New initiative

GLOBALISATION is the way forward for 21st-century higher education, and building on the Asean network is a new initiative to promote, develop, and advance the internationalisation of higher education in the Asean region.
Taking that first step towards internationalising Asean higher education is the Asean Scholars on International Education Network (Ascien), a not-forprofi t academic collaboration. Leading the Ascien Founding Members honours list of five is Management & Science University (MSU), who will also host the Ascien Secretariat office at the MSU Shah Alam campus. Indonesia’s Bogor Agricultural University, Thailand’s Thammasat University, Vietnam’s Seameo-Retrac, and the Philippines’ University of Philippines Manila complete the list.
Ascien promotes student mobility, credit transfers, quality assurance, and research clustering, with special focus on developing learning technologies and benchmarkings. Ascien seeks also to promote the benefits of developing and harmonising regional communication, networking, and professionalism, and to map its way to the setting of a definitive regional guideline for the international relation office of member institutions.
To leverage its connections and key resources, Ascien is set to further gather the collective powers of governments, corporations, academic institutions, and communities through a series of profile-raising activities and membership drive slated for 2016-2019.
The signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at MSU marks the establishment of Ascien as a major regional driver of Asean higher education.
With its aim to present Asean as a hub provider of international higher education, Ascien is committed to supporting the internationalisation of Asean higher education on the principles of diverse and representative membership, mutual respect, and collective progress.