In a 2022 article, Beijing Normal University’s Liwen Ma and California Institute for Human Science’s Joseph L. Subbiondo described partnerships in higher education as something that can “pave the way to world peace”.

Ma and Subbiondo are not alone in their idealistic aspirations; Queen Mary University of London’s Andrew Livingston seems to agree, recently writing:

“Universities don’t just exist to teach. They’re here to build a better society. And that comes through innovation. [Innovation] relies on an underlying process and structure and, crucially, partnerships. Collaboration – whether with other educational institutions, business, charities, or local communities – is so important because the problems we’re attempting to solve are complex, and we don’t have all the answers.”

However, partnerships are likely to have more modest beginnings and motivations: they are more often thought of as a way to find pragmatic solutions to pragmatic problems, such as the need to establish strategic geographic presence, secure new markets, diversify income sources, or gain access to research and expertise not available locally.

For OUM, specifically, collaborating with international partners is a way to promote its distinctive curricula across disciplines, as well as open and distance learning (ODL), to audiences outside Malaysia.

Currently, universities are also up against reduced government funding, declining student enrolment, and the concomitant increase in competition to secure enrolment. Institutional survivability is a very current and very real issue for many institutions, with Ernst & Young’s Kasia Lundy and Haven Ladd stating baldly that “the fundamental problem is that there are too many institutions chasing too few students.”

Engaging in collaboration, consequently, is seen as a survival strategy. In the same article, Lundy and Ladd caution that “institutions at the most risk of failure must collaborate out of necessity.”

Are partnerships, then, only a way for universities to ‘stay in business’? Or is it really possible for universities to be the catalyst for growth, societal advancement, or indeed, world peace? Another way we can frame the latter is, how can university partnerships be really meaningful? And, fundamentally, what could a partnership even entail?

Inter-university partnerships, for one, have been around for decades. Educationists Patrick Blessinger and Barbara Cozza describe them as a representation of a university’s ‘tripartite mission’ of teaching, research, and service, meant to “increase institutional visibility and profile, and extend global impact.” Generally speaking, they involve joint research, staff or student exchange, joint events like conferences or symposia, or other reciprocal arrangements.

Community-university partnerships focus specifically on the ‘service’ element of the tripartite mission. Service-learning, capacity-building research, and consultations are among common approaches used in outreach programmes meant to realise community-wide impact in such areas as youth development, health and wellness, food safety, and others.

Innovation-driven partnerships have also linked, for example, US universities to corporate giants like General Electric, Siemens, and IBM, focusing heavily on reaping mutual gains in research and development, and talent acquisition. Along the same line, corporate-based partnerships provide students with access to mentorship and experiential learning opportunities.

For OUM, specifically, collaborating with international partners is a way to promote its distinctive curricula across disciplines, as well as open and distance learning (ODL), to audiences outside Malaysia.

In a nutshell, OUM lends academic expertise and oversight to foreign partners whose responsibility delivery. OUM also provides support and assistance in setting up the partners’ e-learning platforms, which is now a must considering all higher education institutions – both ODL and conventional – are converging in online provision.

The partners, in turn, get to expose local students to international academic programmes, thus expanding their study and future career options, and giving them the opportunity to be part of an international student body without needing to set foot outside of their own countries.

Using this model, OUM offers homegrown programmes to students in Vietnam, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Ghana, Yemen, Somalia, and several other countries: students from these countries enrol in OUM programmes at local partner institutions and, at the end of the day, earn their degrees as OUM graduates.

The partners, in turn, get to expose local students to international academic programmes, thus expanding their study and future career options, and giving them the opportunity to be part of an international student body without needing to set foot outside of their own countries. This is especially rewarding for those who, for some reason or other, are unable to study abroad. Partnering institutions can also reap gains beyond the monetary: securing and sustaining international linkages are a way to boost global reputation, as well as establish and widen networks from which both scholars and students stand to benefit.

Going on now for more than a decade, the OUM-Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH) partnership is one example of this model in action. Based in Vietnam, HUTECH actively offers homegrown programmes as well as those from foreign universities, in such disciplines as English Studies, Logistics and Supply Chain Management, and Information Technology. Together, OUM and HUTECH have graduated more than 1,700 students.

So, a humble yet meaningful place to start, for any university, seems to be one that fosters honest communication, nurtures an open working climate, acknowledges and embraces cultural differences and sensitivities, emphasises the achievement of shared goals, and builds long-term respect, trust, and accountability.

While this certainly sounds practical and fruitful, one cannot help but wonder if the loftier and more meaningful goals associated with partnerships are at all within grasp.

Vice-President for economic development at Johns Hopkins University Alicia Wilson puts it quite eloquently that universities are builders, and thus “a university’s integration into the bricks and mortar of its locale’s economic growth, its scaffolding into the very life of its neighbours, and its underpinning of a particular community … takes deliberate effort, attention to detail and thoughtful relationship-building to create the collaborative infrastructure necessary to start solving societal challenges.”

In a similar vein, Ma and Subbiondo believe that “international education partnerships have the power to bring the world closer together as they advance an education in which all participants from various countries have opportunities to gain an informed understanding of each other’s countries, cultures, and people.”

Ma and Subbiondo want us to fix our gaze on that meaningful goal of attaining world peace, while Wilson wants us to think deeply about how universities can make things better for the communities surrounding them. Practical needs aside, it is clear that no university would decline a chance to contribute to such noble initiatives.

But, to be part of the fibres that make up the fabric of world peace, universities need to develop a perspective that is willing to consider goals beyond the financial, beyond operating costs and revenues, beyond pragmatism alone.

This is surely a daunting challenge to take on, and Uwe Brandenburg from the Global Impact Institute reminds us not to neglect what lies at the core of partnerships: human connections. He encourages universities to “be more explicit about the human part of … building partnerships between these elaborate institutions: likes and dislikes, attractions, emotions and feelings.”

So, a humble yet meaningful place to start, for any university, seems to be one that fosters honest communication, nurtures an open working climate, acknowledges and embraces cultural differences and sensitivities, emphasises the achievement of shared goals, and builds long-term respect, trust, and accountability.

Perhaps this, then, is how collaboration can begin to lead to world peace.