ASEAN supports the vision of a regional Higher Education Space as a core element of people-to-people connectivity and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. Anchored on the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint 2025, the ASEAN Work Plan on Education 2021 – 2025 includes as one of the key priorities the sustainability and strengthening of ASEAN capacity in higher education harmonisation through strategies, mechanisms, and scholarship provision.
In 2015, the ASEAN Leaders acknowledged higher education as a catalyst in achieving economic and socio-cultural goals of ASEAN and welcomed the adoption of the Kuala Lumpur Declaration on Higher Education at the 27th ASEAN Summit. Cooperation on higher education in ASEAN has gained momentum with the full swing implementation of the European Union Support to Higher Education in the ASEAN Region (SHARE) Programme on the same year. The extension of the SHARE Programme for the period of February 2021 – December 2022 signifies even more the importance of the ASEAN cooperation on higher education.
The SHARE Programme is a flagship project of the ASEAN education sector that aims to promote harmonisation of higher education and introduce an ASEAN scholarship inspired by the EU’s Erasmus Mundus to create space for higher education in ASEAN.
The ASEAN education sector is governed by and under the purview of the ASEAN Education Ministers Meeting (ASED) which convenes once every two years and the ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting on Education (SOM-ED) which meets annually. Chairmanship of both meetings rotates alphabetically between ASEAN Member States and is held by the Philippines until the end of 2021. The ASEAN Secretariat supports coordination of sectoral activities through the Education, Youth, and Sports Division (EYSD) and liaises with the SEAMEO Secretariat as well as with ASEAN external partners and international organisations. Two ASEAN bodies focus specifically on education, the ASEAN University Network (AUN), headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand, and the ASEAN Quality Assurance Network (AQAN), headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
For more information on ASEAN and higher education, please visit http://asean.org/asean-socio-cultural/asean-education-ministers-meeting-ased/ or contact eysd@asean.org
