the coming years. TNE expansion is not only facilitated by key student markets like India, but also actively encouraged by study markets like the UK.
Market-entry partners like Infinite Group remove the obstacles associated with TNE, making it a win-win scenario across the board. Bridget Phillipson, the Secretary of State for Education in the UK, summed it up aptly, “By expanding overseas, our universities, colleges and education providers can diversify income, strengthen global partnerships and give millions more access to a world-class UK education on their doorstep, all while boosting growth at home.”
Partner with Infinite Group- EmpowerEdu
Infinite Group, alongside EmpowerEdu, enables universities from across the UK and Ireland, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US, to establish long-term and highly effective TNE partnerships in key student markets such as India, MENA, Africa and China. Get in touch with us on x to discover how we can support your institution.
Find out more at www.empoweredu.global and www.infinitegroup.org.
Resources: Transnational Education – What We Know | British Council