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The new Asian destinations
As the international higher education market blooms, more Asian countries are vying for a slice of the lucrative pie.
By Loren Smith
Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing, while famed and wellfunded, aren’ t the only destinations for Asian international students. Sociologist Yasmin Ortiga of the National University of Singapore has highlighted that Vietnam, the Philippines and provincial Chinese cities are increasingly enticing university options for the less privileged.
Writing in Higher Education in Southeast Asia and Beyond, published by The HEAD Foundation, Ortiga notes that lesser-known education-providing countries use similar tactics to those of global cities to attract students: internationalisation and human capital development discourses. Yet practice often doesn’ t match theory.
She refers to the work of Professor Phan Le Ha of the University of Hawaii. Le Ha has studied universities in Vietnam and found that they try to cultivate a‘ global’ image by providing English language courses, despite teachers’ limited proficiency in this regard. This notion is humorously illustrated in Carolyn Shine’ s travelogue, Single White Female in Hanoi. In it she applies to teach English at Hanoi Global College, TESOL certificate in hand, whereupon one of its employees remarks:“ I’ ve never seen an actual TESOL certificate before.”
But this deficiency doesn’ t stop two-way migration flows to Vietnamese universities: of teachers from neighbouring countries, and of students from rural areas. As a result, Le Ha concludes, students feel dissatisfied with, yet resigned to, their middling education.
Another example of lesser-known pan-Asian study is that of Indians doing medicine and surgery degrees in regional China. Peidong Yang’ s research on this topic challenges the assumption that international education is always social mobility-focused and directed at the“ English-speaking West”. Similar to the Vietnam case study, Yang, a lecturer at the National Institute of Education, Singapore, ascertained that up to 10,000 lower and middle‐class Indians pursue these relatively low-status degrees due to resignation – they simply can’ t afford to go elsewhere, and therefore are complicit in their‘ mediocre’ experience.
Ortiga’ s own research reveals an additional, on-the-ground international education experience. Manila, in the Philippines, has also seen an influx of international students, mostly from South Korea, Nigeria and India. Unlike Vietnam and regional China, however, students go to the Philippines because they are motivated to“ secure qualifications in professions where Filipino migrants are highly represented – nursing, medicine and seafaring – either to gain an advantage within their home countries, or as a stepping stone towards jobs in the Middle East and North America,” Ortiga says. Therefore, also in contrast to Vietnam and China, Filipino universities market themselves to foreign students not as‘ global’ institutions designed to enhance social mobility, but as avenues to offshore jobs.
Additionally, last year the Philippines expanded its international education offerings even further: 10 of its universities began partnerships with UK universities, and it signed a memorandum of understanding with Russia to increase academic exchange and one with New Zealand to initiate mutual qualification recognition. So, Singapore, Hong Kong and top-tier Chinese cities may indeed be competing with an Asian neighbour for a certain class of international student in the future. ■
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