International partnerships between universities, facilitated by online pedagogies, have great potential to bring together students and teachers from widely differing backgrounds, cultures and locations to combine global perspectives and local relevance in the widely interdisciplinary subject area of geography. However, collaboration between universities is difficult and often fails due to a lack of a shared vision, poor administrative support and difficulties with funding arrangements, and, while online teaching is rapidly expanding, its use at the graduate level is not widely utilized. We reveal the pitfalls associated with international university collaboration founded on the worry that universities are tying themselves to a long-lasting, rigid relationship that may conflict with other activities. Those universities that have surmounted these barriers to collaboration find solutions through establishing incentive structures that encourage shared teaching, apportioning finances and time to support the initiative, and agreeing set conditions for future partners to join or leave the agreement.