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JICA-RI Presents Its Latest Findings on East Asia's Higher Education at Major Academic Conference in Canada

2011.05.25

DayMay 02, 2011(Mon) - May 04, 2011(Wed)
PlaceMontreal, Canada

Since October 2008, research fellow Takako Yuki and visiting research fellow Kazuo Kuroda’s team has conducted research extensively on the trends and effectiveness of cross-border higher education activities in East Asia and their contribution to the regionalization of higher education systems. With the completion of the research project around the corner, they have been actively disseminating the findings to a broad audience, mainly education experts, and relevant officials from governments, international organizations and development agencies. [Read the article on their Bangkok workshop.] As a most recent effort, Yuki and Kuroda gave presentations at Comparative International Education Society (CIES) Conference in Montreal, Canada.

CIES Conference is annually organized by a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization with an aim to promote cross-cultural understanding and scholarship by studying educational practices. An average of 1,250 people such as education experts worldwide and international agencies’ officials attends yearly, making it the largest among academic conferences that cover educational issues related to developing countries. This year, nearly 600 program sessions on a wide variety of topics (Yuki describes the diversity “an academic shopping mall”) were held during May 1-5, 2011, providing an opportunity for researchers to exchange thoughts, network with fellow scholars, and keep up on what’s the latest in the world of education.

The JICA-RI team made presentations in two higher education sessions on May 2 and 4 and received a positive reaction respectively. In the first session, they shared the analysis from the survey results collected from 300 leading universities in East Asia, particularly on the universities’ perceptions of partner region in cross-border interregional programs. Here, Yuki and Kuroda pointed out the need to develop some kind of a cooperative framework with North America in regard to the framework-building. Currently, the team is revising their working paper on this subject for future publication in an academic journal. [Read Working Paper No.26 "Cross-Border Higher Education for Regional Integration: Analysis of the JICA-RI Survey on Leading Universities in East Asia."]

Prof Kuroda CIES2011 PICT0001 amended.JPG

Visiting research fellow Kazuo Kuroda

For the second session on “Partnerships in higher education,” the team presented the survey results on the cross-border collaborative higher education degree programs at the above-mentioned universities in the region. They specifically focused on the expected outcomes and the challenges of those programs. There were comments and questions from researchers surveying similar schemes in Europe, U.S., and China.

Kuroda says “While there exists a bigger interest in basic education, we could feel that the research on higher education is increasing as reflected in the number of sessions at the conference. Both of our sessions were joined by people keen to discuss this agenda.” According to Yuki, the conference included a session on higher education by the Asian Development Bank, and many more on its trends in regions such as Europe and U.S. by other groups.

With the feedback and comments gathered at the conference, Yuki and Kuroda plan to tweak the research papers and prepare them for publication in the near future.

Related Research Area: Aid Strategies

Related Research Project: Analysis of Cross-Border Higher Education for Regional Integration and Labor Market in East Asia