**1. Introduction**

Increasingly, governments have come to recognise the wealth of benefits available from international engagements, and the importance of national support for this, if their tertiary education sectors are to be successful. In pursuance of this important goal of international education, many universities across the globe have resorted to pursuing new modes of international engagement, including online delivery and engagement in a proliferation of partnerships for offshore programme delivery, whilst at the same time, transnational education (TNE) has come to assume increasing importance as an

international education delivery strategy [1]. In all this, transnational education has become a core element of nations' "tertiary education as business" philosophy [2], and is a defining characteristic of the transition of universities into 'multi-million-dollar academic enterprises' reliant upon 'flexible internal and external networks in partnership with businesses, communities and other universities [3].

Consequently, in today's globalised world, TNE including transnational tertiary education (ITE) has become a policy preoccupation for many countries, and the provision of tertiary education to students from 'other' countries remains a critically important role for the vast majority of tertiary education institutions [4]. Tertiary education is used as umbrella term to cover all forms of post-secondary education including education offered by universities. The role of public policy and regulations in the development of tertiary education cannot be over-emphasised. The tertiary education sector is one of the key sectors in modern societies that requires the right public policy regulations in order to play its critical role in society effectively [5]. The debate about tertiary education as public good is still unresolved but the need for right public policy framework to empower tertiary education systems and institutions to deliver on their mandates successfully does not seem to be in contention [6]. Public policy is generally viewed as a broad course of action that guides the behaviour of governments, organisations and individuals. A policy might be a law, or a regulation, or a set of all laws and regulations that govern a particular issue area or problem [7].

Given the critical role of public policy in TNE arrangements of countries and the fact that TNE partnerships are growing steadily in the Ghanaian tertiary education sector, a robust and resilient public policy environment is imperative. However, the public policy environment of TNE partnerships in the tertiary education sector in Ghana is unexamined by any scientific study to guide decision on TNE partnerships in Ghanaian tertiary education institutions (TEIs). Against this backdrop, this chapter examines the level of influence of public policy frameworks on TNE partnerships in TEIs in Ghana to ignite a national discourse on TNE regulation. This chapter is an outgrowth of a British Council, Ghana sponsored research project undertaken between 2019 and 2020 by the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA) of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana [8]. The original research project on which this chapter is based investigated transnational education (TNE) partnerships and the environment of distance learning generally in TEIs in Ghana. The rationale for this research endeavour essentially, was to provide insights into the state of tertiary education (TE) in Ghana.

The overarching aim of the study was to support both Government of Ghana and her international development partners in identifying the key areas where they could work to improve the quality of, and access to Ghanaian TEIs, while at the same time providing her international development partners with value in the form of qualitative and/or economically beneficial partnerships. The focus of this chapter is on how the Government of Ghana's education policy frameworks have influenced, and still continues to influence the development of TNE partnerships in the country. This chapter addresses two of the research questions that guided the study. The first of the two research is "what are the existing policy frameworks in Ghana's tertiary education sector post-independence?" The second research question that this chapter addresses is "how have the existing public policy frameworks influenced, and still continues to influence the development of TNE partnerships in the country?"

The rest of the chapter is organised in this order. The next section (2) provides a portrait of Ghana's tertiary education landscape to put the chapter in context. This is followed by the study's research approach and methods in Section 3. Thereafter,

*Mapping the Policy Regulatory Environment of Transnational Education (TNE)… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99933*

the findings are presented in Section 4 and Section 5 discusses the findings before the concluding thoughts are provided in Section 6.
