Record of Discussion of the 2nd ASEM DUO Expert Meeting

Time and Date: 09:30-18:00, November 14, 2003 Place: Room 203, ASEM Hall, Seoul, Korea

The meeting commenced with the opening remark from Dr. Kim, Eung-Gweon, Director of International Education Cooperation Division in the Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development. (Please refer to Annex A ‘Opening Remark’). Dr. Sung, Director General of the Secretariat for ASEM-DUO Fellowship graciously took the chairmanship upon the general consensus of participants.

I. Review of ASEM-DUO by Dr. Sung, Keuk-Je

Please refer to Annex B ‘ASEM DUO Fellowship Programme’ for more details

1) Quoted from the remark made by Danish Prime Minster MINISTER and beneficiaries from DUO Programme
2) Briefed on the following subjects; development of the programme, differentiated mission, structure of ASEM DUO, core principles and flexibility, airing under ASEM-DUO, operation features of DUO, and charts and table on the contribution vs. amount requested under ASEM DUO, number of people for exchanges, and works ahead, including evaluation of exchange programmes, assistance to finding pairs in the other region, extended and expanded contributions from member countries, and cooperation with other exchange programmes.

II. Progress of DUO-Korea by Dr. Chae, Jae-Eun

Please refer to Annex C ‘DUO-Korea Progress Report’ for more details

1) History & Goals of DUO-Korea Programme
2) Key Fact of DUO-Korea
3) Operation of DUO-Korea, including selection process of DUO-Korea, transfer process of fellowship, monitoring process, and information dissemination activities
4) Major challenges of DUO-Korea, including insufficient fellowship funding compared to surmounting demand, lack of DUO-Korea promotion in European countries and quality evaluation process in need
5) Future plan towards extension of DUO-Korea, including continuance in support for extension and expansion of DUO-Korea, continuance in domestic and international promotion activities, and developing monitoring system of professor exchanges

III. Progress of DUO-Singapore by Mr. Chua, Teng Hoe and Professor Lee, Brian

Please refer to Annex D & E ‘DUO-Singapore Progress Report’ for more details

1) US$ 1 million, to be disbursed over 5 years, set aside to fund education exchanges, and DUO-Singapore website (www.mfa.gov.sg/duo) set up to publicise and disseminate information DUO-Singapore focus, at the moment, on both undergraduate and postgraduate students.
2) A National Selection Committee administers selection process and disburses the financial award to successful candidates, and the Committee comprises officials from Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Education and representatives from the 3 Singapore universities. The Singapore universities liaise with their European partner universities to nominate suitable exchange candidates.
3) First batch of 18 pairs of students successfully implemented in Academic Year 2002/2003. Increase in awards to 27 pairs this year is timely as the DUO Programme has proven to be very popular. Selection for Academic Year 2003/2004: more than 300 applications were received for the Academic Year 2003/2004, a 50% increase in the number of applications from the previous year.
4) Each student received 6,000 Euros, but the award of 6,000 Euros was considered too generous by the Singapore universities; the amount of support was reduced to 1,000 Euros per month for a maximum of 4,000 Euros (one semester lasts 4 months) that allows Singapore to award 9 more pairs a year, benefiting more students.
5) In the last two years, the award winners from Singapore included three Malaysians and a Vietnamese. DUO-Singapore open to ASEM ASEAN students studying in Singapore. 6) Programme has three more years to run, with fifth and final batch to be selected only in May 2006 and has been very successful so far.
7) Challenges include difficulty in forming university pairs, high cost of living in European ASEM countries, significant language barrier, and complexities in matching course modules for credit transfer.

IV. Progress of DUO-France by Mr. Pascal Dayez-Burgeon

Please refer to Annex F,‘DUO-France Progress Report’ for more details

The European background of the ASEM-DUO Program is a step towards the European space of higher education

1) The ASEM-DUO Programme functions as the following; A. Attracting Asian students to Europe Promoting European masters and doctorates and joint degress with Asia B. Articulation with European programmes, namely Erasmus Mundus and Asia Link
2) With 2 years of DUO-France experience, the programme is found to be A. A success for it is very popular among the most prestigious universities And for it is not a mobility programme just for mobility but for enhancing Euro-Asian academic relations B. Focusing on building joint Euro-Asia Master’s within a maximum of 3 years
3)The selection process involves;
A. Informing higher education institutions that propose projects
B. Encouraging structured projects
C. Evaluation of the projects by embassies and French institutions
D. Final selection on quality focused projects
4) DUO-France is a ‘preparation and building tool’ for the developing educational exchanges between Europe and Asia

V. Progress of DUO-Denmark by Mr. Leif Donde

Please refer to Annex G,‘DUO-Denmark Progress Report’ for more details

With a brief presentation made by Mr. Leif Donde, Ambassador of Royal Danish Embassy in Seoul, Korea, Mr. Donde mentioned that DUO-Denmark balances its fellowship between developed Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, and Singapore and developing Asian countries such as China and ASEAN countries excluding Singapore by 50:50.

VI. Asia Link by Mr. John Sagar

Please refer to Annex H ‘Asia Link Programme Overview’ for more details

On behalf of Mr. Klaus Haupt from Asia Link, EC, Mr. John Sagar from EC in Korea shared General information and progress as the following;
1. Main objective
2. Funds available
3. Eligible countries
4. Eligibility
5. Types of projects, including Human Resources Development, Curriculum Development, and Institutional and Systems Development
6. Timetable
7. Partner Search Facility
8. Contact Details

VII. ASEF activities by Mr. Zainal A. Mantaha

Please refer to Annex I ‘Activities of the Asia-Europe Foundation’ for more details

Mr. Mantaha gave a detailed presentation on ASEF activities, which covered the following topics:
1. Introduction
2. Organisation, Strategy and Focus Areas
3. Overall Programmes and Activities
4. Educational Programmes (Higher Education)
5. Other Educational Programmes
6. ASEM DUO and ASEF: Harnessing Synergies

Mr. Mantaha concluded that there was in fact considerable synergy between the ASEM-DUO Fellowship Programme and ASEF’s programmes in the field of higher education, particularly the ASEM Education Hub. In this regards, he suggested that the ASEM Education Hub could be used as a platform firstly to raise awareness of the ASEM-DUO programmes among participating universities and institutions, and secondly to facilitate the establishment of ASEM-DUO partnerships.

VIII. Other exchange programmes in the ASEM Region by Dr. Sung, Keuk-Je

Please refer to Annex J ‘RESOURCES-International Cooperation and Exchanges/Programmes and Projects/References’ adopted from ASEF homepage.

Dr. Sung presented briefly on different programmes under ASEM umbrella.

IX. Presentation on AEI (Asia-Europe Institute) by Dr. Shaharil bin Talib

AEI focuses on developing degree programme and research organization.
From the first expert meeting of its own, it developed International Masters in “Regional Integration’ where it endows scholarship to European and Asian students. Now it is involved in creating International Masters in ‘Small and Medium Enterprise’.
With the research, it progresses towards economics history as well as funds for interns on the programme.

X. Discussion on various topics of ASEM-DUO

1. Core Principles
Experts from individual programme agreed to indicate student’s fellowship amount in 4,000 EUROS per semester (academic definition) per student. Adding quality assurance on the principles was suggested by France.

2. Information Dissemination Dr. Sung hailed the effort of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Education from contributing countries for having actively involved in promoting ASEM-DUO by convening their respective universities. On the other hand, participating but non-contributing countries were in need of making more effort in such information dissemination.

Face to face communication was adopted to be the most effective communication method in spite of convenient means of mails, brochures, and post mails available. In this regards, the meeting agreed that international meetings and conferences and organizations on higher education provided good opportunities for the Secretariat to introduce and raise awareness about the ASEM-DUO programmes. One such organization must be the EUA (European University Association). Other included the Annual Meetings of the EAIE (European Association for International Education) held in September each year. Although the focus of the EAIE Annual Meeting was on strengthening networking and co-operation among European universities and institutions of higher learning, as a result of increasing interest and presence of Asian universities at the meeting each year, EAIE had begun to include topics relevant to Asia-Europe higher education co-operation in the programme. Mr. Mantaha from ASEF also offer to include a reference to the ASEM- DUO programmes at a conference entitled “Universities Beyond Nationahood: Towards a Universal Dimension of Education and Research” that would be held in Turin TORINO, Italy, in the latter half of November 2003. Professor Lee from Nanyang Technology University, Singapore suggested Korean universities should be encouraged to write about ASEM-DUO to their European partner institutions.
Other comments included getting in touch with AUAP(Association of Universities of Asia and the Pacific), Asean University Network (even though not all of the members are ASEM members), or the proposed ASEM Rectors Conference.

3. Expansion of ASEM Countries Participation
In order to expand participation, either increasing the number of contributors or the amount of fellowship per existing contributors should be implemented. The discussion faced different perspectives among current contributors; DUO Korea was willing to expand and further extend the programme and was actually in the negotiation process with other concerning Korean Ministries. In addition, Korea encouraged other contributors in fixing 3% of fellowship as the operation cost in reducing Korea’s burden in having half of the operation cost plus its sole responsibility of salary of Secretariat staff and office rent. The Singaporean delegate applauded the valuable contribution of the Korean government to the Secretariat. He explained that Singapore used its own National Selection Committee to administer the DUO-Singapore programme to minimise administrative costs and maximise contribution to actual fellowship awards. Singapore has encountered no difficulty in administering its own programme. Singapore supported the idea of persuading more ASEM members to join the ASEM-DUO programme as contributing countries. However, he thought that it was premature to discuss about the extension of the ASEM-DUO programme as the DUO-Singapore programme had not even reached its halfway mark yet. Singapore would need more time to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme before making any further decision. DUO-France held an opinion that ASEM-DUO was established by political initiative and the matter of extension should also be left in the hand of political leaders in the ASEM V platform. Noting the Secretariat’s concern about the possible loss of momentum when some of the DUO programme expire in 2005, the Singapore delegate suggested that the meeting could perhaps discuss the Secretariat’s idea of updating the SOM on the progress (and future) of the ASEM-DUO programme.
Germany is running a number of scholarship programmes under DAAD and one of them, the ISAP, is similar to ASEM-DUO operation. So far, Germany was not in a position to state its stand at this meeting.
Mr. Jokinen from Finland concurred with France on the fact that expansion and extension of ASEM-DUO should be dealt in political level first in order for Finland to take a decision on what to do with ASEM-DUO.

4. Plan for ASEM-DUO in relation to ASEM V
Since the contributing members made commitments on ASEM-DUO programme for five years, it was proposed to make a stand in extension while it is in operation on the next ASEM V with a unified voice from participants. It appeared, however, that contributing countries were reluctant to make further commitment due to two reasons; one is that ASEM-DUO was initiated in political level, and the other is that a short operation time to signify programme’s merits. It was stated that the DUO-Singapore would be selecting its last batch in 2006. Current commitments of DUO-Korea and DUO-Denmark (3 year project) finish in 2005. Among non-contributing countries, Germany was already running similar scholarship programmes, and Germany was not sure how to coordinate it in the mean time.

Dr. Puno from Philippines suggested reconceptualize ASEM-DUO to make it more attractive to political decision makers. Also alternative way should be established beforehand in case the reconceptualization work did not work.

Most of the participants voiced out that future of ASEM-DUO should be decided upon political level and experts on ASEM-DUO operational level. Announcement in Hanoi would be vital to ask for commitment from countries.

5. Other Concerning Issues
Coordinating with other programmes European Committee has a limited financial resources and its concentration lies in construction of framework rather than handing out scholarship to individuals. Possible synergy effect with ASEM-DUO might be expected due to geographic overlap they cover. But EC can help in information sharing and publicity as it has rich database on university networks. Mr. Dayez Burgeon stated that ASEM-DUO and Asia Link were compatible if we keep in a project approach; ASEM-DUO might work as a step towards Asia Link’s bigger framework. It was also proposed that the Secretariat should pile various programmes from countries and compare and see how to coordinate ASEM-DUO to those present programmes.

Eligibility
DUO-France does not support already existing projects, however, DUO-Singapore and Korea do not distinguish whether they are already existing or not. DUO-Singapore awardees are not allowed to receive resources from other scholarships. It seemed best to leave to individual programmes to decide their own eligibility criteria for their discretion.

Evaluation Process
Evaluation process in application procedure and result assessment procedure was discussed. All three contributors, France, Korea, and Singapore agreed that there was a need in strengthening the current evaluation process on both sides. The Secretariat will also assist in discerning duplicate applicants among DUO programmes and notify the concerning DUO programme.

Resolution of ASEM DUO
Because the draft resolution contained delicate issues for participants and raised diverse opinions from participants to represent, it was agreed that individual participants should turn in their opinions to the Chairman, and the Chairman in turn should reflect those opinions on the ‘Chairman’s Statement’, altered from the ‘resolution’. END.