As a region Asia has seen a tremendous economic growth over the last 30 years accompanied by a significant expansion of higher education. Asia is the largest general and higher education region of the world with a total population of approximately 3.9 Billion, and an overall participation in education in China (in 2004) of 340 Million people, exceeding e.g. the US population. Asian nations are multi-ethnic, and have multiple nationalities often with significant autonomy within a national framework. For example, China has over 50 recognized nationalities, five large autonomous regions, and numerous autonomous districts. And Asia, as a region, developed a large variety of higher education concepts as part of its pre-colonial history and the colonial and post-colonial development of its nations, where applicable. There are British system derivatives e.g. in Hong Kong SAR, Singapore; American system derivatives in e.g. Korea, Thailand and the Philippines; and multiple influences, including American and Russian, in China.
Under these scenarios, student and researcher mobilities are important indicators and dimensions of internationalization of higher education in Asia. One indicator of mobility is the fraction of foreign students in the overall student body. For some selected Asia-Pacific countries, from 2003 to 2005 (based predominantly on OECD data) foreign student participation is: Australia: 18.6%, New Zealand: 13.4%, Japan 2.2%, Korea: >0.2%, China: 0.7%, and India: >0.2%. Statistics of foreign born persons with higher education living in Asia-Pacific OECD countries as percentage of the total number of similarly qualified residents, for example, are: Australia: 16.2%, New Zealand: 14.5 %, Korea: < 0.5%, and Japan: < 0.5%.
Analysis of policy initiatives and of economic and mobility data sets used in this study show that Asia is a major outbound mobility region for students and university educated professionals with a comparatively and strongly visible trend of intra-regional mobility in the academic sector, indicating that Asian intra-regional student and faculty mobility development shows exceptional promise as an important international dimension of higher education in Asia.
The paper also shows that development of higher education in Asia is highly diversified and is predominantly driven by national history, economy and politics. National policies improving quality and participation in higher education are built on and include elements for the development of international dimensions of higher education in Asia. Economic development and outcomes of national higher education policies prepare Asia to reverse the outbound direction of educated professionals while they significantly prepare the region to become an increasingly valued destination for international students and international faculty and professionals.