Impact of AEC on Education Business in ASEAN Countries: A Cross-National Comparative Analysis

Abstract

ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) has had enormous impacts on all sectors, including education business. This study therefore explored its impacts on higher education (HE) business in ASEAN countries. This study employed a qualitative, interpretive and cross-national comparative analysis of documents. The design of this study involved exploration, interpretation and logical organization of data, document and texts. Two main origins of data in this comparative analysis comprise primary sources and secondary sources. The data collection was compiled through systematic coding process. Reliability, validity check, confirmability, and triangulation were applied.

The results revealed these findings. The significant impacts of AEC are key achievements as a result of the four aspects of AEC (namely moving towards a single market and production base, removing barriers to trade, bolstering productivity, providing MRAs, gearing to a world class investment destination, and strengthening commercial viability). The prospective opportunities of AEC to all business sectors can be seen from the significant increase in theses: normal GDP of the region and each country shares, value and global share of selected indicators of ASEAN economy, the nominal GDP of agriculture, industry and service, and the balancing item from 2010 to 2018. The potential challenges to HE are quality of education (differences in quality of education, quality assessment, quality enhancement, quality of students, quality of the physical and academic infrastructure, student and faculty exchange, integrated education framework, contents of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary studies, research, development of higher education quality and regional approaches, and professional education and job training), higher skill demand (regional skills competition, regional certification on MRA work-related skill s, intraregional skilled labor mobility), and digitalization (width in digitalization and the width in ICT in education). Significant insights indicate emerging trends in recent developments in HE views education and knowledge as an international commodity. In response to emerging trends, two new forms of higher education are knowledge-based international and transnational HE such as Malaysia and Singapore. Major initiatives relate to institutional cooperation through ASEAN University Network (AUN) and other mechanisms and institutional connectivity (physical and digital connectivity). Lessons from best practice highlights Singapore as the best practice of international and management driven, using programs such as 'Global Schoolhouse' and 'Singapore Education'. Keystones for higher institutions lies on interconnectivity among three factors: institutional connectivity (i.e., improvement of the regulatory environment to enhance connectivity within member states), people-to-people connectivity (i.e., exchange of cultural, tourism, education and know-how), and physical connectivity (i.e., infrastructure to support greater connectivity among and within member states). Implications for strategic implementation that need to be addressed are: enhancing knowledge-based institutions, adopting ICT, and accelerating interconnectivity. The evident from the analysis has several key implications as indicated in a roadmap for strategic management for HE institutions, including these 5 stages: 1) committing to uphold the quality education for capacity-building and providing upskill and reskill training, 2) developing into a knowledge-based international and TNE institution, 3) leveraging digitalization at the maximum level, building on ASEAN’s technology and innovation-driven plan, 4) consolidating internal higher education cooperation, embracing external economic relations, fostering educational interconnectivity and sectoral cooperation, and accelerating interconnectivity, and 5) accelerating interconnectivity.

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