Opinion: This is what a decade of collaboration with Stellenbosch University has taught us about enduring international partnerships

Reflecting on a decade of collaboration with Stellenbosch University, Professor John Latham, Vice-Chancellor and CEO of Coventry University Group, explains how a shared vision for a globalised future and a trust that deepens over time are essential to forging enduring international partnerships.

When a university commits to an international partnership with another institution, it can be tempting to judge success by the number of agreements signed, students exchanged or papers published. This isn’t to say that they aren’t important indicators of what the partnership has delivered and who it has benefitted, but focusing too heavily on numbers can obscure what made those achievements possible - the trust that was cultivated, the risks that were embraced and the steady stewardship that allowed the partnership to grow and endure.

From the very beginning, our partnership was energised by shared strategic interests and a vision of what both institutions hoped to collectively achieve. Students and staff embraced opportunities to visit each other’s countries through exchange programmes, cementing early collaborations and gaining insight into different cultures and ways of working, while joint projects were launched to enhance research and teaching opportunities. Over time, these activities allowed relationships to flourish at every level and trust to develop incrementally through sustained collaboration, shared delivery and aligned institutional priorities, as the long-term value of these jointly delivered initiatives became evident across research, education and institutional development.

Evolving into a community

One of the partnership’s crowning successes has been our collaborative dual degree programme, as the benefits have been extraordinary for all those involved. For academics, it has provided intercontinental opportunities to supervise students, exchange ideas and approaches and learn from colleagues in a different research culture. Students have been encouraged to help shape the programme through their questions and perspectives, developing students as independent thinkers and not just participants, while simultaneously ensuring that the research is driven by real and relevant questions. Completing a dual degree also gives students the chance to study in another country and earn two qualifications, demonstrating to future employers their eagerness to step outside their comfort zones and how they’ve developed resilience through the way they’ve studied. They blossom into globally competent scholars and leaders capable of understanding and maximising different cultural voices and approaches. For the universities, managing dual degree doctorates requires careful alignment of policies, standards and expectations, which nourishes the trust further between the institutions and expands each university’s pool of doctoral researchers.

Over time, the programme evolved the partnership, as the responsibility for nurturing it didn’t remain solely with senior leaders at each university. It began to include others, such as academics and alumni who, each with their own skills, connections and experience, wielded them to keep the partnership alive and expanding. Alumni have become real champions of the partnership, holding lectureships at Stellenbosch, continuing joint research and even moving elsewhere to apply what they know in new contexts. Now, Coventry and Stellenbosch are both each other’s second largest collaborative dual degree partner, with twenty students currently enrolled and more preparing to join. In so many personal and professional ways, the partnership has evolved from an agreement into a community.

Sharing the same vision

Committing to an international partnership says a great deal about who a university is and the direction it is choosing to take. Partnerships can be made for the short-term opportunities and how they could impact funding cycles and ranking tables, or as long-term commitments built on trust, consistency and a shared sense of purpose. Ten years on, the value of our partnership with Stellenbosch lies not just in its size and scale, but in its depth and investment into both institutions and the people studying and working within them.

It is inevitable that two universities on opposite sides of the world will bring different strengths, histories and approaches to a partnership. Those differences and complementarities have been exactly what make it excel, helping us to think differently and achieve more together than we could alone. Right from the start, both institutions saw how the partnership aligned with their ambitions to think and operate more globally and to extend their reach beyond their home cities and countries. A decade later and we are just as committed to what comes next, driven by a shared willingness to learn from one another, contribute to tackling the challenges of the century and prepare students for a world that is constantly changing.