Conceptualizing and Researching Student Mobilities in East Asia

The purpose of this paper is to highlight a data driven approach (from three year project which collected data from nine universities in five countries China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore) to discuss key issues related to conceptualizing and researching international higher education student mobilities to this region. These issues are the political and economic context in which universities operated, the motivations and aspirations of international students, the different organizations involved in driving and facilitating international student mobility, and considerations for an effective research design to study student mobility.

Abstract_The purpose of this paper is to highlight a data driven approach (from

three year project which collected data from nine universities in five countries [China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore]) to discuss key issues related to con- ceptualizing and researching international higher education student mobilities to this region These issues are the political and economic context in which universi- ties operated, the motivations and aspirations of international students, the different organizations involved in driving and facilitating international student mobility, and considerations for an effective research design to study student mobility

Keywords_ International Student Mobility, Tertiary Education, Universities, Asia,

Research Design

This essay is based on an earlier paper presented at the international conference on “Study Abroad and Transnational Mobility: Policy and Practice”, organized by the Center for Multiculturalism and Social Policy, Daegu University, 14 June 2019, Daegu, South Korea

* National University of Singapore, Department of Sociology and the Asia Research Institute, Associate Professor, sochokc@nus.edu.sg

Conceptualizing and Researching Student Mobilities

Asia” was conducted from September 2009 to November 2012 Mixed method proach was employed for collecting comprehensive data Over 4,000 international students hosted by nine universities in five Asian countries were surveyed About

ap-198 international students, 86 university officials and 86 alumni were interviewed

In terms of geographical coverage, the sample includes nine universities (National University of Singapore, Tokyo University, Osaka University, Asia Pacific Univer-sity, Renmin University, Sun Yat-sen University, Seoul National University, Korea University and National Taiwan University) located in five countries (Singapore, Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan respectively) I take a retrospective look

by drawing from several key papers which is derived from data collected from this project

The period 2009 to 2012 was a critical moment for all the universities we ied With the exception of Asia Pacific University, the other eight universities are flagship universities coming into terms with the need to respond to pressures staying relevant in an increasingly global education system Ishikawa (2009: 7), for example, talked about the need for Japanese universities to away from their orientations as national universities to respond to competition for reputation and for international students And so the project captured the response of Asia’s top universities from the viewpoints of their officials and the voices of international students who were among the first to experience the wave of internationalization The opportunity provided by the conference organized by the Center for Multicul-turalism and Social Policy, Daegu University on “Study Abroad and Transnational Mobility: Policy and Practice”, allows for a chance to relook some of the key papers

stud-we published from this project in the light of new research in this field, and a look

at the methods we used compared to some of the alternatives deployed by ers studying this growing field

research-2 Understanding the Host Country Context to

International Student Mobilities

Student mobilities are shaped by national agendas in economic and political development of the hosting countries In terms of economic development, the countries of East Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore) are in a late industrial phase The national economic development narrative has been to grow the econo-

my through research and development In the book titled “Student Mobilities and International Education in Asia: Emotional Geographies of Knowledge Spaces” co-authored with Ravinder Sidhu and Brenda Yeoh, I compiled in chapter 2 of the book, two tables which reflect this state of development

Table 1, which shows the research and development expenditure as percentage of GDP presents one indicator of the commitment to innovative activities Based on

Table 1 Research and development expenditure (% of GDP)

China Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) Japan Korea, Rep Singapore

https://www.statista.com/statistics/324700/taiwan-randd-spending-as-research and development share, it is clear that Korea and Japan are major spenders

in Asia, with China, a more recent late developer catching up A related indicator

is the researcher share in the labour market which is an indication of the priority,

in terms of the labor engaged in innovative activities Again, it is clear that Korea is the leader, with Taiwan being a close second in the employment of researchers Through R and D alliances, applied innovation funding, key research universities are implicated in attempts to work with companies to develop new products Inter-national students, especially those in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and

Table 2 Researchers Total, per 1 000 employed, 1996- 2014

Mathematics) graduate programmes become part of the research labour cultivated

to grow national economies (Ge and Ho 2018) I think this is a pattern peculiar to our universities being late developers in international education Our universities are unlikely to attract significant shares of international students worldwide How-ever, given our expertise in applied sciences, the international students who enrol at our universities choose applied sciences They are more likely to choose our univer-sities for applied sciences because of the strong knowledge transfers resulting from the collaborative partnerships between universities and industries and how these transfers take the form of company internships for students and in the form of in-dustry partners teaching in the classrooms Additionally, the prospect of relevant and cutting edge industrial attachments, a key component of applied science learn-ing, are readily available Knowledge transfers and industrial attachments are the result of a close working relationship between academia and industry This relation-ship is shaped by a number of elements: state funding to encourage collaborations, specific alliances between university researchers or university research institutes and companies aimed at product development, and company-built research facilities in university campuses Other possibilities also exist Shen’s (2018) study of overseas doctoral attachments show the value to these students in terms of help by host su-pervisors to advancing research knowledge and even life lessons

Politically, the governments of East Asia, in different degrees, use education and training aid as a way of influencing and developing good relationships with neigh-bours in Pacific Asia and beyond From the host country perspective, the use of higher education in international relations has been viewed as a form of soft power (Altbach and Peterson 2008; Trilokekar 2010) Such a perspective highlight the ability of a host country’s universities to take global academic leadership by virtue

of its reputation (Altbach and Petersen 2008: 52), see ISM as a result created by a pipeline of education and training aid (Wu 2019), and see the international student alumnus as ambassadors of the host country (Lomer 2017a; 2017b) Thus from a soft power perspective, the reputation of the hosting country works to draw inter-national students and the training and education aid provided enables international

student mobility (ISM) flows, particularly from poorer countries The long term benefit of such flows work to the benefit of hosting countries as returning students and alumnus play the role of ambassadors and bridges between the host and home countries

North America and Europe a history of colonialism which has created a strong neo-colonial imagination attracting students from these former colonies (Collins et

al 2014) These regions of the first world also have an earlier history of ization and economic development, driving the world-wide appeal of its universities

industrial-to aspiring students By contrast, Asian universities are late comers in the race industrial-to tract international students It is important here to understand that no matter how international a reputation universities in Asia have, at this point in time, the bulk of their international students will be from Asia (Ho 2014a)

at-The regional character of foreign student movements into Asian universities can be deduced from columns 5 (top three sending countries) and 6 (% from top sender) of Table 3 This is data from the UNESCO global flow of Tertiary students database, based on country data collected in 2018 And although there is no infor-mation from China, Singapore and Taiwan, the information provided by Japan and South Korea shows that the top three sending countries are from within East and Southeast Asia Japan’s top three sending countries are China, Vietnam and South Korea, while the Korea’s top three are China, Vietnam and Mongolia Further-more, China emerges as the top sender in both Japan and South Korea, accounting for 48% of the international students in Japan and 42% of the students in Korea respectively

Shifting the scale of analysis from country to university, columns 1, 3 and 4

of Table 3 shows eight of the universities sampled in the Globalizing Universities and International Student Mobilities (GUISM) which are from China (Renmin University and Sun Yat Sen University), Japan (University of Tokyo and Osaka University), Singapore (NUS/National University of Singapore), South Korea (Ko-rean University and Seoul National University) and Taiwan (National Taiwan Uni-versity) These eight universities as flagship universities of their respective countries

appear in the Times Higher Education World Universities Ranking 2020 In terms

of total student enrolments, these universities all boast of very large student bodies, exceeding 20,000 students What is more interesting is how these eight universities show very different international student proportions Highest international stu-dent proportion is NUS in Singapore, where its use of English (Foong et al 2014) and Singapore’s reputation as an international city attracts many international stu-dents And while the proportions vary between the national universities in the five countries in East and Southeast Asia, the potential is there for universities to create

a stronger regional consciousness among young people to travel to study, and also move to work within Asia Thus, it is important to understand how universities in Asia, through their practices and student formed networks play a role in shaping Asia

Table 3 International student characteristics University

Name Country

Total student enrolment (THE) 1

2020 % national Stu- dents (THE) 1

Inter-top three sending countries to the host country (UNESCO) 2

% from top sender (UNESCO) 2

missing data missing data

2 UNESCO Global Flow of Tertiary students: http://uis.unesco.org/en/uis-student-flow

3 Understanding the Determinants of International

Moving abroad for education adds to the responsibilities In addition to ing, new responsibilities such as managing finances, and possibly holding down part time employment come with study abroad Such experiences become more meaningful when analysed from a lifecourse perspective As young people, inter-national education migrants may find such new experiences, defining critical mo-ments (Thompson et al 2002; Patiniotis and Holdsworth 2006) in their lives This

study-is all the more so when moving abroad results in a receding everyday dependence

on a set of home-based relations, practices and encounters and the cultivation of

new set of host-based relations, knowledges and routines On the nature of social support networks among international students, an early work by Furnham (1997: 19) highlight the three types: close co-national networks, a secondary bi-cultural network with hosts functioning to support instrumental aspirations of students and integration into host city and society, and a third multicultural network about international students that often involve the recreational life of students The stu-dent role that young people have abroad not only allows for navigation in campus, but more significantly in host cities and host societies Thinking about the self formation process among international students, Marginson (2014) highlights the compressed time frame in which this process occurs, note that it is not necessary a bi-cultural process of home and host, but a multicultural, hydrid process given the nature of the campus and of the city, and points to the importance of the agency of the student in bridging this process

Study abroad is an opportunity to accumulate experiences away from home Brooks, Waters and Pimlott-Wilson (2012: 27, 32) highlighted the need to pay attention to the experiences of students studying overseas and how this is an em-bodied experience that is tied to the contexts which the students are embedded in For youths, going to the university involves the assumption of a set of new respon-sibilities but also the expectation of social life (Hopkins 2006) Cities play a role

in the shaping of international student experience in two ways In terms of student choices, studies have noted that students do not just play attention to the reputation

of the programmes they are interest in, they also consider the attractions of sity locations These attractions include the city’s night life (Veloutsou et al 2004: 164), whether the city offers amenities which students will find exciting (Mazzarol and Soutar 2002: 87; Meer 1992: 151-152)

univer-Within this youth training and experience seeking context, study choice are shaped by both academic (reputations of universities and programmes) and also social interests (the social and cultural life of host cities) In the age of globalization and mobility, academic reputations has emerged as the key resource as this signal of quality, defined by ranking agencies, and reinforced by a variety of university “best

practices”, key alliances, guides the aspirations and shapes the decisions of youths around the world as they prepare to further studies What is less well understood

in the higher education literature is that in addition to educational aspirations and

a set of social aspirations of youths to broaden their experiential lives Our study includes universities in 8 different Asian cities in five countries What is revealing from the international student surveys in these eight cities is how foreign students studying in these cities value different attributes of the culture of cities For exam-ple, international students in Taipei and Beppu find the locals to be friendly Taipei and Beijing stand out in terms of the ease for students as young people to find a social group to share their interest Singapore is noted by international students as having good tolerance or ethnic and religious differences

Figure 1 provides three indicators of the social environment in the city While international students spend much time within the campus in class or in their dor-mitories, the city is an important place for international students in their attempts

to learn more about the culture of the host society and in their quest to collect experiences Thus, in this regard, being in a wider urban culture which is tolerant

of diversities is important, as is a friendly urban society Young people must also be able to find peers who share similar interests The eight sites provide some interest-

Figure 1 City Evaluations: Social Environment

Source: GUISM survey data

2.05 3.13 2.78

Transportation in (City) Exciting lifestyle in (City)

Things to see and do in (City)

ing lessons about hosting international students Beppu, the small town where Asia Pacific University is very friendly as the town welcome young people as a supple-ment to its aging population However, being a small town, youths have difficulties finding friends who share similar interests Taipei, where National Taiwan Univer-sity is located, fares the best in all three social indicators

Figure 2 shows three amenities which are important to international students, public transport to get around, things to do when they are not studying or work-ing, and a generally exciting urban culture There are important lessons to learn which derives from Japan and China Three of our samples come from Japan, aside from Asia Pacific University in Beppu, we surveyed students from Osaka University and University of Tokyo In the Chinese case, we surveyed Renmin international students in Beijing and Sun Yat Sen University students in Guangzhou In both countries, the best infrastructure is in the capital cities (Tokyo and Beijing) The second large city (Osaka and Guangzhou) does not fare as well in the eyes of the international students studying there The difference is especially clear in the case of Beijing versus Guangzhou Figure 2 also show that other capital cities of Taipei and Seoul also do very well with international students Singapore reveals an interesting contrast International students studying at the National University of Singapore

Figure 2 City Evaluations: Amenities Source: GUISM survey data

Transportation in (City) Exciting lifestyle in (City)

Things to see and do in (City)