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As UK universities intensify their transnational education (TNE) ambitions, a central question demands more honest scrutiny: how do we internationalise without reproducing the inequalities we claim to challenge? The UK government’s has brought this question to the fore. The strategy places global expansion and education exports at the centre of national policy, aiming to make the UK “the global partner of choice” and to “collectively grow education exports to £40 billion per year by 2030”. 

Yet, while the strategy raises the stakes, it offers only limited guidance on how to navigate the structural inequities embedded in current partnership practices. 

My work developing an equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) framework for Southampton’s TNE activity in Delhi brings these dynamics into focus. It took place in the context of a significant milestone: the university became the first international institution to be granted a licence by India’s University Grants Commission to establish a campus under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Reworking an equality impact approach for a completely different cultural, legal and educational landscape was a necessary exercise in humility. It revealed how quickly well‑intentioned UK norms can misalign with local contexts when applied prescriptively and how much internationalisation reshapes the home institution as well as the host. 

From export to genuine exchange

One of the most striking lessons from this work was how much we, as a UK institution, had to learn. Designing an EDI framework for a new overseas campus required us to revisit assumptions about student expectations, pastoral support and employability. In India, students’ motivations, family dynamics and career pathways reflect social conditions that differ significantly from those in the UK. Understanding these differences is essential for anyone committed to ethical internationalisation.

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This recognition shifted our posture. Instead of asking how to “implement our model abroad”, we had to ask a more fundamental question: how do we co‑create something relevant, credible and grounded in local knowledge? India’s higher education sector is already deeply engaged in inclusion, but through its own histories, regulatory structures and social priorities. The ethical commitments were shared; the mechanisms were not.

Internationalisation at its best is an exchange, not an export. And yet the new UK strategy, with its emphasis on scaling TNE and strengthening the UK’s international standing, risks encouraging institutions to default to export mode unless equity is made a core design principle.

To achieve meaningful exchange, EDI cannot be treated as compliance or “sensitivity training”. It must become a working method: interrogating who sets the agenda, whose knowledge counts, whose cultural assumptions carry weight and how benefits (symbolic, educational and material) are distributed.

Holding aspiration and reality together

Aspiration is not enough. Ambition must be held alongside an honest reckoning with context.

Across conversations in Delhi, issues around gender inequality and everyday misogyny surfaced repeatedly. These are not unique to India, nor are they simple. But they shape students’ lives profoundly and cannot be bracketed out in the name of international expansion. They underscore how respect, safety and voice, the foundations on which EDI rests, cannot be assumed: they must be built collaboratively and they require culturally specific understanding.

Naming these realities is not an act of judgement; it is an act of responsibility. Without acknowledging the gap between policy aspiration and lived experience, TNE risks becoming superficially “inclusive” while remaining structurally inequitable.

EDI as shared power, not soft skills

Framing EDI as cultural literacy is only the starting point. In TNE, EDI must also become a practice of redistributing voice. This means interrogating who participates in decision‑making, who drafts joint policies, who leads safeguarding systems, who shapes curricula and who benefits from collaborative research and mobility schemes.

In developing the Delhi EDI framework, working relationally rather than prescriptively sharpened our own practice. Local expertise challenged assumptions we had not realised we were holding. Shared responsibility altered our processes. Co‑developing policies led us to adapt rather than dilute our commitments. The result was not a weaker version of “Southampton practice” but a more credible, contextually attuned one.

This is precisely the kind of reflexive internationalisation that the UK strategy does not yet fully articulate, even though it is essential to delivering on its aim of becoming a trusted global partner.

A blueprint for non‑extractive TNE

If the UK higher education sector wants TNE to be socially responsible, academically rigorous and politically resilient, and if it hopes to meet the government’s strategic ambitions, several shifts are required. Universities must:

• Design for equity from the outset. The time for open conversations about power, authorship, benefit and governance is when partnerships begin, not after contracts are signed.
• Treat EDI as method, not message. Co‑design, listening and context‑led curriculum development must become standard practice. The scale of the strategy’s ambitions makes this all the more important.
• Measure success through reciprocity. A partnership that transforms only the host institution is not a partnership; it is an export pipeline. Internationalisation should reshape UK institutions as much as those overseas.
• Embed local relevance. Student support, safeguarding and redressal systems must be co‑owned and locally intelligible. Curricula must be co‑curated, not merely “internationalised”.
• Invest in mutual capacity building. The strategy’s emphasis on expanding the UK’s global education offer gives rise to a parallel need to prioritise capacity exchange through two‑way flows of expertise, practice and understanding.

These practices do not dilute academic standards. They strengthen them. Students in genuinely international environments gain deeper cultural literacy and more critically engaged learning. Research becomes more impactful when co‑produced. Partnerships become resilient because they are mutually owned.

The opportunity and the obligation

The UK has an opportunity to lead globally in ethical internationalisation, but only if it moves beyond the export‑oriented impulse embedded in the government’s 2026 strategy. Leadership requires a shift in posture: from transactional to relational, from rapid expansion to reflective engagement, from assumed authority to shared authorship.

If we commit to designing partnerships that acknowledge and address structural imbalances, TNE can do more than extend our international footprint. It can expand our understanding of belonging, community and public purpose. It can help us build universities that are shaped by, accountable to and enriched by the contexts in which they work. This is the version of TNE our sector needs now. And it is the version students, wherever they are, deserve.

Valentina Cardo is an associate professor of politics and identity and co-director of the Intersectionality: Politics – Identities – Cultures Research Group at the University of Southampton.

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