Studying Abroad at Home: Could TNE become more popular in 2025?

We’re used to thinking about the evolution of international education right now. Often this means shifts in audiences and destinations – something we track using Keystone’s unique combination of search and survey data.

But what about changes in international education that don’t involve studying abroad at all? Bear with me.

What is trans-national education?

Trans-national-education (TNE) can take a few different forms but essentially involves a student studying for a qualification in their home country that’s delivered and awarded by an institution with its main base overseas. Broadly speaking, there are two ways in which this happens:

• Branch campus provision – the student is based at a physical campus in their home country which is wholly operated by an institution based overseas – an ‘international’ branch of the main university
• Collaborative provision – the student is based at a physical campus jointly operated by an overseas university and a local university working in partnership

It can obviously get a bit more nuanced than that, with some students moving between campuses (for example, studying for part of a degree at a local campus and then going physically abroad for another year at the ‘parent’ campus). Fully remote distance-learning can also be viewed as a form of TNE, in so far as the student is studying at home for a qualification delivered by an overseas institution.

But the principle and most interesting aspect, for students and for institutions, is the ability to access or offer a conventional on-campus study experience wholly or partly delivered by an international university: overseas study without ever going overseas.

How popular is TNE? 

The simple answer is: more than you might expect. I’ll look at some of our Keystone data on prospective audiences in a moment, but first let’s examine some trends in current enrolments.

There isn’t a single global dataset for this but the UK serves as a pretty good proxy, with British universities operating a large number of international branch campuses in a range of countries.

There were 621,065 students studying for a UK degree via TNE in 2023/24 (the most recent year of official data via the UK’s Higher Education Statistics Agency). This represents an increase of 8% on 2022/23. The biggest segment (245,615) of these study via collaborative provision in a destination outside the EU – Asia is the biggest host region for TNE, with rapid growth in the Middle East (particularly the UAE).

Is interest growing?

The underlying appeal of TNE is clear enough: it’s a means of more easily accessing the expertise, subject provision or even reputation of an overseas institution. But could other factors be adding to the appeal right now? I think it’s possible to argue that they might be.

We know that policy changes are leading to shifting search trends around the traditional ‘big 4’ study destinations (the UK, Australia, Canada and the USA). And we know that interest in other regions, including the so-called Asian Tigers, is rising.

We also know, thanks to Keystone’s 2025 State of Student Recruitment, that interest in fully-online study abroad has increased substantially over the past two years with particular growth for the USA (watch this space for some more exploration of that).

If policy changes and uncertainty make it harder for students to study abroad in another country, will they look to study abroad at home instead? Potentially, yes. Indeed, this was one of the topics Keystone’s CEO, Fredrik Högemark, brought to the roundtable at a recent ICEF webinar.

Here's what the data looks like:

Based on very fresh responses to Keystone’s Pulse survey in June we can see that more than a third of prospective international students (those currently planning to study in another country) say ‘yes’ – they would consider studying for a qualification delivered by an overseas university at an international campus in their home country. And almost the same proportion say ‘maybe’ – they might consider this option.

What stands out to me, however, is how similar the results are for prospective domestic students (those not currently planning to study abroad). There’s a little more of a swing to the ‘maybe’ but it’s actually a larger proportion that would consider this option.

Where is TNE most popular?

An obvious question to ask is whether there’s any link between TNE interest and the destination someone is considering studying in otherwise. It looks like there may be.

Audiences interested in the UK are the least likely to say ‘yes’ they would consider a TNE option and audiences interested in the US or Canada are the most likely to (with a greater proportions of ‘maybes’ too).

The differences aren’t dramatic, but there is a clear correlation, I think, between TNE interest and the policy positions taken across the ‘big 4’ here.

The USA and Canada have raised the most obvious barriers to physical study abroad (in the form of US funding cuts and visa scrutiny as well as Canadian study permit caps). Meanwhile, Australia is considering caps but hasn’t yet implemented them and the UK is proposing to cut post-study work but not to restrict access to study.

We’ll continue to monitor this interest and see how it evolves – with more to come in our insights section. For now though, it looks like there are reasons for TNE providers (and potential partners) to have some positive conversations with student audiences.