Higher education regionalization in East and Southeast Asia

Higher education regionalization (HER), a trend of closer collaboration between higher education actors within their own world region, is gaining increasing momentum in global higher education. The most salient example is the Bologna Process in Europe, resulting in an array of research focusing on Europe. Yet, while HER initiatives are also happening worldwide in Asia, Latin America and Africa, understanding of these regions is limited. Moreover, literature on HER tends to focus on how regional and national level policies are implicated in HER, thereby neglecting the link between HER and global dynamics in higher education. Using university memberships in regional university association worldwide as an example, this webinar will unpack how HER is a global trend not just from regional and national policy perspective, but also from an organizational perspective. Furthermore, it will zoom in on university perspectives in East and Southeast Asia using the decolonial lens to examine how HER in East and Southeast Asia is closely linked to power dynamics in global higher education rooted in transhistorical colonialism. In doing so, the presentation will identify the opportunities and challenges of decolonizing global higher education and invite future research to unpack the underlying rationales of HER in the Global South from a global and critical perspective.