Tackling SE Asia’s education gap

Southeast Asia possesses immense, perhaps even unparalleled, potential for growth. That growth, however, is hampered by poor investment in technology and ever-worsening education standards that threaten to shut out the region from global development. Until citizens, investors and public officials come together to find innovative solutions, Southeast Asia will forever remain a developing region. A recalibration of the entire region’s educational infrastructure is sorely overdue.

Despite Asia’s leaders continually making promises to improve their education standards, they seldom increase spending, meaning publicly funded institutions are growing inadequate. It is a frustrating reality in a region where public spending on education has been shown to improve development standards. As a result, Southeast Asians spent about $60 billion on private education in 2015 — far greater than neighboring regions, and showing the importance that families in the region place on education. This is fine for those who can afford prestigious institutions, but for ordinary citizens, this means spending life savings on a private education, or attending under-funded and poorly resourced state universities.

It is not yet known what broader effect this may have, one Unesco working paper on education policy in developing regions concluded: “[e]vidence on the effects of privatization is scarce and ambiguous and drawing universal conclusions from context-specific empirical research is difficult.” It’s thus crucial to note that the privatization of Southeast Asian educational systems can’t be discussed in broad strokes, but rather must be discussed contextually and with regional expertise kept in mind.

By and large, however, it is clear that the trend of privatization across the region hasn’t done much to benefit the education sector. For instance, data from the World Bank indicate that children born in Southeast Asia will achieve only 59 percent of their potential productivity when compared to children born in regions with higher-performing health and educational systems. Most of this stems from undereducation, which is largely concentrated in poor neighborhoods where parents have few financial means of sending their children to private schools, and where state-funded schools do not offer adequate teaching.

If education continues to grow only in the private sector, and governments do not meet their promises of increasing funding of public institutions, economic and social growth will suffer. Wide-ranging educational reforms with a specific focus on the disenfranchised and disempowered will be essential pillars in the construction of a more advanced Southeast Asia.

It isn’t just an issue of funding; practical experience is also woefully lacking in curricula across the region. Apprenticeships, hands-on internships, and live experience working in a practical environment are invaluable when it comes to churning out talented workers capable of contributing to the economy. Nevertheless, schools across Southeast Asia seem to fail to provide a practically orientated and hands-on experience to their students.

Until more real-world learning opportunities are incorporated into education programs, few residents will develop the practical skills needed to contribute to broad economic growth that will proliferate across the region. It has been shown that practical situations like field trips, which enable students to gain hands-on experience, go a long way toward providing for a well-rounded education. Theory is important, but even in Singapore and Hong Kong, the region’s education powerhouses, there’s a serious dearth of teaching that focuses on practical experience.

This is no small problem; there are ample reasons to believe that Southeast Asia’s education ecosystem is churning out unproductive workers who are ill-prepared for the future. A “learning crisis” has developed from educational disparities, and even those who are lucky enough to go to school may not be learning the right things. As students continue to grow frustrated with the region’s institutions, and as educational value continues to decrease, the learning crisis may eventually place a chokehold on regional development.While poor education prevents the region from joining the tech economy, technology can also be used to jumpstart education changes.

William Erbey is an investor in Scholarly, which provides live, interactive on-line courses so that students from around the world can learn from star professors. Erbey believes that quality American education should be accessible to everyone.

“American institutions of higher learning are a national treasure and sought after around the world. Scholarly has developed outreach programs to match international students with colleges and universities. International students can fill empty classroom seats and pay full tuition, generating much needed revenue to defray the cost of a college education for the entire student body.”

Not only will digital allow students from geographically isolated regions to connect to education institutions, it will also ensure schools in the region are forward-thinking and churning out future workers proficient in cutting-edge technology. Coupled with an ambitious set of study-abroad programs that allow students the opportunities to study at highly regarded institutions in the United States, these reforms stand to help bridge the widening education gap.

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Lin Nguyen is an analyst in Asian political and economic affairs.