Higher Education in the Asian Century: The European Legacy and the Future of Transnational Education in the ASEAN Region ed. by Christopher Hill and Rozilini M. Fernandez-Chung (review)

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a regional block of ten countries working together to develop a strong economic community. Higher education has been identified as one of the key tools needed to enhance the development of human resources in the region. This has translated into four main priorities that are to be incorporated in the ASEAN higher education system: student mobility; credit transfers; quality assurance; and research clusters. The ultimate goal is to set up a common space of higher education in Southeast Asia that currently includes 6,500 higher education institutions and more than 12 million students across the constituent nations. This book therefore offers timely insights into the understanding of higher education in the region, with a specific focus on the Transnational Education (TNE) network.

The introductory chapter attempts to explain the European-Asian connection of TNE across higher education systems in ASEAN. Here, particular attention is given to the unique colonial experiences of eight member countries. While the chapter has been put together in a comprehensive fashion, it can be further enriched by dwelling into the conceptual discussion of topics like “the Asian century”, the underlying geopolitics and socio-economic considerations, the influence of European or Western characteristics of higher education in the Asian context, as well as the indigenous characteristics of Asian higher education.

Chapter 1 begins with Malaysia, one of the pioneering countries to embark on TNE. Morshidi Sirat explores the issues of politics and policy-making in the context of TNE in Malaysia using a non-linear analytical model that portrays diverse positive and negative situations. Robin Middlehurst then provides a commentary from the United Kingdom’s perspective — as a sending country for TNE — talking about the analytical framework used in relation to the development of higher education in the United Kingdom; the impact of TNE, particularly neo-colonial tendencies in Malaysia; and the nature of TNE as trade in services.

Chapter 2 shifts the focus to Cambodia. Here, Kee-Cheok Cheong and Sam Ghanty illustrate the success and failure of TNE in Cambodia using two contrasting case studies. Understandably, the chapter provides an extensive context of the nation’s historical narrative as well as its education system. The two case studies not only include a rich description of the Cambodian tertiary education system, but also highlight the challenges and barriers pertaining to TNE.

Chapter 3 discusses TNE in Indonesia. The discussion on the changing relationships between Indonesian universities and their European counterparts is particularly interesting here. From the initial relationship enforced by the Dutch colonizers and subsequently replaced by a nationalistic model after independence, globalization has now pushed Indonesian universities to embark on TNE collaborations with English-speaking partners, namely Australia and the United Kingdom. An interesting aspect of this chapter is that it draws attention to the role of TNE in upgrading the branding of local universities. Through a unique case study, Agustian Sutrisno provides a narrative of the ways and extent to which TNE has encouraged knowledge transfer between a private Indonesian university and another school in the United Kingdom. However, there appears to be a slight disjoint when Hitendra Pillay writes the commentary from the perspective of Australia as the sending country of TNE, and not the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, the commentary manages to bring out the changing dynamics within Indonesia’s highly diverse higher education system.

Rattana Lao and Christopher Hill then shed some light on the foreign influence on Thailand’s higher education system. Although Thailand is the only country in ASEAN that did not experience colonization, the country’s academic setting has strong foreign connections. While the chapter provides important information on number of international students, collaborations with foreign universities, as well Memorandums of Understanding, further details and the extent of TNE in Thailand...