The East Asian Research Collaborations Network was unveiled at the University of Hull on 18 March at a conference organised by the Society for Research into Higher Education that brought together academics from China, Hong Kong and Vietnam as well as the UK. ??

In a keynote address, Simon Marginson, professor of international higher education at the UCL Institute of Education, argued that ¡°East Asia is on the margins in the UK, despite its overwhelming importance at the world level¡±.

¡°We must push it into the centre of everyone¡¯s consciousness¡­Building a broad highway between the UK and East and Southeast Asia is of great historical importance. In this, higher education must move out ahead of British society, government and business.¡±

Professor Marginson pointed to the remarkable achievements of China and the other countries in what he called ¡°the post-Confucian zone¡± in developing their higher education systems, improving participation rates, investing in research and development, increasing their number of publications in major scientific journals and unambiguously bringing ¡°global standards¡­into the performance management regimes¡± of their universities.

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Yet while ¡°all 25 million tertiary students in China have learned English¡±, Professor Marginson pointed out, this year¡¯s figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency showed that ¡°there were 300 UK students commencing first-year Chinese studies¡±.

Although Britain was probably the country which secures ¡°the highest proportion of its research income from international sources¡±, this was largely through its success in accessing funds through European research schemes.

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Since there were no such schemes and incentives in East Asia, we were developing ¡°exceptionally low rates of collaboration [there] compared to other English-speaking countries¡±.

It was precisely in order to bridge this gap that Hull has launched its new network, whose explicit goals include ¡°bring[ing] non-Western perspectives into higher education¡±, ¡°collaborat[ing] in bids for international research grants¡± and ¡°work[ing] together on high-quality publications based on internationalised research and shared exchange of ideas¡±.

matthew.reisz@tesglobal.com