Comparing European and East Asian Experiences in Higher Education Regionalism

 

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Abstract 
Europe has been trying to converge its higher education systems for the past sixty years.
It created some regional institutions and the graduate level, first the College of Europe 
and, later, the European University Institute. Since the late eighties the European 
Commission has successfully promoted the mobility of students and faculty through the 
Socrates-Erasmus programme. And nowadays, 46 European countries are trying to more 
jointly dynamise all elements of their universities through the so-called Bologna process. 
European universities are also getting ready to work with innovative companies with the 
impetus of a new Institute of Technology. In the meantime, East Asian countries are 
quickly transforming their university systems to be more globally competitive. This 
includes an increasingly noticeable effort to find ways to cooperate within their regions. 
Initial efforts to create linkages in ASEAN countries, and later by linking to America and 
Europe, were rather weak. Yet, in the past few years, a number of political agreements in 
Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and among ASEAN+3 countries include a greater 
exchange of student and faculty. As the process is a difficult one, the role of external 
partners remains important. Noticeable is the effort to create a pan-Asian intellectual 
catalyser by reviving the ancient university of Nalanda in India. 
Keywords
: Higher Education, Europe, Asia, Regionalism 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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