Why Advancing Intra-ASEAN Student Mobility Can Help Boost ASEAN’s Integration Journey

For more than half a century, ASEAN has sought to transform the region into a single connected market. While much of the attention has focused on trade agreements, security arrangements, and strategic frameworks, one of the most promising drivers of integration lies in people-to-people connectivity, particularly in classrooms and lecture halls. Intra-ASEAN student mobility, defined as the movement of students across borders within Southeast Asia seeking degrees, academic credits, and formal training, has not reached its full potential but can strengthen the regional integration journey if allowed to do so.

According to the 2024 Key Trends in Southeast Asia report by Acumen, an international education consultancy, more than 350,000 students from ASEAN countries studied abroad in 2022. This makes the region the third largest globally for outbound student mobility, after China and India. Vietnam accounted for the largest share of such students, with 132,000, followed by Indonesia and Malaysia with 56,000 each, and Thailand with 32,000. However, Japan, Australia, and North America are among the top destinations for Vietnamese students, not Southeast Asian countries.

The trend of students seeking education and training abroad is likely to continue, as the region’s youth population remains substantial. According to the Asian Development Bank’s Key Indicators Database 2024, around 24 per cent of the total population in ASEAN plus Timor-Leste (approximately 165 million) are aged 0-14 years. Coupled with a growing middle class, this positions ASEAN as a significant and consistent source of students in higher education in the coming years.

However, ASEAN has not fully captured its potential, as intra-ASEAN student mobility remains limited. Estimates from the ASEAN Secretariat indicate that the majority of outbound students study outside the region, while most inbound students come from non-ASEAN countries. The latest data suggest that only about 10 per cent of inbound and outbound student mobility occurs among ASEAN Member States (AMS). Structural gaps in quality, recognition, funding, and perceptions are key factors explaining why ASEAN student mobility is skewed outward rather than inward.

Student mobility is a key driver of regional integration: students who spend a semester or complete a degree abroad within ASEAN might return with enhanced intercultural skills, added fluency in regional languages, and increased familiarity with different regulatory systems. These competencies align with ASEAN’s Mutual Recognition Arrangements, which envisions professionals in fields such as engineering, nursing, and tourism working across regional borders, thus helping to connect ASEAN’s services and industries. In this way, student exchanges can help to build the human capital foundations necessary for regional labour mobility.

Further, mobility reduces frictions arising from differing qualifications and academic standards across AMS. The ASEAN Qualifications Reference Framework (AQRF) was designed to help AMS map their credentials against a common standard, but overall progress has been uneven. Embedding student mobility within the AQRF can facilitate the development of a region-wide credit transfer system, enabling ASEAN to recognise educational competencies across member states. In the long run, this would make it easier for graduates to meet regional job requirements and help address one of ASEAN’s chronic challenges: skills mismatches in fast-changing labour markets. 

Beyond measurable skills, student mobility generates intangible benefits. Students who move within ASEAN often form research collaborations, entrepreneurial ventures, and professional networks that endure beyond departure and graduation. These connections strengthen ASEAN’s innovation ecosystems. Programmes such as the ASEAN University Network (AUN) and the ASEAN Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Council demonstrate how mobility can foster cross-border research clusters, giving Southeast Asia a stronger collective voice in global knowledge production, and potentially sharing their resources and amplifying impact.

Student mobility can also help to reduce development disparities and address brain drain across the region. While Singapore and Malaysia remain dominant destinations for other regional students due to their widely recognised qualifications, strong educational resources and highly ranked universities, emerging hubs in Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia are becoming increasingly attractive. For example, Thailand has become a preferred destination for many Cambodian and Burmese students, while Indonesian universities host substantial numbers of Timorese students. As students move to these newer educational destinations, they contribute tuition revenue, local spending power and talent, thereby potentially helping to level the playing field of development among AMS. Furthermore, the developmental impact will be amplified if they return to their home countries, bringing back skills that can benefit their community.

Education is not just a social good but also a significant part of ASEAN’s services trade. Vietnam’s higher education market alone is worth an estimated $503.79 million in 2025. Expanding intra-ASEAN student flows allows the region to capture more of this market, reducing the heavy outflow of students to Western and other non-ASEAN universities. At the same time, seemingly discriminatory policies in the US and to some extent the United Kingdom toward some groups of international students may create opportunities for ASEAN to position itself as a preferred alternative educational destination. If regional students stay in Southeast Asia, ASEAN can retain talent and capital, which are vital to its future competitiveness.

Beyond economics, increasing student mobility can foster a shared sense of regional identity. Shared study experiences can nurture a feeling of belonging that no formal ASEAN agreements can bring. As an example, the European Union’s Erasmus programme illustrates this: the cross-border educational exchange programme has shaped a generation of young people who feel more European after their participation as Erasmus scholars. ASEAN’s fledgling mobility schemes have the potential to similarly impact its youth, cultivating graduates who see themselves as ASEAN citizens as well as national citizens.

The promise is clear but significant obstacles remain. ASEAN countries’ university qualifications and accreditation systems are fragmented, the quality of education is uneven, and scholarships and financial aid are limited. Further, student and work visa regimes are cumbersome, academic calendars misaligned, and English proficiency (usually required in the top universities) varies widely among the AMS. Data on student flows is patchy, making evidence-based regional policymaking difficult. Most troubling of all, mobility opportunities remain skewed toward urban elites in each AMS, leaving students from rural or lower-income backgrounds behind.

It is possible, however, to begin to overcome these hurdles. ASEAN could accelerate the AQRF’s implementation and harmonise credit systems. If AMS commit funding to develop an ASEAN version of the Erasmus programme, for instance, it will send a strong political signal that the region is serious about nurturing an integrated educational network. A common ASEAN student visa could reduce bureaucratic friction, while incentivising the educational sector to invest in digital infrastructure, such as micro-credentials, transcript portability, and online learning, to broaden access among disadvantaged and rural students or first-generation learners. Strengthening the ASEAN University Network-Quality Assurance (AUN-QA) would bolster trust in cross-border recognition, and establishing a regional education observatory could generate the data needed to guide policy decisions.

For ASEAN, advancing student mobility is more than an education policy: it can be a strategic investment for integration. If successful, it promises a workforce prepared for regional labour markets, more equitable development across AMS, stronger innovation networks, and a more profound sense of shared identity. The challenges are real but so are the stakes. If ASEAN is serious about its integration journey, it should look towards increasing not just trade corridors and summits but also strengthening its network of vocational institutes and universities, and the flow of students through them. That is where the next generation of regional integration will be forged and where the impact will be most tangible for ASEAN’s people.

Editor’s Note:
ASEANFocus+ articles are timely critical insight pieces published by the ASEAN Studies Centre.