Challenges of Transnational Education in the Global South The Case of Egypt.

About ten per cent of Egyptian students are registered in 27 private universities and four private community universities in Egypt, amounting to 300,000 students studying in 169 faculties. Based on resident field experiences and drawing on communications with senior university managers in two private universities spanning six years, this research argues that a number of challenges persist in the implementation of transnational education in Egypt. Through the prisms of rational choice theory and institutional theory, it is found that underfunding, political interference (including ‘pedagogical balancing’) and negative norms set by university owners, managers and students alike, compounded by macro-economic instability, have had a major impact on the student experience and wider society. The findings are to various degrees applicable to other states in the Middle East, Africa and the wider Global South, as well as primary foreign stakeholders, such as the United Kingdom in this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]