Challenges and Opportunities on Cross- cultural and Educational Immersion in ASEAN Countries Basis for Strategic Management Model

Cross-border education is among the vital components that is brought about by globalizing the higher education. Project Cross-Border for Learning (CBoL) like the acronyms itself as the Filipino word “SIBOL” which denotes the sprout of life mean that this is the beginning of a new milestone for the academic institution to open its doors for global opportunities. This opens the opportunity for cooperation projects, academic exchange programs, institutional networking as well as cross-cultural  advancement initiatives. This paper aims to present the challenges and opportunities of the cross-border learning experience of MinSCAT on the first three years of implementation of Project CBoL. The perceptions of respondents composed of 20 MinSCAT faculty and key officials; and 15 Thanh Hoa University of Culture, Sports and Tourism (TUCST) faculty and officials on the challenges and opportunities of cross-border education were analyzed using thematic content coding technique. The “a priori” and “in vivo” were adopted for making code frames. The results showed that several factors such as language barrier, cultural and ideological differences, resistance to change of stakeholders, impact to institutions, financial resources, governing board policies, as well as teaching, research and community services with global context pose challenges on the implementation of the Project CBoL. It also revealed that the MinSCAT and TUCST faculty viewed Project CBoL to bring global opportunities such as cross border intelligibility, exposure to diverse culture, faculty and official professional immersion and ASEAN integration.

Keywords – challenges, cross-border education, MinSCAT, opportunities, project cross-border for learning, qualitative research, TUCST