When EU-Asia relations are academic

When ASEM ministers sit down to consider their achievements over the past ten years, educational exchange is one area where they can be pleased with progress. High-level initiatives such as a declaration on education goals and meetings of education ministers may not have been realised, but much has been achieved in building links between universities in ASEM member states.

Education falls under what is designated as a third dimension of ASEM’s activities, social and cultural dialogue (the first two are the political and economic).

But the desire to promote higher education co-operation also comes from a concern that Europe is losing out to the US in its educational contacts and exchanges with Asia. The aim, therefore, has been to encourage networking between academics and increase student exchanges.

ASEM’s Asia-Europe Foundation, based in Singapore, has established an education hub which provides information to prospective exchange students and co-ordinates a network of 27 institutions offering exchange scholarships. It also runs an annual summer school for around 40 students, alternating between Asia and Europe.

A separate initiative is ASEM-Duo, a programme of exchange fellowships for university students and teachers. ASEM members have to opt into the scheme, so exchanges are biased towards the active participants: Korea, Singapore, France, Denmark and, from this year, Thailand. Nevertheless, it is not unusual for a round of grants to support 20 or 30 pairs of exchanges, involving a wide range of ASEM nations.

Meanwhile ASEM has also fostered the development of a high-speed computer network linking Asia and Europe (see below).

The EU has also been trying to attract the brightest Asian students, introducing targeted funding into the Erasmus Mundus student exchange scheme. Of the ASEM nations, China has seen the greatest response, with incoming students rising from 12 in 2004-05 to 85 the following year and 180 in 2006-07. Over the same period, the number of incoming Chinese academics supported by the scheme has risen from three to 38. Meanwhile, students coming from Thailand and Malaysia have risen from nothing to 67 and 57 respectively.

This work on exchanges is complemented by the Asia Link programme, which supports partnerships between institutions to develop new curricula and ways of teaching. Since 2002, it has funded 155 partnerships that together involve over 700 universities.

Although education exchange has been a successful part of ASEM’s first decade, several question marks hang over where it goes from here.

The 2004 ASEM summit renewed the commitment to ASEM-Duo, extending it to 2010, but it also moved to rein in the Asia-Europe Foundation. Concerns had been voiced that it was not responsive enough to ministerial priorities and that its initiatives duplicated other work. It was also told to favour network-building over grant-giving.

This new direction is reflected in its most recent education initiative, European Studies in Asia, launched in January this year. This aims to create synergies between European study centres in Europe and Asia and strengthen interaction between existing Asian networks. While Asian studies in European universities are considered well-developed, the opposite is not the case.

On the EU side universities are waiting to hear if there will be a replacement for the ASEAN-EU University Network Programme.

In 2002 and 2003 this distributed €4.35 million to co-operation projects in applied research, curriculum and human resource development, involving more than 100 universities.

While these projects are still being implemented, there are no plans to continue the programme.

Shrinking the world

While ASEM’s education initiatives have emphasised meetings and exchanges, one of its biggest achievements makes travelling redundant. The Trans-Eurasia Information Network provides a high-speed computing network for education and research between the Asia-Pacific countries, and links to Europe’s own network, Géant.

This means that a French lecturer can teach medical students in Cambodia without leaving Paris, and that climate researchers can share data rapidly enough to respond to events such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The Tein project began in 2001 with a network linking France and Korea. This was progressively upgraded, and with €10 million EU funding expanded from 2004 to cover the whole region. Tein2 allows researchers in Europe and Asia to conduct more sophisticated scientific experiments, gives them access to digital libraries and geographically-dispersed databases and lets them share remote scientific instruments, Tein2 also achieves one of ASEM’s strategic goals, providing a direct connection between Europe and Asia without having to go through computer networks in the US.

• Ian Mundell is a freelance journalist based in Brussels

When ASEM ministers sit down to consider their achievements over the past ten years, educational exchange is one area where they can be pleased with progress. High-level initiatives such as a declaration on education goals and meetings of education ministers may not have been realised, but much has been achieved in building links between universities in ASEM member states.