The Southeast Asian higher education space: Transnational, international or national in new ways?

Abstract

In the last 20 years, reforms of higher education have produced a Southeast Asian higher education space. It resembles the European educational space in being a supra-national development and some scholars suggest it is inspired by Europeanization. These reforms include credit transfer, twinning, distance learning, and academic mobility programmes. But, researchers are divided about the character of these reforms. Some scholars describe these developments as ‘transnational higher education’ but others suggest that dual degree programmes, such as those between Britain and Malaysia, are ‘international’ initiatives. Is the ‘dual degree’ an international or transnational space of higher education? Using the concept of ‘curriculum making’ to understand the cultural character of dual degree programmes, this paper reports on an interview-based study of curriculum writing in Malaysia to understand the character of Malaysian–British dual degrees. The experiences of two Malaysian curriculum writers are drawn upon to explain the process of curriculum making, how discussions about content and organization of curriculum are resolved, and the complexities of these curriculum decisions. I argue that the dual degrees are neither strictly transnational nor international in character but a novel intersectional education space where ‘Europeanization’ and ‘transnational’ influences inflect historic understandings of Malaysian higher education.