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The regional comprehensive economic partnership (RCEP) is promising as per the claims and can be revolutionary for the Asia–Pacific Region. The member countries will get a boost in the post-pandemic world due to the RCEP. According to Brookings, the RCEP is going to be an agreement reshaping the global economics. This study aims to clarify the aspects related to the RCEP and how it can boost global economics.

The study employs qualitative descriptive analysis to address the status of RCEP in the region and the consequences of such main transnational partnership. The study is based on economic reports, official documents and data directly related to the subject of the study.

Findings show that the RCEP will be a significant driver of regional trade despite its faults. The RCEP's tariff benefits and rules of origin, notwithstanding their relatively restricted scope, will encourage enterprises to source products and services from RCEP members, and in combination, RCEP and Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) are anticipated to replace at least some competing US commodities, services and farm exports. For items that integrate parts and components from inside the area, such as from China, the RCEP is projected to reduce tax and trade facilitation costs, allowing enterprises to avoid US Section 301 tariffs.

By examining how the RCEP operates within the framework of domestic and international trade, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of RCEP and analyses its nature based on data and official reports.

This article focuses on regional-level cooperation in higher education by examining the functional, organizational and political approaches (FOPA) framework for higher education regionalization and using supra-national regional universities as established and successful examples of regional-level higher education cooperation among countries.

A conceptual framework is used to provide the structure for analyzing the key approaches to higher education regionalization, followed by an analysis of supra-national regional universities to demonstrate the application of the model.

The FOPA framework for higher education regionalization includes three approaches. The first is the functional approach, which includes both collaborative academic and research activities among higher education institutions as well strategies and policies to help align systems across a region. The second is the organizational approach, which focuses on networks, organizations, institutions and programs, which facilitate partnerships. The third is the political approach, which includes regional-level agreements, declarations and strategic plans to promote higher education collaboration. Key higher education activities for each approach are discussed in generic terms, with examples provided from major regions of the world.

The research was based on desk research only. No interviews were conducted.

A conceptual analysis and a model were provided for the concept of regionalization of higher education and for regional universities, which can help readers locate their interests and research in the regionalization of higher education. Examples of three different types of regional universities were provided to give concrete illustrations of a regional university.

One of the rationales driving regional universities is to address and increase a sense of regional identify and to meet the social, economic and educational needs of the specified region.

Regional universities, such as the University of West Indies, Arab Open University and the Pan-Africa University, are an understudied phenomenon. Using them as innovative and sustainable examples of higher education regional cooperation and the FOPA model, this study illustrates how single-campus, multiple-campus and virtual regional universities are functioning to meet the diversified needs and priorities across a region through cooperation among countries.

This chapter presents a survey of education development in Oceania, a region of diversity held together by its commonalities, shaped by the largest ocean on the planet. The chapter outlines the regional contexts of Oceania and offers a brief historical overview of formal education. Oceania, like most regions, has struggled to mediate between global agendas and national and regional aspirations for sovereignty and self-determination. The chapter recounts ongoing efforts to navigate education in the post-colonial period, efforts to negotiate some of the aspirations of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Education for All (EFA), and other global agendas of the early 2000s with, more recently, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this survey, we hope to demonstrate collective efforts to respond to global agendas, to shape and strengthen regionalism, while maintaining sovereignty in a globalized world. We also highlight the evolving identities of the region, in particular the relationships between Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific countries that collectively make up Oceania.

South Asia is a region urgently seeking development, although it has failed in regional integration. It is the second least integrated region regarding the number of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and can thus be recognised as a missing bloc in the global multilateral system. This study aims to focus on South Asian FTAs and explores the problems of the inter-relations and compatibility between the systemic and regional trade systems.

The study proposes a framework to benchmark the compatibility of South Asian FTAs with WTO rules. Primary data from 2000 to 2020, including descriptive analyses of reports, legal text of the FTAs, official documents and factual presentations, have been collected and analysed through thematic analysis using the proposed framework.

The study finds that, although South Asian FTAs meet most of the WTO requirements, they are not progressing toward facilitating and promoting trade. Data from 2000 to 2020 show us that South Asian FTAs have not significantly impacted trade between themselves. The study argues that, although South Asian FTAs fulfil some benchmarks, they show only a lukewarm interest in contributing to the international trading system as building blocs. It is therefore recommended that the case of South Asian trade liberalisation must be understood contextually and be given careful and exclusive attention by the WTO.

As such, this study is the first to claim that South Asian FTAs are not fully compatible with the WTO rules. They remain a missing regional bloc in the multilateral system, rather than a building bloc or a stumbling bloc, delaying the region’s opportunity to develop as a region and within the larger system.

The internationalisation of industries has spilled over to academia, whereby institutions of higher learning (IHL) increasingly compete in the graduate quality and applied graduate knowledge capabilities that they can offer. With increasing global competition for students, combined with the evolving need for lifelong learning in dynamic industries impacted by digital knowledge management, there is an opportunity for IHLs to be able to evolve to ensure their business models enable services and service delivery to cater to and help shape industry demands. This chapter will look at micro-credentialing (MC) and how the provision of MCs has changed along with the evolving IHL education environment. The demands of students, employers and ecosystem considerations will be addressed through a review of the current landscape, pathways to MC and how MC may be operationalised. The Bersteinian approach to pedagogic classification, which identifies the framework of knowledge as being communicable via three axes of singularism, regionalism and a wider generalist approach is referenced as a framework. The resultant recommendations that draw upon these foundations will conclude the chapter.

The Annual Review of Comparative and International Education (ARCIE) represents a forum and an opportunity for scholars worldwide to discuss and examine trends and directions in comparative/international education, highlighting relevant developments in these fields, related to educational contexts, climates, and reforms in these contexts. Changes and reforms within these contexts and areas can have significant impacts on various education stakeholders, agents, and societies. Given the need to identify and prepare for these changes, the objective of this chapter is to discuss recent trends and directions in the field of Comparative and International Education (CIE). The method employed to identify these trends was a meta-analysis of the 23 chapters published in the 2020 edition of ARCIE. The 23 chapters composed the corpus of texts analyzed in this study, with the support of an online platform for corpora processing. Results of the analysis were contrasted with relevant literature in the field and suggest that (among the three main missions of universities) teaching and research received more attention than outreach/services, considering the corpus analyzed. In addition, teachers and students received more attention than administrative staff. Therefore, we conclude that more attention is necessary toward these aspects (outreach and administrative staff) in the pursuit of social justice and UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Finally, the prevalence of topics related to language and sustainability suggests a need for more representativeness, in terms of regions and languages studied in the field of CIE.

The USA has long been known to provide a competitive environment in which religions compete for believers. The data clearly show winners and losers in this marketplace. Major Christian denominations are generally experiencing a decline in membership while religious “nones” are growing in number. Of note, the recent Pew studies of the US Religious Landscape (2008 and 2015a) indicate that measures of spirituality are rising in this environment. This paper empirically investigates how the demand for spirituality in religion may better understand these trends.

This paper applies ordinary least squares to survey data from the 2015 Pew study to empirically investigate how belonging to a major Christian faith and attending religious services impacts feeling of spirituality, while conditioning on a host of other demographic variables, in order to better understand these trends.

The author finds that being a member of a Christian denomination generally reduces the measure of spirituality relative to religious “nones.” However, this effect is almost always offset by a measure of attendance at religious services suggesting spirituality is positively associated with social interaction.

The results have implications for religious leaders concerned about maintaining and growing the church's membership. The results suggest that Church leaders may benefit from de-emphasizing hierarchical top-down rules and emphasizing community.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-05-2022-0342

This paper explores the issue of developing and enhancing intra-ASEAN international student mobility given the context of ASEAN integration, regionalization of ASEAN higher education and the various intra‐ASEAN student mobility schemes currently implemented.

It explores higher education policies, available higher education and international student mobility data, as well as the various intra‐ASEAN (and relevant) student mobility schemes to present the current status of intra‐ASEAN student mobility, challenges and opportunities to further enhance student mobility within the ASEAN region.

Aside from showing that intra‐ASEAN student mobility is significantly low compared to outbound student mobility from ASEAN countries, the paper also highlights the relationship between a country’s income status with choice of intra‐ASEAN or extraASEAN student mobility. Finally, it recommends developing a comprehensive intra‐ASEAN mobility scheme taking the merits of the various intra‐ASEAN mobility schemes currently implemented and guided by developments in the European ERASMUS mobility programs.

This is probably the first (in fact, it is an exploratory) paper that address the issue of intra‐ASEAN international student mobility, which aims to explore relevant issues to address the development of a comprehensive ASEAN mobility scheme.