Rising Asia – a reason to embrace change

Educators focus on rise of India and China as international education map morphs. A recurring theme at this year’s Australian International Education Conference has been the rise of China and India. Two countries, each home to more than a billion people, that are rapidly climbing the development ladder looking for a better life – and the way they’re getting there is through education. It’s an opportunity that Australia cannot miss, speakers told the conference, held in Adelaide last week. Both China and India enjoy spectacular growth, making their people more mobile. “This transformed the region in which Australia is located,” said Professor Fazal Rizvi of the University Melbourne. “There is a deep cultural anxiety in both India and China about the changes taking place and how education might play a role in steering and shaping those changes.” Dr Michael Wesley, executive director of the Lowy Institute, pitched an image of the future that saw “a world where the most vibrant centres of popular culture are not New York, London, Los Angeles or Paris – but Mumbai, Seoul, Shanghai and Saigon” where people from around the world flocked to work. It was not so unlikely; China, he pointed out, has increased its spending on research and development by 20 per cent a year since 1999. Australia needed to think about the future of its higher education sector not just in terms of attracting students from overseas, but in creating students who would be competitive internationally in the future. “I think Australian education needs to wake up to what is happening to our world and seriously reorient,” said Wesley. In India, a booming population will require the equivalent of at least 1500 new universities in the coming years, said Professor Armitabh Mattoo, the director of the University of Melbourne’s Australia India Institute, providing an enormous opportunity for the Australian international education sector. “Where will they get the faculty from? Where will they get the resources? You can’t do it internally,” he said. The University of Melbourne’s Simon Marginson said the rise of smaller Asian countries such as South Korea and Singapore, was also worth watching, although the entire region was opening up. “Like most people who engage in the region, I’ve been quite stunned by what I’ve seen,” he said. “[In a few years] a lot of the world’s knowledge will be created there.” “All these countries have great importance for us in terms of our higher education and research system, but what does it mean for Australia? Clearly it’s going to be transformative for the environment,” he said. It was important not to approach competition in the international education sector as a “zero sum game” in which there was one winner and one loser, said Marginson. “In the fields of communications and culture, the scenarios are mostly a positive sum. In education and research, while there is clearly contestation in the international market, there’s a fair bit of room there for China and Japan and others in the region to grow their international education sectors without it being at each other’s expense. There’s a great deal of commonality of knowledge to be had in the exchange of ideas,” he said.