Asia’s higher education enrolments already dwarf those of Europe and North America, and most of the world’s future academic workforce will be trained in the East. Yet new research claims that this remains widely unrecognised amid Western scepticism of the region’s “brittle” higher education systems.
A mapping exercise of 16 Asian countries, selected for their “diversity and coverage”, has thrown new light on Asia-Pacific higher education. Together, the 16 nations have about one-third more higher education institutions than Europe and North Africa combined, and enrol more than three times as many students.
The gap is widening, despite declining Asian demographics, as larger shares of both school leavers and mature workers set their sights on degrees. This contrasts with stuttering growth in the West, where large swathes of the population already have tertiary credentials.
Educational mobility patterns are also shifting eastwards, as administrators rely on foreign students for financial stability – much as their counterparts did a few decades ago in countries like Australia, Canada and the UK. “There is ample scope for the expansion of intra-Asia internationalisation of the student body,” notes the briefing document from Australia’s Higher Education Futures Lab (HEFL).
