Three prominent organisations have emerged as drivers of regional higher education (HE) cooperation in East Asia: the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the South East Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO), and a recently formed trilateral grouping between the governments of China, Japan, and South Korea (hereafter referred to as Korea). While these regional actors share some history of collaboration, in part driven by a desire to create a common East Asian HE space, they implement regionalisation schemes largely based on different needs, goals, timetables, and customs. This phenomenon has resulted in a fragmented landscape of East Asian HE regionalisation. In considering this state of affairs, several questions emerge. Why are there multiple regionalisation schemes in East Asia?

For nations with multiple regional memberships, is it possible that some regionalisation schemes have priority over others? If yes, are there any adverse implications for East Asian regionalisation schemes, both as separate initiatives and, more broadly, as schemes working toward a common East Asian HE space?

ASEAN AND THE ASEAN UNIVERSITY NETWORK

Initially (roughly in the period 1967–1989), ASEAN drove cooperation on the twin premise of political stability and security. Thus, its founding members – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand – shared a mission focused on the containment of communism in Indochina and cooperative nation-building, especially in the years following successful national independence movements in the region. However, events of the 1990s, particularly the Asian financial crisis of 1997, prompted a shift in rationale as a wave of political discourse around economic integration swept the region. The financial crisis highlighted the need for cooperation not only among ASEAN member countries, but also among other afflicted nations – namely China, Japan, and Korea – to find economic solutions to prevent future recessions from devastating the region. This grouping of countries became known as ASEAN Plus Three.

Throughout ASEAN’s evolution – from an exclusive grouping of Southeast Asian countries, to the inclusive ASEAN Plus Three configuration, and later the ASEAN Plus Six arrangement (with the addition of Australia, India, and New Zealand) – policy dialogue around HE regional cooperation materialised slowly. The conversation began with the first two ASEAN Committee on Education meetings in the 1970s; together, these meetings promoted higher education, particularly the labor potential of HE graduates, as the primary engine driving economic prosperity. The meetings also advanced a compelling argument in favour of an international pipeline to secure qualified and highly motivated students. What resulted was a subregional grouping known as the ASEAN University Network (AUN), which, assisted by the ASEAN University Network Quality Assurance (AUN-QA) framework and the ASEAN Credit Transfer System (ACTS), facilitates exchanges of faculty, staff, and students among 30 member institutions.

SEAMEO AND THE SOUTH EAST ASIAN HIGHER EDUCATION AREA

Whereas ASEAN’s AUN operates on a subregional platform, the SEAMEO Regional Institute of Higher Education and Development (RIHED) seeks to achieve a higher-order objective of establishing a South East Asian Higher Education Area (SEAHEA). To date, three primary regionalisation processes have advanced this work: the Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand (M-I-T) mobility pilot project and two regional harmonising mechanisms, the ASEAN Quality Assurance Network (AQAN) and the Southeast Asian Credit Transfer System (SEA-CTS). Assisted by the University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific Credit Transfer System (UCTS), 23 universities under M-I-T facilitated the exchange of 1,130 undergraduate students during the initiative’s four-year rollout (2010–2014). M-I-T is now moving forward under a more inclusive branding, the ASEAN International Mobility for Students (AIMS), and plans to expand its remit to include four additional countries: Brunei Darussalam, Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. In contrast to M-I-T, AQAN and SEA-CTS activity has been difficult to measure; however, it is likely that these two regional mechanisms will have increased visibility under AIMS.

CAMPUS ASIA

The newest arrival on the scene of regional cooperation in East Asia is a trilateral student mobility scheme called the Collective Action for Mobility Program of University Students in Asia (CAMPUS Asia). Launched in 2012 as a pilot project under the direction of China, Japan, and Korea, CAMPUS Asia facilitates both undergraduate and graduate student mobility through credit exchange, dual degree, and joint degree programmes, and aims to develop a pool of talented “Asian experts” through a shared resource and knowledge platform.

These experts are expected to become ambassadors of an internationally competitive, knowledge-based Northeast Asian region. As perhaps a secondary objective, the mobility scheme may be regarded as a means to alleviate China and Korea’s brain drain problem (the loss of intellectual capital to popular study and work destinations such as North America and Europe), while simultaneously creating international demand for HE sectors faced with the prospect of diminishing enrolment rates (Japan and Korea).

THE CONUNDRUM OF REGIONALISATION IN EAST ASIA

Taken separately, all the regionalisation schemes described above have the potential to yield considerable benefits within their respective geographic purviews: a deepening of cross-cultural understanding; knowledge sharing; an international pipeline to skilled labour; and regional stability and peace. However, viewed as a whole, they represent a fragmented landscape of HE regionalisation, comprised of mutually exclusive and, in some instances, overlapping cross- and intraregional economic and political interdependencies. These uncoordinated dynamics are bound to cause geopolitical tension, as regional networks are likely to engage in political manoeuvring and other posturing behaviours, especially as programmes expand into neighboring territories and endeavour to recruit member nations that are already committed to other initiatives.

For example, the trilateral Northeast Asian grouping has plans to include some ASEAN and/or SEAMEO member countries in CAMPUS Asia, while both ASEAN and SEAMEO have entertained the possibility of expanding AUN and AIMS, respectively, to the northeast, namely to China, Japan, and Korea. As the prospect of new regional partnerships opens up, countries with multiple memberships may choose to honor or devote more resources to cooperative arrangements that either yield the most benefit (e.g., in terms of prestige, political endorsement, or resources), are most feasible, or both. The maturing of spinoff ASEAN Plus One arrangements (e.g., ASEANJapan), perhaps at the expense of developments in the larger ASEAN Plus Three grouping, may illustrate this point. In other cases, regional networks may find themselves fighting over resources that become “spread too thin” as member nations devote funding, manpower, and time to multiple regionalisation initiatives. In sum, prioritisation activities may thwart the cultivation of enduring regional cooperative ties and hamper the progress of regionalisation schemes that share multiple member nations. Perhaps also at stake is the creation of an all-inclusive, single East Asian HE community.

Another challenge facing regional organisations in East Asia is the inherent difficulty of attempting to harmonise an extremely polarised geographic area of cultures, languages, standards around HE quality, and national norms and regulations, specifically around visa protocols and academic calendars. Reference tools such as AQAN, UCTS, and ACTS have mitigated the most visible differences and successfully facilitated student exchanges for elite regional groupings such as AUN and pilot international mobility projects. But a need emerges to develop more broad-sweeping harmonising mechanisms with the aim of equalising educational benefits across East Asia as a whole. In recognition of this limitation, SEAMEO RIHED and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have begun to develop what aims to be an all-inclusive, pan-East Asian reference tool known as the Academic Credit Transfer Framework (ACTFA). However, the question becomes whether the many regional networks that coexist in East Asia will embrace this framework, especially in light of their tendency to promote homegrown mobility schemes and harmonising mechanisms native to their respective subregions. Currently, CAMPUS Asia seems to be exploring its own CTS and QA framework and AUN, as already mentioned, uses AUN-QA and ACTS.

Given this current state of affairs, now would likely be a good time to emphasise a greater level of interregional cooperation among regional networks in East Asia. The aim here would be to alleviate any geopolitical tension that is perhaps characteristic of East Asian regionalisation today, and develop efficient ways to share knowledge and resources across regional networks to equalise HE benefits across the region. Perhaps in this way, East Asian regionalisation can begin to move toward a more inclusive regionalisation agenda of creating a single, pan-East Asian HE community.

This article was originally published in International Higher Education.