A Study On The Quality Assurance Of Inbound Transnational Education In South Africa

Transnational education has become the major content and pattern of internationalization of higher education in the global context. The developed countries export transnational education to developing countries for the main purpose of pursuing economic interest, while developing countries import transnational education to meet the domestic demands for higher education as well as to impose on it as a key approach to accelerate the internationalization of its higher education. The quality assurance of transnational education becomes very complicated due to its nature of transnational. How to assure the quality of transnational education is a pressing issue that the importing countries have to face and solve.After its democratic reform, South Africa established an integrated and uniform higher education system that includes all races. The higher education enrollment has risen rapidly ever since then. However, due to the limited capacity of its own higher education system, the ever-rising social demands for higher education could not be met. To this end, South Africa government undertakes a wings strategy, with increased investment to develop its own higher education system in one hand, while to open its education market to the outside, promote the internationalization of its higher education system as well as import transnational education on the other hand. The publication of a series of regulations and policies, and the implementation of relevant quality assurance frameworks especially, provide institutional guarantees for the development of inbound transnational education meanwhile seriously restricts its development.This paper mainly adopts these research methods, such as literature, history, case study, comparison, etc. Its main body consists of five parts. The first part introduces the unique society, history, culture, education system, and higher education transformation, etc. in South Africa that lays down the background for the whole paper. The second part describes the development track and the status quo of inbound transnational education in South Africa by providing detailed data, and from the introduction of its international origin and driving forces. The third part is the core part of the paper. It focuses on the regulations and policies as well as the implementation of quality assurance for inbound transnational education. Regulations and policies are the base and principle for quality assurance, while inbound transnational education providers or programs to be registered at Department of Education, to be registered at National Qualification Framework and to be recognized by Higher Education Quality Committee are the unique practices that the government of South African monitors their quality. The forth parts is a case study of the implementation of quality assurance for the most popular MBA programs run by the inbound transnational education providers. It exposes the concrete operation of their quality assurances and concludes some experience from that which is worth considering. The final part concludes some specific features and problems that exist in quality assurance domain of inbound transnational education in South Africa.China and South Africa are both developing countries and both import transnational education. Our main pattern of inbound transnational education, China-Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools can gain some enlightenment from the quality assurance practice of South Africa's inbound transnational education:(1) the role orientation of the government when it is monitoring inbound transnational education; (2) how to conduct good managing practice to inbound transnational education; (3) how to promote capacity building of local higher education institutions by importing transnational education; (4) how to effectively monitor the quality of inbound transnational education; (5) how to import high-quality educational resources by mean of quality assurance; (6) how to ensure the programs opened by inbound transnational education providers can adapt to the local demands.