Group rapporteur, Prof. Narend Baijnath, Vice Principal for Strategy Planning and Partnerships at Unisa noted that partnerships are a strategic priority for the majority of ICDE’s members. They are seen as valuable for increasing the reach of institutions and for allowing them to benefit from the experience of others - even if there is a mismatch in terms of size - and in enabling the leveraging of resources.

Partnerships may be entered into between institutions, but also between institutions and multilateral agencies or state departments.

Consortia agreements are useful for spreading the burden and the benefits of costly research work as far as possible. Savings which are made through the sharing of facilities, for example, can be ploughed into learner support. Indeed, it was argued that partnerships can help enrich the student experience, enhance the prestige of the university, and promote student mobility.

There are though significant barriers to the successful establishment of partnerships. They may take time to establish and put into effect, or suffer from language barrier issues - in Africa this is a key problem for Francophone countries. Travel costs can be restrictive, and the process of hosting visiting delegations can be time consuming. When the exploration of partnerships does not always bear fruit, it can be increasingly difficult to justify new exploratory talks and visits. Participants argued for the importance of selectiveness in finding partners with whom their interests converge.

International cooperation often seeks to implement one institution’s programmes in another country, though the importance – and challenges – of contextualizing the content to meet cultural expectations, as well as the sometimes onerous demands of accreditation agencies were noted. Institutions thus need to be very aware of the regulatory framework in the jurisdiction where they are introducing a programme

The success of a partnership, once an agreement has been entered in to is dependent on the work of individuals – both faculty and administrators – working effectively at the coal face of the project. The need to motivated all actors and allow them to be given a stake in the project was stressed.

Finally, the working group called upon ICDE to work as a global platform to bring together institutions and promote cooperation by compiling information on the interests and capacities of individual institutions.

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