Can Alibaba’s university courses help China outpace the West?

A growing global network of university partnerships is helping Chinese technology giant Alibaba to advance its own business as it competes with Western companies, while simultaneously supporting China’s soft power goals at a time when academic collaborations face increasing scrutiny. 

The e-commerce business, which owns brands such as AliExpress and has strands including artificial intelligence, logistics and cloud computing, is one of Asia’s biggest and most valuable companies. 

Like its international competitors, Alibaba is increasingly using partnerships with universities to support its business goals. Some of these are research-focused, such as its partnership with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, launched in 2019, to establish a joint laboratory focusing on emerging technologies linked to generative AI and big data. 

More commonly, however, these partnerships centre around Alibaba Cloud, the company’s cloud computing arm. 

Here the business has formalised its education programmes through the Alibaba Cloud Academic Empowerment Program, which provides learning resources and certifications for students. According to the organisation’s website, it has at least 50 member institutions, primarily situated in Asia. 

Western companies including Microsoft and Amazon have similar offerings, which are much more prevalent at universities in the US and Europe. 

“These companies are very active in supporting higher education internationally,” said Jim Paterson, head of the computing department at Glasgow Caledonian University. The Scottish university is a member of the Amazon Web Services academy, which provides a similar free curriculum and certification for students. 

For universities, these programmes offer a low-cost way to enhance the employability of graduates, ensuring their students are learning the skills increasingly in demand among employers. 

Yonggang Wen, a professor in the College of Computing and Data Science at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), said that, through a partnership with Alibaba, his institution benefited from “enhanced curriculum relevance, joint research opportunities, funding, and improved job placement for graduates”. 

In some cases, companies also offer direct employment opportunities for students enrolled in their programmes. At Malaysia’s Universiti Malaya, a new partnership with Alibaba Cloud gives students the chance to participate in an internship programme, including “exclusive mentorship”. 

For companies like Alibaba, the reasons to invest so much in universities are more complex. On the surface, they’re doing their part to fill talent shortages in a fast-growing industry, ensuring a future pipeline of workers.

“The partnership provides access to a skilled talent pool, drives innovation, enhances reputation, and allows for input on curriculum development,” said Professor Yonggang. 

And research suggests that companies like Alibaba have to work harder than their Western competitors to secure the best talent, even in the Global North.  

Yujia He, an assistant professor of commerce at the University of Kentucky, studied how Chinese digital platform companies are expanding in countries covered by Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative. In Indonesia, Dr He found that Chinese platforms were keen to hire local workers in growing South-east Asian markets, partly because doing so is much cheaper than flying in Chinese employees. However, the hiring pool is limited and skilled professionals often prefer to work at Western giants like Google and Microsoft. 

University partnerships, therefore, “are not just public relations exercises but business-oriented initiatives aiming to attract future employees in a challenging local labour market”, Dr He writes. 

However, academic collaboration doesn’t just support talent development – it’s also good for business. After all, a company getting their specific tools on the curriculum – as opposed to those of their competitors – can only help their sales.

“If universities are putting out graduates whose skills are on a particular platform, then that helps make sure, for that [company], that that skills gap will be filled by people who are advocating for their products or their services,” said Dr Paterson. 

And, while still small fry compared with the likes of Amazon and Microsoft, when it comes to academic collaborations in the West, Alibaba is making inroads in Europe. Earlier this year, Henley Business School – part of the University of Reading – announced a partnership with Alibaba Cloud, launching a cloud technology skill centre to “cultivate high-calibre talent for the digital age”. 

It comes at a time when China remains keen to exert global influence, yet any academic collaborations with the Chinese government face scrutiny. 

While it is hard to judge how far Alibaba’s business strategy is directly linked to the Chinese government’s goals – founder Jack Ma has a notoriously rocky relationship with the state, with Alibaba part of a landmark antitrust case in 2021 – there are clear benefits to China of having such networks.

“This is also an opportunity for China to grow its influence as an entrepreneurial powerhouse,” said Gerald Postiglione, emeritus professor in the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Education. 

“China becomes a formidable competitor on the basis of its high-quality tech products and services that are marketed globally at lower prices.

“Alibaba’s training programmes provide university students in other countries with the knowledge and skills, and, later, the jobs to service the company’s products, while having their branding displayed prominently in universities around the world.”

Dr He agreed. “Academic collaborations with good local community involvement may help build a better corporate image for the Chinese tech firms, thereby it may lead to better public perceptions of Chinese technology and broadly of Chinese business presence among the local population,” she said.

“But it’s also hard to say how much of this will translate into a better perception of China among the host country’s diplomatic community and defence [and] intelligence community, who are likely to be concerned with higher-order security interests in addition to economic development.”

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com