Common Space in Southeast Asian Higher Education: A Catalyst for Collaboration?

For decades, the diversity of Southeast Asian higher education systems posed a significant challenge to fostering closer and more meaningful collaboration within the region. Not only do these systems vary greatly in terms of the development stage, but their aspirations for higher education’s contribution and the characteristics of their universities differ considerably, ranging from world-renowned research institutions to community-focused ones providing basic access to tertiary education. While English is the working language and globally accepted as the academic lingua franca, at least seven major languages are the official languages across Southeast Asian universities.

Thus, the adoption of the Common Space in Southeast Asian Higher Education on 25 August 2024 is a significant milestone for a diverse region. The Common Space is a necessary step to bring Southeast Asian higher education systems towards a harmonised regional platform, where different systems can be made more compatible and collaborative in fostering academic exchanges to develop skills, competencies and credentials. A harmonised higher educational sector, in turn, catalyses the region’s economies, societies and cultures, bringing them closer to the vision of an ASEAN Community.

The realisation of the Common Space has been a long-standing aspiration. It was first mooted by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organisation (SEAMEO)’s Regional Centre for Higher Education and Development (SEAMEO-RIHED) in the mid-2000s. But the realisation of this aspiration had to grapple with diverse national systems and multiple organisations with competing interests. At times, these entities also operated in silos and were not aligned towards a common regional goal.

Hence, the Common Space’s successful adoption of the joint declaration by ASEAN and SEAMEO is a testament to the unprecedented collaborative efforts in bringing together all relevant stakeholders in the region.

The Common Space was inspired by the Bologna Process, which began in 1999 and led to the establishment of a coherent European Higher Education Area with a common recognition of qualification and quality assurance frameworks in facilitating the free movement of labour. The joint declaration marks the initial commitment of Southeast Asian systems towards the same direction. However, higher education systems and universities in the region have to surmount three challenges for the vision to be realised.

First, inconsistencies in international commitments need to be ironed out. The European Higher Education Area is underpinned by the regional legal instrument — the Lisbon Recognition Convention. The equivalent legal instrument for the Asia-Pacific is the Tokyo Recognition Convention. UNESCO has led the charge by bringing together five regional conventions, including Lisbon and Tokyo, to create a Global Convention that establishes universal principles for fair, transparent and non-discriminatory recognition of qualifications. Southeast Asian countries have yet to ratify the Tokyo Recognition Convention. Without ratification, cooperation and compatibility in the areas of qualifications frameworks, quality assurance and credit transfers are voluntary, and many of the regional initiatives across these areas are piecemeal in nature.

A harmonised higher educational sector, in turn, catalyses the region’s economies, societies and cultures, bringing them closer to the vision of an ASEAN Community.

Hence, the Common Space presents the opportunity to bring the various regional initiatives and individual countries into greater coherence in terms of recognition of qualifications and quality assurance for universities in Southeast Asia towards the global convention. 

Second, there remains room for improvement in terms of intra-regional academic engagement. Most Southeast Asian higher education systems are actively engaged in transnational and international activities, such as student and staff mobility through programmes like the ASEAN University Network and  Asian International Mobility for Students (AIMS). However, data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) shows that only five of the 10 ASEAN countries have a fellow ASEAN country among the top three destinations for students who study abroad. Additionally, intra-ASEAN collaboration across 13 major universities in ASEAN was reported to constitute only 10 to 20 per cent of the total transnational collaborations of these institutions.

Beyond people and institutional exchanges, the Common Space also seeks to promote regional knowledge exchanges. Yet, a bibliometric analysis of 30 ASEAN universities between 2009 and 2013 revealed that intra-ASEAN collaboration in research publications is significantly lower than global and intra-national collaboration. In other words, Southeast Asian higher educational institutions actively engage externally beyond their national systems but less with their immediate neighbours. The Common Space should catalyse a shift for greater intra-regional academic engagement, given that these exchanges are crucial in developing cultural affinities necessary for an ASEAN identity.

Third, there needs to be a deeper commitment to provide higher education “from the region, for the region”. This has been minimal thus far. Southeast Asia has attracted significant foreign interest in its higher education development. This is due to the colonial heritage of many Southeast Asian systems, coupled with the region’s growing middle class and youth population. But most regional initiatives have been initiated or funded by foreign countries, including the EU-SHARE project by the European Union between 2015-2022, which paved the way for the Common Space.

Furthermore, while transnational education in Southeast Asia has been on the rise where foreign institutions have established a strong presence in the region through branch campuses and joint ventures, intra-region transnational endeavours remain few and far between. As many transnational endeavours are foreign investments, a lack of intra-regional endeavours may imply a lower economic preference to invest in or to attract investment from neighbouring countries. The joint declaration should reiterate a commitment to prioritising neighbours in Southeast Asia over foreign partners from afar, in both the educational and economic dimensions.

The joint declaration at the ministerial level of ASEAN and SEAMEO is an important step to demonstrate a commitment to collaboration. The holy grail for Southeast Asian higher education systems is a harmonised regional area akin to the European Higher Education Area, where students, staff and graduates can be mobile in a common and coherent higher education space. But there remain significant challenges. The Common Space is a step in the right direction, but much more can be done to surmount some of the challenges.

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