Higher education regionalism in Asia: what implications for Europe?

ABSTRACT

Studies of regionalism – intra and comparative regionalism – have often used the European experience to explain the emergence and evolution of regionalisms in other parts of the world. This tendency in approaching the European experience as explanatory has permeated sector-specific developments. In this article, we consider the developments in higher education to examine the purported influence that Europe's Bologna Process has had on other regional initiatives. Taking the case of the Asian Universities Alliance (AUA), we delineate the narratives from the actors involved in this initiative to show how they initially perceived and conceptualized higher education cooperation in the Asia region. Applying higher education regionalism framework, we show how AUA actors designed higher education regionalism in Asia independent from Europe's influence. We conclude with the potential implications that AUA's emergence has for Europe, taking into consideration the growing influence of China in developing higher education regionalisms in Asia.

KEYWORDS:

• Asian Universities Alliance
• Bologna Process
• China
• Europe
• geo-economics
• higher education regionalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Exequiel Cabanda is a PhD student in Public Policy and Global Affairs at NTU Singapore. Ex is researching the emigration of Filipino Nurses from the perspective of the sending state. His research has appeared in Migration and Development and Higher Education Policy.

Ee Siong Tan is a student in Public Policy and Global Affairs at NTU Singapore. Ee Siong is studying the effects of massification of higher education.

Meng-Hsuan Chou is Nanyang Assistant Professor in Public Policy and Global Affairs at NTU Singapore, Fung Global Fellow at Princeton University, and Convenor of ECPR Standing Group on Knowledge Politics and Policies. Hsuan is currently researching the rise, evolution, and effects of higher education regionalism in Europe and in Southeast Asia, as well as between these two regions.

ORCID

Exequiel Cabanda http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4051-157X

Ee Siong Tan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6242-5325

Meng-Hsuan Chou http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8138-236X

Notes

1. One of the headlines launching the 2019 Times Higher Education World University Rankings reads ‘East closes in on West’ (Times Higher Education 2018), with China's Tsinghua University being the prominent subject.

2. They are Tsinghua University (China), Peking University (China), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (China), University of Tokyo (Japan), Seoul National University (South Korea), and National University of Singapore (Singapore).

3. Other members are Indian Institute of Technology (India), University of Indonesia (Indonesia), Chulalongkorn University (Thailand), University of Malaya (Malaysia), University of Colombo (Sri Lanka), University of Yangon (Myanmar), Nazarbayev University (Kazakhstan), United Arab Emirates University (UAE), and King Saud University (Saudi Arabia).

4. Early on in our analysis, we found that the Boao Forum for Asia is an important arena for discussions leading up to the creation of the AUA. The Boao Forum for Asia is a non-profit organization that has strong connections with the Chinese government. Since 2001, it has hosted several high-level dialogs with influential leaders in Asia, including governments and private actors.

5. The Asian Universities Alliance is certainly not the only regional higher education initiative that China has forged in recent years within the OBOR framework. For instance, China is also involved in the University Alliance of the Silk Road (2015), which includes several universities from France, Italy, UK, Poland, and Croatia, and the Sino-Russian Comprehensive University Alliance (2017).

6. For instance, French President Macron's call in 2017 for the creation of ‘European Universities Network’ and the ensuing responses. In our research, we did not identify any coherent European response to the creation of the AUA. One possible explanation may be that European actors are more preoccupied with the development of ‘European Universities Network’ than another new regional alliance in Asia.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Erasmus+ [Grant Number 2016-1737/001-001]. The research for this article and special issue were conducted by the Jean Monnet ‘Near-EU’ network, with the support of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.