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2008/AEMM/023

PECC Statement

Purpose: Information

Submitted by: PECC

/ 4th APEC Education Ministerial MeetingLima, Peru
10-12 June 2008

PECC Statement

Observers’ Update

APEC Education Ministers’ Meeting

7 June 2008

We thank Ministers and our hosts Peru for this opportunity to update APEC Education Ministers on our work from the second track. We welcome Peru’s broad theme of “A new commitment to the development of the Asia-Pacific” and the central theme of this meeting “Quality Education for All: Achieving 21st Century Competencies and Skills.”

As we have noted in previous updates to APEC, we have undertaken a major overhaul of our activities to focus on a few selected task force activities and on building broader domestic constituencies supportive of Asia Pacific cooperation. We currently have task forces completing work in the areas on the architecture of cooperation, international labor mobility, and educational services.Our work on the “Asia Pacific Education Market” is of particular relevance to your discussions today.

The Asia Pacific Education Market

As APEC strives to implement its regional economic integration agenda, regional cooperation in the management and provision of education will be critical to ensuring that the people of our region are sufficiently well equipped to compete in today’s fast changing global economy.

Fundamental changes taking place in the way education is delivered and organized in the Asia Pacific. The increased internationalization of education presents many challenges to the governments charged with its regulation. For this reason, over the past two years PECC has been working with the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), to address this issue and produce concrete recommendations that can be adopted by both providers and regulators of education in the region to better equip the people of the region with the knowledge and skills to participate in today’s global economy.

We are currently working with our partners in APRU as well as with a high-level panel of advisors representing the government, business and academic sectors to finalize the report. The following are some of the highlights of the issues we have been addressing in our work.

The Globalization of Education

The rapid development and adoption of technology along with more open economies has created an integrated global economy. The globalisation process has brought with it significant changes in all areas of life, including tertiary education. The first wave of the globalisation of tertiary education mostly meant the movements of students across borders. We are now entering the next wave, with the movement of teachers and whole institutions into overseas markets, joint degree programs offered by institutions in different economies, distance learning programs to mention just a few of its characteristics.

Understanding the changes that are taking place and adapting policies to ensure that the region’s peoples are adequately equipped to participate in the global economy and to maximize the benefits of the second phase are critical challenges facing governments, employers, and educational institutions throughout the Asia Pacific.

Trends in the Education Sector

Increased Student Mobility

International student mobility continues to increase significantly. Some forecasts predict that Asia will account for 70 per cent of the volume by 2025. Mobility is a consequence of the combination of the impact of economic growth and structural change on the demand for education, the differences in demographic patterns among the region’s economies, the lack of capacity of students’ home institutions to meet demand, and the established capacities in the developed but ageing economies.

Provider and Program Mobility

In addition to student movement, providers and programs are increasingly mobile. The Asia Pacific accounts for the bulk of the world’s program and institutional mobility. New providers have entered the market, including those operating from a foreign base. They work in new ways. Some offer vocational and specialised services that challenge traditional academic teaching programs that operate jointly with research.

Increasing Role for Private Institutions

Not only are new players entering the market but the types of players are changing as the extent of public provision is diminishing. Tertiary education used to be the domain of public provision, but it is currently undergoing dramatic privatisation. The entry of new and private providers is shifting the government’s primary role from being a provider more to being a regulator that oversees quality assurance.

Issues for Regional Cooperation

Liberalize the Regulatory Environment

As the region enters into the next phase of globalization, attention needs to be paid to the measures governing the provision of educational services. Our findings indicate for example that student-sending economies would send 60 per cent fewer students on average if the barriers to foreign campus establishment were liberalized completely.

Restrictive policies waste opportunities for gains from international exchange. The ability of the GATS to deal with these issues is limited. Some impediments are of a form that GATS does not specify as being required to be listed. Nor is it clear where impediments applying to foreign consumers (i.e., to exports of services) would be scheduled. Further, the GATS approach tends to be mode by mode whereas most education providers are working with packages of modes. A sector-wide convention or model is valuable and could be designed at a regional level.

Encourage Stakeholder Cooperation

Domestic and regional associations can work together to increase the teaching and research capacity of the academic staff in the region. Staff mobility might be one mechanism. Commitment to openness in that mode of supply will be important. This mobility also supports the evaluation of innovation systems across borders.

Develop Regional Best Practices

There are examples of codes of conduct being developed for international delivery, including by UNESCO and the OECD. Some of the voluntary codes are based on global networks. Relevance of these for APEC members can be examined. A review of options and some evaluation of those already available and of the complementary role that might be played by regional academic networks will help accelerate progress to good quality assurance systems that meet global standards in member economies

Improve Data Collection and Availability

Very little valid data exist in developing countries that enable an understanding of how to grow and plan in a manner that encourages strategic planning. In cases where data exist, there are differences in the terms used and the systems for collecting information, including provider coverage. Relationships might be developed to enable systematic cross-border data collection and analysis, as occurs in other international business transactions.

This kind of information will be critical as markets open up and developing economies address issues such as brain drain and the loss of talent. These concerns are heightened when their own public funds are used to pay for the education of the internationalised students.

Analysis of the actual movement of students after graduation, the rate and timing of their return, the distribution of the costs of higher degree education between the home and host economies in the context of research cooperation, the implications for home and host labour markets, and the students’ contribution to the regional community through diaspora effects are all topics for conversation at a regional level to understand the significance of the issue.

Next steps

We will be happy to share the detailed results of our work with you and look forward to hearing your comments on how stakeholders might contribute to the next steps in the decisions you make today.