Emerging economy universities, the next big thing? How will they challenge the dominance of North American and European Universities?

The expansion of the transnational education activities of leading universities from Australia, Europe and North America has been one of the more noticeable developments in the global higher education business during the last decade. In other sectors of international business an even more noticeable development has been the growing importance of emerging economy based multinational enterprises, such as Tata, Lenovo and PetroChina. Using three illustrative case studies, this paper suggests that emerging economy based universities could use similar strategies to those used by emerging economy multinational companies to enable them to play an increasingly prominent role in the global higher education business. With high student demand, increasing student enrollments and often generous state funding emerging economy universities could be the next big thing in international higher education, challenging and overcoming the dominance of North American and European institutions