Higher Education Regionalization and Global Geopolitics: Comparing University Perspectives in East and Southeast Asia

• In Event: Geopolitics and migration: Universities in the center

Proposal

Introduction
Globalization has been shaping higher education, a field long been considered operating in the national sphere. One indicator is the emergence of international university associations at both the global and the regional level (Brankovic, 2018). At the regional level, the emergence of regional university associations (RUAs) seems to be part of the phenomenon of higher education regionalization, where increasing cooperation among higher education actors are at the regional level (Knight, 2012). While there have been studies on policies of HER initiatives, little is known on universities’ role in HER. This study examines why universities are members of RUAs, as an angle to understanding why HER is important for universities.
Theoretical Framework
I draw on two theoretical perspectives to conceptualize the reasons for universities’ participation in RUAs. Economic functionalist perspective views the emergence of new organizations as introducing new ways of organizing to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. The political functional perspective emphasizes the political processes. For example, various literature argue that higher education regionalization is part of the political project of region-building (Robertson, 2016). Contrary to functional theories, the sociological neo-institutional theory emphasizes the impact of organizations’ external environment providing cultural scripts for the organizational field (Meyer, 2008). Cultural scripts provide meanings and lend legitimacy to universities’ behaviors.
Data and Methods
I conducted interviews with leaders from 15 universities in East and Southeast Asia to understand why their universities are members of RUAs and their perspectives of HER. The countries include China, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand. I used inductive coding method and analyzed the interviews in NVivo.
Findings
Participating in RUAs as Strategic Decisions
I find that universities are members of RUAs because of strategic reasons. For example, universities indicate that their academic programs have benefited from their participation in RUAs, including more opportunities for mobility programs and joint-degree programs. Moreover, even when universities have not been able to benefit academically, they think that participation in RUAs can help them build relationships through mutual understanding and trust, to accelerate internationalization. This is because randomly choosing a partner requires much more work in trust building. The findings align with the economic functionalist perspective that emphasizes enhancing efficiency and effectiveness as the reason for why universities are members of RUAs.
RUA Memberships as Normative Response for the Global
However, university memberships in RUAs are not just functional and strategic, but also reflect universities’ response to norms in global higher education. For example, universities see the importance of RUAs in enhancing their global presence in a global higher education landscape and helping them contribute to solving global issues.
Moreover, I also find that universities are sometimes members of RUAs because of peer pressure. They are not RUA members because they strategically decide to do so, but because internationalization is such a global norm that they are propelled to be a member for nominal reasons. The findings are in line with the neo-institutional argument that organizations are not always strategic and do conform to broader norms in the organizational field.
Furthermore, universities can also be members of RUAs because RUAs can either signal their established identity or help universities signal their aspired identities, which align with the global university model of being comprehensive, research-oriented, and internationalized. This finding further confirms that universities’ memberships in RUAs reflect their response to global norms in higher education.
Interestingly, how RUAs as mechanisms for identity signaling depends on universities’ national and regional higher education context. In contexts where universities have responded to global trends and established globally recognized identity, such as East Asian countries, RUAs are mechanisms to reinforce their established identity. Distinctively, in contexts where universities are still in the process of transforming to the global model, such as Southeast Asia, RUA memberships serve as mechanisms to signal their aspired identity. This finding suggests that while universities’ behaviors reflect their response to global trends in higher education, the rationale behind the same behavior is tailored to universities’ local contexts.
HER and the Influence of Global Geopolitics
One surprising finding is that universities in East and Southeast Asia share some similar perspectives on HER. In both regions, HER is not a familiar term for universities. Rather, they link their regional cooperation and participation in RUAs as part of their internationalization strategy, instead of seeing themselves playing a role in HER.
In general, universities in East Asia tend to see the importance of regional partners because of the importance of Asia and to counter the Western dominance in internationalization, suggesting that HER in East Asia is linked to the backlash against the Western dominance in global higher education.
In Southeast Asia, regional cooperation is important but does not seem to be the priority for most universities in the Southeast Asia region in my interviews, even if Asian partners are competent in key research areas of interest. Instead, regional cooperation serves as a more accessible and more convenient approach to become global, in contrast to universities in East Asia, which tend to stress the importance of Asia.
The findings on regional differences between East and Southeast Asia suggest that HER are linked to the influence of global geopolitics on higher education. East Asian countries are in more powerful positions in the global geopolitical landscape, which might explain their interests in Asia itself. On the contrary, Southeast Asian countries are less powerful, which might explain why their universities are still geared towards Western partners. This finding suggests that universities’ perception of HER is linked to global geopolitics and suggests that HER is linked to larger political process.
Conclusion
The findings suggest that universities’ participation in RUAs is much linked to the global higher education, suggesting the link between the regional and the global higher education field. Particularly, despite the discourse of anti-globalization, universities are still much influenced by the global, in terms of the desire to gain global status and identity, and the influence of global geopolitics on universities’ decisions on who they prefer to partner.

Author

• You Zhang, OISE, University of Toronto