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Set against the backdrop of increasing economic interdependence in East Asia, the idea of regional integration is now being discussed as a long-term political process in the region. As in the field of the international economy, de facto integration and interdependence exist with respect to the internationalization of the higher education system in East Asia. Based on the results of a comprehensive Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute (JICA-RI) survey of 300 leading higher education institutions active in cross-border higher education, located in ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member Southeast Asian countries and three Northeast Asian countries (China, Japan, and Korea), this paper examines universities perceptions of the degree of cross-border activities, the significance of their expected outcomes, and their regional preferences for partners. The objective is to envision a direction for a future regional higher education framework in East Asia and to consider the policy implications of the internationalization of higher education in East Asia in the context of regionalization. The findings related to the degree of cross-border activities suggest a current perception that there is more prominent in conventional than in innovative activities, but that innovation will rise considerably in the future. With respect to the significance of expected outcomes,academic and political expected outcome are perceived to be more significant than economic expected outcome, which are nevertheless expected to be more significant in the future. Finally, in terms of their preferred regions of partners, universities in East Asia overall place a high priority on building partnerships within their own region. Yet, among Northeast Asian universities, North America is perceived as the most active partner. (Contains 3 figures, 21 tables, and 13 footnotes.) [This paper was prepared as part of a Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute (JICA-RI) research project titled, "Cross-border Higher Education for Regional Integration and the Labor Market in East Asia."]

There is growing evidence that students throughout the world no longer see the US as the primary place to study; that in some form this correlates with a rise in perceived quality and prestige in the EU and elsewhere; and further, that this may mean a continued decline in the US's market share of international students. There clearly are a complex set of variables that will influence international education and global labor markets, including the current global economic recession. Ultimately, however, we think these factors will not alter the fundamental dynamics of the new global market, which include these facts: the international flow of talent, scientific or otherwise, is being fundamentally altered as nations invest more in educational attainment and human capital; the US will continue to lose some of its market share over time--the only question is how quickly and by how much; and without a proactive strategy, nations such as the US that are highly dependent on global in-migration of talented students and professionals are most vulnerable to downward access to global talent, with a potentially significant impact on future economic growth. This study provides data on past and recent global trends in international enrollment, and offers a set of policy recommendations for the US at the federal, state, and institutional level. This includes our recommendation of a national goal to double the number of international students in the US over the next decade to match numbers in a group of competitor nations, and requires recognition that the US will need to strategically expand its enrollment capacity and graduation rates to accommodate needed increases in the educational attainment rate of US citizens, and to welcome more international students. Attracting talent in a global market and increasing degree attainment rates of the domestic population are not mutually exclusive goals. Indeed, they will be the hallmarks of the most competitive economies. (Contains 6 figures and 41 endnotes.)

This paper explores the possibilities for building research-oriented, school-engaged teacher education through the professional learning of volunteer teacher-researchers. Volunteerism in education covers a broad spectrum of people and activities ranging from working in school canteens to supporting language and literacy programs. This paper reports on the professional learning of volunteer Mandarin teaching assistants as they develop into volunteer teacher-researchers. Situating this study in relation to Australian National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program, this paper draws on concepts from "Asia literacy" for its theoretical framework. A review of the research literature points to a need to value volunteers' contributions to teaching experience as a way of promoting volunteerism in schools. Elements of the research method for the study reported here include the project's focus, the participants and their selection, and ethical protocols. The analysis of evidence explores the transition through the work-integrated professional learning of these volunteer teacher-researchers, tracking their development through a collection of 28 documents. The discussion section uses the concept of "Asia literacy" to analyse the value of this research-oriented, school-engaged teacher education program. (Contains 4 tables.)

Education is recognized to be a key factor of economic development, not only giving access to technological progress as emphasized by the Schumpeterian growth theory, but also entailing numerous social externalities such as the demographic transition (Murtin, 2009) or democratization (Murtin and Wacziarg, 2010). If the evolution of world distributions of income and longevity over the last two centuries have been described by Bourguignon and Morrisson (2002), changes in the world distribution of education have remained unexplored until now, despite their major importance. How has global education inequality evolved over the twentieth century? How should it be measured? Up to now, existing studies on education inequality have had limited spatial and time coverage. For example, Castello and Domenech (2002) and Thomas et al. (2001) provide a descriptive analysis of years of schooling inequality for a broad panel of countries, but their study starts only in 1960. Also, they remain at the country level and do not consider the world distribution of years of schooling, which takes into account educational differences both within and between countries. In contrast, this paper depicts the world distribution of education over 140 years, improving and extending the database recently released by Morrisson and Murtin (2009), which focuses on average years of schooling. The authors provide both average years of schooling and the distribution of education as summarised up by four quantiles in each country. Importantly, this new database is cross-validated by historical data on illiteracy rates. Then, they describe average stocks of primary, secondary and tertiary schooling by region since 1870, and estimate world inequality in years of schooling, which has been dramatically reduced since 1870. Focusing on the measurement of education inequality, this paper raises an important methodological issue. The authors show that a substantial share of inequality in years of schooling can be mechanically explained by a single component of the distribution of education, namely the population that has not attended school, subsequently called the illiterate population. Actually, they find that the observed decrease in inequality in years of schooling over the XXth century is almost entirely explained by the decline in illiteracy. They believe that this result, derived both theoretically and empirically, could help to reconsider an empirical fact discussed in the literature on education inequality (see Berthelemy (2006)), namely the cross-country negative correlation between the average of and the inequality in years of schooling. This correlation mainly reflects the negative and mechanical correlation between average schooling and the illiteracy rate. In line with a recent macroeconomic literature (see for instance Hall and Jones (1999)), the authors then turn to human capital as defined by Mincer (1974), in order to confer a monetary dimension to education. They propose estimates of the world inequality in human capital, examining several definitions for human capital. They focus on one functional form in particular, which accounts for the existence of diminishing returns to schooling. It is the only one that can account for the cross-country negative correlation between Mincer returns to schooling and average years of schooling, as described by Psacharopoulos and Patrinos (2004). At the national level, they find that that human capital inequality within countries has increased then stabilized or even decreased in most regions of the world. When plotted against average years of schooling, human capital inequality within countries has clearly followed an inverted U-shape curve, namely a "Kuznets curve of education". At the global level, they also find that human capital inequality has increased from 1870 to approximatively 1970, then has decreased. They interpret these findings as a consequence of mass education and the existence of diminishing returns to schooling. (Contains 6 tables, 6 figures and 14 footnotes.)

This literature review interrogates current international writing about inclusive education (IE) in regional and remote settings, with explicit reference to Australian considerations, including the emergent National Curriculum. The task of this review has been to establish the types of knowledge reported about IE in minority, marginalized and "other" inclusive educational settings, and to locate the absences of knowledge that the current literature indicates. Finally, future directions for research into IE in minority educational settings are proposed. (Contains 4 footnotes.)