Due diligence on a partner school is an independent check of a foreign education institution’s standing, capability, and reliability before the school signs any document. It is the least time-consuming step in the whole partnership process, yet it prevents the costliest type of risk.
This guide provides a checklist across five groups, in the order they should be done.
Why this step cannot be skipped
The risk of partnering with an unvetted partner is not primarily financial loss, since most initial agreements carry no financial obligation.
The real risk lies in three other places.
Risk to students. If the partnership involves credit transfer or recognition of results, and the partner is not validly recognized, students bear the direct consequences.
Risk to reputation. The school’s name appearing alongside a problematic institution will affect other partnerships, including ones that are currently going well.
Risk in time. Many months spent working with a partner that lacks the capacity to deliver are months that should have gone to another partner.
The due diligence step usually takes only a few working days, mostly research.
Group one: legal standing and recognition
This group must be done first, and it is disqualifying. If it fails, the later groups are not needed.
Check the institution’s accreditation status. Is the school on the list recognized by the host country’s education regulator. Check the regulator’s own source, not the partner’s own website.
Check the accreditation status of the relevant programme. A school being accredited does not mean every one of its programmes falls within the scope of that accreditation.
Check legal entity status. What legal form the school exists under, and how long it has been operating.
Check the signatory’s authority. Whether the person expected to sign is duly authorized. A document signed by someone without sufficient authority will be void.
For unfamiliar recognition systems, the general framework of The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) helps in understanding how a country organizes degree recognition.
Group two: academic capability
This group answers whether the partner has sufficient expertise in the intended field of cooperation.
Is there a corresponding faculty or department, what is its size, how many full-time faculty members.
Is the curriculum compatible. Read the syllabus, check the duration, learning outcomes, and how the academic terms are organized.
Does it have experience with international cooperation. Has the school worked with other countries before. If so, they are already familiar with the process and will need less explanation.
Does it have research publications in the field, if the partnership involves a research component.
Group three: operational capability
This group receives less attention but is the best predictor of whether the partnership will actually work.
Does it have a genuinely functioning international cooperation office. Not just a name on the org chart, but real people doing real work, actually answering correspondence.
Response time. How long from the first email sent to receiving a reply. This is a very strong indicator. A partner that takes six weeks to reply during the exploratory phase will not be faster once the partnership is underway.
Is the website kept up to date. Information that is years out of date reflects the level of investment in external affairs.
Academic calendar. Differences in academic term start dates directly affect the ability to organize joint activities.
Group four: third-party verification of the partner school
This group provides the hardest information to find but the most trustworthy, since it does not come from the partner itself.
Ask schools that have partnered with them before. If the partner names existing partnerships, it is entirely reasonable to contact one of them and ask. The questions should be specific: did the joint activities run as planned, how responsive was their point of contact, did any difficulties arise.
Ask through your personal network. Faculty at your own school who have studied or worked in that country may know the institution’s reputation within the professional community.
Public records search. Look for any unusual information about the school published by a regulatory body.
One point to note: a lack of information does not mean there is a problem. Many small schools operate well but have little online presence. What matters is a contradiction between what the partner presents about itself and what your research turns up.
Group five: degree of fit
The final group is not about risk but about the likelihood of a successful partnership.
Is the scale comparable. A very large school often has little incentive to partner with a small partner, and vice versa.
Do the two sides have complementary needs. A partnership only lasts when both sides get what they need. If only one side benefits, the relationship will cool within a few months.
Is there a specific person on the partner’s side who genuinely wants to make it work. This is the decisive factor that no checklist can measure. A partnership always starts from two motivated individuals, not from two organizations.
Four warning signs to stop
Accreditation status cannot be verified through an independent source. When the host country’s regulator has no information and the partner cannot supply documentation either, do not proceed.
Information the partner presents about itself contradicts what your research finds. A small discrepancy could be due to a slow update, but a contradiction about status or scale is a serious warning sign.
Thúc ép ký nhanh. A serious partner understands that due diligence is a normal step and does not mind waiting a few days.
A request to charge fees to students already at the framework agreement stage. A memorandum of understanding between two schools should not include direct fee collection from students.
Recording due diligence results
The results should be kept as a short document, one to two pages, covering the five groups above and a conclusion.
This document serves three purposes. It is the basis for presenting the decision to school leadership. It is a record to refer back to if problems arise in the relationship later. And it is a template to make the next due diligence process faster.
It is best to keep screenshots or copies of the pages checked, along with the date checked. Online information changes, and this record is evidence of what the school saw at the time the decision was made.
The education policy reports from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) useful for understanding the context of the partner country’s education system before drawing a conclusion.
Summary
Due diligence on a partner school covers five groups, done in order: legal standing first, then academic capability, operational capability, third-party verification, and finally degree of fit.
Group one is disqualifying. Group three is the best predictor of whether the partnership will survive. And the whole process usually takes only a few working days.
Next Steps
Draft a due diligence template covering the five groups above as a checklist, no more than two pages long.
Apply that template to the partner your school is currently in the most advanced discussions with. The result will usually show at least one group that has not been checked.
This template should also be applied retroactively to partnerships already signed that never went through due diligence. Not to cancel anything, but to know clearly where things stand. For agreements coming up for renewal, the due diligence result is exactly the basis for deciding whether to renew or let it lapse.
