International Voices - Tim Rottleb on International Branch Campuses

2023-12-07

In this episode, Judith and Chris talk to Tim Rottleb - science manager at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU) @BTUCS where he is an officer in the Department for Regional Transformation. Before joining the BTU, Tim worked as a researcher at the Leibniz-Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) where he was part of a research group investigating international branch campus development from urban and economic geographic perspectives. He recently submitted his PhD t...

Before joining the BTU, Tim worked as a researcher at the Leibniz-Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) where he was part of a research group investigating international branch campus development from urban and economic geographic perspectives. He recently submitted his PhD thesis in geography at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Tim studied Politics and Economics of the Middle East at Philipps-Universität Marburg and worked for UN organizations in Cairo and Berlin.

We asked Tim about his work with international branch campus development and he talked about his recent work on gateway cities and educational hubs and the motivations for engaging in this space. He pointed out that motivations here are often in conflict – or at least not entirely complementary – with the sending nation looking to establish research intensive institutions but the reality on the ground needing capacity building programmes that can be recruited to.

We talked about identity and values – how internationalisation is viewed in different places and how the art of compromise is absolutely necessary.

Tim compared the German and UK higher education systems and talked about the rationale for German internationalisation and the underlying contradictions and motivations.

We talked about spaces of exception and academic values – reflecting on the narrative that one side is right and the other wrong, and how this impacts the decision making process for where we go and what we do. We reflected on the fact that on an individual academic level, there is often partnership and engagement activity in place but this becomes more problematic at the institutional level.

Universities are certainly capable of setting up more and more branch campuses but the real question is perhaps, should they?