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A leading Spanish university has acquired a New York campus and the right to grant US degrees, paving the way for it to offer masters’ programmes on business and sustainability as it takes on the competitive educational marketplace of the US financial capital.
IE will become one of very few foreign higher education establishments to gain accreditation as a standalone institution in the US, allowing it to offer international students who complete its courses a post-study work visa to remain in the US for employment for two years after graduating.
Diego del Alcázar, executive vice-president at IE, said: “This is a unique opportunity which brings with it an injection of energy and also an enormous responsibility.”
The move marks an intensification of cross-border deals and investments in foreign campuses by higher education institutions seeking to expand and diversify their intakes at a time of sharp shifts in the number and origins of international students.
Last year Emlyon, the French business school, took a stake in the London Interdisciplinary School, a UK university, and in 2019 Boston-based Northeastern University, which has bought colleges across the US and Canada, acquired the New College of the Humanities in London.
After hostility to foreign students during the term of former president Donald Trump and lockdowns during the pandemic, international student numbers have risen again in the US and elsewhere. Globally China is falling behind India as the largest exporter of students, and while the US still takes the largest share, it has been losing ground to the UK, Canada and Australia.
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IE is acquiring the New York campus and accreditation at no cost from the UK’s Glasgow Caledonian University, which sought to offer degrees in the city from 2013 but struggled to gain accreditation and to recruit sufficient students to make them viable.
The Spanish university plans to invest $18mn over five years for teaching, research and outreach, and aims to offer masters programmes at $50,000-$60,000 a year for classes of up to 60 students.
Other international schools, including IESE of Spain, have campuses in the US but use them mainly for executive education training or temporary placements of students studying abroad rather than offering US degrees.
Some schools have developed joint programmes with US institutions, including IE, which has a partnership with Brown University in Rhode Island for business and Yale with its School of Politics.
New York University has campuses in Dubai and Shanghai, and the Gulf region and India have been actively seeking to recruit prestigious institutions to open campuses as they seek to raise the quality and quantity of higher education in their countries.
However, New York is a far more mature market, and already hosts a series of prestigious homegrown business schools with sustainability programmes including Columbia, New York University and Fordham.