REGIONAL INTEGRATION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT Options for the South Asia Region REGIONAL INTEGRATION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT Options for the South Asia Region © 2023 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ The World Bank 1818 H Street NW Washington DC 20433 Telephone: 202-473-1000 Internet: www.worldbank.org This work is a product of the staff of The World Bank with exter- nal contributions. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect the views of The World Bank, its Board of Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgment on the part of The World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. 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Cover design: Wojciech Wolocznik, Cambridge, United Kingdom Interior design & typesetting: Piotr Ruczynski, London, United Kingdom CONTENTS Abbreviations   6   Executive Summary   8 1  Introduction    11 Background    11 Objective of the Note    13 Methodology, Scope, and Outline    13 Main Messages    14 2  Rationale for Regional Cooperation and Integration    15 Resolving Global Issues    16 Regional Approaches to Scientific Excellence    18 3  Southern Asia Regional Cooperation Experiences     21 Policy Framework for Regional Integration    21 Regional Collaboration Efforts in Higher Education    21 4  The Way Forward    25 Modalities of Regional Collaboration and Integration    25 Enablers for the South Asia Region    36 External Facilitation as a Game Changer    42 Principles of Effective Collaboration    44 5  Conclusion    48 References    50 BOXES BOX 2.1  Developing a Rotavirus Vaccine to Prevent Death    17 BOX 4.1  RMIT and its Branch Campuses    29 BOX 4.2  The European Organization for Nuclear Research    32 BOX 4.3  African Centres of Excellence (ACEs)    43 FIGURES FIGURE 2.1  Map of International Collaborations on Covid-19 in Scientific Journals    18 FIGURE 4.1  Top Host Countries of Branch Campuses, 2015    28 FIGURE 4.2  Coauthored Publications, 1996 – 2018    31 FIGURE 4.3  Open Science and Related Dimensions    40 FIGURE 5.1  Changing the Dynamics of Development    49 TABLES TABLE 2.1  Modalities and Purpose of Regional Collaboration and Integration    24 TABLE 4.1  International Multi-Campus Institutions    27 TABLE 4.2  Modalities and Purpose of Regional Collaboration and Integration    35 TABLE 4.3  Benefits and Costs of Cross-Border Collaboration Options    36 TABLE 4.4  Proportion of the Population Who Speak English    37 TABLE 4.5  ICTs for Higher Education    38 6 ABBREVIATIONS ACEs African Centres of Excellence ADB Asian Development Bank APQN Asia-Pacific Quality Assurance Network AQAN ASEAN Quality Assurance Network AUW Asian University for Women BdREN Bangladesh Research and Education Network CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research CGIAR Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers INSEAD European Institute for Business Administration IT information technology MOOCS mass online open courses MOU memorandum of understanding NIH National Institutes of Health (United States) NREN National Research and Education Network OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development PEMSEA Partnerships in Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia QA quality assurance RMIT Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation SAESM South Asian Economics Students’ Meet SAR special administrative region SDGs Sustainable Development Goals SEAMEO South-East Asia Ministers of Education Organization SESAME Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East STEM science, technology, engineering, and mathematics UCA University of Central Asia UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UWI University of the West Indies “ The best reason to go to college: to learn that the world is more than the issues that divide us. – Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer, novelist 8 Executive Summary  1 Introduction Higher education systems in South Asia have undergone significant changes in the past two decades. Each country in the region has experienced a rapid rise in university enroll- ment, fueled by demographic growth and the resulting expansion of secondary education. However, in the absence of sufficient financial resources to accommodate the ever-increas- ing student numbers, most higher education institutions are facing daunting challenges. Unlike the recent evolution in Europe and East Asia, South Asian higher education systems and institutions have made little progress in working together, notwithstanding the positive results of a few noteworthy partnerships, such as the creation of the South Asia University. The ability of South Asian nations to work together in the higher education sphere will, to a significant extent, determine their capacity to support the development efforts of their respective countries in an effective and dynamic manner. Against this backdrop, the main objective of this report is to explore the potential for in- creased regional collaboration and integration in higher education in the South Asia region and outline a roadmap for progress in that direction. Rationale for Regional Cooperation and Integration All South Asian nations are aware that investing in higher education is indispensable to build dynamic economies and cohesive societies driven by innovation and technology. Furthermore, the Covid-19 pandemic has shown in a dramatic way the important contri- bution that universities can make in times of acute health crisis through applied research and the provision of scientific advice to policy makers and the general public. In an increasingly connected and interdependent world, a growing number of universities have developed international collaborations and partnerships in support of their teaching and learning, research, and engagement functions. The main direct advantages are im- proved quality of academic programs, better learning outcomes, mastery of foreign lan- guages, and students and staff with an international mindset. Regional collaborations have 1. This report was prepared by Jamil Salmi, Global Tertiary Education Expert, upon request from Nina Arnhold, Global Lead for Tertiary Education and Lead Education Specialist under the Higher Education Regional Development Program of the South Asia Region (SAR) of the World Bank (IO2105710). A technical review was conducted by Roberta Malee Bassett, Global Lead for Tertiary Education and Senior Education Specialist. Diane Stamm edited the report. The team would like to thank all interview partners; management in the South Asia Human Development Department, especially Lynne Sherburne Benz, Regional Director; Cristian Aedo, Manger (outgoing) and Keiko Inoue, Manager (incoming), as well as Cecile Fruman, Director, Regional Integration and Engagement and her team for the support of this work. The report was launched at a regional higher education event hosted jointly by the Government of Sri Lanka, the University Grants Commission (UGC) Sri Lanka, and the World Bank in Colombo, Sri Lanka in June 2023. Executive Summary 9 become more necessary for at least two reasons. First, our planet faces serious global issues that require regional or international solutions. Second, pooling resources among neigh- boring countries is an effective way of overcoming the high cost involved in establishing a critical mass of high-level researchers and setting up leading-edge scientific infrastructure. South Asia Regional Cooperation Experiences South Asian universities tend to privilege collaborations with universities in Europe and North America. However, South Asian countries have considered ways of promoting region- al collaborations in higher education through ad-hoc mechanisms, usually on the sidelines of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meetings. These are opportu- nities for the heads of the University Grants Commissions or Higher Education Commissions to exchange views about regional issues in higher education. The pandemic has put these initiatives on the back burner. Unlike other parts of the world, South Asia does not have many formal regional higher edu- cation undertakings. Two initiatives do stand out, however: (i) the South Asian University in Delhi, and (ii) the Asian University of Women in Bangladesh. The South Asian University (SAU) was set up in 2010 as a specialized body of SAARC. It is primarily a postgraduate insti- tution, graduating about 200 students every year. The Asian University for Women (AUW), located in Chittagong, was chartered by the Parliament of Bangladesh in 2006 as an inde- pendent international university. To date, UAW has graduated more than 900 women from 15 countries in the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. The Way Forward Modalities of Regional Collaboration. Growing internationalization has been one of the most striking trends characterizing the global higher education landscape in the past two decades. Several models of cross-border collaboration have emerged as a result, which could be of great benefit to the South Asia region: multi-campus universities, branch campuses, academic mobility, joint delivery of instruction, joint research projects, professional net- works for academics and higher education institutions, quality assurance and accreditation associations, recognition of qualifications networks, and strategic partnerships and alliances. Enabling Factors. Three enabling factors that could help facilitate the creation of a higher education regional space in South Asia are (i) the widespread use of English, (ii) advanced information and communications technology, and (iii) the open science and open educa- tion resources movement. External Facilitation. Considering the political difficulties that prevent regional collabo- ration initiatives for higher education to thrive through official channels, external facilita- tion provided by multilateral agencies such as the World Bank can be a game changer. This facilitation role can take three complementary forms: (i) a convening function for policy and professional dialogue, (ii) financial and technical support for regional activities, and (iii) support for regulatory harmonization. Executive Summary 10 Principles of Effective Collaboration. Based on the review of international experience and the interviews conducted for this study, a few principles can be pondered to guide inter- ventions of international donor agencies in support of increased regional collaboration and coordination in South Asia: (i) reliance on professional channels, (ii) gradualism in mem- bership, (iii) seeds planting, (iv) a capacity building focus, (v) sustainability, and (vi) need for monitoring and evaluation. Conclusion Moving forward, rather than seeking to expand relationships through government chan- nels — a difficult and complicated endeavor — South Asian universities could achieve more tangible results by participating in bilateral initiatives with like-minded higher education institutions in other countries in the region, or collaborating through national, regional, and international university networks and associations. Multilateral agencies such as the World Bank could play an important role as convenor and financier, building on and expanding beyond the few successful ongoing regional initia- tives in the higher education sphere. 1  11 Introduction Background With 25 percent of the world population living on 3 percent of the Earth’s land area, South Asia is the most densely populated region on the planet. Even though they share a common colonial past, South Asian countries are culturally and religiously diverse. South Asia is also a region of striking contrasts, with India becoming the most populated country in the world in 2023, and the Maldives being one of the least. Sri Lanka offers its citizens one of the longest life expectancies (77.1 years), while Afghanistan has one of the shortest (52.1). Endowed with many natural resources, energy sources, fertile lands, and a young popula- tion, South Asia has nevertheless experienced uneven economic growth over the past sev- eral decades, with Afghanistan challenged by having the lowest per capita income (US$370) in the region and the Maldives being the region’s richest economy (US$10,370) while India is at US$2,260.2 One of the major development constraints has been the slow progress in enhancing the region’s human capital. As underscored by a recent World Bank report, some of the region’s main challenges in this area include “high levels of child malnutrition, deep deficits in early learning, continuing infectious disease burden, the disempowerment of women, and pervasive structural inequalities” (World Bank 2021a, 11). The Covid-19 pan- demic is likely to have made the situation worse. Extreme poverty, high population density, structural economic inequalities, and inadequate disaster management have made South Asia particularly vulnerable to climate change and environmental degradation (IPPC 2014). As a result, the region is exposed to damaging con- ditions and risks in the form of floods, food shortages, diseases, economic stagnation, and mass population displacement. Therefore, implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the international community in 2015 is even more pressing in South Asia than in other parts of the planet. Reducing the vulnerability of the region requires pur- poseful, concerted, and converging actions from governments, economic actors, civil soci- ety, and universities, the latter having shown a growing commitment to contribute more proactively to the SDGs through their education programs, research activities, and engage- ment with the community, as evidenced by the rising number of South Asian universities (86) recognized by the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings.3 2. https://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/ 3. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210501085447197; https://www.timeshighereduca- tion.com/impactrankings#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/undefined. 1 Introduction 12 Higher education systems in South Asia have undergone significant changes in the past two decades. Each country in the region has experienced a rapid rise in university enroll- ment, fueled by demographic growth and the resulting expansion of secondary education. However, in the absence of sufficient financial resources to accommodate the ever-increas- ing student numbers, most higher education institutions are facing daunting challenges. How can they guarantee equal opportunity of access and success and enhance the quality and relevance of their programs? In response to these trends and tensions, most South Asian governments have undertaken substantial reforms to help higher education institutions reduce disparities, improve the quality and relevance of their programs, and strengthen their research capacity. The South Asia region contributes 5.3 percent of the scientific out- put of the world, 88 percent of that output coming from India. Even more radical changes are looming ahead for higher education systems in the region. The French philosopher Paul Valery observed with nostalgia that “the trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.” This is particularly true in the realm of higher education, which is in great flux. More than 10 years ago, in 2011, the president of Babson College (U.S.A.) observed that “… the ground is shifting in fundamental ways for higher ed- ucation. We must reframe our approach to managing colleges and universities in the face of the new normal” (Dennis 2020). Around the same time, the president of Stanford University (U.S.A.) spoke with foresight about the tsunami of digital education about to engulf higher education, and a report from the Pearson Foundation announced an avalanche of disrup- tive changes coming to higher education (Barber, Donnelly, and Rizvi 2013). Indeed, a growing number of rupture factors are at play in transforming the ecosystem in which higher education institutions are operating all over the world, drastically chal- lenging how they perform their teaching and research functions and support their stu- dents’ academic and socio-emotional needs. The first ones are technology-driven innova- tions, such as flipped classrooms for interactive and peer-based learning, mass online open courses (MOOCS) reaching hundreds of thousands of students all over the world, and EdTech- designed software and platforms based on artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to support the work of academics and administrators in a wide range of activities (online teaching and learning, evaluation, academic management and planning, retention). The second set of changes comes from new forms of competition as for-profit and corporate universities increase their presence in providing competency-based professional qualifica- tions and certifications closely focused on the evolving labor market needs. Finally, higher education institutions are influenced by new accountability modalities, such as the global and national rankings, which allow for measuring and comparing the performance of uni- versities across all continents or within any country, student engagement surveys that as- sess the degree of student satisfaction with the quality of their teaching and learning expe- rience, and web-based evaluation systems providing students and employers with real-time information about the performance of colleges and universities (Salmi 2017). What was true at the beginning of last decade is even more germane today as university leaders assess their readiness to embrace the post-pandemic future. The Covid-19 sanitary and economic crisis has indeed accelerated the impact of these disruptive trends. Having moved swiftly to a virtual delivery mode to compensate for the closure of physical cam- puses, colleges and universities must now consider adequate transformative measures to 1 Introduction 13 eliminate the structural weaknesses revealed by the pandemic, especially the acute social and connectivity inequalities among countries, institutions, and students, which constrain the learning opportunities of millions of students. The pandemic has revealed underlying flaws in current financing policies for both public universities that are extremely dependent on national or state budget resources and private institutions that are mostly financed by tuition fees. As in other parts of the world, higher education institutions in South Asia are challenged to design and implement more innovative educational approaches and embrace more sustainable economic models (Salmi 2020). Unlike the recent evolution in Europe and East Asia, two regions that have seen a tremen- dous growth in collaborative efforts and joint activities among their universities, South Asian higher education systems and institutions have made little progress in working to- gether, nothwithstanding the positive results of a few noteworthy partnerships, such as the recent Bangladesh-Afghanistan initiative or the creation of South Asia University. Re- flecting on the Bologna Process and the construction of the European Higher Education Area, or the strong role of the South-East Asia Ministers of Education Organization (SEAM- EO) and that region’s quality assurance networks (Asia-Pacific Quality Assurance Net- work [APQN] and ASEAN Quality Assurance Network [AQAN]), the ability of South Asian nations to work together in the higher education sphere will determine, to a significant extent, their capacity to support the development efforts of their respective countries in an effective manner. Objective of the Note Against this backdrop, the main objective of this report is to explore the potential for in- creased regional collaboration and integration in higher education in the South Asia re- gion and outline a roadmap for progress in that direction. Specifically, the report seeks to answer the following questions: • What potential benefits could regional cooperation bring to South Asian higher edu- cation systems and institutions? • What lessons of experience arise from the few existing examples in this area? How relevant are experiences from other parts of the world? • What modalities and instruments could be envisaged to develop regional coopera- tion and integration in South Asian higher education? • What roadmap would be realistic to guide South Asian countries in their efforts to- ward closer cooperation and collaboration in support of higher education development? Methodology, Scope, and Outline This policy note is principally informed by a series of interviews with key informants in various South Asian countries and World Bank offices in the region. It also relies on a desk- top literature review of existing documents, including the following sources: 1 Introduction 14 • Official publications and policy documents of South Asian governments, regional reports (Asian Development Bank [ADB], UNESCO), and relevant studies produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank • Recent academic works on regional integration in OECD countries and South Asia. The countries of South Asia included in this report are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The report is divided into three parts. Part 1 reviews the benefits that could arise from in- creased collaboration and integration in the higher education sphere, Part 2 explores les- sons from a few known examples of ongoing collaborative activities, and Part 3 examines various modalities and instruments to accelerate the move toward collaboration and inte- gration among South Asian higher education systems and institutions and outlines a roadm- ap to take this agenda forward. Main Messages • Regional collaboration carries many benefits for higher education institutions: bring- ing together a critical mass of scientists to resolve regional issues that cannot be effec- tively addressed by any single country, building institutional capacity through mutu- ally beneficial partnerships, and sharing the financial burden of setting up a critical mass of high-level researchers and expensive advanced scientific facilities. • Most collaborative initiatives and partnerships in which South Asian higher educa- tion institutions are currently involved tend to be with universities in Europe and North America, and to a lesser extent East Asia and the Pacific. • Because of political tensions in the region, there are few efforts to develop collab- orative relations that could bring the higher education systems and institutions of South Asian nations closer. • Moving forward, rather than seeking to expand relationships through government channels — a difficult and complicated endeavor — South Asian universities could achieve more tangible results by participating in bilateral initiatives with like-mind- ed higher education institutions in other countries in the region, or collaborating through national, regional, and international university networks and associations. • Multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and UNESCO, could play an important role as convenor and financier, building on and ex- panding beyond the few successful ongoing regional initiatives in the higher educa- tion sphere. 2  15 Rationale for Regional Cooperation and Integration All South Asian nations are aware that investing in higher education is indispensable to build dynamic economies and cohesive societies driven by innovation and technology. Higher ed- ucation supports knowledge-driven economic growth and poverty reduction strategies by (a) training a qualified and adaptable labor force, including high-level scientists, profession- als, technicians, teachers in basic and secondary education, and future government, civ- il service, and business leaders; (b) generating new knowledge through basic and applied research; and (c) providing the platform for accessing existing stores of global knowledge and adapting this knowledge to local use. Universities are unique in their ability to inte- grate and create synergy among these three dimensions (Salmi 2017). Furthermore, the Covid-19 pandemic has shown in a dramatic way the important contribu- tion that universities can make in times of acute health crisis. All over the world, many of them have stepped in to provide scientific advice to governments and the general popula- tion, donate medical equipment, and produce Covid-19 tests, protective gear, and ventilators. Several universities have been at the forefront of emergency research to find effective treat- ments for contaminated people and discover a vaccine that could put an end to the pandemic. In an increasingly connected and interdependent world, a growing number of universities have developed international collaborations and partnerships in support of their teaching and learning, research, and engagement functions. Higher education systems and institu- tions do not work together across national borders because internationalization is the fla- vor of the day or because everyone is keen to emulate the European model of the Bologna Process. Internationalization is seen as bringing many benefits to students and higher edu- cation institutions, with resulting positive spillovers to countries at large. The main direct advantages are improved quality of academic programs, better learning outcomes, mas- tery of foreign languages, and students and staff with an international mindset. Academic mobility for staff and students can be a life-changing experience, and the presence of for- eign academics and students helps to broaden the intellectual horizons of domestic stu- dents. Societies with a high degree of internationalization are prone to adopt a more toler- ant and open-minded worldview (Jibeen and Khan 2015). 2  Rationale for Regional Cooperation and Integration 16 Regional collaborations have become more necessary for at least two reasons. First, our planet faces serious global issues that require regional or international solutions. Second, pooling resources among neighboring countries is an effective way of overcoming the high cost involved in establishing a critical mass of high-level researchers and setting up lead- ing-edge scientific infrastructure. Resolving Global Issues A number of essential scientific questions and issues are of a regional or global nature. To take just a few examples, communicable diseases, climate-related phenomena, and water flows are oblivious of political borders. In the past two decades, the severe acute respira- tory syndrome (SARS), Ebola, and Zika epidemics were a forewarning that infectious dis- eases can originate in one country and spread rapidly across national frontiers. The Covid- 19 pandemic has brought this reality to the entire planet in a brutal and tragic way. Similarly, natural disasters such as hurricanes, droughts, earthquakes, floods, landslides, and volcanic eruptions more often than not have adverse cross-border effects, and the trans- boundary risks are usually more severe for neighboring countries. “ Even disasters with seemingly localized impacts contained within the national borders of a given state may have indirect short-term or long-term effects on other countries through refugee flows, conflict spillovers, volatility of global commodity prices, disruption of trade relations, financial flows, or global supply chains” (McLean and Bas 2020, p. 2). With respect to water-sharing issues, it is estimated that the planet has 214 rivers that cross at least one national border.4 This means that many dam construction and water develop- ment projects may cause international problems or even conflicts. The Mekong Basin in East Asia, the water flows between India and Pakistan, and the Nile Valley in Africa are three examples in that respect. The global nature of scientific inquiry is not restricted to understanding, preventing, and mitigating threats to humanity. Many other domains require cooperation and collabora- tion across nations because of their complexity in geographic and disciplinary scope. For instance, the study of migratory species requires the contribution of several scientific ar- eas, such as data science, environmental fieldwork, molecular biology, and morphology. To study the universe, astronomers use globally distributed telescope facilities, as illustrat- ed by the recent breakthrough in the observation of black holes, which was made possi- ble by sustained international collaboration bringing together hundreds of radio astron- omers and computer specialists from 59 institutes in 20 countries (American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2020). Therefore, advancing and applying scientific knowledge to solve the planet’s most pressing challenges requires working collaboratively with colleagues in different countries through 4. https://www.waterpowermagazine.com/news/newscross-border-challenges/. 2  Rationale for Regional Cooperation and Integration 17 collaborative research projects and training programs. Box 2.1 illustrates a successful experi- ence of cooperation between researchers in India and the United States to combat a widespread deadly disease, rotovirus. In Southeast Asia, the One Health University Network (SEAOHUN) was established in 2011 by 13 universities from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam to pro- mote the one health concept to training specialists and technicians working on animal and hu- man health issues. The “one health” approach recognizes that many contagious diseases origi- nate from wildlife, then jump to livestock, and then to humans, outlining the need for a common scientific framework to look at the ecosystem of many infectious diseases. In addition to promot- ing research on “one health” issues, SEAOHUN works with academics from member universities to ensure coordination and alignment in program and curriculum design among all those in- volved in teaching in scientific areas that deal with animal health and human health (ADB 2012). BOX 2.1  Developing a Rotavirus Vaccine to Prevent Death Rotavirus is a universal childhood infection that, prior to the introduction of a safe and effective vaccine in 2006, was the most common cause of diarrhea in infants and children worldwide. The rotavirus remains re- sponsible for more than 215,000 infant and child deaths every year. Today, a range of vaccines is available for prevention of rotavirus-induced diarrhea. One of these is currently widely used in India, where nearly one- third of all babies in the world are born. This vaccine was developed during a collaboration between Indian scientists and researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. Maharaj Kishan Bhan, an Indian gastroenterologist and re- searcher at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, formed a collaboration with Roger Glass at the NIH, and Durga Rao, a researcher at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, collaborated with Harry Greenberg at Stanford University, to develop a vaccine for rotavirus. The four researchers worked in collaboration with a new Indian company, Bharat Biotech, as they moved from the basics of virology to real-world development. A major challenge was to create capacity at Bharat Biotech to manufacture the rotavirus vaccine for broad deployment in India. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was essential in bringing in funding to launch this Indian initiative. Bhan was also able to bring in the support of the Indian government, while Glass represent- ed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Gates Foundation negotiated a price of one dollar per dose, and the vaccine developed from this collaboration has since become the default treatment for India’s poor. It has prevented the deaths of tens of thousands of babies. Due to this collaboration, capacity and expertise in virus manufacturing grew substantially at Bharat Biotech, which has since expanded to develop typhoid fever, rabies, and hepatitis vaccines, and is currently working to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. Today, most measles vaccines in the world are manufactured in India thanks to expanding scientific capacity. Source: American Academy of Arts and Science 2020, 8. There is no better illustration of the need for and usefulness of transborder scientific col- laborations than observing what has happened since the beginning of the Covid-19 pan- demic. Despite the lack of transparent communication from some governments and the refusal of several political leaders to adopt policies based on scientific evidence, scientists all over the world have worked together to understand the virus, its modes of transmis- sion, and its impact on human beings, to find effective treatments, and to develop a vac- cine (figure 2.1). Research teams have shared databases that have permitted rapid genome sequencing of the virus. Never in the history of epidemics have vaccines been developed as rapidly, as a result of unprecedented levels of international cooperation and collabora- tion in an interdisciplinary fashion, reflecting advances in medical research, bioengineer- ing, chemical engineering, and systems engineering. 2  Rationale for Regional Cooperation and Integration 18 FIGURE 2.1  Map of International Collaborations on Covid-19 in Scientific Journals Source: American Academy of Arts and Science 2020, 10. Note: As of April 2020. Regional Approaches to Scientific Excellence The high cost of scientific infrastructure and the need for a critical mass of researchers and technicians to develop and operate cutting-edge facilities is the third reason in sup- port of regional approaches to the advancement of science. In many fields and interdisci- plinary areas, regional endeavors and projects help to achieve economies of scale and con- duct leading-edge scientific research that many countries would be unable to do on their own for lack of adequate financial and scientific resources. Successful initiatives abound around the world, as the following examples illustrate: • The Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers (CGIAR) was estab- lished in 1971 as a global partnership to promote scientific research focusing on food security. Its members are national governments, international agencies, civil soci- ety organizations, universities, and private firms. It seeks to increase food security through programs and projects aiming at reducing rural poverty, improving human health and nutrition, and achieving sustainable management of natural resources. The CGIAR has supported the establishment and development of 15 specialized research centers, most of which are located in developing countries.5 Two of the CGIAR centers are located in South Asia: the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi- Arid Tropics in India, and the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka. • In Africa, the creation of a network of African Centres of Excellence (ACEs) has had a transformative effect on the higher education systems and institutions of several countries among the poorest in the world (World Bank 2021b). 5. https://www.cgiar.org/. 2  Rationale for Regional Cooperation and Integration 19 • The Asia Engineering Education Development Network, a subnetwork established in 2001 under the auspices of the Asean University Network (AUN), is a Japan Inter- national Cooperation Agency (JICA)-funded project that gives faculty members mo- bility opportunities to teach and conduct research at any participating university in the Southeast region.6 • The Partnerships in Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia (PEMSEA) is a regional governance mechanism set up in 2009 to implement the marine strate- gy adopted by 14 countries in the region. PEMSEA has forged partnerships with three internationally recognized research institutions to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Strategy for the Seas of East Asia: the Marine Science Institute at the University of the Philippines, the Coastal and Ocean Management In- stitute (COMI) at Xiamen University (China), and the Institute for Global Environmen- tal Strategies in Japan. The regional centers provide expert advice on themes in their areas of competence, coordinate and undertake studies and projects, train research- ers from countries of the region, and organize regional training courses.7 • Inaugurated in Jordan in 2017 after almost two decades of planning and preparation, the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME) is the first particle accelerator in the Middle East, and the first international research center in the region.8 Sponsored by governments as diverse as Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey, the new facil- ity is testimony to the fact that regional collaboration can happen even when the sci- entific partners come from a range of countries that have limited political relations, are not getting along, have no diplomatic relations, or are engaged in proxy conflicts. SESAME, which is modelled after the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) center in Europe and is powered by a solar farm, was set up with support from the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA). • In April 2021, the European Commission and the Government of Slovenia inaugurated the first European petascale supercomputer, built in cooperation with the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking. The Vega supercomputer, which will have a sustained performance of 6.9 petaflops (6.9 million billion calculations per second), will underpin open science, research, and innovations in Slovenia and Europe. It will enable European scientists to cooperate in large international projects and support the development of applications in science, the public sector, and indus- try, especially in the fields of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and high-per- formance data analytics.9 Successful regional centers of excellence are likely to enjoy a snowball effect. The estab- lishment and operation of world-class scientific facilities on a regional basis attracts sci- entists — both research stars and junior researchers (PhD students, postdocs) — from all over the planet. 6. https://seed-net.org/. 7. http://pemsea.org/about-pemsea/our-network/regional-centers-of-excellence. 8. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Jordan-inaugurates-region-s-first-synchrotron. 9. https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/news/vega-online-eu-first-eurohpc-supercomputer-operational. 2  Rationale for Regional Cooperation and Integration 20 Furthermore, scientific collaboration is often more relevant when undertaken on a regional basis than joint research carried out with international partners in countries with totally different environments. Partnering with academics working in a relatively similar cul- ture may be more useful than with researchers whose reality is totally different. In the context of a recent World Bank-supported higher education reform and development pro- ject in Bangladesh, capacity building activities to modernize the governance and man- agement of public universities benefited from a partnership with Malaysian universities, deemed to represent a more adequate model for Bangladeshi institutions than universi- ties in OECD countries. 3  21 Southern Asia Regional Cooperation Experiences Policy Framework for Regional Integration Established in 1985, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is an intergovernmental forum for the promotion of economic and social development in mem- ber states through regional cooperation. In 2006, SAARC launched the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) with the mission of facilitating regional trade among SAARC members. Afghanistan joined SAARC in 2007. Many SAARC activities are channeled through four specialized bodies (the SAARC Arbitration Council, the SAARC Development Fund, the South Asian Regional Standards Organization, and the South Asian University) and 12 regional centers. However, half of these centers were terminated in 2015 for lack of activity and funding. Because of political tensions and lack of trust among some of the SAARC members and sig- nificant geographic and demographic inequalities in the region, the consensus seems to be that the Association has had limited impact, with mixed success and few tangible results (Delinic 2011; Siali 2012; Muzaffar 2017; Shah 2020). The last SAARC Summit took place in 2014 in Kathmandu. The 2020 emergency meeting of SAARC leaders sought to coordinate responses to address the Covid-19 pandemic, but it led to few concrete coordinated actions on the ground. Regional Collaboration Efforts in Higher Education In the past decades, South Asian countries have considered ways of promoting region- al collaborations in higher education through ad-hoc mechanisms, usually on the side- lines of SAARC meetings. These are opportunities for the heads of the University Grants Commissions or Higher Education Commissions to exchange views about regional issues in higher education. The last meeting of that group took place in 2019 in Kathmandu, lead- ing to a general agreement on the future establishment of a Higher Education Network of South Asia (HENSA) and the development of a South Asia Quality Assurance Network. The 3  Southern Asia Regional Cooperation Experiences 22 meeting also proposed to boost student mobility on the basis of Credit Transfer Mechanisms across SAARC member states. The pandemic has put these initiatives on the back burner. The SAARC Forum of Vice Chancellors of Open Universities, set up in 1998, is another ini- tiative worth mentioning. Bringing together the Open Universities of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, the Forum has not been very active in recent years and does not have its own website. When they have international linkages, South Asian higher education institutions gener- ally tend to privilege collaborations with universities in Europe and North America. Unlike what can be observed in other parts of the world, South Asia does not have many formal regional higher education undertakings. However, two initiatives stand out as worth men- tioning in this context: (i) the South Asian University in Delhi; and (ii) the Asian University of Women in Bangladesh. South Asia University The South Asian University (SAU) was set up in 2010 as a specialized body of SAARC. SAU’s mandate is to: • Enhance learning in the South Asian community that promotes an understanding of each other’s perspectives and strengthens regional consciousness • Provide liberal and humane education to the brightest and most dedicated students of South Asia so that a new class of quality leadership is nurtured • Enhance capacity building of the South Asian nations in science, technology, and other areas of higher learning vital for improving their quality of life such as infor- mation technology, biotechnology, and management sciences.10 The main campus is located in Delhi. SAU is primarily a postgraduate institution offering programs in economics, computer science, biotechnology, mathematics, sociology, inter- national relations, and law. The University is planning to establish an undergraduate col- lege. SAU degrees are recognized by all eight member states. In 2017, the last year for which an annual report is available, SAU graduated 194 master’s and MPhil students (110 from India and 84 from the other SAARC countries). SAU is ranked 241st by Webometrics among all Indian higher education institutions. Asian University for Women The Asian University for Women (AUW), located in Chittagong, was chartered by the Par- liament of Bangladesh in 2006 as an independent international university. Its mission is to graduate “skilled and innovative professionals, service-oriented leaders in the busi- nesses and communities in which they will work and live, and promoters of intercultural 10. http://www.sau.int/. 3  Southern Asia Regional Cooperation Experiences 23 understanding and sustainable human and economic development in Asia and through- out the world.”11 Besides receiving a generous land donation from the Government of Bang- ladesh, AUW benefited from starting grants from the Open Society Institute, the Goldman Sachs Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as well as from individ- ual philanthropists. AUW’s main academic offering is a liberal arts undergraduate curricu- lum focusing on the development of skills in critical thinking, problem-solving, and ethical leadership. The first cohort of students was admitted in 2008, comprising 130 young wom- en from Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. To date, UAW has graduated more than 1,000 women from 17 countries in the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. AUW has not been internationally accredited yet. Its Webometrics ranking is 52nd among all universities operating in Bangladesh.12 Other Initiatives Besides the three projects described above, universities across South Asia have engaged in a number of bilateral collaboration activities on an ad-hoc basis, from institution to insti- tution, or directly from academic to academic. For example, Nepalese universities have relied on academic exchange with Indian universities to strengthen the quality of their programs. Before the pandemic, the Sri Lankan Quality Assurance Council used to invite external examiners from India to participate in the accreditation process. Bilateral relations with higher education institutions in East Asia have also increased. A recent higher education development project in Bangladesh, financed by the World Bank, supported joint activities with Malaysian universities for capacity building in innovative teaching methods and modern management. Collaborative activities have been carried out among South Asian universities in a more systematic way in the context of global networks or associations, such as the International University Association, the International Association of University Presidents, and the Association of Commonwealth University, at least for Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The quality assurance agencies and higher education institutions from all eight South Asian countries participate enthusiastically in the activities of the Asia-Pacific Quality Assurance Network (APQN), which was established almost 20 years ago with financial sup- port from the World Bank’s Development Grant Facility. India and Sri Lanka are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Institutions of Higher Learning. Notwithstanding these positive cases, regional collaboration is much less advanced in South Asia than in many other parts of the world. To illustrate this situation, table 3.1 compares col- laborative activities within South Asia, activities involving South Asian universities within the wider Southeast Asian context, and collaborations among Southeast Asian and Pacific countries. This comparison reveals two important findings. First, the range and intensity 11. https://asian-university.org/who-we-are/mission-vision/. 12. The Webometrics ranking, prepared by the Cybermetrics Lab, a unit of the Spanish National Research Council, combines both webometric (all education missions) and bibliometric (research mission) indicators. The Webometrics database includes about 31,000 higher education institutions from 200 countries (https://www. webometrics.info/en/Methodology). 3  Southern Asia Regional Cooperation Experiences 24 of regional collaboration endeavors are much larger in Southeast Asia than in South Asia. Second, higher education institutions in South Asia are willing to work with each other in the context of wider networks or associations. This suggests lots of opportunities and good will to scale up higher education collaborations outside official channels. TABLE 2.1  Modalities and Purpose of Regional Collaboration and Integration South Asia within Southeast Asia Modality South Asia Southeast Asia & the Pacific International universities ++ – +++ Branch campuses – – ++ Academic mobility + ++ +++ Joint delivery of instruction – + +++ Joint research projects + ++ +++ Professional networks for academics and higher + ++ +++ education institutions Quality assurance and accreditation associations/ – ++ +++ networks Recognition of qualifications associations/ + ++ +++ networks Strategic partnerships and alliances (CP) – + ++ Note: - = nonexistent; + = low level of activity; ++ = medium level of activity; +++ = high level of activity. In the area of scientific research, a recent Elsevier and World Bank study found that “South Asia lacks a unified collaboration framework, with each country using different, independ- ent systems to establish academic and scientific partnerships”: “ Within South Asia, India and Pakistan have the strongest collaborative ties, and these two countries form the nexus of intraregional collaboration. Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka also regularly engage with India and/or Pakistan, while Afghanistan, Bhutan, and the Maldives are on the fringe of the regional network. Examining intraregional collaboration as a share of each country pair’s collaborative research reveals that Pakistan has especially strong research collaboration ties with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; Nepal has strong ties with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; and Bhutan has strong ties with the Maldives” (Elsevier and the World Bank 2019, 5). 4  25 The Way Forward To outline a roadmap for scaling up regional collaboration in higher education in South Asia, this section (i) reviews the range of regional collaboration modalities that could be con- sidered based on international experience, (ii) identifies a few enablers that can be relied upon in the South Asia region, (iii) examines the facilitating roles that international agen- cies like the World Bank can play, and (iv) proposes several principles of good collaboration. Modalities of Regional Collaboration and Integration Growing internationalization has been one of the most striking trends characterizing the global higher education landscape in the past two decades.13 Several models of cross-bor- der collaboration have emerged as a result. Many of them could be of great benefit to the South Asia region, as the following list indicates: • Multi-campus universities • Branch campuses • Academic mobility • Joint delivery of instruction • Virtual and mirror classes/dual degrees • Joint research projects • Professional networks for academics and higher education institutions • Quality assurance and accreditation associations/networks • Recognition of qualifications associations/networks • Strategic partnerships and alliances. Multi-Campus Universities Few universities in the world are organized and operate as international multi-campus institutions. Two of them are intergovernmental universities serving several countries in a given region. The most ancient one is the University of the West Indies (UWI), function- ing under the authority of 17 Caribbean Island nations. Besides the main campus in Jamaica, 13. Internationalization of higher education is an “intentional process of integrating an international, inter- cultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions and delivery of post-secondary education, in order to enhance the quality of education and research for all students and staff, and to make a meaningful contribution to society” (Brandenburg, de Wit, and Leask 2019). 4  The Way Forward 26 UWI operates four university centers, three of them in Barbados, and Trinidad, and Antigua, plus a virtual campus for distance education. The second one is the University of South Pacific (USP), belonging to 12 island nations of the Pacific region. Its main campus is in Fiji, but it also has 11 regional centers on the various member islands and relies extensively on distance education programs. The European Institute for Business Administration (INSEAD), which was founded in 1957 with seed money from the French Chamber of Commerce, is the only private university in the world operating as an international multi-campus institution across Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. INSEAD students can choose to enroll at any of the school’s three cam- puses, in Fontainebleau (France), Singapore, or Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates). Students can move seamlessly from one campus to the other during the course of the one-year MBA program, and they are taught by faculty members who teach on both the Europe and Asia campuses, as well as by permanent faculty on each of the three campuses. With its three campuses and students from over 80 countries, INSEAD is considered to be the most mul- ticultural business school in the world and is ranked consistently among the top business schools (currently number four in the Financial Times MBA ranking). Over the years, INSEAD has amassed a US$2 billion endowment. The last institution in that category is the University of Central Asia (UCA), sponsored by the Aga Khan Foundation. It is the first and only private intergovernmental multi-cam- pus institution in the world. Legally established in 2000, it operates two campuses, one in Kyrgyzstan (Naryn), and one in Tajikistan (Khorog). A third campus, in Kazakhstan (Tekeli), is under planning. UCA focuses on teaching the skills and competencies necessary to tackle the specific issues of mountain areas in Central Asia. The first campus opened in September 2016 in Naryn, with a class of 60 students coming primarily from UCA host countries. To en- sure that the brightest students across the region can attend, the University offers finan- cial aid in the form of scholarships, grants, loans, and work-study programs. UCA has re- cruited top-notch faculty from around the world and the region. As His Highness the Aga Khan stated at the Foundation Stone Ceremony in Khorog, “ By creating intellectual space and resources, the University will bring the power of education and human ingenuity to the economic and social challenges of mountain societies in Central Asia and elsewhere.” UCA’s mission is to build human capacity in remote parts of the countries and train gradu- ates who will be job creators rather than job seekers, thereby contributing directly to the economic and social development of the immediate regions served by UCA and reducing the isolation of mountain societies. By building a world-class university whose campuses are located in secondary towns, UCA wants to set an example to other towns keen on rein- venting themselves. Table 4.1 presents an overview of existing international multi-campus institutions. 4  The Way Forward 27 TABLE 4.1  International Multi-Campus Institutions Institution Number of Number of (Year of Establishment) Countries Served Campuses Number of Students 40,360 undergraduates and 10,080 University of the West Indies(1948) 17 4 graduate students University of the South Pacific (1968) 12 14 30,000 students 1,300 graduate students + 12,000 INSEAD (1957) 3 3 EMBA and executive education 350 undergraduate students from 9 University of Central Asia (2000) 3 3 countries Sources: http://www.uwi.edu/index.asp; https://www.usp.ac.fj/index.php?id=about_usp; http://www.insead.edu/home/; http://www.ucentralasia.org/. International Universities Even though internationalization experts do not agree on the definition of international universities because of the difficulty in accurately measuring the degree of internationali- zation of a higher education institution, this Policy Note uses this category to describe uni- versities that were set up from the outset with the deliberate aim of attracting and serving a high proportion of students from other countries in the immediate geographic region or beyond.14 The Asian University for Women based in Bangladesh and South Asia University in India have already been mentioned in that context. Two other private universities oper- ating in India, Amity University in Noida and Symbiosis International University in Pune, also belong to this category. The main advantage of these types of universities is that they offer a truly international learning experience with a high proportion of foreign and/or foreign-trained academics and a highly diverse student population. Branch Campuses As part of their internationalization and resource diversification strategy, a growing num- ber of universities in industrial countries have opened branch campuses in developing and emerging economies. The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education defines a branch campus as “an entity that is owned, at least in part, by a foreign higher education provider; operated in the name of the foreign education provider; and provides an entire academic program, substantially on site, leading to a degree awarded by the foreign education pro- vider.”15 These branch campuses are usually brick-and-mortar facilities delivering the same degree(s) as the mother institution to students coming predominantly from the host country. The most recent estimate puts the number of branch campuses at about 285 in 75 countries (Mackie 2019). Half of the branch campuses are affiliated to U.S. universities; the others belong mainly to Australian, British, and French universities, in declining order. In recent years, universities from emerging economies, such as India and Malaysia, have also opened branch campuses in other countries. The large majority of branch campuses 14. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=2015031910180116. 15. https://wenr.wes.org/2019/05/the-complex-environment-of-international-branch-campuses. 4  The Way Forward 28 have been established in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia. Until recently, India and Indonesia prohibited branch campuses, even though Indian universities have set up a few branch campuses in the Middle East and East Africa. However, the National Education Policy of India, launched in 2020, makes provision for the opening of branch campuses in India. Figure 4.1 shows the countries that host the most branch campuses. FIGURE 4.1  Top Host Countries of Branch Campuses, 2015 China United Arab Emirates Malaysia Singapore Qatar United Kingdom Canada France United States Spain South Korea Germany China (Hong Kong SAR) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Number of Branch Campuses Source: Mackie 2019. The main advantage, for the host country, is that its students can get access to a quality edu- cation from a foreign university without needing to live overseas and pay the full cost asso- ciated with a foreign degree, as a recent global survey of transnational education revealed (Knight and McNamara 2015). For this reason, a number of governments have offered finan- cial and fiscal incentives to encourage foreign universities to set up branches locally. Dubai, for instance, constructed Knowledge Village in 2003 as a free trade zone for foreign insti- tutions interested in operating there without needing to build facilities or pay taxes. Abu Dhabi has generously funded a campus of New York University since 2010. Qatar’s Education City has nine branch campuses from the United States (6), the United Kingdom (2), and France (1). Box 4.1 presents the experience of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, one of the most internationalized universities in the world. Branch campuses can also be found in Central Asia. Uzbekistan has branch campuses from Russia (3), the Republic of Korea (2), and one each from India, Latvia, and the United States. Eight Russian universities operate in Almaty, Kazakhstan. In addition, the cities of Almaty and Bishkek in Kyrgystan host universities that, while not branch campuses in the strict meaning of the concept, do represent partnerships between Central Asian universities and foreign institutions. In Almaty, the Kazakh-British Technical University, the German- Kazakh University, and the American-Kazakh University are good illustrations of this kind of cross-border partnership. In Bishkek, the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University, the Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University, and the American University of Central Asia American University represent similar joint ventures. 4  The Way Forward 29 BOX 4.1  RMIT and its Branch Campuses The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) is one of Australia’s leading science, technology, en- gineering, and mathematics (STEM) universities, specializing in technology and design. RMIT has been a pi- oneer in relying on internationalization as a vehicle of transformation to improve the relevance of teaching and research. In addition to receiving a high proportion of foreign students on the Australian campus (30 per- cent), it has two branch campuses in Vietnam, a research site in Europe, and strategic partnerships with uni- versities in China; Hong Kong SAR, China; Indonesia; Singapore; and Sri Lanka. RMIT is today considered one of the most internationalized universities in the world. It has a Global Management Hub to ensure cohesive- ness of the various geographic entities. RMIT Vietnam, established in 2000, was the first foreign university authorized in the country. It has grown into a leading university in the region, with two well-equipped campuses in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. RMIT Vietnam offers the same programs and courses as the main campus in Melbourne and delivers the same in- ternationally recognized degrees. With about 6,000 students in Ho Chi Minh City and 1,400 students in Hanoi, RMIT Vietnam is the world’s largest offshore university. Program offerings in Ho Chi Minh City include infor- mation technology (IT), business, fashion merchandising, and economics; the Hanoi campus focuses on IT, commerce, accountancy, and communications. RMIT Europe, based in Barcelona, was set up in 2013 to strengthen the university’s relationship with educa- tion, research, and industry partners in Europe and to explore new ways of growing its research profile. It has forged links with more than 160 universities or companies in Europe. In Barcelona, it was a founding member of the KEY Economic and Knowledge cluster with the Government of Catalonia and the Barcelona City Council. Through its research institutes, branch campuses, and partnerships, RMIT has built a global international re- search community. Its research is particularly focused on solving the critical global problems affecting com- munities and the environment in five key areas: designing the future, smart technology solutions, improving health and lifestyle, sustainability and climate change challenges, and the future of cities. Source: https://www.rmit.edu.au/. Academic Mobility Academic exchanges are the most common form of cross-border collaboration in higher ed- ucation. The mobility of academics and students constitutes an effective mechanism for im- proving the educational experience of students and stimulating the professional growth of professors. This is why it has been a priority program on the European agenda since the launch of the Bologna Process. At the 2009 Leuven Bologna meeting, the Ministers of Education set a target of 20 percent as the proportion of the entire student population who should participate in an exchange program by 2020. During the 2018 – 19 academic year, 3.3 million European students participated in academic mobility programs. Among them, 530,000 sought a degree in another country. However, the funding of academic exchanges is still a major constraint in most countries outside Europe. To overcome this challenge, cost-sharing arrangements can be the most effective approach, combining contributions from the state as part of the official interna- tionalization policy, financing from the participating universities, and small contributions from the students themselves. In many parts of the world, including South Asia, students encounter logistics barriers, such as visa and lodging, that constrain mobility opportunities. 4  The Way Forward 30 Joint Delivery of Instruction Early in the Bologna Process, the European Ministers of Education saw the development of joint programs and degrees as a powerful mechanism to help create the European higher education space, as reflected in the 2001 Prague Declaration. The Erasmus Mundus program, launched in 2004, gave it a strong impetus, especially at the master’s degree level. This has required a move toward competency-based curriculums, the establishment of the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), the adoption of the diploma supplement to facilitate recog- nition by foreign universities, and national qualifications frameworks. Following this example, a growing number of universities across the world have used the construction of dual degrees as a vehicle for improving the quality and relevance of their programs. In Russia, for example, the young Higher School of Economics built high-quality programs on the basis of joint degrees through a two-decade partnership with the London School of Economics. In India, the Australian University of Melbourne has recently part- nered with three Indian institutions (University of Madras, Savitribai Phule Pune Univer- sity, and Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management in Hyderabad) to offer a dual de- gree Bachelor of Science.16 In Sri Lanka, the University of Sri Jayewardenepura and Monash University in Australia are offering a joint business administration degree.17 Moving in this direction in the South Asia region would involve working jointly on pro- gram and curriculum design and making coordinated decisions on program accreditation and mutual recognition of degrees. The participating universities could rely on the same instruments as those used in the context of the Bologna Process, such as curriculums based on learning outcomes and competencies acquired. The worldwide switch to online learning because of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about many innovations in course design and delivery, which should make joint delivery of instruction much more common and acceptable. For example, the growing practice of mirror classes, involving one or two instructors teaching students from several universi- ties at the same time, provides a good platform for co-constructing programs and courses regardless of physical distance. Collaborative Research Projects Research production has increased exponentially in the past decades, and collaborative re- search activities have followed the same pattern. In fact, Scopus data reveal a faster growth of multiple-author articles than single-author ones. While the number of articles published over the decade 2003 to 2013 went from 1.3 million in 2003 to 2.4 million, the number of au- thorships increased at a far greater rate, from 4.6 million in 2003 to 10 million in 2013 (Plume and van Weijin 2014). In 2018, 39 percent of all U.S. scientific articles were published with 16. https://www.ndtv.com/education/university-of-melbourne-3-indian-universities-to-offer-this-dual-de- gree-3847608. 17. https://www.sjp.ac.lk/usjp-to-light-up-the-way-openings-for-joint-splitdouble-undergraduate-and-post- graduate-degrees-in-australia/. 4  The Way Forward 31 international collaborators, an increase from 19 percent as of 2000.18 Figure 4.2 shows the impressive growth of science and engineering co-publications between U.S. authors and scientists in selected countries. FIGURE 4.2  Coauthored Publications, 1996 – 2018 Brazil China India Mexico Singapore South Africa Korea, Rep. Turkey 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Number of Publications, Thousand 1996 2018 Source: Scopus database. Drawing from a pioneering analysis of publications over the past three decades, Jonathan Adams announced the “fourth age of research,” the age of collaborative research and interna- tional research networks, following the age of individual researchers, the age of the research institution, and the age of the national research enterprise (Adams 2013). Collaborative re- search yields faster results and facilitates a quicker transfer of these results, thereby serv- ing the needs of both producers and users of knowledge in a more effective and efficient manner. According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022): “ In the increasingly digital landscape, scientists seek new remote collaborators after seeing newly published scientific work. Some collaborations are formed from expansive networks or derive from established priorities designated by higher bodies, such as the International Science Council (ISC), agencies of the United Nations (UN), or regional intergovernmental or scientific groups. Some collaborations originate from development and capacity-building aid, and some develop from relationships created from a history of colonization and immigration, with scientists in diasporas partaking in collaborations that bridge across nations and regions. From these grass roots, long-term scientific partnerships can bloom for decades and have the potential to grow into lasting institutional or national relationships (p. 48).” This trend represents a great opportunity for research universities in South Asia, which can work together within international research networks and develop joint research projects of a multidisciplinary nature to address big challenges that are common to the eight coun- tries. As mentioned, they can also collaborate through the development and use of shared facilities and capabilities, perhaps best exemplified by CERN, in operation since 1953, which brings together more than 600 institutions from all over the world (box 4.2). 18. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20201/global-science-and-technology-capabilities. 4  The Way Forward 32 BOX 4.2  The European Organization for Nuclear Research at the Vanguard of Open Science Founded in 1954 and established at a location that symbolically bestrides the French and Swiss border near Geneva, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is the result of a collective effort of European countries to build the world’s leading particle physics research center to address fundamental scientific ques- tions about the structure of the universe. CERN hosts the world’s largest particle accelerator, the 27-kilom- eter-long Hadron Collider, which collides protons or lead ions at energies approaching the speed of light. CERN is one of Europe’s first joint ventures, comprising 21 member states and over 600 institutes and uni- versities around the world, which are currently using its facilities. Around 10,000 visiting scientists from over 113 countries, which represent half of the world’s particle physicists, come to CERN for their research. They represent 580 universities and over 85 nationalities. The construction and operation budget contributions are proportional to the GDP of each member state. When it comes to CERN’s contribution to open research, it is important to remember that the new era of on- line sharing information started there in 1991, when a CERN team led by the British scientist Tim Berners- Lee created the world’s first website. Several major collaborative projects were born at CERN, the best known being the ATLAS collaboration, which brings together 3,000 physicists from more than 174 institutes in 38 countries on five continents. Being the largest and most complex of six particle detector experiments developed at CERN, the ATLAS experiment is an archetypical example of collaboration in “big science.” The project raised numerous challenges in many specialized disciplines and required unusual efforts at cross-disciplinary understanding and collaboration. One of the key success factors of this collaboration has been efficient means of communicating informa- tion. ATLAS has adopted TWiki since 2004 and today it has over 14,000 web pages containing world-reada- ble technical information about the project and also protected data for scientists. New pages of this kind are created at a rate of 150 per month, averaging over 10,000 updates a month. ATLAS creates different working environments and applications through TWiki, thus allowing users to contribute to the development, main- tenance, and sharing of the documents. Source: http://home.web.cern.ch/. Sharing scientific facilities for collaborative research is not restricted to large projects. Modern labs can be linked at a distance through fast broadband connections, allowing for the sharing of expensive equipment and facilities within countries or across nations. At Wageningen University in the Netherlands, the BioScience Center makes five shared labs available to startups and spinoffs.19 In Frankfurt, Germany, two Max Planck Institutes, the Brain Research and Biophysics Institutes, share a proteomics lab with state-of-the-art equipment for mass spectrometry analysis.20 In the U.S. State of Oregon, the Oregon BEST program supports a network of nine cutting-edge shared-user research facilities at Oregon State University, Portland State University, and the University of Oregon. Through these multi-million-dollar labs, industry partners have access to research tools, faculty exper- tise, and workforce development opportunities.21 Shared labs could be of great benefit for universities and research centers in South Asia, which could link up with advanced labs in other countries in the region or in industrial countries and benefit from the use of ex- pensive equipment for performing long-distance experiments that are scientifically valid at a much lower cost. 19. http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Expertise-Services/Facilities/BioScience-Center/Expertise-areas/Shared- Labs.htm. 20. http://brain.mpg.de/services/scientific-services/proteomics.html. 21. http://oregonbest.org/what-we-offer/expertise/labs/#sthash.gjDJVTxF.dpuf. 4  The Way Forward 33 Professional Networks The numerous professional networks that exist in the higher education sphere have tradi- tionally been effective platforms for capacity building on many aspects, from academic dis- cipline-focused networks to networks of pedagogical innovators or networks of university administrators. They usually promote a nonthreatening environment that offers informa- tion, resources, and opportunities for experience sharing and training. By working together in networks and learning from their peers in other countries and institutions, members of the academic community (leaders, administrators, professors, students) can find solutions to issues of shared concern, thereby enhancing institutional capacity. The pandemic has shown the great value of professional networks as never before. In many countries, colleges and universities have been innovative in imagining new ways of conduct- ing internationalization activities and continuing their partnerships with foreign univer- sities and colleagues in a virtual mode. For example, the Association of Pacific Rim Univer- sities (APRU), a network of 55 universities in the Americas, Asia, and Australasia, launched the Virtual Student Exchange Program to connect students with peers from around the world to learn new knowledge and skills and exchange ideas. Led by the Chinese Univer- sity of Hong Kong, the program allows students to take academic courses and participate in co-curricular programs without the need to leave home. It makes international educa- tion accessible to all students by “providing an immersive virtual student exchange expe- rience through digital technologies and platforms.”22 Quality Assurance Associations Until the 1980s, higher education institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Commonwealth countries were the only ones in the world with a strong tradition of external quality assurance. By contrast, most higher education systems elsewhere evolved without any formal quality assurance mechanism at the national level. In many countries, higher education institutions operated under a widely accepted notion of academic auton- omy that applied not only to the relationship between universities and the state but went all the way down to the lecture hall and classroom. This all started to change in the 1980s and the 1990s, as most OECD countries moved to es- tablish some form of government-sanctioned quality assurance. Europe, in particular, wit- nessed a considerable drive as a direct result of the Bologna Process, officially launched in 1999. One of the most important dimensions of the Bologna Process activities has in- deed been the development and/or strengthening of quality assurance in all participating countries, based on the principles issued through the Berlin Communiqué in 2003, and the standards and guidelines prepared by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), in partnership with the European University Association (EUA), the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education (EURASHE), and the European Students’ Union (ESU). By 2008, most countries had a functioning evaluation or accreditation 22. https://vse.apru.org/?utm_source=APRU&utm_campaign=cfa07c9700-EMAIL_ CAMPAIGN_2020_05_05_02_00_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2fbec0f- d6e-cfa07c9700-60809213. 4  The Way Forward 34 agency. The European Quality Assurance Register (EQAR) has been a strong factor in influ- encing quality assurance (QA) agencies wishing to integrate the community of national sys- tems recognized as complying with the Standards and Guidelines. The successful conver- gence of QA regulations has been one of Bologna’s most noticeable outcomes. Whereas only a minority of developing countries had a formal quality assurance system by the turn of the century, the QA movement has gained tremendous momentum in the past 20 years, undergoing what could be described as the quiet revolution in higher education (Salmi 2015a).23 In Southeast Asia, Indonesia took the lead in establishing a national qual- ity assurance agency in 1994, followed over the next two decades by almost all the countries in the region. Today, Myanmar has the only higher education system in the region without a formal external quality assurance department or agency. One of the accelerating factors behind the successful expansion of a strong quality assur- ance culture in Southeast Asia has been the relentless capacity building work of the Asia Pacific Quality Network (APQN). From an initial 11 member agencies in 2004, the network has grown to a 143-member organization, representing 31 nations of the Asia-Pacific re- gion. As mentioned, APQN benefited from prolonged financial support from the World Bank through two successive Development Grants. Recognition of Qualifications Many international cooperation activities, especially academic exchange programs and joint degrees, cannot operate adequately unless all the countries involved have a harmo- nized system to recognize qualifications seamlessly. A cornerstone of the Bologna Process in Europe has been ensuring the mutual recognition of qualifications and learning peri- ods abroad completed at other universities. In other parts of the world, however, progress toward regional recognition of qualifications has been a slow process, especially in Latin America and South Asia. The adoption in November 2019 of the Global Convention on the Recognition of Higher Education Qualifications facilitated by UNESCO, almost 20 years in the making, has given a new momentum to similar efforts at the regional level. Strategic Partnerships Universities and colleges know that they can accelerate institutional capacity building through mutually beneficial partnerships. Research on emerging universities has revealed that inter- national collaborations and partnerships are an effective way of fast-tracking capacity build- ing efforts in order to improve teaching and learning, deepen research activities for higher output and impact, and achieve more effective engagement with the community, public agen- cies, and private firms (Salmi 2009; Altbach and Salmi 2011; Altbach et al. 2017). A good way of strengthening higher education institutions in an accelerated manner, therefore, is to es- tablish links or even forge strategic partnerships with universities in neighboring countries. 23. By contrast to reforms in the areas of governance and financing, which more often than not have generated heated debate and encountered strong resistance in the academic community, the development of quality assur- ance has been widely accepted in most countries across all regions of the world. 4  The Way Forward 35 The idea is not to emulate the practice of many universities in the world, which tend to sign dozens — sometimes hundreds — of memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with institu- tions in other countries, usually focusing on academic and student mobility. In practice, few of these MOUs are active or effective. Strategic partnerships are of a different nature. They are deep relationships with a small number of carefully chosen institutions that are not necessarily at the same level of development but do share a common vision and simi- lar values. The principal objective of these partnerships is to undertake mutually benefi- cial projects spanning the entire range of academic and administrative activities, including the development of joint academic programs and/or double degrees, collaborative applied research projects, joint services to the community, and possibly joint benchmarking exer- cises that help with the identification of gaps and the definition of stretch goals. For exam- ple, the University of Auckland (New Zealand), the University of Melbourne (Autralia), and the University of Liverpool (UK) have worked together for years as benchmarking partners to identify gaps and share good practices.24 Bangladesh Agricultural University and Cornell University recently established a partnership to improve agricultural research and educa- tion in Bangladesh. This partnership includes joint research projects, student and faculty exchanges, and curriculum development.25 Summary Assessment Table 4.2 summarizes, for each modality of regional collaboration, the main purpose and the scope of the collaboration in relation to the areas of improvement that these collabo- rations are expected to bring about at participating colleges and universities. The various purposes of these initiatives include the following aspects: internationalization of the cur- riculum, capacity building, search for complementarities and synergies, professional devel- opment, and harmonization. TABLE 4.2  Modalities and Purpose of Regional Collaboration and Integration Purpose Teaching Knowledge and and Technology Institutional Modality Learning Research Transfer Development Multi-campus universities (S) International universities (I) Branch campuses (I) Academic mobility (I) Joint delivery of instruction (I) (virtual and mirror classes/dual degrees) Joint research projects (S) Professional networks for academics and higher education institutions (PD) 24. Author’s interview with the vice-chancellor of the University of Auckland in November 2011. 25. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/08/international-programs-ground-bangladesh. 4  The Way Forward 36 Purpose Teaching Knowledge and and Technology Institutional Modality Learning Research Transfer Development Quality assurance and accreditation associations/ networks (H) Recognition of qualifications associations/networks (H) Strategic partnerships and alliances (CP) Note: CP = capacity building; H = harmonization; I = internationalization; PD = professional development; S = search for synergies. While the various collaboration modalities presented above are not mutually exclusive, quite the opposite, some are easier to implement than others, or carry a smaller price tag. To guide policy makers and university leaders in South Asia — t he main stakeholders respon- sible for driving the regional integration process — table 4.3 offers a summary evaluation of the relative benefits and costs of each modality. It looks, in particular, at their financial cost, the political difficulty involved in their implementation, and their technical complexity. TABLE 4.3  Benefits and Costs of Cross-Border Collaboration Options Benefits & Costs Potential Political Technical Modality Impact Financial Cost Difficulty Complexity Multi-campus universities +++ +++ ++ +++ International universities ++ ++ + + Branch campuses ++ + + + Academic mobility +++ + + + Joint/dual degrees ++ + + + Research networks ++ + + ++ Professional networks +++ + + + Quality assurance networks +++ + + + Recognition of qualifications Strategic partnerships and alliances +++ + + ++ Note: The number of + signs reflects the magnitude of benefits and costs. Enablers for the South Asia Region It is important to emphasize the role of three enabling factors that could help facilitate the creation of a higher education regional space in South Asia: (i) the widespread use of English; (ii) advanced information and communications technology; and (iii) the open sci- ence and open education resources movement. Language In many parts of the world, low levels of English mastery, the international language of science, make international contacts more difficult than in countries where young people 4  The Way Forward 37 and academics have a good command of the language. This is the case, for example, in most Central and South American countries, which are constrained in their capacity to develop fruitful exchanges with universities in North America, Asia, or Europe (besides Spain and Portugal). Similarly, in Cyprus and Greece, the legal obligation to use only Greek as the lan- guage of instruction has set the local universities outside the main destination of European students taking advantage of Erasmus mobility opportunities. English language use and mastery is uneven across TABLE 4.4  Proportion of the Population Who South Asia, as illustrated by table 4.4, which shows Speak English estimates of the proportion of the general popu- Share of English World Rank by lation who speak English, and the country rank- Country Speakers English Skills ing, prepared by the international testing company Afghanistan 6% 79 Education First (with 100 participating countries). Bangladesh 18% 63 In any case, the relatively widespread use of Eng- Bhutan 80% Not ranked lish in the education systems of all eight South India 12% 50 Asian countries, especially in higher education, is Maldives 80% Not ranked a big advantage to establish and nurture close links Nepal 36% 60 throughout the region among students, academics, and higher education institutions, notwithstand- Pakistan 57% 61 ing the legitimate efforts of certain countries (and Sri Lanka 62% 68 certain states within India) to encourage the use Sources: https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ of national languages, as well. List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population. Information and Communications Technology Even though the Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare acute disparities in economic resources and connectivity throughout the planet, universities and colleges have been able to take advantage of the infinite opportunities offered by modern information and communica- tions technology (ICT). Many of them have introduced innovative practices through online teaching and learning, remote research arrangements, new forms of assessment, and vir- tual internationalization practices (Salmi 2020). In many countries, the pandemic has also provided the opportunity for increased collabo- ration among colleges and universities that would otherwise be competing with each oth- er, facilitated by the proliferation of software and digital platforms that facilitate collec- tive work. Sometimes at the instigation of the Ministry of Higher Education, sometimes led by national university associations, and sometimes arising spontaneously, higher edu- cation institutions with good online education capacity have reached out to help less-pre- pared institutions in their region or country, and/or have created collaborative platforms for sharing good practices for teaching online. In Mexico, for instance, nine universities joined forces to set up a website that will host free digital resources for the entire educa- tional community in the country and beyond. Since the beginning of the health crisis in March 2020, South Asian governments have worked hard to bridge the digital gap in support of their higher education system. The Indian Ministry of Human Resources Development has set up the National Programme on 4  The Way Forward 38 Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), a platform that offers digital resources for STEM programs. It also launched the National Educational Alliance for Technology (NETA) as a public-private partnership aiming to put educational software and products on a single plat- form. Authorities in the southern state of Kerala announced that they would provide extra bandwidth across the state to support online learning for all students during the Covid-19 outbreak. In Pakistan, the Virtual University has provided support to all the universities that switched to online education. In Bangladesh, the University Grants Commission and BdREN, the national education research network, teamed up to support universities dur- ing the transition to online education through capacity building activities and a hotline to help students facing connection difficulties. Similarly, in Sri Lanka, the University Grants Commission worked with the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission to seek sup- port from the country’s internet providers. Moving ahead, higher education institutions in South Asia can take advantage of ICT to facil- itate communication, information sharing, and joint activities without necessarily having to meet physically. ICT can be a powerful accelerator toward greater regional collaboration and integration. Many of the collaborative activities reviewed in the previous section can take place in a virtual mode, without having to worry about government authoritization, visas, and cost of travel. Even for research in many fields, a number of universities have given their students the opportunity to participate in online simulations, accessing remote labs or using virtual reality rooms to continue the experiential part of the learning process. All this is, of course, conditional on the existence and further development of a strong and financially sustainable National Research and Education Network (NREN) that sup- ports all higher education institutions in each of the South Asian countries. NRENs in South Asia could emulate the generosity of India’s NREN (ERNET), which during the pandemic has granted any interested African country free access to digital platforms, peer-to-peer ser- vices to support research collaboration between African and Indian scientists, and techni- cal support to help strengthen NRENs in Sub-Saharan Africa and develop campus networks. Table 4.5 shows the different ways in which advanced technologies can be harnessed to sup- port higher education instutions and enhance their collaborative activities with other uni- versities in other South Asian nations. TABLE 4.5  ICTs for Higher Education Teaching Academic Types of Technology and Learning Research Management Connectivity Computers/Internet/NREN Technology Remote connection to digital labs Individual First generation ICT-based management informa- Digital tion systems for education Technologies Cellular phones and mobile applications Drones for remote sensing Satellite imaging Blockchain for secure microcredit and degrees 4  The Way Forward 39 Teaching Academic Types of Technology and Learning Research Management Individual 3-D printing Digital Technologies Augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR) (cont.) Online Educational Content Digital Online Educational Portals with Learning Platforms Resources (including MOOCs) Labor market observatory platforms Converging AI-driven personalized and adaptive learning Technologiesa Big data for formative assessment feedback Predictive analytics for identification of at-risk students Big data analysis and remote sensing Source: Adapted from World Bank (2021b). Note: a. Converging technologies are defined as the synergistic combination of four groups of technologies: information technology, biotechnology, nanotech- nology, and cognitive technologies (World Bank 2021b). Open Science and Education In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, it might be worth revisiting the traditional compet- itive and restrictive approach to research funding and research production that privileges publications in prestigious scientific journals over research impact and social relevance may. As part of efforts to make higher education and research systems more resilient and more relevant to the needs of society, South Asian nations could seriously consider the pro- motion of Open Science as a policy priority in the post-pandemic era. The paradigm shift embodied by Open Science, which has been on the agenda of the European Commission and a number of European countries for several years, refers to the rapid development of open, interactive, and collaborative modes of knowledge acquisition, generation, and dis- semination, facilitated by networks that rely on modern information and communication tools. As a matter of fact, Covid-19 has pushed the scientific community to work together in unprecedented ways, an approach with potentially many benefits to instructors, research- ers, and students working at higher educations institutions in South Asia. As Apuzzo and Kirkpatrick (2020) explain, “ While political leaders have locked their borders, scientists have been shattering theirs, creating a global collaboration unlike any in history. Never before, researchers say, have so many experts in so many countries focused simultaneously on a single topic and with such urgency. Nearly all other research has ground to a halt. … Normal imperatives like academic credit have been set aside. Online repositories make studies available months ahead of journals. Researchers have identified and shared hundreds of viral genome sequences. More than 200 clinical trials have been launched, bringing together hospitals and laboratories around the globe. … The University of Oxford – A stra Zeneca vaccine, developed using data published on the genome of the coronavirus by a Chinese virologist at Fudan University, is the centrepiece of COVAX, the global vaccine initiative which aims at providing equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for low- to middle-income countries. 4  The Way Forward 40 “ The pandemic is also eroding the secrecy that pervades academic medical research, said Dr. Ryan Carroll, a Harvard Medical professor who is involved in the coronavirus trial there. Big, exclusive research can lead to grants, promotions, and tenure, so scientists often work in secret, suspiciously hoarding data from potential competitors, he said. ‘The ability to work collaboratively, setting aside your personal academic progress, is occurring right now because it’s a matter of survival.’ “ One small measure of openness can be found on the servers of medRxiv and bioRxiv, two online archives that share academic research before it has been reviewed and published in journals. The archives have been deluged with coronavirus research from across the globe.” Figure 4.3 proposes a representation of how the various dimensions of Open Science are connected and interact, and how many of them are directly relevant to the work of univer- sities and colleges. FIGURE 4.3  Open Science and Related Dimensions entific Populatio Global Sci n ased Incre Ne w s Open Software Web Mo a 2.0 de em Dat of bl en Re Pr o Op Sh are Overseas Develo dF se pme ex ss nt A ac ar pl ssis ili ce ch m licy tan Co Pr Po tie ce Ac od ic bl s& en Team- & Design- uct Pu Op Based Learning Ca ion pa n bili pe tion Le P ties ar ica Open Research ee ning Pu O Open Source d Jurisdictions r bl iplo m acy G a m in g C iti z e n S Big D a ta Ope n n Collaboratio ce D Share E-S .0 cie c ie n ce 2 ie n ce S ci e n nc Sc Co OP e EN O N ATI m s S C IE tic D UC m N C E IN TERTIARY E aly un An i ti of es OP iv ks e Pr EN S CI E TY i ct or ac ed Sh CI E N C O ti c E IN T HE WID ER S Pr w d ar e et Gl N al e ob n al ENA S ti o Ch B LER TF O RM na a ll S : IN STR UM E N T S & P L A er en I nt ges O P EN SCIE N C E D RIV E R S Source: Salmi 2015b. 4  The Way Forward 41 Moving toward an Open Science mode, which would allow for more collaborative forms of research, can only happen on a large scale if research funding agencies agree to modify their allocation methods and encourage grant applications reflecting partnerships across institutions and countries. Research funding agencies should encourage Open Science and collaborative projects across institutions and countries that could pool talent and resources to foster cooperation and multidisciplinarity in the resolution of societal challenges. Another, equally important change would be the transition to Open Access publishing of scholarly articles and books, defined at the 2003 Berlin Conference on Open Access to Learning as the “free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, down- load, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.” The main advantage of Open Access is to reduce the time between sci- entific discoveries and advances and their dissemination in the public space. By removing the price and geographic obstacles preventing the free and fast circulation of knowledge, this has the potential of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of research and ampli- fying scientific collaborations across institutions and countries. A recent study sponsored by the European University Association identified two possible models to achieve this ob- jective — one based on publisher-owned platforms, and one relying on community-owned platforms (Technopolis 2020). One of the world’s leading publishers, Elsevier, has provided the example by making exten- sive collections of relevant scientific publications and material available free of charge for the duration of the pandemic through its Novel Coronavirus Information Center (Schoombee 2020). This new posture departs from previous episodes that have pitted Elsevier against the academic world. In 2014, for example, Dutch universities clashed with the internation- al publishing house with a demand to have their scientific production become open ac- cess by 2024 (Jump 2015). In 2015, South African universities joined an international move- ment of thousands of universities around the world that signed the Confederation of Open Access Repositories petition against the new rules imposed back then by Elsevier (Wild 2015). Cambridge University Press has provided free access to a wide range of books, jour- nals, and learning materials for students, teachers, and researchers impacted by Covid-19. A recent World Bank report stressed the potential offered by Open Science for the South Asia region. “ Open science is an approach to enable all countries to benefit from the digital revolution in science and the ongoing converging technology revolution. … Open science complements the open data movement and enables countries to join the frontiers of scientific and technological innovation, be it by building local innovation capacity, resilience, and adaptation or by co-creating technology and data governance frameworks as scientists, researchers and policy makers learn about these technologies. … Open science can create efficiencies of scale in the planning, procurement and provision of data, computing power, and advanced data science skills through collaboration and shared capacities. This approach will be of benefit especially for the smaller SAR countries” (World Bank 2021b). 4  The Way Forward 42 External Facilitation as a Game Changer Considering the political difficulties that have prevented regional collaboration initiatives for higher education to thrive through official channels, external facilitation provided by multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and UNESCO can be a game changer. This facilitation role can take three complementary forms: (i) a con- vening function for policy and professional dialogue, (ii) financial and technical support for regional activities, and (iii) support for regulatory harmonization. Convening Function In the first instance, international organizations can organize various types of meetings that pro- vide a safe space where higher education representatives from South Asia can meet on neutral grounds to exchange information and ideas about recent developments, identify common chal- lenges, and learn from each other’s experience. In the early 2000s, for example, the World Bank conducted a series of workshops about higher education reforms in South Asia, following the pub- lication of two seminar reports, Peril and Promise and Construction Knowledge Societies. These meetings provided a platform for hearty and frank debate about the main issues faced by each participating country. The stimulating effect that the testimony of delegates from each nation had on the others was noteworthy, as they reported what they were doing, or planning to undertake, or not able to achieve for political economy reasons. Interestingly, this multicountry policy dia- logue resulted, over the following years, in the preparation and launch of higher education de- velopment and reform projects financed by the World Bank in almost all South Asian countries. Another, more recent example, is the series of regional conferences bringing together un- dergraduate economics students from all over South Asia (all SAARC members except the Maldives). South Asian Economics Students’ Meet (SAESM), initially launched by two pro- fessors at Delhi University, is an independently organized annual academic event that has been supported by the World Bank and the United Nations Institute for Peace as a plat- form for dialogue among young people from the region who are future agents of change. Each SAESM has a particular theme related to the contemporary economic issues of South Asia. The first SAESM was hosted in New Delhi in 2004. The latest gathering took place in Kathmandu in January 2020. As observed by Kaushik Basu, World Bank Chief Economist, “SAESM is an excellent opportunity for young people in South Asia to engage with one an- other and come up with creative solutions to shared challenges.”26 The testimony of Nishant Khanal, an economics student and 13th SAESM participant, is also informative: “ Last November, when the SAARC summit that was supposed to be held in Pakistan was canceled, I thought regional cooperation in South Asia would lose its momentum. Tensions between members not only postponed the SAARC Summit, but also hampered the South Asian Economics Students’ (SAESM) meet [sic]. SAESM was scheduled to be held in India in December. I started believing in news, media and opinion pieces that said there is no future for South Asian integration as there is so much mistrust in the region. 26. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/12/31/ south-asia-economic-students-meet-saesm-integration. 4  The Way Forward 43 “ After a concerted effort from the economics professors from across South Asia with the support of the World Bank, the 13th SAESM of economics students was successfully held in Kathmandu last week. Despite regional dynamics, SAESM has never missed any year since its inception in 2004, and it may well be unique in that respect in South Asia. “ Besides talking about economic theories and making policy recommendations for better regional integration in our research papers, we shared our common dreams for One South Asia. Traveling to Nepal for SAESM was the first abroad travel experience for many counterparts and it made them love South Asia more. “ How will SAESM help South Asia prosper? Joining the alumni of more than 1,000 participants who have attended this wonderful event; we, the future leaders of South Asia will hopefully make the One South Asia dream true. We know the beauty of cross- country friendships, our research has taught us the importance of trade within the region, and importantly, we want to savor and build on this momentum in the years to come.”27 In fullfilling this role of convenor, international organizations can try to identify champi- ons and enlist their help in steering the informal dialogue on regional collaboration. These would be distinguished individuals with a recognized trajectory in public office, academia, the private sector, or civil society who no longer hold official positions but are keen to engage in informal conversations and exchange of views with like-minded people in other South Asian countries. These champions can participate in the regional collaboration dialogue in their personal capacity, without the burden of having to represent an official national or institutional position. They can act as sounding boards and local influencers to explore possible options and solutions to resolve issues of common interest, thereby helping cre- ate coalitions of the willing among people committed to the regional integration agenda. Financial and Technical Support The second main modality of support from development organizations is to provide finan- cial and technical assistance in the context of regional grants or projects. Regional projects are the perfect platform to stimulate joint programs and courses, partnerships for capac- ity building activities, collaborative research, academic mobility, and development of net- works. Another important contribution that projects of this kind can make is to help set up or strengthen regional centers of excellence for advanced training and applied research, as illustrated by the ACE project in Sub-Saharan Africa (box 4.3). BOX 4.3  African Centres of Excellence (ACEs) The realization that shortages in advanced human capital and low research capacity constrained the abili- ty of Sub-Saharan African nations to address development challenges through innovation and productivity increases led to the launch of the African Centres of Excellence regional project by the World Bank in 2014. The first phase supported 19 Centres selected across seven Western and Central African countries. The sec- ond phase, launched in 2016, financed 24 Centres of excellence in Eastern and Southern Africa. The projects operate in five clusters of regional priorities: industry, agriculture, health, education, and applied statistics. 27. https://blogs.worldbank.org/endpovertyinsouthasia/voices-youth-restoring-my-belief-one-south-asia. 4  The Way Forward 44 The mission of the new Centres, which are specialized in select multidisciplinary areas, is to tackle develop- ment challenges facing the region through graduate training in master’s, PhD, and short-term courses, and applied research in the form of partnerships and collaborations with other institutions and the private sec- tor. The ACEs will help to build the capacity of their host universities to provide quality postgraduate educa- tion with relevance to the labor market, and to conduct high-quality applied research that seeks innovative solutions to key development priorities. To generate greater impact, they will develop partnerships with oth- er academic institutions, nationally as well as regionally and internationally, and with industry and the pri- vate sector. The Centres are meant to become role models for other tertiary education institutions by deliv- ering excellent teaching and research. A recent evaluation of the first wave of ACEs found that this initiative has created synergies in higher ed- ucation across the SSA region by optimizing limited resources and deepening cooperation among coun- tries, while equipping young people with highly relevant skills and strengthening the research capacity and output of the host universities. Some of the Centres have led major health initiatives during the Ebola epi- demic and the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, the Africa Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID), hosted by Redeemer University in Nigeria, and the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) at the University of Ghana illustrate how regional higher education in- tegration can help generate solutions to common problems. Source: World Bank 2021a. Regulatory Harmonization The third and last function that international organizations can fulfill is to work toward regulatory harmonization through their bilateral relations with individual governments in South Asia. These negotiations would seek to ensure that the legal and regulatory frame- work of each country facilitates regional collaboration with respect to alignment of quality assurance standards; criteria and processes; and recognition of qualifications, credits, and microcredentials. The frameworks should encompass both on-campus and online education. Principles of Effective Collaboration Based on the review of international experience and the interviews conducted for this study, a few principles can be pondered to guide interventions of international donor agencies in support of increased regional collaboration and coordination in South Asia: (i) reliance on professional channels, (ii) gradualism in membership, (iii) seeds planting, (iv) capacity building focus, (v) sustainability, and (vi) need for monitoring and evaluation. Reliance on Professional Channels In recognition of the existing political difficulties and tensions among South Asian gov- ernments, the construction of a regional higher education space has a greater chance of success if collaboration activities take place in the context of professional associations and networks. Rather than waiting for political decisions or seeking official commitment from national authorities, university leaders and members of university communities are more likely to be successful in building trust and working together toward common goals in the context of professional networks. These can be either restricted to the South Asia region or have a wider geographic reach. The experience of the Asia Pacific Quality Network and the 4  The Way Forward 45 Association of Commonwealth Universities shows that the latter approach provides a non- threatening environment that, for the time being, is perhaps more propitious to building effective partnerships among South Asian higher education institutions. Gradualism in Membership To be considered as a fruitful regional cooperation action, collaborative undertakings do not need to involve all eight countries of South Asia. The best way to proceed may be to start with small projects on a bilateral or trilateral basis. If successful, these modest initiatives are more likely to attract associations or academics from other South Asian countries. This approach worked well with the African Centres of Excellence. Seeds Planting Supporting a national higher education reform and development program or project in one of the South Asian countries provides a platform for planting the seeds of regional collabo- ration around issues of common interest. The program/project can explicitly include knowl- edge-sharing activities that bring higher education stakeholders together. Study tours to learn about relevant experiences in other parts of the world are also an opportunity to com- bine delegations from several South Asian countries. Training partnerships with univer- sities in Southeast Asia or OECD countries can also be leveraged to serve higher education institutions in several South Asian nations at the same time. Capacity Building Focus Under the influence of the global university rankings (Shanghai, Leiden, Times Higher Education, QS), the world of higher education has become increasingly hierarchical. There is a risk, therefore, that universities in South Asia may be more interested in partnerships with top institutions in Southeast Asia or OECD countries, or that within South Asia net- working links would thrive only among the most prestigious higher education institutions from each country. To avoid the peripheralization of many institutions, regional collaboration initiatives in South Asia should have a capacity building focus driven by solidarity motives. Some of the regional projects could be organized in a “cascade” manner, whereby the most advanced South Asian universities that are involved in partnerships with top universities from OECD countries would at the same time provide technical support to higher education institutions in the region that have less capacity. The collaborative ventures may not always be partner- ships between or among equals from an institutional capacity viewpoint, but all partners could work together in a mutually beneficial way. The more developed institutions could play a “big sister” role, sharing their experience and know-how with their partners as a way of helping them accelerate their institutional building efforts. In this context, capac- ity building should aim at both raising performance and strengthening the resilience of higher education institutions. 4  The Way Forward 46 Drawing on the experience and challenges faced by higher education institutions in South Asia during the Covid-19 pandemic, a priority focus of regional collaboration initiatives should be strengthening the resilience of universities and other tertiary level institutions. This involves at least two complementary dimensions. First, higher education systems and institutions need to incorporate risk monitoring and assessment in their strategic planning and put in place measures and mechanisms that can make them more resistant to shocks and more agile to be able to make necessary adjustments rapidly. Second, higher education in- stitutions must revisit their business model to build up their financial sustainability. In the case of public universities, this means becoming less dependent on public funding while, for private institutions, it implies relying less on tuitions fees. Never has the resource diversifi- cation agenda been as imperative — for all types of tertiary education institutions — as today. Sustainability If the regional collaboration activities are sponsored by donor projects, it is important to factor in sustainability concerns. More effective results can be achieved if the impact of donor intervention is not limited to the project period but continues beyond the availability of donor-supported technical and financial assistance. Several design features can contrib- ute to increased sustainability of donor investment. First, the likelihood of smooth project implementation and increased longer-term sustainability is much greater if the beneficiary higher education institutions can contribute at least part of the funding. Using a sliding scale — diminishing the donor contribution and increasing the counterpart contribution every year — can be a practical approach for ensuring sustainability beyond the project life (Salmi 2017). To finance their part, higher education institutions in South Asian countries might try to compete for internationalization funds and research grants when provided by the national or subnational authorities. Second, implementation can be easier if the project is developed in partnership with the beneficiary institutions, rather than for them. Ideally, the higher education institutions themselves should determine the specific objectives and targets they want to achieve on the basis of the proposed collaborations, as they must have primary implementation responsi- bilities. Project design should therefore provide for an appropriate balance between decen- tralization of responsibilities to universities and central coordination by the project imple- mentation unit at the national level. Monitoring and Evaluating Finally, as signaled in a study prepared by the Asian Development Bank (ADB2012), adequate metrics and indicators are needed to properly monitor and evaluate progress in develop- ing regional collaboration, cooperation, and integration. Several initiatives exist, such as the ADB’s Asia-Pacific Regional Cooperation Integration Index (ARCII), the Africa Regional Integration Index, the Latin America and Caribbean Integration Index, and the EU Index of Integration Effort. All these approaches use a composite index that attempts to measure relevant dimensions for regional integration, among which are infrastructure and con- nectivity, trade and investment flows, regional value chains, movement of people, and in- stitutional and social integration. 4  The Way Forward 47 Rather than develop a similar composite index to measure the degree of regional inte- gration in higher education in South Asia or elsewhere, it might be more useful to adopt a benchmarking approach looking at good practices with respect to each of the modalities of regional collaboration and cooperation reviewed in this Policy Note and assess progress within the South Asia region on that basis. In any event, it is important to monitor devel- opments in this area and learn from successes and failures, taking into consideration the multiple opportunities that ICT offers to find alternative ways of engaging across borders and to scale up collaborative efforts through virtual platforms. 5  48 Conclusion Despite shared languages, history, culture, and borders, South Asia remains one of the least integrated regions in the world. One of the big challenges of the region is that its countries are becoming at once more connected and more divided. The low level of regional coopera- tion translates into a loss of opportunities for each nation in the region. In South Asia as everywhere else, human development is at the heart of any strategy seek- ing to promote innovation and raise productivity. In a visit to the United States prior to the pandemic, the Prime Minister of the Canadian province of Ontario observed that, in today’s knowledge-driven economies, the main source of comparative advantage that coun- tries can rely on is not capital, technology, or raw materials anymore, but the talent of their educated population. The priority given in past decades by the East Asian “dragons” and the Nordic countries in Europe to the development of their education system at all levels clearly reflects a similar conviction. Notwithstanding existing tensions and the lack of mutual trust at the political level, South Asian universities are in a unique position, through their cross-border collaborations, to help transform the dynamics of fragmentation and isolation into one of synergy and sym- biosis. This report has sought to identify a few promising initiatives to develop joint activi- ties in the higher education sphere that could accelerate progress toward a more integrated region where universities, colleges, and research institutes work effectively together across national borders. Successful initiatives at the institutional level might help trigger the pro- cess at the political level at a later stage to put in place a supporting regulatory framework and financial incentives. The former rector of the Danish University of Aarhus, the second-most-recognized univer- sity in that country, used the concept of “change without a burning platform” to describe the difficulty faced by academic leaders seeking to drive transformative projects in their university when things are going reasonably well, making it arduous to sensitize the uni- versity community to the need for further change. In the same spirit, the main challenge for the leaders of South Asian colleges and universities is to create a sense of urgency that would help persuade all stakeholders in the respective higher education sectors to embrace the opportunity of regional collaboration and integration as a factor of acceleration to attain higher levels of performance and serve the local and regional economies more effectively. With that sense of urgency should also come the full realization that doing things “togeth- er,” instead of pursuing the separate development of their respective higher education sys- tems and institutions, makes eminent sense for every country in the region. As argued 5 Conclusion 49 in this report, collaborative ventures are likely to have a much stronger impact than dis- persed efforts. In a highly competitive global higher education landscape, the cost of “doing nothing” is high. The South Asian higher education systems and institutions, just like any other sec- tors, must seek to improve their performance and responsiveness to the needs of their coun- tries. Efforts to increase regional collaboration and integration could be a game changer. As illustrated in figure 5.1, elaborating, adopting, and implementing a common framework would place higher education systems and institutions in the region in an aspirational spi- ral that would allow them to play a more active role in support of their nations’ development. FIGURE 5.1  Changing the Dynamics of Development Complacency Aspiration Growing STAGNATION Absence Improved CHANGE Goal performance DIAMOND of vision performance DIAMOND setting gap Business Renewal as usual strategy Source: Salmi 2009. The political realities, rivalries, and tensions in the South Asia region make it more difficult to implement a regional integration agenda than in other parts of the planet. 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