Attending a university overseas has long been an aspiration for many Chinese.
“My father said ‘Why do you want to stay in China? Open your mind, look at the world,”‘ said Bao Qianqian, 25.

The predictable choice might have been Australia or Britain, where her two sisters and thousands of her countrymen have studied. But Ms. Bao decided to embark on a journey that would keep her closer to her home in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo, improve her English while still giving her the chance to converse with Chinese speakers, and enjoy substantially lower costs.

She chose Malaysia, where she is currently a third-year business student at HELP University College, a private institution in Kuala Lumpur.

With the appetite for higher education showing no signs of abating among the growing Asian middle class, more countries in Asia are positioning themselves to attract students like Ms. Bao.

Educators have been stepping up their efforts to exploit the global student market, whether by relaxing quotas on non-local students or encouraging overseas institutions to set up local campuses. The words “education hub” have infiltrated the mission statements of governments hoping to attract students to their shores.

Typically foreign students who pay their own way not only provide a welcome boost for university coffers; they can also represent another stream of talented graduates who may join the local workforce and continue contributing to the economy of their host country after their college days are over.

In 2007, more than 2.8 million students were enrolled in higher education institutions outside their country of origin, a 53 percent increase since 1999, according to a Unesco report released in July.

While the United States, Britain and other Western countries continue to draw the most Asian students, the report also showed that Asian students were increasingly attending universities within their own regions.

In East Asia and the Pacific, 42 percent of students who left home remained in their region in 2007 compared with 36 percent in 1999, according to the 2009 edition of Unesco’s Global Education Digest. Unesco officials attributed this in part to the growing local availability of higher education.

Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong all want to attract thousands more international students. Malaysia wants 100,000 foreign school and university students by next year, compared with 71,000 enrolled in the current academic year. Singapore hopes to attract 150,000 by 2015, up from 97,000 in 2008. Hong Kong has not set specific targets, but it recently doubled its quota for non-local students in its public universities.

All three are attempting to capitalize on the fact that they can offer a university education in English, and often for considerably less than more expensive Western nations can, but each has its own selling points.

Singapore, which has only three public universities, has made attracting the involvement of foreign institutions central to its “Global Schoolhouse” policy.

Some schools, such as the University of Nevada and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, have established branch campuses in Singapore, while others, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, offer joint degree programs through local universities.

The government, which hopes to increase education services’ share of the gross domestic product to 5 percent in 2015 from 3 percent in 2007, boasts that this enables Asian students to get a degree from world-renowned universities without leaving Asia.

Toh Wee Khiang, executive director for human capital at the Singapore Economic Development Board, said the government aims to attract, develop and retain talent.

“The war for talent is at the heart of economic growth, and education plays an important part in creating and sustaining talent in Singapore,” he said, adding that another government agency was linking graduating students with Singaporean employers in key growth industries.

Although Malaysia’s schools are not well known internationally, the country has made progress toward meeting its goal of attracting 80,000 foreign university students and 20,000 secondary and primary school pupils by next year. Most of the 71,000 foreign students now enrolled are in private institutions, because of a 5 percent cap on foreign undergraduates in public universities.

Since Malaysia liberalized its education sector in the 1990s, allowing the establishment of more private institutions, the number of providers has expanded to 20 public universities, 36 private universities and 5 foreign branch campuses.

Morshidi Sirat, director of the National Higher Education Research Institute at the Universiti Sains Malaysia, said that now that more Malaysians of Chinese and Indian ethnicity can enroll in public universities, thanks to the removal in 2004 of a quota system that had favored ethnic Malays and indigenous groups, local enrollments have declined slightly at private institutions. Private schools have been trying to attract more foreigners to take their place, he said.

Hong Kong might be better placed to cash in on international students, with three of its institutions ranked in the world’s top 50 universities in the Times Higher Education rankings for 2008. Still, in the 2008-09 academic year, Hong Kong enrolled only about 8,400 non-local students, up from about 3,700 in 2003; more than 90 percent of those came from mainland China.

The Hong Kong government imposes a quota on non-local students in public universities, which it increased last year to 20 percent from 10 percent. It has also relaxed employment restrictions and now allows students to remain in Hong Kong for 12 months after graduation, which the government hopes will help enhance the quality of the workforce.

In a statement, the Hong Kong Education Bureau said Hong Kong needs to “nurture and attract” talent to sustain its economic and social development.

Cheng Kai-ming, professor of education at the University of Hong Kong, said that Hong Kong suffers from severe space constraints, limiting the abilities of schools to build or expand campuses .

“There is always an argument within the government that land is precious and is one of the biggest sources of income for revenues,” he said. “Hence, unless higher education is given priority in allocating land, there is practically no space for developing any new institutions.”

While Malaysia may have the edge among price-conscious students, Mr. Morshidi identified Thailand and Vietnam as two low-cost future contenders. Japan has also been admitting large numbers of Chinese and South Korean students as its domestic enrollments have declined.

Despite the best efforts of universities around the region, their success may be influenced by factors beyond their immediate control. Education researchers say after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States and the subsequent tightening of its visa rules, some students began looking for alternatives. Malaysia, a Muslim-majority nation, was among the countries to benefit.

Of the more established providers, Australia, which counts education as its third-largest export after iron ore and coal, may have more cause for concern than others. Its reputation as a safe destination offering high quality education took a battering this year after what many have dubbed “racist attacks” on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney.

But Chris Nyland, a professor of international business at Monash University in Melbourne, said an increase in the countries pushing for foreign students did not necessarily mean Australia’s share of the market would decline. “There are more suppliers coming into the industry,” he said, “but there are more and more people in China and India who can afford higher education.”

(www.eduwo.com, Jainlyn&Charlotte)