The latest edition of Higher Education Policy (HEP) is entitled Transnational Education and Student Mobility in Asia. For more information, abstracts and ordering, please visit the Journal’s homepage on Palgrave's website. Editorial - Ka Ho Moka - College of Education, Zhejiang University, China and Faculty of Arts and Sciences, The Hong Kong Institute of Education
With the strong conviction to enhance their global competitiveness, governments across different parts of the world have tried various means to transform their higher education systems in order to strengthen national competitiveness at the international level. Some major strategies being adopted by governments from different parts of the globe are to (1) promote the rankings of their universities in the global university leagues; (2) promote internationalization in curriculum design and student learning; (3) enrich student learning through enhancement of student mobility; (4) engage in the quest for regional education hub status. In order to better position themselves in the global university leagues, Asian governments have made serious efforts to promote student mobility and internationalization in higher education (Portnoi et al., 2010; Mok and Yu, 2011; Welch, 2011). This special issue sets out, within the context of internationalization of higher education and the rise of education hubs in the region, to examine the issues related to transnational higher education (TNHE) and student mobility in East Asia.
It is generally perceived that TNHE has galvanized the development of higher education in terms of teaching. Among all Asian countries, China is one of the fasting growing places of TNHE, which has caught the interest of K.C. Ong and David Chan, who examine in their article the blossoming of TNHE programmes and foreign-local co-run schools in China. What are the drivers of such growth? As Ong and Chan argue, it is mainly linked to the socio-economic changes taking place in China. TNHE development in China began to accelerate in the 1990s, when it needed more human capital for a higher level of economic development. Other factors also include the rising educational demand by the young population, and the need for internationalizing the higher education sector. But as TNHE has continued to expand, the Chinese government has turned away from an originally ‘informal, incidental and rather laissez-faire’ approach to a regulatory one. The 21st century has witnessed a more robust development of TNHE in China, as it has increasingly integrated with the world economy, for example the admittance to the World Trade Organization, which attempts to open up a world market of educational services. Against this background, the varieties of TNHE programmes offered by different institutions across different regions are examined in the article to illustrate the prospects of TNHE in China. At the end of the article, the authors discuss the potential difficulties it is now facing, mostly the lagging behind of quality assurance mechanism amidst rapid expansion.
While many people like Ong and Chan are giving positive reactions to the rise of TNHE for its economic potential and the increased educational opportunities, Li-Chuan Chiang's article provides a critical reflection of TNHE in East Asia. In her article, Chiang raises some critical issues: the fact that TNHE has always prioritized teaching at the expense of research and community service, the other traditional missions of university; the low quality of TNHE programmes (in terms of medium of instruction, programme materials, teaching staff); and the over-commercialization of TNHE programmes, which are more vocationally oriented than academic in nature. Apart from these practical concerns, from a critical cultural perspective, Chiang is most worried about the intrusion of ‘western-dominated pedagogies and curriculum from abroad to home via importing TNHE’, which Chiang regards as ‘the Trojan Horse’.
Similarly, Aaron Koh also shares the same worry about the rise of TNHE in Asia, and he pays particular attention to the fact that outward-bound student mobility is harmful to human capital building of a state, as in his case study of Singapore. According to Koh, human capital is critical to a small city-state like Singapore, where natural resources are scarce and the manufacturing base is small. In the past few years, the Singaporean leaders and society have been increasingly aware of the potential harm of student outflow in the context of the rise of TNHE. Arguing that Singapore has been pursuing ‘tactical globalization’, in which the state adopts a pragmatic way to seize on the potential and opportunities offered by globalization but also to actively deal with negative consequences of globalization, for example brain drain, Koh examines the ‘tactics of intervention’ by the Singaporean government to retain and nurture local talent and attract foreign talent in the battle for human capital for economic growth. Such tactics include offering scholarships, changing immigration policies and maintaining ties with overseas Singaporeans.
In fact, in thinking about the broad picture of brain drain in Asia in recent years, the past understanding that TNHE would favour the West and undermine the East (student outflow always occurs from Asia to western developed countries, as students mostly aspire to study in those places and intended to stay there for work after graduation) has been rendered increasingly problematic in regard to rising horizontal mobility of students within the Asian region. As Sheng-Ju Chan argues in his article, the signs of change are linked to the shift in the global balance of power, when many Asian countries have increased competition for human capital (within and also beyond Asia) for advancing national competitiveness. These Asian countries have taken efforts both domestically and internationally. Domestically, they have restructured the higher education sectors to increase their attractiveness. Internationally, they have sought more presence in the international scene, for example, by bringing in more foreign resources, such as inviting leading foreign institutions to enter the local markets, and aligning themselves with international accreditation organizations and joining international institutional networks.
In delineating the development of TNHE from the perspectives of international change and institutional transformation as mentioned above, what is often missing in the discussion is the perspective of the students engaging in TNHE. In this regard, we have in this special issue collected two articles — Ka Ho Mok's case studies on Singapore and Malaysia, and Hao Jie and Anthony Welch's case on China. From the perspective of students’ learning experience, Ka Ho Mok's article discusses the characteristics of TNHE in Singapore and Malaysia, the two potential education hubs in Asia. Having conducted focus groups and interviews of students engaging in TNHE in Singapore and Malaysia, Mok finds overseas studying experience a major attraction for overseas students in the two countries. It is not only the overseas studying experience, but also overseas academic qualifications that drive students to engage in TNHE. That is why students are enthusiastic about twinning programmes (e.g., co-organized programmes by one local institution and by one foreign institution) because having the name of a foreign school printed on an academic certificate leads to better career prospects in their own countries. And as Mok discovers, students in Singapore are more satisfied with TNHE programmes than their counterparts in Malaysia, because Singapore has been more strategically and carefully selective in bringing in foreign partners than Malaysia.
In the case of China, Hao Jie and Anthony Welch also discover the same phenomenon that the overseas studying experience has long been regarded as a gold ticket to the employment market. The high-skilled returnees, who are called ‘Hai Gui’ (sea turtles), have always been highly sought by employers, because the overseas qualification they possess is a guarantee of one's quality, as China's higher education development had been halted for a long period of time before the 1980s. After graduation in foreign countries, the high-skilled returnees are motivated to come back to China by the expanding career opportunities concomitant to the rise of the Chinese economy, a sense of national identity, and also the desire to contribute to the country. However, in examining the job-seeking experiences of high-skilled returnees who have returned from Australia to China, Hao and Welch find that, as the higher education sector of China has been improving in recent years, their career paths are not as promising as before, as now they have to face competition from student graduates from top universities in the country. And, although they are Chinese natives, they have the added difficulty of having to reintegrate into a rapidly changing China after a period of time away from the country.
The collection of articles in this issue has provided comparative perspectives and international insights when analysing the growing trend of TNHE in Asia. The authors in this special issue have highlighted not only the growing popularity of student mobility, they have attempted to critically examine the socio-cultural implications for the rise of TNHE and student learning in Asia. Embracing internationalization among higher education systems in Asia has clearly suggested that Asian countries are very keen to become more international, but we must be sensitive about how the notion of ‘internationalization’ is understood. Internationalization should not be interpreted as an overemphasis of other cultures and languages, but as an under-valuation of the local and domestic traditions, values, cultures and languages. In the quest for internationalization, Asian universities should have engaged in serious efforts for the rediscovery of Asian scholarship, introducing the uniqueness of Asian values, traditions and cultures through international connectivity in terms of academic exchange and international research collaboration. For in doing so Asian universities would be able to contribute to a better understanding of internationalization by playing up the role of ‘Asianization’ in order to contribute to the international community dominated by the West.
Articles:
Transnational Higher Education and Challenges for University Governance in China - Kok Chung Ong and David K.K. Chan
Higher education in China is currently undergoing a process of re-orientation. This paper focuses specifically on the development of transnational higher education (TNHE) in China over the last decade, as well as its implications for university governance. Major features of TNHE programmes in China will be explored, and a corresponding typology will be presented. We argue that in the face of the fast expanding activities of TNHE, the common irregularities in programme operation, and the less effective and efficient mechanism of quality assurance, may well be the major challenges for university governance in China. Structural reform in university governance is desirable, particularly in terms of empowering the non-public sector in Chinese higher education and of separating the role of the Party from academic administration.
Tactics of Interventions: Student Mobility and Human Capital Building in Singapore - Aaron Koh
Hitherto, research on transnational higher education student mobility tended to narrowly present hard statistics on student mobility, analysing these in terms of ‘trends’ and the implication this has on policy and internationalizing strategies. What is missing from this ‘big picture’ is a close-up analysis of the micropolitics of student mobility in specific geographical contexts. Despite an expanding university sector in Singapore, there is a persistent trend of Singaporean students leaving the country for overseas study, posing a possible problem of brain drain. This paper presents a socio-politico analysis of student mobility and the attendant politics this has created for Singapore's human capital building. The Singapore case is instructive of how it manages its human capacity building vis-à-vis its outward-bound student mobility. Although there are ‘tactics of intervention’ in place, it remains to be seen how the Singaporean government tackles two national dilemmas that are related to the socio-politico consequences of student mobility.
Shifting Patterns of Student Mobility in Asia - Sheng-Ju Chan
Responding to the impacts of globalization and the knowledge economy, the increasing demand for higher education in East Asia is not only met by domestic higher education, but also by importing transnational higher education (TNHE). Importing TNHE becomes an export strategy to attract international students to contribute to capacity building for the importing countries. While trading on the strength of west-dominated TNHE in East Asia is well received, its underlying dilemmas are under-represented. The paper aims to offer an alternative analysis to identify possible hurtful aspects that might be treated as ‘the Trojan Horse’ hidden in the import–export model that might aggravate rather than minimize student mobility and brain drain and deepen rather than alleviate the influence of western culture on East Asian countries. Hence, the overwhelming discourse of capacity building in importing TNHE should be critically re-visited by paying attention to foreign providers’ motives, the nature and characteristics of TNHE programmes, and the reality of the partnership process and arrangement.
The Rise of Transnational Higher Education in Asia: Student Mobility and Studying Experiences in Singapore and Malaysia - Ka Ho Mok
During the past decade, Asia — traditionally one of the largest exporters of mobile students — has experienced major changes in student mobility within higher education. As the worldwide competition for international students has escalated, many Asian countries have adopted a wide range of mechanisms and strategies in facilitating student mobility. This paper argues that although most Asian nations face a problem of net outflow of students to Western countries, a trend of regionalization or horizontal mobility of students within the region is emerging. As the Asian countries mainly compete for the same pool of students in the region, the competition will intensify. Therefore, the role of leading universities in the West in helping to attract international students to Asia in the form of transnational higher education has become problematic. The growing competition for international students between domestic and foreign higher education institutions poses new governance challenges for host countries in Asia.
A Tale of Sea Turtles: Job-Seeking Experiences of Hai Gui (High-Skilled Returnees) in China - Jie Hao and Anthony Welch
A key feature of contemporary globalization is the increasing mobility of high-skilled talent. While for many countries in the developing world the loss of such individuals represents a longstanding concern, countries such as China have now developed key policies to harness their overseas talent. The article examines the job-seeking experiences of a key group of high-skilled returnees, after taking advanced degrees in Australia, discussing the outcomes in terms of salaries and length of time to secure employment, as well as analysing their advantages and disadvantages relative to their domestic peers. On the basis of survey and interview data, the views of both returnees and employers are canvassed, as also issues of re-integration and Chinese networks and values.
Indian Higher Education: Envisioning the Future - Heather Eggins (book review).
Le 3e Forum mondial des apprentissages tout au long de la vie, qui se tiendra à Marrakech (Maroc) les 31 octobre, 1er et 2 novembre 2012, accueillera des intervenants du monde entier. 
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