UNDERSTANDING YOUR PARTNERS MORE: TAKING THE OPERATION OF NON-LOCAL HIGHER EDUCATION COURSES IN HONG KONG AS AN EXAMPLE

the factors for success or failure in partnership in running transnational higher education (TNHE), the empirical-based case studies on how the demand-side partners’ thinking in reality is much more wanted. The paper aims to explore the realities regarding how the demand-side partners’ considerations and thinking in the process of operating transnational higher education courses. Thus, Hong Kong is selected as a case study since the non-local course in HK provided by foreign suppliers is a competitive market that is also critical to Australian offshore course suppliers. For achieving the aim, this study has carried out an empirical study in Hong Kong. The interviews are adopted for data collection. The main findings include:(1) the development of non-local higher education courses in HK are closely related to the limited capacity of expanding local higher education, free market economy, and current governmental policies; (2) the main considerations of running non-local courses include: the quality of the program, the demand for the program, the mode of instruction, the medium of instruction, and no direct conflict with local courses; (3) the system of registration, rather than of accreditation, is adopted in the operation of non-local course; therefore, the quality of those course heavily relies on the local higher education institutions; (4) the competition between non-local and local degree courses is not much as expected, but the non-local courses still bring some positive impacts on local higher education institutions’ thinking. Finally, based on the results, the certain suggestions on understanding the partners’ practical considerations are proposed.