A Comparative Study of Student Mobility Programs
Student’s academic mobility primarily aims to empower students with vast knowledge from other institutions for a limited time. It is directed toward elite students in the higher education level. Mobility has developed and taken a large number of programs that vary depending on the considered institution. In this case, we had Collective Action for Mobility Program of University Students in Asia (CAMPUS Asia), ASEAN International Mobility for Students (AIMS), and UMAP student mobility scheme which happened to share higher education regionalization purpose.
Majorly, quality assurance mechanism, and credit transfer systems are the distinctive strategies of enhancing student mobility. But on the contrary, we find that the quality assurance systems were not entrenched into UMAP and AIMS initiatives. Additionally, ASEAN Quality Assurance did not conduct a quality review over AIM as UMAP showed no signs for collaborating with the other quality assurance networks. I, therefore, suggest that a higher output would be achieved if the three initiatives work together towards maintaining a quality assurance mechanism.
Credit transfer systems, on the other hand, are challenged by diversity in national regulations, grading systems, and academic calendars in higher education that significantly challenge the implementation of initiatives. The Asian nations should, therefore, make efforts towards having the same credit transfer systems. This would impact education regionalization positively.
It is quite promising now that Asian nations have initiated the process of collaboration. With this, they are going to succeed in their definitive goal of upholding regional integration and coordination by supporting student mobility programs and higher education learning. In the future, every slight effort made by any higher education stakeholders towards regionalization will be of great importance. We are only yet to know how the three initiatives combat the adverse effects that students face upon mobility and how the disadvantaged students like individual education students are taken into consideration.
In conclusion, student mobility currently has played an important role since there exists a great demand for a globalized society. It has therefore become nations’ key strategy for human resource training. Additionally, student mobility is a tool used to improve higher education as it takes advantage of opportunities to strengthen more top education systems globally.