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Third-party arrangements where a university offers its degrees in collaboration with another institution are not a new phenomenon, particularly when the third-party arrangements occur in the form of a cross-border education (or widely known as transnational education). Drawing on a critical review of the literature available on quality assurance of domestic third-party arrangements and through the use of interviews with the sessional teaching staff, the paper offers theoretical as well as practical views on the domestic third-party arrangement and seeks to inform key stakeholders in the academic management of such collaboration.

The study was undertaken with 40 sessional academics who are involved in teaching postgraduate courses at several third-party education providers and universities with metropolitan campuses in Australia. Focus group interviews were conducted with 8–10 participants in each group. The qualitative study included seven open-ended questions. Each focus group interview was between 45–60 minutes.

The study found 11 universities in Australia offering courses in third-party arrangement with a focus on international students. Online third-party arrangement is also gaining momentum. The study found the following areas that require attention: induction and professional development, quality assurance arrangements, maintenance of standards, adequacy of resources and infrastructure and risk related to academic quality.

Limited study has been conducted on third-party arrangements where a university, usually located far from the city vicinity, works in a collaborative mode with another institution, primarily a private institution, to offer degrees at metropolitan city areas in the same country. Further research is needed with a large number of participants.

The study is undertaken for the first time in Australia. No research has been undertaken on the growth and quality assurance of a third-party arrangement in Australia and other developed countries. The study involves the engagement of the sessional academic staff.

The purpose of this paper is to examine issues academics at importing institutions face while delivering Australian degrees in Malaysia. Transnational higher education (TNE) has been widely researched. However, less widely researched is the area of understanding what academics at the offshore locations need to uphold the required academic standards of their partnered exporting universities. This area warrants close attention if Australian and other transnational education universities are to sustain their growth through a partnership model with offshore academics delivering a portion (often a substantial portion) of the teaching.

Two focus groups were conducted with a mix of long standing and newly recruited Malaysian lecturers who taught into an Australian degree through a partnership arrangement. The semi-structured questions which were used were derived from a preliminary literature review and previous internal institutional reports.

The findings from the focus groups indicate that TNE is largely “Australian-centric” when addressing the standard of academic quality and integrity. The findings pointed not so much to any sustained internationalisation of curriculum or administration or personnel but more as internationalisation as deemed required by the local academic.

To a greater extent, the findings highlighted that equivalent student outcomes do not necessarily equate to equivalent learning experiences or teaching workload. In fact, the frustration of the interviewees on the tension to fulfil the home institution curriculum and helping students to “comprehend” an Australian-centric curriculum translates to “additional and unrecognised workload” for the interviewees.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dynamics facing transnational education (TNE) in Australia through literature review in three major areas: policy changes in Australia and major importing countries of Australian TNE, and recent development in online learning and the impact of the prevailing TNE models. The paper concludes by shedding some light on how these changes could affect the sustainability of the growth of Australian TNE in the future.

The paper is based on review of literature and use of secondary data on TNE in Australia. The paper analyzes the external quality audit reports with focus on TNE. It finally analyzes the future sustainability of Australian TNE based on growth of higher education in Asia and emergence of online learning.

TNE is experiencing growth in Australia. Based on the current model such as setting overseas campus and partnerships, the growth may not be sustainable. The emergence of online learning and developments in Asian higher education may pose increased risk and competition. TNE has been subject to external scrutiny through the external quality agency in past. The current compliance-driven quality assessment may put the transnational quality assessment at risk with increased focus on assessing the quality based on review of documentation.

The paper is original and it is based on Australian TNE.

This paper aims to examine the development and effectiveness of quality assurance as a competitive tool for Singapore's private tertiary education in an increasingly competitive global market.

A review of the growth of private education in Singapore is presented and issues related to quality and Singapore's quality assurance framework are discussed in this paper. The experience of “private schools”, that is, private tertiary education providers, in relation to quality assurance is documented through two case studies of two typical private schools in Singapore.

It was found that quality assurance of private tertiary education in Singapore is still narrowly focused on business and management processes. The government has not yet imposed any form of regulatory framework to ensure that academic standards are upheld. Rather, private schools are relying heavily on their own initiatives to safeguard teaching quality.

This paper reveals the insufficient nature of quality assurance in Singapore's tertiary private education industry. The paper suggests a need for more collaboration between the Singapore Government and the private education providers in order that appropriate quality assurance is provided. The findings strongly suggest that it is critical for Singapore to re‐evaluate its quality assurance framework in order to realize its vision of becoming a regional educational hub.

This paper draws from the experience of the interviewees and will be of interest to those in the field of private education.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of understanding between an Australian university and its offshore partner institution, on quality assurance. It attempts to highlight the dynamics of quality assurance policy implementation within and across institutions for an offshore degree.

The study used interviews as the research method to gather data from the Business school of a university that is a major exporter of higher education degrees and its offshore business partner, a business school of a private university college in Malaysia.

The findings show that gaps exist in the current practices of quality assurance measures in Malaysia. In addition, top‐level management from both sides of the exchange believe that the university should bear the overall responsibility for quality assurance. However, the findings also reveal that such heavy reliance on the university for quality assurance might not be healthy, especially when the university's own policy implementation is suffering internal problems.

For governments and various agencies the insights in the paper will be useful in creating better policy. At an institutional level, the findings will assist in the formulation and implementation of such policies.

This paper will be useful to stakeholders in the offshore education industry. It provides an insight into the regulatory and auditing practices commissioned by the government and highlights the various gaps and challenges in quality assurance policy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate generated themes associated with talent development in the Australian higher education sector. This is because there are pragmatic advantages for universities that are focused on developing talents. For example, talent is a primary source of competitive advantage for educational institutions.

This study depends on the individual interview method as the main tool for data collection. The sample consisted of six participants who are talented. High-level individual interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed using NVivo 11.

Individual interviews have identified four key themes of talent development: performance management, coaching talent, leadership development and talent acquisition.

This study only targeted one country (Australia), and one sector (higher education). Hence, the generalisability of these results is limited to the Australian university sector in Queensland.

This study collects rich and original qualitative data regarding talent development in the higher education domain. Therefore, for instance, the research findings validate what was already found but are significant because practical data rather than theoretical were gathered through a discussion with experts in talent management. This study has a high quality because of strengthening the effect of an in-depth case study.

The study offers a value added to talent management theory through investigating themes of talent development for the higher education sector. This would assist researchers in this field to provide a deeper understanding and develop a theoretical foundation for their further studies. This implication is unique to the advancement of talent management theory.

The key objective of the study is to understand the best processes that are currently used in managing talent in Australian higher education (AHE) and design a quantitative measurement of talent management processes (TMPs) for the higher education (HE) sector.

The three qualitative multi-method studies that are commonly used in empirical studies, namely, brainstorming, focus group discussions and semi-structured individual interviews were considered. Twenty-three individuals from six Australian universities participated in this study.

The qualitative study explored three key themes and ten subthemes of TMPs that are used in AHE. These were: (1) talent attraction, (2) talent development and (3) talent retention.

This study only targeted one country (Australia) and one sector (HE).

This study offers three major contributions as follows: theoretical, practical and policy aspects. Theoretically, the study provides a value-add to Talent Management (TM) theory through designing a guide (conceptual model) of TMPs for the HE sector. Practically, it collects original qualitative data regarding TM in the HE domain. From a policy point of view, this study adds more debate around adding new ideas to Australian education strategic plans for HE.

This study has a unique methodology because of strengthening the effect of an in-depth case study. For instance, two different techniques were used for data analysis for the same research objective as follows: (1) both manual methods and content analysis software (NVivo 11) and (2) the three-stage approach. Using these techniques for the same purpose in one study can provide greater flexibility to examine the relationship between theory and data.