We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Professor Christine Ennew, whose leadership helped shape the early landscape of UK transnational education (TNE). At the turn of the millennium, Chris played a pivotal role in one of the sector’s most ambitious international ventures - the establishment of the University of Nottingham’s Malaysia Campus, the first UK branch campus in Malaysia and a landmark in global higher education. She was also closely involved in the creation of Nottingham’s China campus. In our conversation, Chris reflects on those formative years - the vision, the risks, and the lessons learned. Chris’ experiences and takeaways are as relevant to universities opening up branch campuses today as they were 25 years ago.
Setting up the Malaysia campus
Chris highlights two main factors that influenced Nottingham’s international ambitions in the early 2000s:
1) Nottingham’s then Vice Chancellor, Colin Campbell, was a visionary and very international in his outlook. He was keen to expand, and was looking across national borders.
2) Malaysia was beginning to position itself as a higher education hub.
Other factors also shaped Nottingham’s international strategy, including the macroeconomic landscape, interpersonal relationships, and alumni networks, which included the then Malaysian Education Minister and several members of the Malaysian Royal family. As Chris recalled, ‘Nottingham had a profile amongst the Malaysian elite!’ Whilst the potential for profit had to be demonstrated in any business case, Chris wasn’t sure that financial gain was the primary motivation - ‘the VCs thing was very much about the global brand and the global presence.’
In 1997, Nottingham was also considering a move to Thailand. The university was in late-stage talks with several other universities, around being a founding member of what would have been The British University of Thailand. However, the idea was scrapped with the onset of the Asian Financial crash.
Chris wore many hats in the early stages, including leading on Nottingham’s MQA submission, which required considerable ‘creative thinking’ to align with Nottingham’s UK model. One challenge involved integrating mandatory Malaysian subjects (which were compulsory for private education institutions to deliver) into Nottingham’s 120-credit curriculum. Another key issue was degree awarding powers, which were pivotal to Malaysia’s vision of being an international education hub. Fortunately, ‘there was enough will at senior level in government to make it happen’ and, impressively given the relative infancy of branch campuses, Nottingham got the ‘approval through reasonably quickly.’
Early benefits
Professor Ennew reflected on attracting outstanding staff and students that might otherwise never have studied or worked at Nottingham’s UK campus. She noted the presence of ‘tremendously able students’ who wouldn’t have been able to afford UK study and ‘some really interesting staff who again wouldn't come to the UK, but gave you a different perspective’. She recalled that those students ‘recruited in the very early days [were] tremendously able… and have gone on to great careers, so there's a fantastic network of people who went through that campus’. Chris also highlighted the positive impacts on research - for example, projects on elephant translocation and tropical crops that simply could not have been done in the UK.
Reflecting on the early 2000s, Chris was unsure of the significance that the move had on Nottingham’s global brand, but believes that the Malaysia campus has ultimately enhanced the brand in unexpected ways, including the quality of staff and students. At the time, financial benefits were limited; as one former senior colleague publicly quipped, if Nottingham had ‘wanted to make money, we’d have just built another hotel’. However, contrary to some ‘paranoia that the campus would hoover up all of the Malaysian students that went to Nottingham in the UK’, there were positive impacts on undergraduate enrolment in the UK, as the campus did increase the profile of the university more broadly in Malaysia. And, additionally, as Nottingham’s Malaysia campus recruited around 30-35% of its students from neighbouring (or close proximity) countries, there was a positive spillover of people opting to stay local for undergraduate and go to the UK for postgraduate study.
Key to the Malaysia campus’s early success was Nottingham’s recognition that it needed to become part of the Malaysian system. As Chris put it, there was a ‘curious, very high level of ambiguity: you were British, and you were Malaysian, and you couldn't simply come in and say ‘we're British, and that's it, and this is how we do it.’ You had to have that willingness to adapt and engage and embed yourself’. She recalled a Malaysian colleague urging management to advertise locally to recruit students. However, this wasn’t typically done in the UK at that time, ‘so I think we weren't open enough to understand in the context, I would say. We thought we knew, and we didn't listen enough.’
Despite the success of Nottingham’s Malaysia and China operations, several other international branch campuses in Malaysia have faced significant challenges. Not all overseas ventures are destined for success, and achieving mutually beneficial outcomes for both the university and the host country demands substantial investment, continuous collaboration, and a long-term commitment to sustainability.
The present day
Chris wasn’t surprised by the recent swathe of branch campus announcements in India and elsewhere, noting that ‘an awful lot of things are cyclical in HE’. She recalled how the 2012 reform in tuition fees led to broad increases in income for UK universities, which ‘took away a lot of the pressure that had been encouraging institutions to look more creatively at the international space’ over the preceding decade. And, again, in the present day, ‘surprise surprise, you see this sort of twin effects of financial pressure and the pressures on migration suddenly saying ‘actually life's going to get a little bit more difficult’. So, I'm not surprised it has come back’.
Professor Ennew’s reflections reveal the complexity and creativity behind early TNE ventures. Beyond the financial rationale, the Malaysia campus embodied a vision of global engagement with local integration, a model that continues to shape how universities navigate internationalisation today. Her experience underscores a timeless lesson: successful global expansion requires not only ambition and strategy, but a genuine willingness to listen, adapt, and embed within local contexts.