Cultivating Talented Individuals

Social Integration and Networking

Cultivating Talented Individuals:Support Scheme:Support Scheme for Presentation at International Conference, etc. (for student)

Yeeyoung HONG / Istanbul, Turkey

2010.07.09

Affiliation: GASPS
Year: D1
Name: Yeeyoung HONG
Itinerary: June/9/2010 - June/17/2010(Month/Date/Year)

Destination (Name of city and country)

Istanbul, Turkey

Research objectives

The main objective of this research trip is to attend the 14th World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) as a presenter which was held from 14th to 18th June 2010 at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.

Research project

For Japan, Asia has become a major partner region in political and economic aspects as well as in education cooperation such as university agreements or student exchanges. Japanese universities are accepting the increased number of students from Asian countries and a part of these students are supported under international cooperation projects for not only conventional study abroad programs but also for "cross-border (or international) collaborative degree programs" (e.g. twinning, sandwich, double/joint or combined degree programs). Some Japanese universities are also establishing double/joint degree programs as a part of their internationalization strategies. As compared with a conventional way of accepting foreign students, these collaborative programs are less active until now, but they are expected to be more active in future by leading universities of Asia, including Japan. In Europe, there are some prior surveys and researches to inform about the situation of collaborative programs within Europe region or between North America and Europe. However, only limited research exists for Asia to our current knowledge. This paper mainly uses the data come from the original dataset of a survey for cross-border collaborative degree programs, conducted by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency Research Institute (JICA-RI) in 2009/2010. This paper has two research purposes as below.

  1. To analyze the current situation of cross-border collaborative degree programs in Asia region. (ASEAN plus five countries: Japan, China, Korea, Australia and New Zealand),
  2. To compare the characteristics and attitude of Japanese universities with all Asian universities how they perceive cross-border collaborative degree programs.

Using an original survey, this paper aims to describe Japanese universities' distinct roles in enhancing regional collaboration and integration. It will analyze current characteristics of Japanese universities' programs in comparison with Asian universities' programs, and then universities'views on these programs in terms of the excepted outcomes and challenges.



Achievement

I gave a presentation entitled "Cross-border education of Japanese universities: Active collaboration within the East Asia region" at Higher education: Cross-border supply session. I presented preliminary data from 1000 collaborative degree programs survey which is an on going project at JICA. While answering questions and receiving valuable comments regarding my presentation, I was able to obtain the knowledge and ideas on how to design further analysis. It was also a very fruitful time to share the opinions and to network with other scholars with similar academic interest.

The theme of 14th WCCES was "Bordering, Re-Bordering and New Possibilities in Education and Society". The conference consisted of many keynote lectures and much diversified sessions related to all kinds/levels of education such as primary, higher, language, and teacher training education. It also focused on the current issues regarding education with many countries' case studies. I mainly attended sessions related to internationalization of higher education and education development/aid, because I was thinking of developing this paper with more focus on Japanese universities role of public good. Compare to CIES which I attended last March, there were less sessions about higher education or international student exchange. There were, however, a few sessions about higher education and regionalization where I was able to hear good discussions on this topic and also exchange information with scholars who were interested in regional integration of higher education in the context of Europe or Latin America.

Since this was one of the biggest conferences in education field, I was able to catch a general trend of international higher education study with broad perspective.

Finally, I greatly appreciate the support of GIARI for providing me with this wonderful opportunity.



Confirmed by person in charge of project promotion

Academic Adviser: Prof. Kazuo KURODA

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