The Globalization of Tertiary Education and Intra-Asian Student Mobility: Mainland Chinese Student Mobility to Malaysia

Abstract

Intra-Asian student mobility is an emerging phenomenon little studied in the literature on the globalization of tertiary education. This paper examines the flow of students from the People's Republic of China to Malaysia, based on a large-scale survey of 888 respondents, as well as in-depth interviews with 80 informants. It addresses three empirical questions: who comes, why Malaysia and what are the outcomes? Underlying these questions is the issue of the character of contemporary intra-Asian educational mobility, and the specificity of regional sites, such as Malaysia, in the global educational spatial order. The paper makes two main arguments. Firstly, this trans-Asian education mobility is largely circular in nature and represents the private-sector creation of a new industry and market, with commercialized market knowledge facilitating the rise of non-elite mass mobility from cities in the interior with no prior migration ties to the destination country. The key role of professional brokerage or education agents in enabling and channeling student mobility from China to hitherto “unknown” destinations such as Malaysia is critical in this respect. Secondly, notwithstanding the commercialization of such flows, ethnicity and religion remains important in channeling the demand for international education to regional hubs such as Malaysia. This is evidenced by the disproportionate numbers of Chinese Muslims among the students from China, for whom the fact that Malaysia was a Muslim country was a key selection factor.