Call for Papers – New Opportunities and Challenges for the Future Cooperation and Trust Building of Global Higher Education

The current international society is experiencing the VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) more intensely due to the recent pandemic, political disputes, and rapid technological advancements.

Global higher education is also facing difficulties in projecting its future direction. Prior to the pandemic, global higher education was making gradual progress in terms of global student mobility, collaborative studies, and aligning educational systems and quality assurance.

The significant reform of European higher education, known as the "Bologna Process," serves as a noteworthy example of these initiatives, highlighting joint efforts and trust-building among European nations and educational institutions. Numerous Asian and other regional consortiums have also made efforts to foster student mobility, develop joint curricula, and align educational systems. However, these endeavours have been at a standstill, awaiting further progress.

Several obstacles continue to hinder regional or international collaborative efforts in advancing global higher education. Two major issues are: (1) significant gaps in financial resources, educational quality, and educational environments between institutions, and (2) variations in educational systems, including different institution types, degree programs, curricula, instructional methods, study durations, academic calendars, grading systems, and credit policies. These variations often pose challenges for institutions seeking to establish new collaborations.

Global higher education is facing recent challenges. UNESCO's regional and global conventions on recognizing qualifications in higher education aim to promote the mutual recognition of different educational qualifications, especially non-traditional education, worldwide. Additionally, the expansion of micro-credentials and the digitization of educational credentials are poised to create new forms of education in the global higher education landscape. These new developments may present both opportunities and challenges for advancing global higher education in the near future.

In this issue, contributors are expected to examine past experiences in developing global higher education and discuss future opportunities and challenges for the next phase of cooperation and trust from the following five perspectives:

List of topic area

We are interested in topics such as:

• Trust building in global higher education
• Joint development of educational systems and frameworks in global higher education
• Joint development of the educational curricula and outcomes in global higher education
• Joint development of quality assurance in global higher education
• Joint Development of regional higher education
• Trust building of technologies for global higher education, especially in nontraditional education.

Timeline

Submission open: 1st of June 2023
Submission close: 30th of September 2023

Submission information

• The author guidelines must be followed.
• Submissions should be made through ScholarOne system.
• Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the Special Issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e., in response to ‘Please select the issue you are submitting to’.
• Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Guest Editor

Professor Taiji Hotta
Center for the Study of International Cooperation in Education, IDEC Institute, Hiroshima University

Professor Hotta has extensively researched the regionalization of the higher education system, especially for developing an aligned Asian academic credit transfer system. In 2018, the 4th ASEAN+3 Education Ministers Meeting adopted the concept of “Asian Academic Credits” as a base for the international comparative table for academic credit transfer with other parts of the world. Professor Hotta's latest article, The Development of “Asian Academic Credits” as an Aligned Credit Transfer System in Asian Higher Education, was published in the Journal of Studies in International Education (Volume 24, Issue 2, May 2020, Pages 167-189).

References

• Hans de Wit & Philip G. Altbach (2021) Internationalization in higher education: global trends and recommendations for its future, Policy Reviews in Higher Education, 5:1, 28-46, DOI: 10.1080/23322969.2020.1820898.
• Yung-Chi (Angela) Hou (2020) Quality assurance of joint degree programmes: what Asia can learn from Erasmus Mundus joint degree programmes in Europe, Globalisation, Societies and Education,18:1,19-29, DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2019.1690083.
• Hotta, T. (2020). The Development of “Asian Academic Credits” as an Aligned Credit Transfer System in Asian Higher Education. Journal of Studies in International Education,24(2), 167-189. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315318822797.
• Wagenaar, Robert (2014) Competences and Learning Outcomes: A Panacea for Understanding the (New) Role of Higher Education? Tuning Journal for Higher Education, v1 n2 p279-302 May 2014.
• Varadarajan, S., Koh, J.H.L. & Daniel, B.K. A systematic review of the opportunities and challenges of micro-credentials for multiple stakeholders: learners, employers, higher education institutions and government. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 20, 13 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-023-00381-x.