Keynote Speech Delivered at the ASEAN + 3 Higher Education Quality Assurance Forum
Organized by MEXT and NIAD‐UE in Tokyo, Japan, 1 October 2013

Vision and Current Trends of student mobility:
byAssoc. Prof. Dr. Sauwakon Ratanawijitrasin
Centre Director, SEAMEO RIHED

ABSTRACTDuring the past two decades, the landscape of international student mobility has been
expanding rapidly. Globally, the number of foreign students have more than triple‐‐from 1.3
million in 1990 to 4.3 million in 2011. More than half of foreign students populationworldwide come from Asia. Among them around 34% are from Northeast Asian and 8%
from Southeast Asian countries. In Southeast Asia, although most outbound students go to
study in an OECD member country, the tide for foreign students studying within the regionis rising in recent years.
These trends are driven by a wide range of forces. Key among them are the needs to meetthe challenges of globalization and regionalization, which has led to efforts tointernationalize. East Asia—Northeast and Southeast—has witnessed proactive nationalpolicies and institutional initiatives to promote student mobility, which is a prime policyinstrument among the many schemes to internationalize higher education. Individuals too
desire to mobilize across national borders for higher education to enrich knowledge, skills,and experiences.
Amidst this tide of change, governments and higher educational institutions in the region
reach out to one another to forge broader and deeper collaborations—bilaterally andmultilaterally. International organizations also contribute to create and coordinate collectiveactions.
The Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization‐Regional Centre for Higher
Education and Development (SEAMEO RIHED) plays such a role in initiatiing andcoordinating the multilateral student exchange program AIMS (ASEAN International Mobilityfor Students). From its launch with 3 participating countries in 2010, the Program has now
expanded to include 7 countries—Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Phillipines,
Brunei Darusalam, and Japan—extending opportunities to students in both Southeast andNortheast Asia.

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To advance regional harmonization, as well as build enabling mechanisms for student
mobility, SEAMEO RIHED also conducts and takes part in initiatives related to quality
assurance and credit transfer system. A recent effort, supported by the Asian Development
Bank, is a policy action research to study and develop common credit transfer system which
has resulted in the Academic Credit Transfer Framework for Asia (ACTFA) to be used tosupport student mobility.
Asia, as well as the world, demand more human resources with tran‐system competency. It
is the role of higher education to cultivate globalized human resources to meet futurechanllenges. To better promote student mobility, more extensive collective actions arecalled for. These include 1) establishing and enriching multilateral platforms for student
exchange, 2) developing more programs in more diverse formats—covering learning in class,learning from peers, and learning in the workplace and community‐‐to meet future needs, 3)
harmonizing higher education to allow better compatability and comparability, as well as
maintaining diversity, 4) Strengthening quality of higher education to cover existing as wellas emerging forms of institutions and programs.

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