Creating Higher Education Collaboration: the experience of ASEAN University Network (AUN) in Southeast Asia

Abstract

It is deemed that human resource is one of the most invaluable resources of a society. Human can be developed in various aspects as they are versatile, having immeasurable potential and limitless in terms of possibility. In this connection, education can play a key role in laying a strong foundation of a society and bring about beneficial impacts and positive changes necessary for furthering sustainable development through human capacity building. In light of globalisation, many changes have emerged. They have direct impact on almost every fabric of society and education sector is not an exception. The changes we have seen involve the striking increase of the flow of information, the movement of peoples, the shifting in economic trend towards knowledge, creative and innovation-based economy. These are only some of the phenomena that have surfaced in the present day and they are transnational in their nature. The impact having direct effects on higher education sector can be seen in the form of the increasing trend in the flow of academic and student movement across borders. Academic staffs and students are able to move to countries that can meet their aspiration. Also, there are needs for combined skills which can be only achieved through integrated and multi-disciplinary training to meet the demand of the current global labour market. To some extent, experiences abroad have also increasingly become one of important requirements. To manage with these challenges, it is essential for universities and higher education institutions to focus and prioritise their efforts in the international looking to cooperate with one another, and the basic foundation of this type of cooperation is mobility. In capturing the trend, higher education sectors may focus on the component of mobility as the fundamental mechanisms of cooperation. In this connection, it is also involved the issue of quality recognition as the indispensable aspect of implementing effective mobility aiming for a long-term and desirable outcome since this is not only concerned with cross-border education and training but also cross-border employment. Although globalisation may benefit higher education in many ways through the aids of ICT technology, the issue of development gap must be vigorously addressed before cooperation can be effectively materialised. Therefore, before seeking a suitable means to cope with the aforementioned issues, one may need to look at the level of development in each country. Disparity in development scale is of major issue. The well-equipped one may be able to adjust themselves and quickly respond to the challenges and may also even take advantages from these changes through the well-established infrastructure, advanced technology, large pool of human resources and strong financial capability. On the other hand, the less-equipped ones may lack far behind in the mentioned capacity. As a result, these changes might cause the loss of opportunities since these changes is evidently benefit those with strong capacity. That is, the internationalisation endeavour, without a well plan and proper preparation, may backfire and receive adverse effects such as the issue of brain drain that would incur unfavourable effects on the universities characterised as peripheries. Nevertheless, as mentioned, the changes, which bring about both challenges and opportunities, are transnational, it need multilateral effort for universities to be able to successfully hand these changes and this approach is mutually beneficial since it would allow opportunities for participating institutions to develop, to share experiences and to grow together. Thus, this poses the questions of how would it be viable for a higher education institution to embrace and sail along the globalisation current with successful outcome amidst the compelling challenges and the urge for educational cooperation. Focusing on regional cooperation can be the key in making successful cooperation achievable. In bringing the niche areas and unique strengths of universities in the regional together can be one of the key successful ingredients for forming regional cooperation. This would in turn also help build regional uniqueness and strengths and facilitate various forms of cooperation including mobility and collaborative research. Also, when touching upon regionality, it would increase the opportunities for cooperation in relation to the linkage on people-to-people level which in turn will help deepen regional connectivity and bring the whole region closer. The forging of regional partnership will help enable greater cooperative efforts and this will be further facilitated by the existing common and shared characteristics within the region. Although there are a myriad of promising areas that can be achieved through collective effort among universities, to effectively create higher education collaboration in Southeast Asian, there are still rooms for improvement in terms of both reinforcing the existing activities and cooperation framework as well as building the necessary components that have not yet been done. One may need to identify the essential parts that are in need for support for possible improvement and at the same time explore the possibilities of common areas for cooperation in order to be able to look forward and move further ahead in an attempt to attain the desirable and sustainable education development through regional cooperation.