2008-E-23
Comparing European and East AsianExperiences in Higher Education Regionalism 1

Cesar de Prado
Barcelona Institute of International Studies (www.ibei.org) andUniversity of Salamanca (www.usal.es/asia)
January 20091

This paper partly draws on Chapter 6 of this author‟s book titled Global Multi-level Governance:
European and East Asian Leadership. (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2007),
www.unu.edu/unupress/2007/multilevelGovernance.html.

Preface

Asian Regional Integration and Education

Set against the backdrop of increasing economic interdependence in the Asia region, the idea of„regional integration‟ is most often articulated as a policy instrument and political ideal. Arguably, thisobjective is being pursued to further promote regional competitiveness in the world economy and tobring about a new stable political order. Nevertheless, any move in this direction has been repeatedly
challenged from perspectives that emphasize socio-cultural diversity in the region and shared histories.
It is in this context that Waseda University received the Global COE research grant from the Ministryof Education of Japan. Waseda University was tasked with establishing the Graduate Institute for
Asian Regional Integration (GIARI) to investigate problems and prospects relating to Asian regional
integration. Issues of education are central to any dialogue that seeks to further integrate political,
social, and economic systems in the region. Taking European integration as a precursor, it is clear that
education plays a critical role in the integration process. It is certainly, therefore, within the purview
and moreover, a responsibility of Waseda‟s Global COE—sponsored research to examine the role
education will continue to play in a more comprehensive integration of the Asia region.
There is not a single nexus of research where the study of Asian regional integration and education
meet; rather, there exist a diversity of approaches that form a matrix of research. A first feature of
regional integration studies is the empirical study of „de facto‟ integration of the region‟s education
systems. From this approach, we conclude that education systems, economic systems and societal
values are already intertwined and integrated to a certain degree. This first approach endeavors to takestock of the extent of actual integration. A second approach emphasizes the purpose(s) and governing
principles which inform the integration process. It may then be possible to derive ordered conceptual
frameworks that reveal future pathways of regional cooperation and integration. This approach asks
why we need to integrate and the answers come mainly from historical and philosophicalinvestigations of policy arguments. The third type of regional integration studies attempt to analyze
existing frameworks and institutions for regional cooperation and integration of education systems. It
is a political analysis that reveals practical and organizational implications for future regional
cooperation and integration processes. The fourth approach focuses on the study of the actors
involved in the regional integration process. Countries and governments are probably the mostimportant actors in these processes, but educational institutions are also important. The fifth approachis best described as the comparative study of regional integration drawing on experiences fromdifferent regions; education regionalization in Europe, for example.
In doing these researches, we must share a vision concerning Asian regional integration andeducation that can foster mutual trust and a concept of people‟s Asia, and strengthening thecompetitiveness of Asian human resources in the world. By comprehensively discussing andinternalizing diverse views, rather than relying on a single model or ideal, it will be possible to build aregional framework for education in Asia that can be expected to contribute greatly to the formation ofan Asian Community, and thus, to peace and prosperity in the region.
Kazuo KURODA, Ph.D.
Leader, Education and Asian Regional Integration
Research Group, GIARI

1

Abstract
Europe has been trying to converge its higher education systems for the past sixty years.
It created some regional institutions and the graduate level, first the College of Europe
and, later, the European University Institute. Since the late eighties the European
Commission has successfully promoted the mobility of students and faculty through the
Socrates-Erasmus programme. And nowadays, 46 European countries are trying to more
jointly dynamise all elements of their universities through the so-called Bologna process.
European universities are also getting ready to work with innovative companies with theimpetus of a new Institute of Technology. In the meantime, East Asian countries arequickly transforming their university systems to be more globally competitive. This
includes an increasingly noticeable effort to find ways to cooperate within their regions.
Initial efforts to create linkages in ASEAN countries, and later by linking to America andEurope, were rather weak. Yet, in the past few years, a number of political agreements inSoutheast Asia, Northeast Asia, and among ASEAN+3 countries include a greater
exchange of student and faculty. As the process is a difficult one, the role of external
partners remains important. Noticeable is the effort to create a pan-Asian intellectual
catalyser by reviving the ancient university of Nalanda in India.

Keywords: Higher Education, Europe, Asia, Regionalism

2The First “Universities”
Having learnt the painful lessons of the wars in the first half of the 20 th century,
European governments created unique postgraduate institutions to study, research andinfluence peaceful European integration.2
The College of Europe (www.coleurope.be) started in 1949 as the world‟s firstacademic institute of postgraduate studies and training in European affairs, and despite its
growth and evolution it remains rather unique to this day. The College‟s origins date backto the Pan-European 1948 Den Hague Congress, when Salvador de Madariaga, a Spanish
statesman, thinker and writer in exile, proposed the establishment of a College where
university graduates from many different countries could study and live together. A
group of private citizens were successful in attracting the College to Bruges, near
Brussels, and one of the intellectual leaders of the track-2 European Movement became
its first rector. In the wake of the changes in Central and Eastern Europe following theend of the Cold War, at the invitation of the Polish government and with the support of
the European Union, a second campus was opened in Natolin outside of Warsaw in 1994.
The College has always been a mainly intergovernmental institution, as European member
states select and fund most of the students and the Belgian and Polish authorities fund muchof the physical infrastructure. Yet, the European Union has increasingly provided
structural help and a growing number of private foundations and firms help in particularareas of study and research.
Students and faculty reflect a great diversity of culture and backgrounds thatsuccessfully interact together. Over 400 students coming from nearly 50 countries share,
during 10 months, master courses in law, economics, politics and administration, and live
together in dormitories. They must work fluently in English and French, although mostspeak several languages, which facilitates a successful career in European institutions orelsewhere where there is a European interest. The College‟s alumni association counts
twenty-four groups in more than eighteen countries and works within a network of morethan eight thousand former students. Faculty is drawn from the top experts in academia
and administration around Europe. They rush to teach only for a few days each semester,with preparatory administrative work being done by resident research assistants having
been chosen from among the best graduates of previous years.
Although the College has been very successful, it needs to constantly adapt itself to
excel beyond the growing supply of European teaching programmes. Its new
development office provides a wide range of professional training courses, organises
conferences, workshops, and tailor-made professional seminars, sets up institutional andacademic co-operation projects and provides research, consultancy and technicalassistance activities in its growing areas of expertise. The College increasingly
collaborates with partners around the world, and in 2006 it started a new English masters
programme in EU International Relations and Diplomacy. However, its networked natureand location precludes it from opening new campuses, as many people would like.
After decades of discussions, and spurred by the social transformations of the 1968
movement, European intellectual cooperation further flourished with the creation in 1976
2

Palayet, Jean-Marie (1996) A university for Europe : prehistory of the European University Institute in
Florence (1948-1976). Rome: Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministry.

3

of the European University Institute (www.eui.eu) in an abbey outside of Florence. The
EUI is the first intergovernmental European doctoral research and training centre in thesocial sciences. It took many years of discussion to reach only partial agreements on its
structure, funding, culture and intellectual objectives. Its first students and faculty lived
together, but much movement took place. Research students had to maintain strong links
with home universities, and after the three-year grants were consumed they often left
Florence for good. Over the years the value of Institute doctorates increased and large
numbers of candidates applied for limited places. The Institute‟s four original
departments (law, politics and sociology, economics, history and civilisation) gradually
grew and were complemented, since the 1990s, with interdisciplinary, applied policy
research centres and annual research programmes, as well as post-doctoral research
positions. Despite its reputation, financial and location incentives, the Institute has always
had some difficulties in attracting and retaining prominent faculty from afar, as they may
only be there continuously for a period of four years, renewable once. Thus, the morepermanent administrative staff quickly gained unusual powers to influence thedevelopment of the otherwise rich and rather anarchic academic debates reflecting thefull variety of European (and often North American) debates in the social sciences and ofcultures. As in the case of the College of Europe, the Institute is under pressure to adapt
to global developments. It has thus been trying to promote the intake of more students
from outside Europe, and has developed study and research programmes focusing onsome parts of the world, and Asia represents a new target region.
Inspired by the unique but qualified successes of the College of Europe and theEuropean University Institute, newer and specialised pan-European teaching institutions
appeared. The European Institute of Public Administration (www.eipa.eu) opened in theearly 1980s in Maastricht to train public administrators from European governments. In
addition, the Academy of European Law (www.era.int) was created in the early 1990s,
favoured by European institutions and with the collaboration of Luxembourg, the nearby
German city of Trier, and the Land of Rhineland-Palatinate, while a growing number ofgovernments from European countries have become financial patrons.

Erasmus Community Programmes
The pace of setting-up regional higher education and research institutions was too
slow for the times, forcing Europe to implement new structural answers. Since the late1960s, social revolutions and the mobility of working migrants were beginning topressure higher education systems to open and collaborate at the European level. The
Treaty of Rome of 1957, establishing the European Communities, only allowed thefederalising European Commission to assist the then six member states in vocational
training as a complementary measure to promote the mobility of workers, one of the key
liberties behind the formation of the single European market. Yet, in 1984, the European
Court of Justice interpreted that all education is vocational training, allowing theEuropean Commission to soon promote European higher education programmes.
The directorate for education and training within the Commission‟s DirectorateGeneral for Education and Culture (http://ec.europa.eu/education/) now proposes andmanages several strategic initiatives, the most relevant is the European Community
Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (Erasmus, also the name of a4

famous philosopher from the 16th century). Established in 1987, the Erasmus programme
was the first comprehensive action on interuniversity co-operation for student and, to alesser extent, faculty mobility. Socrates, a broader education programme, has continued
and extended the Erasmus action in higher education since 1995. In Socrates‟ first phase,
Erasmus managed around 200 projects, focusing beyond the earlier networking of single
university departments and more on promoting a broader university mobility andcurriculum innovation. The second phase of the growing Socrates programme, runningin the seven year period of 2000-2006, advanced eight actions/areas that reflect theindividual‟s progression through the learning life cycle, from pre-school and school
education (Comenius), then on through higher education (Erasmus) and finally even into
adult education (Grundtvig). It also included several transversal actions like Lingua (forlanguage learning) and Minerva (for open and distance learning and the use of infocommunications technologies). In Socrates‟ second phase, Erasmus counted large sums
to support and catalyse not only physical exchanges of students and faculty, but also to
broadly develop content; thus, it placed more emphasis on teaching staff exchanges, on
recognising the credits accumulated for taking similar courses in different countries, ontransnational curriculum development (Europass) and on pan-European thematic
networks. Moreover, Socrates promoted a thorough comparative analysis of education
systems and policies, and the exchange of information and experience to help formulate
and implement educational policies around the EU. In other words, through the Socrates
programme, the European Union has been helping change national university systems tohelp Europeanise at home, the majority of students that are not yet very mobile.
The number of education establishments participating in the Erasmus programmes
has reached about 2200, that is, basically all relevant universities in the European Union
and associated neighbouring countries. In the 1987-2007 period about 1.5 million
students have studied abroad for one-two semesters. The current goal is to reach 3 million
students by 2012. The cumulative number of Erasmus teachers is nearly 20,000, a
number that indicates that teachers are proportionally more mobile than students,
although they tend to move for shorter periods.
Nowadays, there is a large number of intra-European university networks andassociations focusing on various, broader and narrower, aspects of higher education.
Several groups of universities stand out for their goals to collaborate on issues ofinternationalisation. There are also many other groupings focusing on European subregions. Furthermore, there are many university associations of teachers, students,
managers and rectors, many thematic ones (medicine, law, business, etc), also focusing
on technical colleges and, more recently, on online course delivery. They have all been
active in giving some input on European collaboration, which has facilitated a basic
consensus for further reform.
The European Union budget for the third Socrates phase, the period 2007-2013,
included a noticeable increase in its allocation for education, and groups all the above
programmes into a grand concept of life-long learning that should more broadly benefit
national economies and societies. But we have to remember that the European Union has
limited treaty prerogatives in higher education, so Socrates-Erasmus actions can only
complement the transformation of higher education systems which are still under the5prerogatives of member states‟ governments or under the prerogatives of sub-stateregions in federal countries like Germany or Spain.

The Broad-based European Higher Education Area
Given the treaty limitations of the European Union in the higher education sector toexact the need for broader structural adaptation, a more powerful but complementarymechanism has been put in place to create a European Higher Education Area. It is
usuallyreferredtoastheBologna
Process(www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/), deriving its name from the so-called
Bologna Declaration, which was signed in that Italian city in June 1999 by ministers incharge of higher education from 29 European countries. It is an intergovernmental andpan-European reform process envisaged to homogenise study programmes and credits,and to further allow students, graduates and faculty to benefit from unhampered mobility
and equitable access to high quality higher education by 2010. The Bologna Process has
advanced through a solid work programme that receives orientations from ministerial
conferences every two-years (Prague 2001, Berlin 2003, Bergen 2005, London 2007,
Benelux - Leuven/Louvain-la-Neuve 2009). These conferences are prepared by a
Bologna Follow-up Group, which is in turn supported by a relaying Bologna Secretariat.
Currently, 46 countries participate and many more are following the developments from a
distance.
There are several keys to achieving this European higher education space. All
higher education systems should be restructured into globally compatible three-cycle
structures (three-four years for undergraduate programmes, one-two years for masterprogrammes, and doctoral degrees). Degrees must be easily readable and comparable
through an explanatory European degree supplement. Course credits must be based on
the actual work of students‟, not faculty. Quality must be assured.
The difficult but sustained success of driving the revolutionary Bologna process
comes from a partnership approach in both policy-making and implementation. Besides
member countries, various international organisations are involved (European
Commission, the Council of Europe based in Strasbourg), and European associations
representing higher education institutions, students, staff and employers. While the goalof being globally competitive is crucial, it has also maintained the social dimension as itemphasises participative equity and employability of graduates in a lifelong learning
context. And, it has drawn on the best existing pan-European tools: the 1997 Lisbon
Recognition Convention advanced by the Council of Europe; the European Credit
Transfer and Accumulation System based on students‟ work first advanced in the
Erasmus programme; the overarching qualifications framework and the Standards andGuidelines for Quality Assurance, this last one is planned to function as admission
criteria for quality assurance and accreditation agencies in the European Register of
Quality Assurance Agencies, which is currently being set up.

Future Prospects for Collaborative Knowledge
European knowledge structures first began to converge through elite post-graduate
institutions, and then picked-up speed through the opening and structural transformationof existing universities. Not to lose momentum, Europe is nowadays establishing a new6knowledge framework to address the global challenge of technological and economic
competition.
The European Council meeting in 2000 launched a Lisbon Strategy aiming toreform the European Union into “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based
economy in the world” by 2010. The grandiose goal cannot be achieved this decade, but
the European Commission put forward in 2006 a proposal to establish a European
Institute of (Innovation and) Technology (http://ec.europa.eu/eit/) as an integral part of arevised Lisbon Strategy for growth and employment, aiming to reinforce Europe‟scapacity to transform education and research results into business opportunities.
This visionary proposal has quickly developed, thanks to extensive consultations
with many European stakeholders, member states and the general public. Indeed, theEuropean Competitiveness Council swiftly reached, in November 2007, a politicalagreement to set up the EIT by Community legislation in spring 2008, with a budget of
309 million euros for the period 2008-2013. A governing board drawn from business andacademia became ready in the summer of 2008 to establish by 2010, the first long-term
autonomous knowledge & innovation communities made of universities, researchorganisations, companies and other stakeholders to drive cutting-edge innovation of key
economic and societal interest.
These communities of excellence should transform higher education at the masterand doctoral levels to generally lead in the expansion of human capital, and in particular,
to adapt education and training systems in response to new competence requirements.
They would encourage the recognition in member states of the EIT degrees and diplomas
awarded by partner higher education institutions.
Although France had strongly lobbied for it to be in Paris, its final hub location
became Budapest, a city that bridges between west and east. The EIT hopes to become asymbol and a reference of a more networked European Innovation, Research and
Education Area that will inspire and drive change around the European Union andbeyond.
The European institutions, programmes and structural agreements aimed attransforming and helping converge Europe‟s higher education systems, must always havean active external dimension. The Erasmus programmes, for example, have inspired
global Erasmus-Mundus activities. Similarly, the Bologna process has become so
fascinating that many other parts of the world are trying to link to it, to profit from it andeven to develop similar regional transformations. As the EIT will do in the future, theBologna process already welcomes these developments. It has established and plans towork with dynamic stakeholders that share European values, as expressed in its recent
strategy for the European Higher Education Area in a Global Setting.

East Asian Higher Education Cooperation
When analysing higher education developments in East Asian countries, we seevery different cases that nevertheless also show signs of regional convergence andsustained global linkages. China and other countries shaped by Confucian ethics havetraditionally valued education as the main personal basis of development. Nowadays,
provision of higher education in the Asia region is more varied than ever, allowing newer
7

paths of cooperative development with each other and globally. Japan has long allowed
the creation of many private universities to complement the ones funded by the national
and local governments, which are now under pressure to compete more autonomously.
Although many Japanese study in the USA or in Europe, most of Japan‟s inward foreign
students come from China and other East Asian countries, a trend that is bound toincrease with the announcement on 22 May 2008 of the „New Fukuda Doctrine‟(www.kantei.go.jp/jp/hukudaspeech/2008/05/22speech.html?ref=rss).
Mao‟s China
basically closed its universities during the Cultural Revolution, and only in the 1980s did
it embark on a path of recovery and catching up with the industrial world, with theintroduction of the market economy and the growing demand for qualified manpower.
The large demand for higher education has forced the growth in the number and variety
of means of education delivery, which has naturally included international solutions.
China remains the most significant source of international students, and a growing
number of them now go to Japan and several thousand go to other East Asian countries. 3
However, the regional trend is even more visible in the intake of foreign students, as the
majority come from South Korea and Japan to study not only language and culture, butmodern curricula of global interest. And caught in the middle of this educational typhoon,
the South Korean government announced in 2005 a plan to reverse the relative decline ofits higher education system in a way that keeps regional and global links. 4
Southeast Asian countries at first promoted nation building through education, but
now they all feel challenged to allow more avenues of personal development. 5 To meetthe increasing student demand, universities are training academic and institutional staff,
developing new curricula, and searching for funds, as they transition into more or lessprivate institutions. Their new competitive strategies increasingly involve transnational
solutions, at first global, but more recently also regional. Singapore and Malaysia havebeen leading in attracting foreign students and campuses, while Thailand and thePhilippines have endeavoured to host regional policy institutions.
Given the mixed historical record in Southeast and Northeast Asia, one should not
be surprised that their current search for regional dimensions in the development of theirhigher education systems is still different from what we saw above regarding Europe.

The First Initiatives in Southeast Asia
The first regional initiative for higher education collaboration came from a small,but open group. The Association of Southeast Asian Institutions of Higher Learning(www.seameo.org/asaihl/) was founded in 1956 as a non-governmental organisation, at a
meeting in Bangkok attended by the heads of eight state universities in the region. The
association is still administered through a general conference, an administrative board
and a secretariat. It is a clearinghouse of information: it assists member institutions in the
recruitment and placement of faculty and staff, in exchanges of professors and students,
3

Xinhua News Agency, 19 January 2006.
Park, Kyung-Jae (2005) “Policies and Strategies to Meet the Challenges of Internationalization of Higher
Education” Government Speech at The Third Session of the Regional Follow-up Committee for the 1998
World Conference on Higher Education in Asia and the Pacific, Seoul, 5 July.
5
UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau of Education (2006) Higher Education in South-East Asia.
Bangkok.
48and in the development of cooperative arrangements on specific projects. And it grants atoken number of fellowships, but given its meagre resources, ASAIHL has sought global
linkages to survive, and nowadays it includes many Asian members, as well as othersfrom developed countries.
Next came the Southeast Asia Ministers of Education Organisation(www.seameo.org), which was established in 1965 as a result of a meeting held in
Bangkok between the education ministers of Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and thethen Republic of (South) Viet Nam, the chairperson of UNESCO national commission ofPhilippines, and a special adviser to the U.S. president. SEAMEO has a wide remit topromote cooperation in education, science and culture, but it too has linked outside theregion to prosper. It currently includes the ten ASEAN countries as regular members andEast Timor, while a few Western countries are associate members; meanwhile, theInternational Council for Open and Distance Education is an affiliate, and Japan is adonor country. SEAMEO has grown into a network of regional centres to promote
training of specialists, including the Regional Institute of Higher Education andDevelopment (RIHED), and since 1997 it is complemented with a Regional Open
Learning Centre. Tens of thousands of professionals from the region (and beyond) haveparticipated in its training courses, professional technical conferences, seminars, andworkshops. But only a few thousand people have participated in its graduate degree
programmes.
SEAMEO shares offices in Bangkok with UNESCO‟s Asia and Pacific Regional
Bureau for Education (www.unescobkk.org). Through the Regional Convention on the
Recognition of Studies, Diplomas and Degrees in Higher Education in Asia and thePacific, UNESCO-Bangkok provides limited financial and technical assistance, andsustains an overall policy debate for reform. It sometimes assists developing countries ina subregional fashion, as in the plan to establish a Greater Mekong Virtual University, by
focusing on quality assurance and mutual recognition issues, and promoting regional
networks.
In the meantime, ASEAN countries began exploring collaboration(www.aseansec.org/8584.htm). An ASEAN Committee on Education first met in 1975 in
Manila, where two years later the first gathering of ASEAN Ministers of Education took
place, but without any relevance for higher education collaboration. Finally, the ASEAN
Summit of 1992 reaffirmed ASEAN studies and an ASEAN University as priorities foreducation cooperation and also urged that student exchanges at secondary and tertiarylevels be implemented as a strategy for promoting awareness of ASEAN. An ASEAN
University Network (www.aun-sec.org) began operations in a few years to manage
incipient collaborative programmes (master studies, short-term exchanges of students andfaculty, and scholarships), information networking, and even collaborative research, andplanned an ASEAN Virtual University. But reflecting its very limited resources, output
was very limited, forcing them to link more globally to procure themselves more assets.

Linking to America and Europe
East Asian countries are becoming increasingly interlinked, partly through smarterlinkages with external partners and regions. Trans-regional links with the US are
nowadays complemented with ideas coming from Europe and beyond.
9The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization had its first education
ministerial in 1992, when it created an Education Forum within its Human Resources
Working Group to advance various projects in different levels of education (www.
apecneted.org). Only in 2000 did APEC hold a second ministerial, where it was decided
to transform the Education Forum into an Education Network. Being based in Taiwan,
however, it helped little in regional cooperation. Complementary initiatives, within or
around APEC, in the higher education sector have had a useful but limited projection.
Various Asia-Pacific academic networks have appeared to stimulate cooperation,although with very limited success. A consortium of APEC study centres was launched
in 1993 to promote studies and research on APEC issues. Meanwhile, the Association ofPacific Rim Universities (www.apru.org) was created in 1997 with a base in Singapore tolink the chief executives of leading universities in APEC, hoping to stimulate cooperationin teaching and research on various issues. In addition, there is the geographicallybroader Association of Universities of Asia and the Pacific (http://auap.sut.ac.th/), formed
in 1995 in a conference at Suranaree University of Technology in Thailand. Its broad
membership includes universities from Iran, India, Bangladesh, US, Australia, Japan and
UNESCO, advancing an operational plan that focuses on management, teaching, research,
international linkages, information dissemination, and attracting new members.
Meanwhile, Australia independently promoted in 1991 the structurally morechallenging University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific (www.umap.org) scheme tocomplement APEC‟s intergovernmental activities. Since 1993, UMAP exists as avoluntary association (with a secretariat moved from Tokyo to Bangkok) of governments
and non-governmental representatives aiming to increase the mobility of university
students and staff. Participating universities first recognise credits for one-two semesters
abroad and, since 1998, based on the Erasmus experience in Europe, a pilot project wastrying to achieve a broader credit transfer scheme and recognition of qualifications. But
the report on the UMAP credit transfer scheme presented to the Board in March 2003
highlighted the difficulties with its use and generally limited understanding andknowledge across the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, UMAP does not even have the resources
to provide basic statistical information on student mobility. UMAP changed course andbegan advertising itself as “a vehicle for governments and regional organisations
interested in supporting the UMAP vision”.
East Asian countries soon approached Europe to further internationalise their higher
education systems. Upon the creation of the ASEAN University Network, the ASEANEU University Network Programme was launched in 2000 to enhance cooperation
between higher education institutions, promote regional integration within ASEAN
countries and strengthen the mutual awareness of European an Asian cultural
perspectives. It was complemented with the Asia-Link Programme, an initiative by theEuropean Commission to promote regional and multilateral networking between higher
education institutions in countries from the European Union, South Asia, South-East Asia
and China.
The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) process is becoming a more useful mechanism
for East Asian regional cooperation, as it has helped bring Southeast and Northeast Asia
peacefully together for their first time in history when it first convened in Bangkok in
1996. Since the ASEM-2 summit in London in 1998, it has been exploring higher
10education exchanges. An ASEM Vision Group Report released in 1999 included many
specific proposals to enhance educational exchanges at various levels from students all
the way up to heads of universities and ministers. The Asia-Europe Foundation(www.ASEF.org), located in front of the APEC secretariat next to Singapore‟s National
University campus, has promoted several pilot activities in higher education, including
university networks, short-term university courses, and scholarship programmes.
Moreover, ASEF has been developing policy colloquies to facilitate mobility of students
and faculty, credit recognition and transfer, quality assessment, joint research and joint
curriculum development and borderless education, including e-learning. And it has also
begun creating databases on academic systems, programmes, exchanges and scholarships,
and thematic research networks. More importantly, leaders attending the ASEM-6
summit in Helsinki emphasized that qualified human resources constitute a key factor for
economic and social development. They stressed the value of continued dialogue andexchange of best practices on questions related to structured and life-long education andtraining, and prepared the way for the first ASEM Ministerial Meeting on Education andQualification held in Berlin in May 2008 and in October, with the help of ASEF, the first
ASEM gathering of university rectors and other education leaders.

Strengthening links within East Asia
Higher education developments in Southeast Asian countries, spurred by global andinterregional connections, are now reaching out to Northeast Asia. A group of thinkers,
forming part of an East Asia Vision Group (www.aseansec.org/pdf/east_asia_vision.pdf),
produced around the turn of the century, recommendations to favour educational
cooperation and the promotion of a sense of identity and regional consciousness. In
particular, they recommended the creation of a Network of East Asian Studies to promoteexchanges and other projects on subjects relevant to contemporary East Asiandevelopment.
A group of bureaucrats behind the East Asia Study Group expanded these ideas andasked political leaders -- mindful not to mention the need for financial resources -- topromote East Asian studies in the region through cooperative programmes, the teachingof languages, the establishment of networks, and by expanding the ASEAN University
Network to the rest of East Asia, profiting from existing bilateral initiatives between
ASEAN and China, Japan, and Korea.
Japan then formed in 2003, an “ASEAN+3 group on facilitation and promotion of
exchange of people and human resource development” that produced even morevisionary education mobility goals, closer to the developments behind Europe‟s Bologna
process (www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/asean/conference/asean3/sg0305-r.html). East
Asia should be promoting lifelong learning programs; credit transfer systems;
scholarships and exchange programs for students, faculty, staff; research anddevelopment cooperation; „centers of excellence‟ including those based on e-learning;and curricular development as bases for common regional qualification standards amonginterested institutions.
The Network of East Asian Studies (www.neas-aseanplus3.net) may become ofsalient importance as it aims to catalyse comprehensive contemporary East Asian
regional knowledge, not just on atomised issues, as is often the case in classical Asia11

related exchanges. Discussions have been largely led by the University of Tokyo,
coordinating discussions with leading universities in Northeast and Southeast Asia. The
University of Tokyo (http://dir.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/kokusai/) has also led the creation ofother regional networks. The „BESETOHA‟ network created in 1999, brings together top
national universities located in BEijing, SEoul, TOkyo, and HAnoi. The Association of
East Asian Research Universities, dating from 1996, even links Japan to South Korea andboth Chinas. The undergraduate liberal arts college of the University of Tokyo, uniqueamong Japan‟s national universities, started in 2005, an East Asia Liberal Arts Initiative
to bidirectionally reach to China and other neighbouring countries for discussion ofdifficult issues like textbook translation, and the development of public spheres. Since
the rectors of the Universities of Tokyo and Beijing first met in 2000, various additional
bilateral gatherings are aiming at a tripartite educational leadership. The University also
influenced the creation of an (East) Asian Consortium of Political Research and othernetworks (ACPR). But in Japan, one may see many other universities -- Waseda
University, for example -- actively promoting regional links with other institutions in EastAsia.
To prepare for broader East Asian cooperation, Japan had launched in late 2001 alarge-scale programme of cooperation with ASEAN countries in the field of humanresources development and education. Moreover, in 2003 Japan pledged to ASEAN
assistance of over US$ 1.5 billion (through technical cooperation, grant aid and yenloans) over 3 years for human resource development with various human exchange
programmes involving approximately 40,000 people: this includes receiving trainees,
students and youths, and dispatching experts. These ideas are now part of theComprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements that Japan is crafting, bilaterally, with
East Asian countries with the aim of eventually weaving together and leading a regional
one.
These kinds of actions have not only helped ASEAN advance in regional
cooperation, but also with Northeast Asian countries, testing regional linkages.

The New Drive from ASEAN
ASEAN leaders agreed in 2005 to promote ASEAN exchanges of teachers, staff
and students, as well as the creation of common content on traditional and infocommunication platforms. The ASEAN University Network would be strengthened witha view to ultimately establish the ASEAN University, and it would work to promotemutual recognition of academic degrees and qualifications. In addition, ASEAN leadersagreed to establish an ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Education that would meetalongside the annual SEAMEO Meeting. Moreover, they declared that “regional
coordination mechanisms for education collaboration through the ASEAN and SEAMEO
forums should be synergized to work with countries beyond the Southeast Asian region
and with other regional and international organisations on education”(www.aseansec.org/17678.htm).
Education Ministers and senior education officials from Southeast Asian countries
gathered in Singapore in 2006 for the 1st ASEAN Education Ministers Meeting (ASED)
alongside the 41 st SEAMEO Council Conference, as well as with partners and otherrepresentatives from the region and beyond. ASED agreed to promote an ASEAN
12

identity and socio-cultural community, building on the strengths of the region‟s multiethnic societies and the their many unique experiences, reaffirming that education plays a
key role in the promotion of regional identity and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community.
They then agreed to deepen and expand collaboration to other countries. Currently, many
activities and programmes that enhance interactions and exchanges among students andeducationists in the region are on a bilateral or regional basis. From now on ASEAN andother countries would strengthen ASEAN studies, produce resource books, enhance ICT
technologies, bring students and teachers together, promote various people-to-peopleinteractions, study how education is related to multi-ethnicity quality, find goodcombinations of language education that combine English with national and mothertongues, promote vocational technical education, and select and train school leaders.
All these initiatives are bound to grow as the ASEAN Charter, approved in
Singapore in November 2007, further acknowledged the need to work with academic
institutions. And so, the new ASEAN Secretary-General openly declared in the GIARI
symposium in January 2008 his intentions for the ASEAN secretariat to become a
networked institution and for the ASEAN University Network to become an educational
think-tank to advance the ASEAN Charter.

Incipient Northeast Asian Cooperation
In the multi-level creation of an East Asian higher education space, the key longterm component is the consolidation of cooperation among Northeast Asian countries.
The governments of Japan, mainland China and South Korea are softly weaving
many more types of bilateral people‟s exchanges into a more tripartite or trilateralregional space. At their November 2000 meeting, on the occasion of the ASEAN+3
Summit Meeting, the three Northeast Asian Leaders proposed measures to enhance
human and cultural exchanges. This prepared the way for their 2003 Bali declaration,
which included a large array of measures to promote civil society exchanges where
education was highlighted: “They will enhance cooperation to expand student exchanges
among their institutions of higher education, promote mutual institutions' recognition ofacademic records, degrees and credits, and encourage language teaching and cultural
exchange
among
the
three
countries”(http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asiapaci/asean/conference/asean3/joint0310.html).
The first yearly progress report of tripartite cooperation, adopted in November 2004,
already indicated growth, with several cultural and people-to-people exchanges, including
student exchanges and progress in mutual recognition of academic credits and records
through agreements between universities. And the concomitantly adopted Action
Strategy on Trilateral Cooperation, included several broad measures to enhance educationcooperation: through promoting high level consultations, training of highly qualified
personnel, mutual recognition of academic degrees, credits and records, and thecontinuation of the promotion of student exchanges among education institutions.
Although the government leaders cancelled their summit planned for 2005, lower
level government officials kept advancing the education agenda. The Inaugural KoreaChina-Japan Educational Director-General Meeting held in Seoul in March 2006,
presented each country‟s educational priorities and government policy measures anddiscussed ways to develop diverse three-way collaboration models. This is a departure13

from habitual practice, where cooperation tends to take place only in a bilateral format.
There is now evidence of a more comprehensive dialogue, raised to the ministerial level.
In the 2nd meeting, a year later, they even discussed the launching of a full-fledged
Education Ministers Meeting.

Future Prospects For East Asia
Despite the difficulties, East Asian governments are increasing the momentum
towards regional higher education cooperation by combining a series of overlapping
supranational actions.
The ASEAN Plus Three Cooperation Work Plan for the 2007-17 decade, approved
the goals and objectives set forth in the joint statements on East Asia Cooperation,
including several educational goals to strengthen the Network of East Asian Studies,
investments in education and training, institutional and political linkages especiallythrough the ASEAN University Network, credit transfers between universities, research
activities and exchanges among scholars interested in regional issues, facilitation of visa
arrangements, and the cultivation of regional identities through the promotion of ASEAN
and East Asian Studies in the region.
Meanwhile, the geographically broader East Asia Summits that take place just after
the ASEAN and ASEAN+3 summits are also concerned about knowledge collaboration.
In its first summit in 2005, education was declared a priority issue. At the third Summit,
held in 2007, political leaders welcomed the positive developments regarding plans torevive the Nalanda University, famous from Japan to the Mediterranean as a centre for
Buddhist and many other studies during the 5th-12th centuries. 6 Moreover, it will serve asa residential centre for cultural exchange and inter-religious study and understanding in
the broader Asian region. A consortium led by Singapore and including China, India,
Japan and other nations is raising substantial funds with the hope of establishing sevenschools, with scores of faculty to impart courses in sciences, philosophy, spiritualism,
among others. Nalanda‟s chancellor may be a renowned international scholar; perhaps
someone like Amartya Sen, the head of its mentor group and praised for his arguments on
economic development emphasizing the high returns of education, or someone with amore practical focus like Abdul Kalam, the weapon developer and progressive thinker
who was instrumental in advancing the project while he was India‟s president.
If the Nalanda vision is successful, it is possible that it will catalyse networks withother, ancient, existing, and new, institutions sharing similar objectives. As East Asia
reaches further West though the East Asian summit, as well as other macro-regional
initiatives (Asian Cooperation Dialogue www.acddialogue.com, Asia Middle East
Dialogue www.amed.sg, Asia-Europe Meeting, a renewed APEC, etc.), it may bepossible that other parts of Asia (South, Central, West, North) may also want to promote
their still weak regional visions for higher education collaboration by finding their uniquemixes of useful Western and East Asian knowledge.

6

Sankhalia, H. D. (1972) University of Nalanda [2d rev. and enl. ed.]. Dehli: Oriental Publishers.
Shekhar, Vibhanshu (2007) Revival of Nalanda University: Key Players and their Soft Power Diplomacy.
Dehli: Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, www.ipcs.org/IPCS-SpecialReport48-Vibhanshu.pdf.

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An Analytical Comparison
We may now make a first comparison of the key elements behind the regional
adaptation of higher education systems of Europe and East Asia, as summarised in thefollowing table:
Comparing Regional Cooperation in Higher Education in Europe and East Asia
Element

Europe (EU)
Erasmus: European Commission‟sefforts to promote linkages
Bologna process: Pan-European
intergovernmental convergence

East Asia
ASEAN+3: East Asia Vision/Study Group
reports. Group on facilitation andpromotion of exchange of people andhuman resource development.
Southeast Asia: Joint SEAMEO-ASED
ministerials
Northeast Asia: ministerials developing

Academic
institutions

1949-: College of Europe Masters
1975-: European University Institute2010-: European Institute of
Innovation and Technology

None yet.
Nalanda in India may be an external
catalyser

Networks

A variety of active associations

Growing number

Student
exchanges

Erasmus: Aiming at 3 million by
2012
Bologna: allowing fuller mobility

Autonomously growing in Northeast Asia.
Very incipient exchanges in ASEAN.

Facultyexchanges

Erasmus: Tens of thousands for shortperiods
Bologna: encouraging fuller mobility

Very limited

Content

Erasmus: ECTS
Bologna Process promoting structural
homogenization in a global context

Declarations aiming to structuraltransformations

External
linkages

Bidirectionally important

Crucial to develop

Overall
Assessment

Advanced regionalism

Growing regionalism

Main policy
frameworks

Europe‟s early elite academic institutions that attempted to promote regional
identities began experiencing, in the 1970s, the crowding of national university systems.
Since the late 1980s, the European Commission‟s Erasmus programmes have promoted
the exchange of people and their ideas. In the new century, governments across theEuropean continent are responding to the challenges of achieving a global higher
education system with the Bologna process, allowing fuller mobility of students, faculty,
content and staff. While this vision faces many local and global difficulties it is alreadyadvancing with the consensus of many education stakeholders. Meanwhile, Europe isgetting ready to create knowledge communities that link innovative universities withcompetitive private and public institutions.

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In East Asia there were many diverse paths of higher education development that
only recently are beginning to converge. The first regional efforts date to the late 1950s
when a regional association was set up in Southeast Asia. That and subsequent regional
initiatives bore at first little success as they lacked human, political, or economic
resources. But in the 1990s links with North America first and Europe later spurredchange and promising regional adaptation. Building on various overlapping regional andinterregional networks and institutions, the ASEAN+3 East Asian countries have in thefirst decade of the 21st century began to converge while generally transforming theirhigher education systems
Europe has long had two main regional academic institutions in the social sciences,
the College of Europe at the master‟s level and the European University Institute at thedoctoral level. In addition, it is creating a new institute of technology to jointly spurhigher education institutions to be competitive in a world driven by global technology
and business. East Asia has not yet agreed to set up any regional academic institution,although it is possible that the project to revive the Nalanda University in India will spur
similar initiatives in Southeast, Northeast or in the whole of East Asia.
Europe has many kinds of academic networks that allow all interested stakeholders
to actively participate in regional cooperation processes. Meanwhile, in East Asia one
may see a growing number of network -- including a promising Network of East AsianStudies supported by the ASEAN+3 summit process -- but they still seem rather elitist,
thus making one wonder how they will engage other potentially active stakeholders.
Perhaps the continuation of linkages with America, Europe and beyond would help.
Europe is trying to reach an accumulated total of 3 million Erasmus exchange
students in the following decade, while the Bologna process aims to allow autonomous
short or long-term movement of students. The order of magnitude of student movements
in East Asia is still much smaller, but the speed of growth among Northeast Asian
countries is possibly the greatest in the world. Meanwhile, governmental efforts tofacilitate transnational contacts and the provision of funds and other needs should help
meet the growing demand for higher education.
Something similar may be said regarding teaching faculty. European professors are
already relatively mobile, as sizable numbers attend conferences and profit from shortterm employment schemes by Erasmus or other programmes. Faculty in East Asia does
not seem yet very mobile, although not only a small number of prominent professors, butalso a growing number of younger faculty meet in a growing number of regional network
gatherings.
Europe‟s efforts to create a 3-cycle higher education structure will particularly
facilitate the convergence of content and the catalysis of the still immobile members ofhigher education institutions. Course credits and full-fledged programmes, for example,
should soon be more easily recognised. Meanwhile, higher education systems in East
Asia do not seem structurally incompatible among themselves, or with Europe. As inmany countries, they already have a similar graduate programme structure, made up of
master and doctoral cycles. Yet, the mutual recognition of non-technical programmes
remains an obstacle to full-fledged regionalism. Paying attention to these from a more
technical point of view, may gradually facilitate convergence. Moreover, while one may
point to the many lingering differences in language, religion, ethics, demography or16economic development that affect East Asian higher education systems, one may also
identify a pragmatism in searching for more common peaceful development without
excluding others. English is useful as a regional lingua franca, and global human values
really have some common value. Furthermore, the mobility of human resources is
encouraged in a variety of ways to help match supply and demand, and in this vein, richer
countries make an effort to help poorer ones.
Overall we see a convergence of European and East Asian initiatives, which
increases the potential of lasting cooperation and the exploration of global synergies.
While Europe‟s efforts to regionalise higher education systems is more advanced, withmost public and private actors having reached a consensus, the dynamic East Asianmodel is quite interesting for the variety of paths available to help the convergence of
their systems. The ASEM process will look into those prospects in more depth as of thisyear. But to help advance useful linkages around the world, both Europe and East Asia
should discuss collaboration in their external projections towards other countries, regions,and global organisations like UNESCO and the WTO. Neither European nor East Asian
regional projects should try to avoid global linkages. Instead, they should aim to facilitate
the diverse local goals of a growing number of thoughtful and responsible people to link
more globally.

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GIARI Working Paper Vol. 2008-E-23,
January 31 2009
Published by Waseda University Global COE Program
Global Institute for Asian Regional Integration (GIARI),
Waseda University, Nishiwaseda Bldg. 5F#507 1-21-1
Nishi-waseda, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-0051 Japan
E-mail: affairs@waseda-giari.jp
Webpage: http://www.waseda-giari.jp
Printed in Japan by International Academic Printing Co.Ltd
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