Calls for an Asean University: the time to think about this is now

Back in 1992, Asean was considering creating a university, but the plan became derailed related to problems concerning location, funding and leadership.

Easier to implement, the Asean University Network (AUN) was created in November 1995. This was a consortium of initially 13 universities formed to foster regional cooperation in higher education in the Asean region.

A major project initiated by AUN from 2007-10 was to assess the quality of 23 undergraduate programmes in seven AUN countries. The idea was to foster standardised quality assurance in higher education in each country.

AUN has grown to 30 institutions, including five from Thailand – Chulalongkorn, Mahidol, Chiang Mai, Prince of Songkla and Burapha.

With the Asean Economic Community set to become operational in December 2015, now is an appropriate time to begin serious thinking about creating a real Asean university that could become a model for excellence for the region.

Here is a vision for such an institution: The basic model is a “school within a school” to save on the need to invest heavily in new infrastructure. There are many attractive campuses in Southeast Asia that could house the new university and its proposed 10 graduate colleges.

Following the Harvard model – a strong liberal arts Harvard College, embedded within a world-class research university – the Asean College would be in one country with 10 graduate colleges, one in each Asean country, focusing on applied Asean-related research and graduate-level training.

Despite the current commercialisation and vocationalisation of higher education across the globe, a genuine liberal arts education with a focus on learning how to learn and becoming a well-rounded individual is even more germane and valuable in a knowledge economy.

Walter Isaacson, director of the visionary Aspen Institute, argues that innovations stem primarily from the creative synthesis of the arts and sciences.

The Asean College would emphasise innovation. Also an integral part of the curriculum would be a core course, the history of Southeast Asian civilisations.

The pedagogies of the new Asean College would be state of the art, emphasising student-centred learning and the use of cutting-edge technologies. Classrooms would be designed to facilitate student-centred cooperative learning and the use of dynamic new learning technologies. Flipped classrooms, a popular new progressive pedagogy, would foster student engagement and empowerment.

Such pedagogies would demonstrate how productivity in higher education can be improved. As part of the liberal arts curriculum, all students would be expected to develop global and intercultural competence.

There would also be a strong emphasis on the development of communication skills with all students taking four years of English and four years of another Southeast Asian language.

The curriculum would cultivate curiosity and creativity, while fostering an appreciation of cultural diversity and the development of multiple intelligences.

A strong emphasis would be put on ethics and moral education. As Martin Luther King said, “Character, that is the true goal of education”.

Given the great value of practical experience, each student would have a six-month internship in an Asean country other than their own.

The college would also have an active college of continuing education to provide online courses to citizens of the region related to the countries and cultures of Asean.

Institutions of higher education would submit proposals to host the new Asean College on their campus.

The 10 graduate colleges would cover business, engineering, humanities and sciences, medicine/public health, agriculture, language pedagogy and linguistics, anthropology/geography/sociology, public policy and administration, education, economics/politics, and communications/journalism.

Each country would be awarded one such college. The economics programme at the National University of Singapore is ranked 18 in the world, so it would be a logical place to host the graduate college of economics and politics.

With its success in medical tourism and institutions such as Mahidol – one of the highly ranked Asian universities – Thailand would be a logical place to house the college of medicine and public health, which also would include sports science and gerontology.

Given the economic wealth of the Southeast Asian region, funding for this new university should not be a problem. The richer countries such as Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia and Thailand should contribute a greater share. 

The private sector and other nations or groups of nations, such as the EU, China, Japan and Australia, would also be asked to contribute.

The region has many talented academics who could lead such an institution, for example, the late Soedjatmoko from Indonesia, who was the able president of the United Nations University from 1980-87. 

The president would serve a four-year term, renewable once. Then leadership would rotate to an individual from another Asean country.

The board of trustees would consist of two representatives from each Asean country.

Students at the undergraduate and/or graduate level would have invaluable intercultural learning experiences and prepare themselves well to assume leadership roles in this dynamic region.

 

Gerald Fry

Professor of international/Intercultural education

College of Education and Human Development

University of Minnesota

[email protected]