Chelsea Buns and Mergers - The Evolving Nature of Higher Education Partnerships

Following on from our recent conversation with Prof Ian Mabbett, Prof. Christopher Hill and Prof. Judith Lamie revisit the issue of partnerships – how they are changing and how we are responding to these changes in international higher education.

We discuss teaching and learning, research and innovation and the increasingly explicit nature of the integration of all of these elements in our thinking about partnership.

Partnerships have evolved and we are more readily acknowledging the more equitable nature of engagement.  We talked about how encouraging we find the current approach to TNE – not as a financial necessity – but as part of a strategic understanding of development. Judith reflects on how the TNE landscape is being discussed and understood in the current climate and the levels of increased discussion regarding attempts to broaden opportunities for people to engage in education – even within the wider discussion of geopolitics and the economy.

We talked about the nature of partnership and the extent to which we might see institutions from the same country, largely seen as competitors, partnering on an international activity that wasn’t research focused.  We did record this episode of the Think Education podcast back in May 2025 and so acknowledge its place in the development of current activity.  We talked about mergers and what this means for the partnership and individual identity of the partners themselves.

We ended the podcast talking about the nuances of how we refer to different elements of partnership and the extent to which this can impact both our understanding and indeed, the reality of what we are doing.  The more things change, the more they often stay the same.  And we also learned that, whether it is in reference to American universities merging or the purchasing of Chelsea Buns, Judith is correct!

 

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