Guest editorial

Abstract

Following volume 23.2, the second volume in our two-part special issue series (23.3) includes six papers. One focuses on a policy framework facilitating international mobility of students and academics in higher education in the Asia-Pacific region, and the other five papers focus on dynamic policies and practices of internationalization of higher education in countries including China, Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam. In the first article of this issue by Wesley and Wang (2021), they describe the development and prospects of the Tokyo Convention (UNESCO, 2011). The Tokyo Convention is a significant policy framework for the internationalization in Asia-Pacific to facilitate regional collaboration, authoritative information sharing and recognition of qualifications across diverse modes of learning. To monitor and assess the role and implementation of the Tokyo Convention throughout the region, a standardized survey implementation was employed in their analysis, and it became the first systematic review of its kind. Including their professional insights, Teter and Wang identify the need for a multi-stakeholder approach based on collaborative governance to effectively monitor implementation and implications of the Tokyo Convention for diverse higher education stakeholders in the Asia-Pacific region.With the start of opening-up reform in the late 1970s, the rapid internationalization of Chinese higher education has been receiving emerging attention worldwide. The second article contributed by Zhong ( 2021) elucidates an entrepreneurial approach of internationalization of Chinese higher education with an in-depth case study of Chinese higher education at the system level and Tsinghua University at the institutional level. Zhong interprets the process of internationalization as a dynamic reciprocal interaction between the opening-up policy and the Chinese higher education policy through employing a mixture of research methods, including reviewing policy documents and conducting participatory observation and interviews with stakeholders. The author demonstrates that there are five purposes of China's higher education internationalization, which is considered a process of entrepreneurial internationalization. It sustains China's belief that educational opening-up is beneficial for China's modernization and common development worldwide. The approach provides a cost-effective approach to foster human resources for the Chinese society through studying abroad. It promotes domestic reform and enhances Sino-foreign exchange and collaboration. It becomes a public diplomacy measure to construct a global network of educational engagement. Moreover, this empowers the top national universities to lead in the global competition.Writing about the context of Cambodia in the third article, Say Sok and Rinna Bunry explain the challenges that Cambodia has faced in recovering their higher education sector after the Khmer Rougewhen educators and educational institutions were famously targeted for elimination. Sok and Bunry (2021) explain th...