The EHEA and ASEM: Creating Regions of Higher Education

Editor’s note: Que Anh Dang is a Marie Curie Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, UK. This guest entry is based on her direct observations at Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Education Process and European Higher Education Area (EHEA) ministerial meetings in April and May 2015. Her current research project ‘Shaping an ASEM Education Area: Regionalism and Higher Education Policy Travel between Europe and Asia’ is a part of the European joint project ‘Universities in the Knowledge Economy – UNIKE’. Contact: qa.dang@bristol.ac.uk

Note: this entry is also available at Inside Higher Ed in a format more amenable for sharing & printing.

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The EHEA and ASEM: Creating Regions of Higher Education

Que Anh Dang

The capital cities of Riga (Latvia) and Yerevan (Armenia) have marked milestones in the history of the Asia-Europe Meeting Education Process (ASEM Education Process) and the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) respectively by hosting two significant regional ministerial meetings in April and May this year. Each meeting gathered around 50 national delegations and many regional organisations to develop and renew a vision for the future development of higher education. The most important policy documents publicised at these two events are the ASEM Chair’s Conclusions and the Yerevan Communiqué. The EHEA’s vision by 2020 is ‘to enhance the quality and relevance of learning and teaching; to foster the employability of graduates, to make the systems more inclusive; and to implement agreed structured reforms in all member countries’, whereas the ASEM’s vision is to create a ‘single higher education area linking Europe and Asia’ where ‘mobility of students, teachers, researchers, ideas and knowledge would be the core common goal’. Despite the differences in geographical boundaries, purposes and stages of cooperation, the two groupings share a common feature: ‘creating regions of higher education’. Over the years, these regional spaces have not only influenced policy making at the national level, but also reshaped the landscape of global higher education. This educational regionalism has changed the ways people organise places, spaces and institutions when thinking about higher education.

Economic Integration Heralds Educational Regionalisation

Regionalism has the capacity to shape patterns of human activities, such as trading and movement of people, including students and scholars. The process of economic regionalisation has become a trend in different parts of the world after the Second World War, noticeably in Europe, South East Asia, North and South America, and the Asia-Pacific Rim. Observations show that economic regionalisation often heralds educational regionalisation and the two processes become inextricably intertwined. These arguments are supported by the fact that most higher education regions which have recently been created around the world (e.g. ASEAN Community, UNILA – MERCOSUR´s Educational Sector (SEM), the Gulf Cooperation Council, Caribbean Community, etc.) are driven by the knowledge economy agenda. The Bologna Process, which gave way to the EHEA in 2010, is an excellent example of a region where higher education is seen as vital intellectual resource for economic recovery and expanding knowledge economy in Europe. Not only did the EU’s Lisbon Strategy spell out the concern for European competitiveness, which increased the concern for the competitiveness of its higher education systems. The Bologna Declaration, signed by the EU members and the then EU candidate countries in 1999, inter alia, referred to economic competition while setting out a vision for a ‘Europe of Knowledge’ by stating that “we must in particular look at the objective of increasing the international competitiveness of the European system of higher education”. Also at the national level, although joining the Bologna Process is voluntary, the motivation of countries is very diverse. In many cases it was highly political and rested on an assumption that joining one of the European ‘clubs’ was a step closer to gaining full membership in the European Union. In other cases, becoming a part of the EHEA is a branding exercise for publicity or for gaining access to a larger market for international students.

Higher Education and Region-Making Projects

The EHEA did not exist as a region by itself, it has been constructed by people’s ideas and it has been talked about for more than a decade. Since it has been talked about, it starts existing. The EHEA has been transformed from an abstract concept into an entity which has the capacity and power to act as a competent player in higher education. This is reflected in the common utterances, such as ‘the EHEA mobilises a change in teaching methods’, ‘the EHEA promotes improvement in the quality’, ‘the EHEA enabled many education professionals to adopt new teaching methodologies’. Furthermore, in the Yerevan Communiqué, we can see similar expressions, ‘the EHEA has a key role’, ‘the EHEA faces serious challenges’, ‘the EHEA has opened a dialogue with other regions’. Of course a region is a concept and it cannot actually say or do anything. Only people can speak and act, therefore a region does not exist without people. And certain people can act on behalf of the nation state and collectively they influence policy development for the entire region. For instance, an official document from Yerevan ‘The Bologna Process revisited: the future of the European higher education area’ describes the mission of the EHEA, such as the EHEA is expected to facilitate a student-centred learning approach, ensure higher education be a public good, respond to demographic changes, contribute to scientific research, make the best use of technological developments, even react to conflicts between countries and to political extremisms, and to turn the current economic crisis into new opportunities. The list of active verbs goes on further, but as it stands it already makes the job of the European education ministers more challenging than ever before. The Budapest-Vienna Communique 2010 assigned an extended responsibility to the ministers from being ‘responsible for higher education in the countries participating in the Bologna Process’ (§1) to become ‘the Ministers responsible for the European Higher Education Area’ (§12).

Thus, creating a region in the EHEA case is not only an aspiration, but a conscious act with concrete goals. However, whether or not such goals materialise is a complex process depending not only on the ability to achieve goals, but also on the existence of other regions that are willing to recognise a region as a region. Both the initiators of a region and those who acknowledge the region as such can be regarded as ‘region builders’. Therefore at the Berlin Ministerial Conference in 2003, the European Commissioner, Viviane Reding, supported the idea to “develop an active dialogue with other continents” because “the fact that the whole world is watching us increases our joint responsibility to make the Bologna reforms a success”. Later, this idea was developed into the Bologna Policy Forums and other projects that help construct other regions. At the recent meeting in Yerevan, a member of the Board of the Bologna Follow-up Group, Sjur Bergan, re-emphasised “the EHEA has so far rarely been ignored, and one of our tasks is to make sure it does not suffer this indignity in the future” and “if we want other regions to be inspired by the EHEA, we need to show that we take our own commitments seriously”. Keeping the commitments to implementing the agreed structural reforms puts financial pressure on many member countries, thus also creates business opportunities for the World Bank, whose representatives were invited to the Yerevan forum to offer policy solutions to their ‘customers’ and ‘partners’ on how to make regional cooperation permanent and ongoing.

ASEM – an Extension of the EHEA or a New Education Area?

Inspired by the success of the Bologna Process in creating convergence across (now 48) higher education systems, European and Asian ministers of education attempted to strengthen the connections between the two continents by forging high-level strategic partnerships and launching the ASEM education process in 2008. Although the ASEM education process is nine years younger than the Bologna Process, it has created a larger group involving 51 European and Asian countries, two international entities (the European Union and the ASEAN Secretariat). It also exemplifies an extensive region-making project in the higher education sector with its borders stretching eastward from the Atlantic coast of Europe to Oceania. ASEM represents half of the world’s GDP, more than 60% of the world’s population and around 60% of global trade, according to Eurostat figures in 2014.

Region in the ASEM case goes beyond the conventional concept of region that is based on geographical proximity. Rather it is an imagined community constructed in a political process in which different higher education discourses compete to construct social meanings and to make what is not natural appear natural. In other words, higher education is seen as a noble means to strengthen the ties that bind Asia and Europe together. The agenda of the ASEM education process, consisting of four priorities: quality assurance, balanced mobility, engaging business and industry in education, and lifelong learning including TVET, seems to resemble some of the action lines of the Bologna Process. This resemblance manifests the European soft power which Joseph Nye defines as “the ability to get others to want the outcomes that you want” and “the ability to shape the preferences of others through attraction and co-operation rather than coercion”. When other countries and regions look to the Bologna Process for good practices, values and ideas, soft power is taking root. Academic exchanges and student mobility are central to the soft power theory. The stories about the sons and daughters of Asian leaders as examples of foreign elites studying in Europe are not new, but creating a whole new education area for increasing two-way mobility among the ASEM countries is indeed a novel idea.

Nonetheless, this idea together with the overlapping membership of 33 EHEA members seems to make the ASEM education area an extension or replication of the Bologna Process. At the recent ASEM ministerial meeting in Riga, the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, Tibor Navracsics, explicitly suggested “despite a wide variety of languages, cultures and specific structures in the different countries, Europe’s higher education systems are comparable and compatible. Why shouldn’t we be able to replicate a similar system across Europe and Asia, in particular with the support of Erasmus+ and our expertise?”. Ironically, in the first half of his keynote he emphasised the current situation in Europe, where “more than six million young people are unemployed in the EU with peaks of more than 50% in some member states. Even more alarmingly, 7.5 million young Europeans between 15 and 24 are neither in employment, nor in education or training”. This fact made the audience at the meeting, especially those from Asia, wonder why other regions are to replicate the Bologna model of higher education.

Three weeks later, at the Yerevan meeting, Sjur Bergan, said “the EHEA has largely been in the ideal situation [to be loved], at least if we believe that emulation is the most sincere form of flattery”. Perhaps Mr Bergan did not mean the kind of ‘funded emulation’ in the name of capacity building projects which are heavily sponsored by the European Commission, such as EU SHARE for the ASEAN region and ‘Intra-ACP Academic Mobility Scheme’ for Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific regions. These projects, in essence, are a deliberate act to build and/or strengthen other higher education regions, and synchronize them with the EHEA.

In Lieu of a Conclusion

The Bologna Process has been perceived by many in both academic and policy communities as an internationalisation process of higher education. This article, however, sees the Bologna Process as a region-making project with the EHEA as a work-in-progress and an outcome. This pan-European project has impacted on other regional initiatives around the world, especially in Asia, through a very powerful discourse on the construction of a higher education space. Such abstract ‘space’ increasingly affects the ways in which other regions come to conceive, understand, plan and organise their higher education systems. Despite a strong influence from the European partners, the ASEM education area – though still in the making – manifests a hybrid form of regionalism combining Asian and European expertise and agendas. Many higher education regions are being constructed around the world. Let’s hope they are about advancing scholarship, connecting cultures and individuals, and about building a different future instead of reshuffling old ideas, pandering to economic concerns, or playing to the hegemon’s tune.

Global regionalism, interregionalism, and higher education

The development of linkages between higher education systems in a variety of ‘world regions’ continues apace. Developments in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Gulf, and Latin America, albeit uneven in nature, point to the desire to frame and construct regional agendas and architectures. Regionalism -– a state-led initiative to enhance integration to boost trade and security — is now being broadened out such that higher education, and research in some cases, is being uplifted into the regionalism impulse/dynamic.

The incorporation of higher education and research into the regionalism agenda is starting to generate various forms of interregionalisms as well.  What I mean by this is that once a regional higher education area or research area has been established, at least partially, relations between that region, and other regions (i.e. partners), then come to be sought after. These may take the form of relations between (a) regions (e.g., Europe and Asia), (b) a region and components of another region (e.g., Europe and Brazil; Latin America and the United States; Southeast Asia and Australia). The dynamics of how interregional relations are formed are best examined via case studies for, suffice it to say, not all regions are equals, and nor do regions (or indeed countries) speak with singular and stable voices. Moreover some interregional relations can be practice-oriented, and involve informal sharing of best practices that might not formally be ‘on the books.’

Let me outline two examples of the regionalism/interregionalism dynamic below.

ALFA PUENTES

The first example comes straight from an 8 July 2011 newsletter from the European University Association (EUA), one of the most active and effective higher education institutions forging interregional relations of various sorts.

In their newsletter article, the EUA states (and I quote at length):

The harmonisation agenda in Central America: ALFA PUENTES sub-regional project launch (July 07, 2011)

 EUA, OBREAL, HRK and university association partners from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and Mexico gathered in Guatemala City on 27-28 June both to discuss and formally launch the sub-regional project ‘Towards a qualifications framework for MesoAmerica’, one of the three pillars of the European Commission supported structural project ‘ALFA PUENTES’ which EUA is coordinating.

Hosted by sub-regional project coordinator CSUCA (Consejo Universitario CentroAmericana), and further attended by the sub-regional coordinators of the Andean Community (ASCUN), Mercosur (Grupo Montevideo), partners discussed current higher education initiatives in Central America and how the ALFA PUENTES project can both support and build upon them.

CSUCA, created in 1948 with a mission to further integration in Central America and improve the quality of higher education in the region, has accelerated its agenda over the past 10 years and recently established a regional accreditation body. This endeavour has been facilitated by project partner and EUA member HRK (in conjunction with DAAD) as well as several other donors. The association, which represents around 20 public universities in Central America, has an ambitious agenda to create better transparency and harmonisation of degrees, and has already agreed to a common definition of credit points and a template for a diploma supplement.

Secretary General Dr Juan Alfonso Fuentes Soria stated in a public presentation of the project that ALFA PUENTES will be utilised to generate a discussion on qualifications frameworks and how this may accelerate the Central America objectives of degree convergence. European experience via the Bologna Process will be shared and European project partners as well as Latin American (LA) partners from other regions will contribute expertise and good practice.

ALFA PUENTES is a three-year project aimed at both supporting Latin American higher education convergence processes and creating deeper working relationships between European and Latin American university associations. Thematic sub-regional projects (MesoAmerica, Andean Community and Mercosur) will be connected with a series of transversal activities including a pan-Latin American survey on change forces in higher education, as well as two large Europe-LA University Association Conferences (2012 and 2014).

This lengthy quote captures a fascinating array of patterns and processes that are unfolding right now; some unique to Europe, some unique to Latin America, and some reflective of synergy and complementarities between these two world regions.

TUNING the Americas

The second example, one more visual in nature, consists of a recent map we created about the export of the TUNING phenomenon. As we have noted in two previous GlobalHigherEd entries:

• TUNING USA: Echoes and translations of the Bologna Process in the US higher education landscape (26 January 2010)
• ‘Tuning USA’: reforming higher education in the US, Europe style (28 April 2009)

TUNING is a process launched in Europe to help build the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). As noted on the key TUNING website, TUNING is designed to:

Contribute significantly to the elaboration of a framework of comparable and compatible qualifications in each of the (potential) signatory countries of the Bologna process, which should be described in terms of workload, level, learning outcomes, competences and profile.

The TUNING logic is captured nicely by this graphic from page 15 of the TUNING General Brochure.

Over time, lessons learned about integration and educational reform via these types of mechanisms/technologies of governance have come to be viewed with considerable interest in other parts of the world, including Africa, North America, and Latin America. In short, the TUNING approach, an element of the building of the EHEA, has come to receive considerable attention in non-European regions that are also seeking to guide their higher educational reform processes, and as well as (in many cases) region-building processes.

As is evident in one of several ‘TUNING Americas’ maps we (Susan Robertson, Thomas Muhr, and myself) are working on with the support of the UW-Madison Cartography Lab and the WUN, the TUNING approach is being taken up in other world regions, sometimes with the direct support of the European Commission (e.g., in Latin America or Africa). The map below is based on data regarding the institutional take-up of TUNING as of late 2010.

Please note that this particular map only focuses on Europe and the Americas, and it leaves out other countries and world regions. However, the image pasted in below, which was extracted from a publicly available presentation by Robert Wagenaar of the University of Groningen, captures aspects of TUNING’s evolving global geography.

Despite the importance of EU largesse and support, it would be inaccurate to suggest that the EU is foisting TUNING on world regions; this is the post-colonial era, after all, and regions are voluntarily working with this European-originated reform mechanism and Europe-based actors. TUNING also only works when faculty/staff members in higher education institutions outside of Europe drive and then implement the process (a point Robert Wagenaar emphasizes). Or look, for example, at the role of the US-based Lumina Foundation in its TUNING USA initiative. Instead, what we seem to have is capacity building, mutual interests in the ‘competencies’ and ‘learning outcomes’ agenda, and aspects of the best practices phenomenon (all of which help explain the ongoing building of synergy between the OECD’s AHELO initiative with the European/EU-enabled TUNING initiative). This said, there are some ongoing debates about the possible alignment implications associated with the TUNING initiative.

These are but two examples of many emerging regionalisms/interregionalisms in the global higher education landscape; a complicated multiscalar phenomenon of educational reform and ‘modernization,’ and region building, mixed in with some fascinating cases of relational identity formation at the regional scale.

Kris Olds (with thanks to Susan Robertson & Thomas Muhr)

Euro-Asia university cooperation as a means to enrich academic quality

Editor’s note: The speech below was given by Alistair MacDonald (pictured to the right), Head of Delegation, European Union Delegation Manila. Mr. MacDonald kindly allowed us to reprint his speech below, which was delivered at the Best Practices in University Development through International Cooperation conference, Baguio City, Philippines, 2-4 February 2010.

The conference rationale was framed this way:

Saint Louis University and Benguet State University are organizing an international conference to cap 10 years of fruitful partnership under the Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad (Flemish Interuniversity Council)-Philippines Institutional University Cooperation Program. The collaboration between SLU and BSU is the only one of its kind among all the Flemish IUC programs, in that it involves two universities in a single partnership. Despite the differences in structure and development objectives, SLU and BSU worked successfully together in various projects covering Institutional Management, ICT, Library Services, Socio-Economics, and Health and Environment. Thus in this conference, the VLIR, SLU and BSU aim to share best practices in university development cooperation based on the PIUC experience which could serve as a model for other institutions. This will also bring views from all over the globe on the opportunities and challenges of international university development cooperation.

The EU Delegation to the Philippines was established in 1990, as a “fully-fledged diplomatic mission, with the task of officially representing the European Union in the Philippines (in close cooperation with the Embassies of the EU Member States)”. Our thanks to Mr. MacDonald for shedding light on the logics and practices that are shaping the transformation of higher education systems within, as well as linkages between, European and Asian systems of higher education.

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University Cooperation as a Means to Enrich Academic Quality

Remarks by Ambassador Alistair MacDonald, European Union

Baguio, 3 February 2010

Chairman Angeles, Professor Supachai, Fr Hechanova and Dr Tagarino, our visitors from the Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad and other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning, magandang umaga, gooie morgen.

Thank you for inviting me to join you at the opening of your conference – a conference which is an excellent example of cooperation between the Philippines and Belgium, between the EU and Asia. Having been an academic before I became a bureaucrat, higher education remains a subject very close to my heart. Though I must say, having been out of academia for more than 30 years, that I feel pretty nervous speaking in front of such an audience of university presidents, deans, and professors.

At least that means that I don’t need to convince you just how important higher education is to the future of any country, and indeed how important a role higher education plays in building and cementing international relations and international cooperation. International partnerships are becoming increasingly important in the context of globalisation, and the EU sees higher education as a strategic sector for strengthening our partnership and our cooperation with Asia.

I would just like to look today at two main themes – how we have attempted to strengthen higher education across Europe, through the Bologna process, and how we have sought to promote cooperation with third countries in higher education.

1) The Bologna Process

I should underline first that in the EU, the primary responsibility for education rests with the individual Member States, and in some cases (like in Scotland or I believe Belgium, with the national or regional authorities within these States). But the EU has for many years sought to promote cooperation among European universities, through the exchange of students and faculty or the exchange of best practices, and through joint research and degree programmes. The European Commission, as the executive arm of the EU, has played an active part in developing such programmes .

The foundations of our current efforts in this field were laid back in 1999, when Education Ministers from 29 European countries met in Bologna, and committed themselves to create a European Higher Education Area by 2010, in which students can choose from a wide range of high quality courses and benefit from smooth recognition procedures. Our Education Ministers were concerned to make European higher education more compatible and comparable, promoting free movement across the EU, and at the same time to ensure that it would remain competitive and attractive, both for Europeans and for students and researchers from elsewhere in the world. That was how the so-called “Bologna Process” was born.

Why was it called the Bologna Process? The simple answer is that this meeting was held in Bologna. But at the same time this recognised Bologna’s place in history, as the oldest university in Europe (though not the oldest in the world, which distinction is held in Morocco, I believe). The University of Bologna was founded in 1088, well before Paris, Oxford, etc. My own alma mater, Glasgow University, was a relative latecomer, being established in 1451.

The Bologna Process, from its birth in 1999, had the objective of  making academic degree standards and quality assurance standards more comparable and compatible across Europe, so that :

• it will be easy to move from one country to the other (within the European Higher Education Area) – for the purpose of further study or employment;
• European higher education will become more attractive to students and researchers from outside Europe
• and in particular that the European Higher Education Area will provide us with a high-quality university network, helping to ensure Europe’s future as a stable, peaceful and tolerant community;

The priorities of the Bologna process are:

• to introduce the three cycle system (bachelor/master/doctorate) across Europe
• to set standards for quality assurance and thus of comparability;
• and to facilitate the mutual recognition of qualifications and periods of study
• all of this through the creation of a European Higher Education Area

Twenty-nine countries signed the Bologna Declaration in 1999 (including Iceland, Norway and Switzerland), but a total of forty-six countries have now joined the Bologna Process, ranging from Russia to the Holy See. The criteria for accession to the process are simple :

• being a signatory to the European Cultural Convention of the Council of Europe.
• and giving a clear commitment to the objectives of the Bologna Process, and presenting a reform programme for that country’s higher education system.

I should underline that the Bologna Process is not in fact an EU process, but an intergovernmental process, whose membership stretches far beyond the EU. Nevertheless, the European Commission is a full member of the Bologna Process, beside the 46 signatory countries. Consultative members include bodies such as the Council of Europe and UNESCO.

In parallel with the the Bologna Declaration, though, and just one year later, the EU also adopted the Lisbon Agenda, setting the objective that Europe should by 2010 become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth, with more and better jobs, and greater social cohesion.

Underlying these parallel initiatives were two main concerns – we needed to protect and promote European competitiveness, ensuring that our young people would be able to find their place in a caring, sharing and dynamic society – and we needed to encourage academic mobility across Europe, breaking down national barriers.

The Bologna Process has already achieved considerable results. There is clearly a strong commitment at national, regional and institutional levels to maintain this momentum, especially following last April’s Ministerial meeting in Belgium (in Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve), where the Ministers responsible for higher education in the 46 countries of the Bologna Process met to establish the priorities for the European Higher Education Area until 2020. They highlighted in particular the importance of lifelong learning, of widening access to higher education, and of mobility. And they set the goal that by 2020, at least 20% of those graduating in the European Higher Education Area should have had a study or training period abroad.

At the same time, I have to underline that our educational perspectives were not limited to internal European requirements. The Bologna Ministers also agreed upon an external dimension strategy, focusing on information, promotion, cooperation, recognition and policy dialogue. The EC supports the external dimension strategy through a number of policies and programmes, which I will come to later.

Indeed the international openness of the Bologna Process is a key priority for the EU, especially as there seems to be a great interest in the Bologna reforms from countries outside Europe. Twenty non-European countries attended the first ‘Bologna Policy Forum’, which took place last year in Belgium. This Forum serves as a platform for developing a closer relationship with other regions of the world, and provides an opportunity to promote global cooperation in higher education. The second such Forum will be held in Vienna in March (12 March), and I was very happy to hear that the Philippines has been invited to take part.

2) International academic cooperation

The second main topic I’d like to look at is the manner in which the EU works to promote international academic cooperation, whether through student or faculty exchanges, or through research cooperation, or through inter-university cooperation more generally. Indeed the EU’s policy work in the field of education and training is backed up by a variety of funding programmes implemented by the European Commission. I’m not going to try to be exhaustive here, particularly since I’m sure our colleagues from Flanders will be able to speak of their own experiences under EU-funded programmes in this area, so I’ll just comment briefly on some of our main programmes in this field.

Erasmus Mundus

Just as our flagship programme in the field of student exchanges within the EU is the Erasmus programme – commemorating of course the famous Dutch humanist scholar of the Reformation era, who himself studied and taught in Paris, Leuven, Cambridge, Turin and Basel – so our flagship programme for international academic exchanges is the Erasmus Mundus programme.

Erasmus Mundus was launched in 2004 with a view to promoting the quality, visibility and attractiveness of European higher education by supporting partnerships with non-EU universities in relation to the joint masters’ courses established under the Erasmus progrmme (and including more than one hundred such courses offered by consortia including over 230 European universities). The Erasmus Mundus programme offers scholarships to graduate students and academics from outside the EU to follow these courses, and so far some 6000 students and 660 academics worls-wide have followed these courses. The global budget for the first phase of the programme (2004-2008) was €230 million, 90% of which went into scholarships. In 2005, special regional windows were created under the Erasmus Mundus programme by using additional funds coming from the Community’s development cooperation budget.

Over the period 2004-09, there were about 100 Filipinos who have received such scholarships – and I am delighted to say that all who have completed their training have returned to the Philippines, as ambassadors for European education, just as they were ambassadors for the Philippines when studying in Europe. The returning scholars have also established a very active Alumni Association, with their own website, which also works  to provide information and advice to students thinking of studying in Europe.

Then in 2006 the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window (EMECW) was established, building on the existing Erasmus Mundus programme to promote academic partnerships and institutional cooperation between higher education institutions in Europe and in partner countries, and including a mobility scheme addressing Erasmus-style student and academic exchanges. Under this programme, calls for proposals were organised in 2007, 2008 and 2009, with total funding for Asia amounting to almost €30 million.

A second phase of the Erasmus Mundus programme was adopted at the end of 2008, covering the period 2009-2013, and building on and extending the scope of the first phase. Erasmus Mundus II covers joint masters and joint doctorate programmes, including scholarships for EU and non-European students and academics (Action 1); partnerships between European universities and universities in specific world regions (former EMECW, now Action 2); and measures to enhance the world-wide appeal of Europe as an education destination (Action 3). New elements of the programme are the inclusion of non-EU institutions as full partners in Erasmus Mundus consortia, the offer of full study scholarships to EU students and the extension of Erasmus Mundus joint programmes to doctoral level.

Erasmus Mundus II has a budget of € 950 million, much higher than in the first phase of the programme. The first joint initiatives under the new actions of Erasmus Mundus II started in academic year 2009/10, but the mobility under the new actions will take place as of 2010/11.

Jean Monnet

Quite apart from the Erasmus programme, and established earlier (in 1990), is the Jean Monnet programme. This specifically supports studies in the field of European integration, and builds on the work of the network of 54 national European Studies Associations. Such associations exist in most of the EU Member States and in several non-EU countries (such as the United States, Canada, Japan, China, India, Korea, Brazil, Argentina …).

The Jean Monnet Programme is intended to enhance knowledge and awareness on European integration, increase the visibility of the EU in the world, stimulate academic excellence in European integration studies, and allow policy-makers to benefit from academic insight. The programme is now part of the Lifelong Learning Programme and funds Jean Monnet chairs, centres of excellence and teaching modules, as well as information and research activities.

Such programmes now exist in 61 countries around the world, with more than 100 Jean Monnet Centres of Excellence, and more than 750 Jean Monnet Chairs. They reach an audience of 250.000 students every year. The highest number of Jean Monnet teaching projects outside the EU can be found in Canada, China, the United States and Turkey.

Research cooperation

Turning to more research-orientated cooperation, the EU has for many years devoted significant resources to supporting applied and pure research in many fields, both within the EU and externally. We are currently implementing the 7^th Framework Programme in Research and Technology, covering the period from 2007 to 2013, and with a total budget of over €50 billion. This funding is used to support research, technological development and demonstration projects. Grants are determined on the basis of calls for proposals and peer review, and the selection process is highly competitive. A number of Philippine universities have participated in such programmes, as members of consortia under FP7 and its predecessors – I’m thinking for example of UP, Ateneo, DLS, San Carlos and Siliman.

Apart from our funding possibilities under the Framework Programmes, we have also funded some specific research activities under our classical development cooperation budget. One example is the Trans-Eurasia Information Network (TEIN), addressing the digital divide by connecting universities and research institutions in Europe and Asia by means of high-capacity dedicated Internet networks. Currently the third phase of this programme, TEIN3, covers 19 countries in Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea in East Asia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam in ASEAN, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in South Asia, and Australia). TEIN3 receives an EC grant of over €11 million covering some 60% of the project costs; the remaining funds are provided by the partners on a cost-sharing basis.

3) Conclusion

Ladies and gentlemen, it is evident that a growing concern of policy makers in Europe and around the world is to ensure that our higher education institutions and systems are “fit for purpose” for the 21^st century. This is as much a concern in Asia in general, and the Philippines in particular, as it is in Europe. Globalisation makes it essential for universities to open up to international cooperation, to send and receive more students from abroad, and to ensure that the quality of their teaching and research meets domestic needs and international standards.

These concerns are at the heart of the move to establish a European Higher Education Area in the context of the Bologna process, ensuring that higher education in Europe is fully competitive in the global context, and is able to meet the teaching, research and employment needs of the 21^st century. Within the EU, the Lisbon Agenda of 2000, and its likely successor the “EU 2020” programme which the Commission will shortly present, have these concerns at their core. Here in the Philippines, with its long tradition of academic excellence, it is no less essential that the Universities are able to respond to society’s needs – producing the teachers, researchers, skilled workers and entrepreneurs that will drive the country forward, at the same time as the Universities keep alight the value of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. And now more than ever, international university cooperation has a key role to play in promoting mutual understanding, mutual cooperation, and mutual respect.

Thank you for your attention, maraming salamat po, en hartelijk bedankt.

ANNEX

Past Programmes in Asia

• The Asia Link Programme supported regional networking among higher education institutions in Europe and Asia from 2002 until 2006 (and has since been integrated in the Erasmus Mundus). It included support for joint research work, for curriculum development, and for staff and student exchanges. Nine AsiaLink projects have been implemented in the Philippines, with EC funding totalling some €2.6m (PHP 160m) – in sectors as diverse as mathematics teaching, urban planning, agro-forestry, and biomedical engineering.
• In past years, we have also funded the EU-ASEAN University Network Programme (2000-06) supporting research and teaching cooperation between universities in ASEAN and their counterparts in Europe, and including two substantial projects with Philippine universities, in mariners’ education and in spatial planning.
• I can even stretch my mind back to earlier programmes in the 1990s, such as our support for the establishment of a European Studies Consortium in Manila, and for an EU-ASEAN Scholarship programme.

Programmes in other regions

And since this is an international conference I would also like to mention very briefly the international cooperation programmes for higher education and training the European Commission implements in the other regions of the world:

• Tempus contributes to the building of cooperation in the field of higher education between the EU and partner countries in neighbouring regions, namely in Western Balkans, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. The latest phase of the programme, Tempus IV, started in 2008. The annual Tempus budget amounts to around €50 million, and individual projects receive funding between €0.5 and €1.5 million.
• Edulink fosters capacity building and regional integration in higher education in the Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific region and countries. It also promotes higher education as a means of reducing poverty. This programme is addressed only to institutions, hence individuals can not apply. Between 2006 and 2008 the total funding amounted to €14 million.
• Alfa is a cooperation programme between higher education institutions in the EU and in Latin America, having as objectives to improve the quality, relevance and accessibility of Higher Education in Latin America; and to contribute to the process of regional integration of Latin America, fostering progress towards the creation of a joint Higher Education area in the region and exploiting its synergies with the EU. The third phase of the programme, ALFA III (2007-2013), has an EU budget of €85m.

Brazil’s new Latin American and global integration universities launched

As 2009 drew to a close, Brazil’s Senate granted official authorization for the establishment of a new, very different kind of university in Brazil – the Federal University for Latin America Integration, otherwise known as UNILA.

Unanimously passed on December 16^th 2009, the Bill now enables UNILA to formally announce itself as a university, instead of a fledging project under the banner of the Institute for Advanced Studies, with oversight by the University of Parana, in the Brazilian state of Parana.

UNILA is one of three regional integration universities launched by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2006 to advance Brazil’s interests within the region and globally. The other two university projects are UNILAB – the Afro-Brazilian University of Integration, and UNIAM – the University of Amazonian Integration.

These Brazilian initiatives were the latest addition to a rapidly changing higher education landscape around the globe, and one that is set to continue in 2010 (as implied in a recent NY Times report about the implications of the collapse of Dubai’s overheated economy for branch campuses such as Michigan State University and Rochester Institute of Technology).

Dubai’s spectacular meltdown in December was matched by a stunning $61m launch party for Saudi Arabia’s ‘House of Wisdom’ – the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or KAUST which Kimberly Coulter covered for GlobalHigherEd.

As Kris Olds wrote in his introduction to Coulter’s entry:

KAUST is a unique experiment in how to organize an institution to facilitate innovation in scientific knowledge production, a secure and efficient compound (hence Saudi Aramco’s involvement), a defacto sovereign wealth fund, a demonstration effect for new approaches to higher education in Saudi Arabia, and many other things (depending on standpoint).

So what do these initiatives have in common? Money aside (KAUST has an endowment of around US$11bn), but like KAUST, Brazil’s three new universities reflect a shared ambition: to use international higher education networks to advance cultural, political and economic projects.

However while KAUST is aimed at developing a world class national university in Saudi Arabia via the recruitment of global talent (academics and students), state of the art buildings and cutting edge development projects, UNILA, UNILAB and UNIAM are aimed at creating a ‘supranational’, ‘global’ and ‘regional’  university respectively, drawing upon staff and students from within the wider region, or from across south-south networks (UNILAB) – though each,  as I will show below, have distinctive visions and territorial reaches with UNILAB the most global.

In August of 2009, I had the privilege of attending the official launch of UNILA.  Close to the fabulous Iguacu Falls,  in Foz, Parana, UNILA is being developed on a 43 hectare site granted by Itaipu Binacional, the bi-national energy company running the huge hydro-electric dam providing energy to Paraguay and the southern cone of Brazil.

The objectives of UNILA are to pursue inter-regional trans-disciplinary research and teaching in areas of joint interest of the MERCOSUL member countries (Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay) focusing, for example, upon use of natural resources, trans-border biodiversity, social sciences and linguistic research, international relations as well as relevant disciplines for strategic development.

Unlike KAUST, however, whose model is US-oriented (in becoming the MIT of the East, the ‘Stanford by the Seashore’), UNILA’s mission and approach to knowledge is shaped by a distinctive Latin American commitment. Each course has a Patron and a Founder.

The first Patrons have been chosen for being Latin American names who have left relevant academic-scientific contributions associated to a field of knowledge , while course founders have been appointed for the high academic prestige in their respective fields of knowledge as well as renowned international competence in their specialities.

10 Professorial Chairs have been appointed to UNILA. Each Chair has a mandate to develop courses in ways that are inspired by, and advance, the intellectual legacy of the Patron. For instance, in the area of science, technology and innovation,  founding Chair, Hebe Vessuri, will draw inspiration from the patron Amilcar Herrerra (1920-1995) – an Argentinean geologist who valued inter-disciplinary knowledge and who have argued that the solution to problems lay not with science as progress, but in the interface with policy and politics.

These patrons are clearly not the organic intellectuals of the ruling classes. Many of these patrons, such as the Chilean writer Francisco Bilbao (1823-65), and Paraguay’s Augusto Roa Bastos (1917-2005), have spent years in exile.

The target student population for UNILA is 10,000 students enrolled in undergraduate and post-graduate programmes leading to MA and PhD degrees. Entrants will be required to sit a university entry examination that will be offered in two versions: one with a Portuguese language requirement for Brazilian citizens and a Spanish Language for the foreign candidates of eligible member countries. Lectures will be offered in both Portuguese and Spanish, as it is expected that half of the teaching staff will be from the regional member countries.

By way of contrast with UNILA, UNILAB is the most global in ambition. This unilateral Portuguese-speaking Afro-Brazilian University of Integration will have  campuses in various  Portuguese speaking countries (Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, Sâo Tomé and Príncipe, and East Timor). Expected to open for enrolment in the beginning of   2010, UNILAB is hailed as a political-pedagogic innovation project (see here for information on UNILAB developments).

The principal aim of UNILAB is to encourage and strengthen co-operation, partnerships, and cultural, educational and scientific exchanges between Brazil an member states of   the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP) listed above. UNILAB will also focus on collaboration with the African countries of the CPLP,  aiming to contribute to these nations’ socio-economic development, including reducing ‘brain drain’ problems currently experienced by African countries.

UNILAB is intended to become an integrated multi-campus institution with campuses in all the   African member countries of the CPLP. Each of these campuses will also be integrated within the regions where they are located. Its main campus will be established in the city of Redenção in Brazil’s North-Eastern state of Ceará, approximately 60 kilometres from the city of Fortaleza. Redenção has been selected to host the main campus because it was the first municipality that had abolished slavery in Brazil, and because the region currently does not yet host a university. The main campus is also expected to function as an instrument for the strategic social-economic development of the North-East of Brazil.

In a report carried by the Observatory for Borderless Higher Education on these initiatives, Brazil’s Minister of Education, Fernando Haddad, commented:

We will not offer traditional programmes, but instead we will construct a common identity between the countries, that makes it possible to contribute to the social-economic development of each of the countries involved.

The third, more regional, initiative, Universidade Federal da Integração Amazônica, or UNIAM, will be established as a public multi-campus university, with a main campus in the Brazilian city of Santarém, and three satellite campuses in the cities Itaituba, Monte Alegre and Oriximiná, all located in Brazil’s state of Pará.

The main aim of UNIAM will be to encourage social-economic integration of the Amazon region, which includes not only parts of Brazil, but also areas of eight surrounding countries.

UNIAM’s  main campus will be established in the Brazilian city of Santarém, and three satellite campuses in the cities Itaituba, Monte Alegre and Oriximiná, all located in Brazil’s state of Pará. The aim of the new institution will be to encourage social-economic integration of the Amazon region, which includes not only parts of Brazil, but also areas of eight surrounding countries.

While it is unclear at the moment when the new university will open for enrolment, by 2013 UNIAM is expected to offer 41 programmes at Bachelor’s, Master’s and doctoral levels.  The Brazilian government will reportedly cover the US$107 million budget that will be needed to pay for the establishment and personnel costs of the new university until 2012.

Described by the Brazilian Ministry of Education as particular ‘political-pedagogic innovation projects’, these three new universities are intended to enhance national, regional and global integration, and demonstrate to the world that it may be possible to unite different countries through education.

These are fascinating initiatives likely to liven up the global higher education landscape in 2010. They reflect not only emerging regionalisms, but potential shifts in the sites and stakes of global and regional knowledge production and power.

Susan Robertson

Debate: Asia vs Europe: which region is more geopolitically incompetent?

Can regions think and act strategically? In which ways are Europe and Asia geopolitically (in)competent? How does one speak for “Asia” and “Europe”? Why do Mahbubani and Emmott seek to speak for “Asia” and “Europe”? Link here for a National University of Singapore (NUS) webcast of this recent debate, and here for a lecture synopsis.

Ministers of Education and fora for thinking beyond the nation

One of the features of the globalization of higher education and research is the bringing together of ministers of education from various countries to think beyond the nation at regional, inter-regional, and global scales, as well as in a comparative sense. Thus we are seeing the nation-state creating internal competencies for statecraft via extra-territorial fora.

This is, of course, nothing new in some ways: ministries of trade and industry, or ministries of immigration, have done this for decades. But this is really the first era when ministers of education have become much more involved in strategizing about how to adjust education systems, especially the higher education and research elements, so as to engage with broader shifts in economy and society.

Here are links to some recent meetings, with associated reports:

• APEC Education Ministerial Meeting (AEMM), 11-12 June 2008
  (pictured above)
• Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) Biennale on Education in Africa, 5-9 May 2008
• ASEM Conference of Ministers for Education, 5-6 May 2008
• Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) Council Conference, 13-14 March 2008
• Meeting of Ministers of Education under the auspices of the Inter-American Council on Integral Development of the Organization of American States, 12–14 November 2007
• Bologna Process Ministerial Conference, 17-18 May 2007
• Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM), 11 to 14 December 2006

Let me know if you know of any more that I should include – I am happy to add them to the list above.

Scaling up need not only work at the regional or interregional scale. In Latin America, for example, five higher education ministers from Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Nicaragua, Venezuela signed the Cochabamba Declaration to further ALBA – the “Bolivarian Alternative for the peoples of Our America”, a regional intergration initiative that is anti-capitalist in nature, for the most part.

Or in Canada, the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada (CMEC), made up on all provincial ministers of education (as education, including higher education, is a provincial responsibility), frames its international activities along a variety of other regional, interregional, and multilateral axes:

CMEC’s international activities have traditionally involved three major international organizations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the Commonwealth. While other partnerships have been formed with the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO), the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Education Forum, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Summit of the Americas process, both OECD and UNESCO, as well as the Commonwealth, continue to play a prominent role.

Assessments of the efficacy of such fora in facilitating new ways of thinking, innovative forms of statecraft, and extended networks of support, are lacking.  Yet it is clear that some, such as the biannual Bologna Process summit (the London 2007 event is pictured to the left), are effective in facilitating action.

In conclusion, we are seeing, via the lens of such fora:

1. Enhanced extra-territorial agendas and networks being built up by ministries that have not traditionally been so interested, nor obligated, in thinking beyond the nation, nor even beyond the province/state scale, in some countries.
2. Meeting agendas and joint concluding statements that are framed around adjusting education systems to mediate and especially advance economic interdependence.
3. Evidence of the enhanced intertwining of higher education with regional and interregional R&D strategies (especially with respect to science and technology).
4. The desire to continue advancing longstanding social and cultural agendas (given the core nation-building function of higher education), though these socio-cultural agendas brush up against economic and international migration dynamics.
5. The inclusion of some associated voices in the ministerial-centred deliberations, and the exclusion, by design or accident, of others that have clearly not started to think beyond the nation. On this point I see the voices of some students (e.g., the European Students’ Union) included, but faculty voices (via associations, unions, etc), are remarkably absent.

In the end, it is uncertain how far these initiatives will go. The addition of new mandates is perhaps to be expected in these globalizing times, but the challenges of thinking beyond the nation for the nation (and the region) is not a simple one to face, conceptually nor organizationally. This said, these are noteworthy events, and well worth engaging with on a number of levels.

Kris Olds