POLICY BARRIERS AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE GLOBAL EXPANSION OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Policy barriers present major challenges to the development of educational services trade, especially amid rising global trade protectionism, which further restricts the overseas operations of educational institutions. This study examines the impact of such barriers on the international expansion of educational institutions, using educational trade data and the Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) across 55 countries from 2008 to 2017. Following the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), we analyze effects across its four supply modes. Our results show that policy barriers under Mode 3 (commercial presence) strongly inhibit overseas expansion. Notably, the impact differs by income level: in high- and lower-middle-income countries, barriers under Mode 1 (cross-border supply) reduce Mode 3 trade, indicating complementarity between these modes; in contrast, for upper-middle-income countries, Mode 1 barriers encourage Mode 3 trade, revealing a substitutive relationship. These findings suggest that educational institutions adjust their market-entry strategies according to policy restrictiveness, either combining multiple modes or substituting one for another depending on context.