The New Curriculum Framework at Taylor’s University Will Open Up More Exchange Opportunities for Students

The new curriculum framework to be introduced in 2018 will give many more Taylor’s students the opportunity to spend a semester on exchange overseas. Identifying and establishing new international exchange partners to meet this potential demand is an on-going activity for the Global Mobility Office.

(L-R) Prof Perry Hobson meeting with the International Office staff of HM-Munich in Germany

Over the last 5-years, the Global Mobility Office at Taylor’s University (TU) has been rapidly expanding the number of international semester exchange partner universities that we have all around the world. In countries such as Australia, Taylor’s University already has multiple university partners that Taylor’s students can study at. “When I arrived at Taylor’s University in 2012, I recall we had just 17 partners” said Professor Perry Hobson, the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement (PVC-GE). Today, TU now about 156 exchange partner universities in some 30 countries. The adoption of a more flexible curriculum in 2018 will see most degrees offer a semester of unspecified electives. “We anticipate that this will free-up a lot more students to be able to take advantage of the many exchange partners we have” said Professor Hobson. While we already have a number of partners, he went onto point out that often we have challenges when it comes to availability of places, course compatibility as well as issues of language and location preferences. As he points out, “Many partners can only offer us two or three places each semester” adding that, “even when we do have partners in a location such as say Bavaria in southern Germany, the problem is that none of our existing partners in Augsburg or Ingolstadt offer hospitality and tourism”. In order to be able to offer our hospitality and tourism students more options in Germany, he recently went to visit the Faculty of Tourism at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich (HM) to see if he could establish a new partnership with them as it is one of our largest Faculties.

Taylor’s Global Mobility Office (GMO) has been long finding institutions in a wide range of European countries such as Austria, Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy that offer courses in English. Ms Jayvien Lau, the Head of Student Exchange in the GMO, explains that, “we are lucky in that a number of institutions are looking for partners in Malaysia as they want to offer their students an Asian experience. Our challenge is making sure we there is a good fit of academic courses, and the international student support facilities are in place”. As Prof Perry Hobson added “We are now talking with potential exchange partners in countries and territories such as Macau, Ireland, and Norway where we currently don’t have any partners”. He added that, “Attending international education conferences such as APAIE in Asia, EAIE in Europe and AIEC in Australia is one really good way to meet potential partners, but we also need to visit their campus and city to see what the reality of the student experience is going to be”. To this end, Taylor’s staff have visited our exchange students at locations such as and at To find out more about the Global Mobility options at Taylor’s University click here - (Global Matters 2017)