"The virtual and physical movement of providers to other countries raises many of the same registration, quality assurance, and recognition issues of program mobility. But it also involves extra consideration, especially if a network or local/foreign partnerships are involved. Setting up a physical presence requires paying attention to national regulations regarding status of the entity, total or joint ownership with local bodies, tax laws, for-profit or non-profit status, repatriation of earned income, boards of directors, staffing, granting of qualifications, selection of academic programs and courses, and so on."
Jane Knight (2011), "Higher Education Crossing Borders" (p. 28)
The limitations of current infrastructures are revealed at times of institutional change—calendar conversion, curriculum revision, implementation of approved policies—because of the changing educational activities of the institution. New infrastructure in support of educational activities truly emerges for people in practice.
International branch campuses (IBCs) present most of the same infrastructural challenges of a main campus, but also entail the additional challenges of operating in different cultural, linguistic, bureaucratic, competitive, and student demographic contexts.
Within cross-border relationships, there can be the presumption that instructional activities exported by the main institution are appropriate, even desirable, for the students enrolling at other campuses. My RIT Croatia colleague's question about the Writing Seminar curriculum demonstrates that not every instructional activity can be assumed appropriate, especially in light of any proposed or adopted changes in the curriculum. When an institution's values and desired outcomes are being rearticulated, as they are at RIT's main campus, questions that reveal tensions about the adequacy of infrastructure are abundant. Those questions become most productive, however, when those answering the questions include all stakeholders and address how best to support educational activities for everyone.
Here, as in my edited collection, Transnational Writing Program Administration (2015), I use the term "transnational" to describe the growing phenomenon that Grant McBurnie and Christopher Ziguras address in their book Transnational Education: Issues and trends in offshore higher education as "any education delivered by an institution based in one country to students located in another" (p. 1). But unlike "global" or "international," I use the term "transnational" because it also invokes a more critical, analytical orientation like that described by Rebeca Dingo in her book, Networking Arguments: Rhetoric, transnational feminism, and public policy. Dingo (2012) argued:
The term transnational, while defined in a number of ways, generally refers to how globalization has influenced the movement of people and the production of texts, culture, and knowledge across borders so that the strict distinctions among nations and national practices can become blurred. In the last ten years, disciplines throughout the humanities and social sciences have recognized that increasing globalization and enduring neoliberal economics have changed our understandings of citizenship, place, and texts. Drawing heavily from the fields of political science, sociology, geography, and women's studies, the emergent interdisciplinary field of transnational studies has sought to uncover, analyze, and conceptualize similarities, differences and interactions among trans-societal and trans-organizational realities and dynamics across time and space (Levitt and Khagram, p. 10–11). (p. 8–9)
By considering the infrastructure of transnational writing programs, my aim is to continue a critical conversation about the opportunities and implications for the learning, teaching and administration of writing across borders.
The bitter battle in the state of Wisconsin over the right of public employees to unionize and bargain collectively is now shifted to the courts and yet, the massive efforts to recall elected officials failed. The argument made by the Republican Governor, based upon a kind of market logic, is that after years of recession and continued economic downturns, the salaries and benefits of public employees, which were the result of collective bargaining, were too costly for the state to continue paying. Still, while the public employee unions agreed to reductions of pay and benefits, the governor insisting on his legislation in the Republican controlled legislature, despite the efforts of the minority Democrats to thwart the passage of the law, as well as widespread public support. An example of market logic gone awry: even when the unions agreed to reductions of pay and benefits to help close the budget deficit, the governor signed the law to restrict collective bargaining.