Brief Introduction:

Academic Partnerships International (API), along with its parent company Academic Partnerships (AP), is an education service company which is devoted to helping universities become international. AP is the biggest service provider of distance online higher education in the United States, as well as the only entity to provide global service in the United States.

To date, it has helped more than 40 American public universities to set up virtual universities, and assisted more than 750 university teachers to transform their curriculum into more than 1,500 online courses which cover 160 degree courses. After the establishment of API, AP began rapid global expansion. Currently its business scope has reached as far as America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, and it has been providing excellent online courses for more than one hundred thousand students in schools worldwide. 

Cooperation with the OUC

On 25 February 2013, an API delegation including Sir David Newbigging, API chair, Terrance Kwok Yin Leung, CEO of its North Asia region, and Ms. Jane Lee, adviser on international academic cooperation, visited the OUC. Zhang Shaogang, OUC deputy secretary of the Party Committee, met the delegation, and the two sides discussed international cooperation and potential collaborations.

On the 22nd of October, 2013, the OUC signed a cooperative letter of intent with the Academic Partnership International (API). The signing ceremony was attended by president of the OUC, Yang Zhijian, vice president of the OUC, Zhang Shaogang, the dean of the OUC School of Agroforestry and Medicine, Guo Xiaoxia, the chairman of the API, Sir David Newbigging, and associate dean of the USA's University of Texas Arlington, Professor Mary Elizabeth Mancini. Yang Yongbo, director of the OUC International Cooperation and Exchange Department, signed a letter of intent with Terrance Kwok Yin Leung, CEO of North Asia region of API, on behalf of their own parties separately.

According to this letter of intent, the OUC will introduce original editions of online courses, including the courses of the School of Nursing at the University of Texas Arlington, and other online courses from American universities cooperating with API, and translate them into Chinese so as to make these courses available in China’s mainland.