Service Science in Higher Education: Productization of Offshore Programs in Transnational Education

One of the forms in service innovation for universities in Taiwan is to develop transnational education such as offshore programs where the existent programs were re-innovated by providing new service processes including improved delivery or distribution methods. This study examined how the universities adopted this form of innovation and examined how they productize their offshore programs, corresponding to the four productization practices: specifying, tangibilizing, systemizing and standardizing, in terms of program design, curriculum design, teaching and learning, assessment, and administration. By these productization practices, students and partner universities can have a clearer picture and better understanding of the programs, and the host universities can cut down the administration cost and achieve better efficiency and cost-benefit. This study can be seen as a pioneering study which applies the service science philosophy to redefine higher education and reformulate the process of the service innovation such as offshore program implementation by the productization practices.