Page 45 - EU_ASEN Relations: Perspectives From Malaysia

Malaysia and the EU─ASEAN Cooperation in

Higher Education

by Azirah Hashim and Yee Chee Leong

Introduction

The mobility of academics and students has been an important feature in higher

education cooperation between ASEAN and the EU. Each year, ASEAN

students and academics travel to the EU countries on education scholarships
and research fellowships through the Erasmus Mundus and Marie Curie

programmes and other EU member states’ scholarships. These exchanges have
generated closer ties and brought about socio-economic impact for both

regions mainly through the Bologna process in European higher education.
This process has created both the European Higher Education Area (EHEA)

and the Lisbon Recognition Convention (1997), which are instrumental in

guiding today’s multilateral developments in higher education in ASEAN. An
overview of the EU higher education landscape will provide a better

understanding about the ASEAN-EU cooperation in higher education.

Higher education in the European context

The Bologna Process, named after the University of Bologna, during which the
Bologna declaration was signed in 1999, arose from a series of ministerial

meetings and cooperative agreements between European countries to ensure
comparability and recognition of higher education standards, quality and

qualifications. It was “an example of a successful policy coordination of
national policies and regional cooperation [within and] beyond the European

Union” (Pol, 2015, p. 12). Some of the core values that underpin the

foundations of the Bologna process such as academic freedom, institutional
autonomy, mutual dependency of teaching and research, and the increasing
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