What value is there in UK transnational education? Contextualising individual understandings of educational worth and possibilities in Malaysia and Hong Kong

The rapid expansion of transnational education over the last two decades has seen an unprecedented growth of predominantly Western foreign universities delivering education in Asia. The United Kingdom (UK), the leading exporter of transnational education (TNE), has more tertiary-level international students pursuing a UK qualification overseas than within the UK, one in two of whom is based in Asia (Wake, 2019). The value of transnational education to these students (and graduates) is often overlooked. It is overshadowed by UK and wider literature which give more focus to the macro-economic value of TNE (see O’Mahony, 2014) and related marketing, development, management and delivery issues (e.g. Wilkins & Huisman 2019; Cai & Hall, 2016; Healey, 2016). Together with Maggi Leung and Johanna Waters, I set out to highlight the value of TNE to international students and graduates, particularly in Malaysia and Hong Kong where we had conducted our separate research exploring their lived experiences (e.g. Sin, 2013; Waters & Leung, 2012).