Chapter 4 Providing Access to and Ensuring Excellence in Asian Higher Education

Transnational education in Asia has expanded dramatically in its scope and scale. China, India, and Korea are the world's largest source of students to other countries. Asian universities have developed transnational education through cross-border exchanges and collaborations in order to respond to the demand for mobility oftalent and knowledge. In this process, the universities have created new modes of operation, new frameworks of reference, and new spaces for institutional engagement in sustainable local to global development.

Recent years have seen a surge in the popularity of short-term study abroad programs in Asia, international branch campuses (IBCs) and massive open online courses (MOOCs). Short-term study abroad programs improve the international competency of students and institutions, develop academic and sociocultural networks, and raise awareness of Asian identity. Asia has also experienced a surge of IBCs and international education hubs development. Of all 248 IBCs around the world, 147 are based in Asia. China, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Singapore, and Qatar are now the world's top five countries in terms of the highest number of established IBCs. Moreover, massive open online courses (MOOCs) represent an innovative form of virtual education with the potential to raise efficacy and efficiency of learning. Common challenges to transnational education involve financial sustainability, consistency in expectations among different stakeholders, quality assurance and recognition of qualifications.

Across Asia, the national higher education systems adopt vastly different approaches in relation to quality assurance standards, qualification recognition, and credit transfer frameworks. Asia does not have a single platform to coordinate region-wide higher education quality assurance or qualification recognition; rather a mosaic of partially independent and partially integrated, multi-layered systems and approaches. Nevertheless, both the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Office and ASEAN Plus Three have made substantial progress in developing a common space for Asian higher education. Successful multinational efforts to promote cross-border quality assurance and qualification recognition are the ASEAN International Mobility for Students (AIMS), Collective Action of Mobility Program of University Students in Asia (CAMPUS Asia) and ASEAN University Network/Southeast Asia Engineering Education Development Network (AUN/SEED-Net) Project.

As international academic mobility expands in size and scope, the development of quality assurance, qualification recognition, and credit transfer frameworks at institutional and national levels in Asia take place at the same time with those efforts at regional and global levels. These systems will serve as both enablers and results of the rise of internationalized universities on the one hand, and the increasingly more compatible and more permeable systems of higher education on the other. To continue increased access and ensuring excellence in higher education within the dynamic and diverse Asian context, there is a need for more coordinated efforts in information and experience sharing across higher education systems in Asia. This presents a potential opportunity for AUA to fulfil this important role.