Reimagining ASEAN’s Higher Educational Regionalism Project: Digitally Breaking Physical Barriers and Charting Decolonial Futures

• In Event: Policy mechanisms and glocal shifts: Shaping futures of education in Southeast Asia

Proposal

Southeast Asia is a region consisting of 11 countries embodying heterogeneity in almost all aspects of their identity aside from geographical proximity. These countries possess divided colonial histories, diverse ethnicities, contrasting political ideologies, differentiated states of economic development, and for the purposes of this research, varying levels of higher educational quality. The transformation of the Southeast Asian higher educational landscape began in earnest in the late 2000s with the creation of two regional entities focused on developing regional educational policy (Chou & Ravinet, 2017), largely under the guidance of ASEAN. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was created in 1967 to realize this ideal of regional unity and development (Flores & Abad, n.d..), and ASEAN’s domain of influence has extended to every facet of regional cooperation including the promotion of higher education in Southeast Asia. However, ASEAN’s guiding organizational principle of non-interference (Severino,1999) in other Southeast nation’s affairs has allowed peace to develop in the region (Yukawa, 2018), but at the expense of binding collective effort and accountability (Chou & Ravinet, 2017). With the backdrop of a growing digitally interconnected region, this research leverages a “higher educational regionalism” framework to envision the future of Southeast Asia’s higher educational ecosystem, and puts forward two key research considerations.

The first key consideration is on how ASEAN nations leverage technology to reduce the existing regional barriers within Southeast Asia rather than to pursue their individual higher educational development agenda. Despite ASEAN collectively ratifying the Kuala Lumpur Declaration on Higher Education which “acknowledge higher education as one of the catalysts in accelerating ASEAN’s economic, political and sociocultural development agenda” and seeks to “embrace diversity and solidarity of the ASEAN Community through enhanced intra-ASEAN mobility of students and scholars” (ASEAN, 2015), Southeast Asian student mobility research noted that “less than 10% of all inbound/outbound mobility was between ASEAN Member States” (Lim et al., 2022). More tellingly, scholarships provided under the ASEAN University Network (AUN) to ASEAN students only lists China and Japan as countries for Southeast Asian students to pursue their tertiary education (AUN, 2024). Leveraging digital technology to craft higher educational regional partnerships needs to be a priority for ASEAN’s future collective capacity-building (Schofer et. al, 2021; Sirat et. al, 2014).


The second key contention of this research is for a decolonial reckoning of ASEAN’s positionality in relation to superpower dynamics within the realm of higher educational policy. Higher education has been utilized as a soft power tool to engender support for superpower interests in Southeast Asia (Feuer & Hornidge, 2015), and if ASEAN seeks to develop its own higher educational identity, it has to reconstruct its (digital) regional architecture on the basis of ASEAN Centrality (Petri & Plummer, 2013) rather than merely following the lead of the European Union or its 3 key East Asian partners of China, South Korea, and Japan. It is critical that the goals for ASEAN higher education be agreed upon and embodied at the highest regional levels, as that will create the trickle-down effect needed to build a cohesive digital regional project. The application of a social constructivist lens to understanding how ASEAN as a region was created by the violence of colonization is critical in charting a decolonial future that allows for Southeast Asians to achieve parity and collective growth (Dang, 2017). For instance, with the creation of clear digital guidelines and platforms, higher educational administrators can more easily build intra-institutional Southeast Asian partnerships which then educates students on the value of attending a regional institution as part of their collective ASEAN identity.

Methodologically, this paper will conduct policy document analysis of critical ASEAN higher educational agreements (e.g. ASEMundus project, ASEAN–EU University Network Programme, and SHARE) to chart the overarching priorities and interests with ASEAN higher education policy making. Additionally, semi-structured interviews (slated for October and November 2024) with relevant ASEAN bureaucrats, higher educational administrators from different regional institutions, and Southeast Asian students will provide a holistic picture of the role technology plays in informing the success of the ASEAN’s regional project. Lastly, this paper will leverage Walter Mignolo’s notion of decoloniality and pluriversality to argue for a more decolonial Southeast Asian-centric higher education strategy (Mignolo, 2020).

Southeast Asia as a site of comparative and international educational research has regularly been overlooked despite its huge youth population and rising economic stature. Research focused on how higher educational regionalism intersects with the institutional policies and priorities of ASEAN will be useful in charting how ASEAN needs to grow its higher educational landscape using digital technology without being subsumed by the tool itself. ASEAN cannot see itself as mere followers of other regional projects (Dang, 2017); its geographical division based on superpower alliances (Author et. al, 2024) should not constrain its possibility of leveraging digitality for social transformation and justice across the region. Southeast Asia has matured as a region over the last 60 years, and it is time ASEAN stepped out of the shadow of superpower dynamics to make its own mark on the global higher educational ecosystem - an educational force focused on togetherness and decoloniality to envision a more inclusive future for all Southeast Asians.

Author

• Tinesh Indrarajah, Loyola University Chicago