Westerners starting to flock to developing regions in Asia

By KANG SOON CHEN
educate@thestar.com.my

Ab Rahim greeting the delegates during the conference.

KUALA LUMPUR: The lack of credit transfer programmes between Asian and European universities has hindered the mobility of students between the two continents, the Higher Education Ministry said.

Ministry secretary-general Datuk Ab Rahim Md Noor said there was an imbalance in the flow of students with the movement heavily skewed towards students from Asia studying in Europe.

“Although the number of European students studying here is rather small, there is an increasing trend of students from the West furthering their studies in Asia,” he told a press conference at the 4th Asia-Europe Meeting (Asem) of Education Minis­ters here yesterday.

“Traditionally, students in Europe stay in their own countries but the trend has shifted with more Western countries sending their students to the developing regions,” he added.

The setting up of branch campuses here by prestigious institutions, such as Monash University, University of Nottingham and University of Read­­­ing, had helped draw more foreign students to the country. Ab Rahim said.

“Engineering, medicine, social sciences and Islamic finance are the niche areas in the local institutions of higher learning,” he added.

Ab Rahim said enthusiastic responses from the higher education institutions alone were not sufficient to sustain a balanced inflow and outflow of students among Asem countries.

“Without the structural convergence, consisting of compatible academic cycles, shared quality assurance procedures, system or provision for quality recognition and domestic regulations, the sustainable movement of students is not likely to occur.

“These structural differences are the main obstacles deterring students and staff members to move around, even at the level of intra-regional movement.

“To respond to these underlying structural challenges, national governments in many regions are tackling these problems at the regional level by promoting policy harmonisation,” he added.

Among the regional credit transfer systems developed are the European credit transfer and accumulation system, Asean credit transfer system and UMP credit transfer system. “I believe improving mutual recognition of higher education qualifications is a key factor for more balanced mobility, in particular to attract more European students to study in Asia,” said Ab Rahim.

He said the dynamics of education in the fast-changing globalised world had created new stimuli and changing directions.

“These new directions and trends – including education mobility, changes in methodology of instruction and learning and, above all, the utilisation and growing dependency on technology – pose unprecedented challenges to the progression of education and the way it is being quality assured.”

Ab Rahim said the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) had expressed its interest to undertake bilateral comparability studies of Bachelor degree qualifications with its European counterparts to pave the way for credit transfer between European and local universities.

Ab Rahim said Malaysia was supportive of initiatives to create learning communities, learning opportunities, funding mechanisms and incentives to promote and share research findings in lifelong-learning between Asia and Europe.

Asem members, particularly Ma­­­lay­­­sia, Indonesia and Thailand, have been actively promoting student mobility with the support of the South-East Asian Ministers of Educa­tion Organisation Regional Centre for Higher Education and Development.

In 2009, the first M-I-T Mobility Meeting was held in Bangkok to explore the mobility programmes among the three countries, with the intent of expanding them to other countries within the Asean region.

A total of 260 students from 23 universities in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand were involved in the mobility programmes between 2010 and 2012.

Vietnam is following suit with six universities from the country expected to join in this year.

Asem currently has 51 partners, con­­­­­­sisting of 49 countries, the Euro­­­­­pean Commission and the Asean Secretariat.

Tweet