Establishing branch campuses abroad—often used as a crisis mitigation strategy—could become more important for U.S. universities facing increasing threats at home, but scholars are divided on their likelihood of success.
Illinois Institute of Technology has announced that it is to build a campus in Mumbai, while Georgetown University, one of six U.S. universities with satellite campuses in Doha, recently renewed its contract in Qatar’s Education City for another 10 years.
Research-intensive colleges and universities in the U.S. are faced with “new and profound uncertainties” over future funding and the strength of their endowments under the Trump administration, said Geoff Harkness, formerly postdoctoral teaching fellow at Northwestern and Carnegie Mellon Universities’ Education City campuses.
“This means that R-1 institutions will have to seek alternative sources of revenue, including partnering with nations in the Middle East. For Georgetown, which has a long-established branch campus at Education City, the renewal was a no-brainer in 2025.”
It comes just a year after Texas A&M closed its campus in Education City, citing “instability” in the region. However, academics said the decision was more likely a reflection of growing pro-Israel politics in the U.S. and unease with Qatar’s role mediating for Hamas in the Gaza conflict.
Harkness, now associate professor of sociology at Rhode Island College, said the Israel-Palestine conflict put Qatar in a difficult position but warned that Texas A&M could regret its decision to leave from a fiscal perspective.
“The nation’s vast resources and relative political moderation make it an appealing partner for U.S. colleges and universities, particularly in light of current economic uncertainties.”
Although not all partnerships are as lucrative as those with the Qatar Foundation, research by Jana Kleibert, professor for economic geography at the University of Hamburg, found that uncertainty around Brexit triggered U.K. universities to explore opening campuses in continental Europe—as Lancaster University did in Leipzig, Germany.
“Branch campuses are often used as a crisis mitigation strategy by universities,” she said.
“In this sense, it is no surprise to me that in situations of financial and geopolitical turbulence, branch campuses become more attractive to decision-makers at universities.”
University leaders hope that overseas campuses can contribute financially to the well-being of the overall institution, either through direct transfers from these sites to the main institutions or through accessing a broader pool of students, said Kleibert.
Recent figures show that U.S.-Chinese collaborative campuses have experienced record-breaking application numbers from both domestic and international students over the past few years.
Illinois Tech began planning its Indian outpost long before President Trump’s unprecedented assault on the U.S. higher education system. But Nigel Healey, professor of international higher education at the University of Limerick, said Trump’s culture wars could increase the “push factors” toward overseas expansion in the future.
“In the medium to long term, branch campuses may offer elite U.S. institutions an alternative way of maintaining their internationalization, accessing international talent and maintaining a global profile at a time when Trump is fostering a new national culture of xenophobia and isolationism,” he said.
However, he warned that the risks of being pushed into a strategy by suddenly changing political winds is that poor, reactive decisions might be made.
“The winds may change in the opposite direction, leaving the institution with a branch campus that is suddenly a white elephant.”
Philip Altbach, professor emeritus at Boston College, agreed that there are significant risks in establishing branches overseas and that they are not a high priority for elite universities right now.
“In the current situation of total instability in U.S. higher education due to the Trump administration, U.S. universities will not be thinking much about branch campuses but about their own survival.”
Although partnering with many countries may be politically safe, he said universities are unlikely to want to risk making “controversial political moves in the current environment.”
“Top U.S. universities are more interested in establishing research centers and joint programs overseas that can help their research and be a kind of embassy for recruiting students and researchers for the home campuses.”
And Kevin Kinser, professor of education and head of the department of education policy studies at Pennsylvania State University, said overseas partners are not free from scrutiny from the White House.
“The turmoil in the U.S. also includes scrutinizing foreign donations, contributions, collaborations and investments. Looking overseas does not create a safe haven for current federal attention.”
As a result, he said, Texas A&M may have gotten ahead of the narrative on foreign activities by universities by quitting Education City when it did.
