Asia’s Prospects: Regional Hubs and Skilled Mobility

This post covers the latest developments in human mobility in Asia, mainly with regard to skilled migrants and international students. While China, Korea and Japan are trying to attract skilled immigrants as well as to ease policies toward immigrants already arrived, they might have to compete with Southeast Asian countries.

The University World News article Worldwide Student Numbers Forecast to Double by 2025 revealed some highlights of the Bob Goddard chapter for the book Making a Difference: Australian International Education. According to the author, by 2025 there will be 262 million post-secondary students worldwide (up from 150 million currently, or an increase of 75 %), much of that growth coming from India and China; and almost 8 million students studying outside the country in which they were born (up from 3-3.5 million currently).

Goddard points to Singapore and Malaysia as emerging education hubs: the former hopes to attract 150,000 foreign students by 2015 while the latter has a target of 100,000 by 2020. However, both countries are currently experiencing some problems.