Challenges and possibilities of regional collaboration in East Asian higher education

In recent years, regional collaborations in higher education have been widely promoted around the world, as a basis for sharing of resources, conducting research into common problems and more broadly developing a sense of regional identity. The growth of regional collaboration among East Asian systems of higher education has been much anticipated. Despite substantial policy rhetoric, however, evidence-based analyses of actual collaborative practices among universities in China, Japan and South Korea are scant. This study seeks to provide an account of such practices by focusing on the challenges and possibilities of regional collaboration in East Asian higher education. It is based on data drawn primarily from document analysis and semi-structured interviews with executive leadership, academics and international strategy staff at eleven universities participating in two major programs of regional collaboration in East Asia: CAMPUS Asia and BESETOHA. Analysis of the data collected suggests that despite numerous challenges emanating from major cultural, economic and political differences across the three systems, the universities in East Asia remain optimistic about the possibility of increased levels of collaboration. Their optimism appears to rest on a common perception about the need to collaborate in order to meet the growing pressures of globalisation. Also significant is their inclination to focus on their abundant historical and cultural commonalities, along with their geographical adjacency, rather than on their differences. However the differences relating to competition over resources, historical suspicion and struggle for political supremacy remain. At this stage, small-scale trilateral networks of academic collaboration appear more feasible than the development of a stronger sense of regional identity, beyond the merely symbolic