**5. Discussion**

TNE partnerships in tertiary education are inspired by a business philosophy and an entrepreneurial orientation [2, 3]. In view of this, it is plausible to argue,

based on this finding, that private TEIs in Ghana are more entrepreneurial compared to the public TEIs because over 70% of existing TNE partnerships are private TEIs. This finding confirms Ansah and Swanzy [16] finding in their study that private tertiary education institutions in Ghana are not funded by the state and therefore have high entrepreneurial tendencies. These entrepreneurial tendencies have implications for the quality of tertiary education provision in the country because entrepreneurship carries profit motives that could compromise quality. This is why appropriate policy regulatory frameworks are required to ensure that sanity is maintained around TNE partnership relationships. In another vein, appropriate TNE regulatory policy frameworks for tertiary education in Ghana should be able to encourage public TEIs to increase their TNE partnership portfolios in areas that maximise the benefits of TNE in tertiary education.

Given that, the strongest influence of a policy regulatory framework is a Mean Score of 4.00, it safe to argue that even the National Accreditation Board policy regulatory framework, the only policy with influence, represents a weak influence regarding TNE operations in TEIs in Ghana because its Mean Score of 2.96 is just a little above the minimum influence represented by a Mean Score of 2.56.The findings from the survey and the in-depth interviews have also demonstrated that the environment of TNE in the Ghanaian tertiary education sector looks like what Verbik and Jokivirta [17] describe in regulatory terms as 'liberal regulative', because foreign providers must satisfy certain minimum conditions prior to commencing operations: for example, official recognition in the home country. This is consistent with Ghana's Minister of State responsible for tertiary education, Professor Kojo Yankah's claim that Ghana lacks comprehensive tertiary education policy [18]. The obvious implication for this liberal regulative TNE environment existing in Ghanaian TEIs is that the tertiary education sector could get flooded with TNE partnerships which have the potential to supply quality tertiary education to underserved sections of the Ghanaian society or soil the integrity of the existing quality tertiary education with poor quality provision.
