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Universities in well-resourced but demographically challenged countries must avoid monopolising the intellectual talent of their crowded neighbours, a Philippines higher education leader has warned.

Labour migration expert Angelo Jimenez said prosperous but ¡°seriously ageing¡± countries, particularly in Asia, were aggressively conscripting top students from nations with youthful populations. While this was understandable, universities in places like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan must ensure that donor countries like the Philippines shared the benefits of cross-border student recruitment.

Failure to do so risked undermining the struggle against ¡°existential¡± threats like climate change and global conflict. ¡°Development is always good for peace,¡± said Jimenez, president of the University of the Philippines.

Speaking on the sidelines of a of the Worldwide Universities Network and the Asean University Network (AUN), Jimenez said he advocated ¡°collaboration for common growth and prosperity¡± ¨C not altruism, which ¡°like trickle-down economics¡±, had ¡°never worked¡±.

He said Western universities should align their primary interests with the ¡°common¡± good. ¡°There¡¯s nothing like self-interest to move people. It¡¯s good for everyone to have a modicum of development. You will never maximise¡­global prosperity and trade if there are unstable countries in the rest of the world.¡±

Jimenez said top Filipino students were understandably drawn to the advanced research facilities and industrial capabilities of their prosperous neighbours. But he argued for a ¡°circular high skills migration model¡± to ensure ¡°mutual co-development¡±.

This might mean fostering students¡¯ eventual return to their homelands, but it could also mean collaborative research to help kickstart new industries back home. And it could mean ¡°limited¡± open data arrangements where groups of universities agreed to share knowledge in clearly defined fields.

Dawn Freshwater, vice-chancellor of the University of Auckland, warned of an exploitative edge in relations between the ¡°emerging economies¡± of South-east Asia and their high-income neighbours. ¡°I think transaction has taken over,¡± she told the conference. ¡°That¡¯s not collaboration.¡±

Tatacipta Dirgantara, rector of Institut Teknologi Bandung, said Western universities struggling to recruit local doctoral candidates tended to poach graduate students from the developing world. This left countries like Indonesia without the expertise to tackle peculiarly local problems, such as shortcomings in technology designed for Western conditions.

He said wind turbines designed for the Global North, for example, were not necessarily suited to wind conditions in an archipelago of mountainous islands. Prosthetic legs, greatly needed in a country where 80 per cent of traffic accidents involved motorcycles, were not optimised for a population culturally accustomed to squatting and sitting cross-legged.

Dirgantara advocated joint PhD supervision schemes that enabled countries like Indonesia to ¡°retain our talent¡± while exposing Western academics to research opportunities in the East. He said he had lobbied for the scholarship, which covers talented Indonesians¡¯ postgraduate studies at home or abroad, to be limited to institutions ¡°linked¡± with local universities.

Jakarta authorities are ¡°interested¡± in the proposal, he said, ¡°but¡­we need interest from the other side¡±.

Former AUN director Choltis Dhirathiti said it was inaccurate to characterise the region¡¯s collaborations with rich neighbours as pure exploitation. He cited the 25-year-old programme, funded by the Japanese government, which had boosted South-east Asia¡¯s engineering skill base with ¡°thousands of alumni¡± while fostering ongoing academic exchange and collaborative research.

¡°I don¡¯t see this as a transaction,¡± Dhirathiti told the conference. ¡°I see this as a true partnership.¡±

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com