The ASEAN
Economic Community (AEC) provides a wealth of opportunities of integration,
collaboration and competitiveness among higher education institutions within
the ASEAN regions; yet challenges that need to be confronted abound.
The major
consequence brought about by the free flow of goods, services and labor within
the merging regions is certainly professional and skilled human resources that
are poised to face economic competitiveness and to engage in a strategic
partnership.
For this
reason, education, especially tertiary education, is critical for supporting
the missions of the AEC –political and economic stability, inclusive growth and
shared prosperity, and equity to employability.
Tertiary
education has been widely perceived as the core where knowledge-based economies
are often sought. And, it is also used as an indicator for employability and
for higher-income-jobs.
The
merging of the ASEAN regions in the educational sectors is indicative of the
exponential rates of the regional multinational education in the country. On a
positive note, this offers plenty of opportunities for local higher education
institutions in strengthening their quality standards and accelerating their
ways to go international. For instance, research networking can be created
between the centers of academic excellence in the country with those in the
other fellow ASEAN countries. Student and teacher exchanges can be initiated to
boost the quality of human capitals of local education institutions.
Also,
academic cooperation in the forms of scholarship provisions, staff development,
regional and international symposiums, and joint scholarly publication can be
promoted to enhance the academic standards and services to the community.
Clearly,
the benefit that can be reaped via this collaboration is the leveraging of
skills, knowledge, and innovation among academia in both the country’s higher
education institutions and those in the other ASEAN countries. No less
important, academic collaboration can help raise cross-cultural sensitivity and
awareness of different identities of the ASEAN members.
Political will
While
these opportunities can be afforded through arduous efforts, strong commitment
and political will, several persistent challenges confronted by the local
higher learning institutions need to be addressed here.
To begin
with, our quality education professionals are still low compared to those in
such countries as Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. In terms
of international research publications, for instance, we still lag far behind
these countries.
Closely
related to this is the lack of proficiency in communicating in English (both
orally and in written form), which in turn impedes local education
professionals to engage continuously in scholarly discussions with
professionals from the other ASEAN countries. Considered as the language of
international business, the language of technology and the lingua franca within
the ASEAN regions, English ought to be learned and mastered for interactive
communication to occur.
Another
challenge is that most higher education institutions tend to detach themselves
from society, and shy away from the ongoing social dialogue with social
partners such as industry sectors and trade unions. This tendency can be seen
in the design of curriculum, which is less integrative with the needs and
demands of the private sector.
In the
context of the ASEAN Economic Community, such a de-linking can eventually
create a yawning gap between the skills and knowledge obtained in classroom and
the skills and knowledge needed by private industries. Clearly, this is more
harmful rather than beneficial for higher learning institutions.
It is
important to note that qualification standards are not fixed and determined
solely by learning institutions. Rather they are adaptive, in constant change,
and are always informed by the private industries in terms of what skills are
needed in the specific contexts.
It is not
surprising to hear that many industry sectors often find higher education
graduates not having the right skills needed in the real workplace environment.
Due to these skill mismatches, they are not readily employable.
Thus, to
keep abreast with the mutable qualification standards, higher learning institutions
and training institutions need to align themselves with industry sectors.
Through such an alignment, skill mismatches can be minimized and reduced.
Finally,
the greatest challenge perhaps lies in the preparedness in building coherent
regional qualification frameworks for assessing and comparing skill acquisition
and regional quality-assurance frameworks. These two frameworks are needed in
order to measure the success and failure of academic collaboration among the
universities in the ASEAN region.
To
overcome these challenges, local higher education institutions need to create
viable strategic plans and to set up priorities that address the above
challenges in their educational policy. To work effectively, both these plan
and priorities should tap into the changing demands of not only local but also
regional communities.
Setiono
Sugiharto
The
writer teaches at the English Department, Faculty of Education and Language,
Atma Jaya Catholic University,
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