Hong Kong Venue for British Council's Conference Reflects Shifting Trends in Education

By Aisha Labi

Hong Kong

Going Global, the British Council's annual higher-education conference, drew more than 1,000 participants here last week from nearly 70 countries, with a concentration of delegates from Asia, and focused on such topics as efforts to establish regional education hubs, the impact of transnational education, the influence of international rankings, and enhancing the experience of international students.

Taking place outside of Britain for the first time and devoted to the theme "World Education: the New Powerhouse?," the conference was held in a region and city where major changes are having a profound impact on higher education. Much of the discussion over the event's two days, both in the content of the official program but also in conversations among participants, highlighted the shift of the world's economic and education axes toward Asia.

The host city embodies many of the changes that are transforming the region. Hong Kong is in the midst of sweeping curricular changes, in both its secondary- and higher-education systems, and in 2012 will make the transition from three-year to four-year undergraduate degrees.

Like many governments in the region, Hong Kong's is investing heavily in education. Its chief executive, Sir Donald Tsang Yam-Kuen, told participants at the conference's opening session that in the coming year, education spending will total nearly $7-billion and represents his government's "single biggest spending priority," accounting for nearly a quarter of its recurrent spending. The generous financing is helping to back the territory's ambitions to become a regional education hub, along with Malaysia, Singapore, and other players in Asia.

Hubs and Branch Campuses

Several of the conference sessions touched on the subject of education hubs, including one devoted to their development in the Middle East.

Another session brought together educators from Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka to discuss their countries' experience in working to transform their higher-education systems into regional hubs. Speakers from the Malaysia University of Technology told the audience that an "Asian model" for establishing hubs has emerged, in which countries are developing national capacity through investment in higher education to import educational "services" from countries with stronger, better-developed education systems, and in turn export those services to systems in the region that are less developed.

Allan Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education, who led that session, emphasized that "none of the regional hubs is limited by a region." Such hubs are often portals to other parts of the world, he said, and thinking about regional hubs needs to be broadened to focus on them as "transnational centers for international education."

Mark Disney, the Malaysia-based chief operating officer of LCCI Asia, a company that offers training and courses in such topics as English and marketing, echoed that sentiment in another session, on the impact of transnational education. "The concept of what constitutes a 'hub' varies enormously," he noted, as do the reasons why governments in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, China, and Vietnam are actively pursuing their establishment.

Transnational education, often involving the establishment of branch campuses by Western universities that are not among their countries' biggest-name institutions, has grown rapidly since the 1980s in many parts of Asia, Mr. Disney said.

Figures released by the British Council to coincide with the conference highlighted the growth of transnational education: They show that there are now more foreign students studying for British degrees outside of Britain than within the country.

The looming increase in tuition rates at universities in England could spur more British students, whose reluctance to venture abroad was frequently invoked at the conference, to take advantage of transnational opportunities in Asia. "For £9,000, you could go to Malaysia, live it up, and get a Nottingham degree," Mr. Disney noted, referring to the maximum rate that universities in England will be allowed to charge beginning in 2012. Western students are actively courted by many of the transnational campuses, he said, because their presence helps to raise the profile of institutions and instill confidence locally.

Other Notable Sessions

The failure of American students, along with their British and Australian counterparts, to study abroad in large numbers was also discussed in a session on "Turning the Tables on International-Student Mobility" that was led by Daniel Stevens, a graduate from Brazil of the University of Warwick who is now president of the student union there.

Although the United States still attracts more foreign students than any other country in the world, it faces many challenges if it is to continue that dominance. Conference-goers explored some of those challenges, including the emergence of regional hubs in parts of the world from which many mobile students originate. Jeesuk Kan, international coordinator in the office of international affairs at Kyung Hee University, in South Korea, noted that many of the students at his university were eager to study abroad and experience American culture. But increasingly, he said, those students were deciding not to study in the United States, where many felt that they were segregated from mainstream campus life along with other international students and often found American students standoffish and difficult to get to know. Instead, they are increasingly opting to study at institutions elsewhere, often in Asia at campuses affiliated with American universities, where the American students they encounter are much more open and internationally minded, he said.

One of the conference's liveliest sessions was devoted to the ever-controversial role of international rankings. John A. Spinks, senior adviser to the vice chancellor at the University of Hong Kong, who chaired the session, noted that his own institution's rise in the rankings has had a direct impact on the enrollment of students from countries in the region, where such tables are especially influential. As soon as his university attained the top spot in Asia, he said, "more of the top schools in India and Korea were interested in sending students to us."

A growing number of higher-education conferences around the world are devoted to themes of globalization, but much of the discussion still revolves around such fundamentals as what exactly the concept entails for institutions, students, and staff members. John Hudzik, vice president for global engagement at Michigan State University and the former president of Nafsa: Association of International Educators, told participants that student mobility and international education are not synonyms for internationalization, although they are essential components of what he termed "comprehensive internationalization." He defined that concept as "commitment and action to infuse international, global, and comparative content and perspective throughout the teaching, research, and service missions of higher education." Putting such a concept in place would require a "paradigm shift" for institutions, he said.

Some conference participants questioned whether Mr. Hudzik's prescriptions amounted to a Rolls-Royce formula for higher education that was ill-fitted to the majority of the world's systems. Mr. Hudzik defended his vision, saying that only by embracing ambitious goals for internationalization and by placing such goals at the core of their institutional missions could higher-education systems realize their full potential.