77education systems, which tend to support Yeo’s institutional and networked region-
alism argument.
As presented in Fig. 5.1, UNESCO’s 1983 Asia-Pacific Regional Convention on
the Recognition of Qualification in Higher Education together with ASEAN, which
established the ASEAN University Network (AUN) and the AUN-quality assurance
network (AUN-QA) in 1995 and 2000, respectively, and SEAMEO, particularly
through SEAMEO-RIHED, is the core of East Asian regionalization of higher edu-
cation. Although guided in part by European higher education developments, the
abovementioned institutions and their higher education initiatives have advanced
contemporary East Asian regionalization of higher education. Along with other
institutions, such as the Asia Pacific Quality Assurance Network (APQN) and the
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), networks (e.g., University Mobility
for the Asia Pacific (UMAP)), and the Australian-led Brisbane Communiqué, East
Asian regionalization of higher education initiatives has focused on student mobil-
ity, quality assurance, mutual recognition, and harmonizing academic systems
toward establishing a regional higher education area. The scope and boundaries of
this regional higher education area, however, remain vague to date with its evolution
being shaped by extra-regional forces. These extra-regional forces include the
European Union, which launched and supported the 9.6 million Euro project “the
European Union Support to Higher Education in ASEAN Region (EU SHARE)” for
the period 2015–2018, and the Asia-Europe Meeting education dialogues. In spite
of this brief overview of East Asian regionalization of higher education, Fig. 5.1 and
Table 5.1 should be able to give a bird’s eye view of the process and the various
related initiatives being undertaken.
With the abovementioned contextual differences between European and East
Asian regionalism established, it is appropriate to dwell into the definition of region-
alization of higher education and the conceptual frameworks that will inform our task
in mapping the development of regionalization of higher education research in Asia.
Stressing that regionalization is an intentional ongoing and evolutionary process
built on existing and new relationships and activities by diverse actors, Knight
Fig. 5.1 East Asian regionalization of higher education (Source: Chao 2014a)
5 Regionalism, Regionalization of Higher Education, and Higher Education Research...