Education, fundamental to economic growth and development, has become an arena for global competition in the digital information age. As in the United States, many Asian policymakers are now pushing for higher education reform in the belief that strong, innovative higher education systems will pave the way for their countries’ future economic and political strength.

Looking comparatively at situations across Asia and in the United States, the fourth annual Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue considered possible solutions to the challenges of reforming higher education today.

Scholars and top-level administrators from Stanford and universities across Asia, as well as policymakers, journalists, and business professionals, met in Kyoto on September 6 and 7, 2012. In the discussion sessions following the presentations, participants raised a number of key, policy-relevant points, which are highlighted in the Dialogue’s final report. These include:

All countries face the challenge of preparing students to find meaningful employment, yet there is a lack of clarity in educational goals. Several participants felt the political expediency of government funding aiming for world university rankings must be balanced with the less politically attractive but potentially more critical vocational needs of economic development.

University administrators and government policymakers need to define their goals for “globalization” or “internationalization” as they launch new initiatives and policies. Participants noted that, while few are opposed to the principle of internationalization, without a sense of concrete and realistic goals, the cost-benefit of various measures may not make sense.

Online education promises great potential innovation in education, but it is still at a very early stage. While potentially valuable in enhancing traditional learning and research, serious challenges remain. There was a sense that far more needs to be done than simply taking existing forms of education and putting them online in order to truly harness the potential offered by online education.

The Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue series is made possible through the generosity of the City of Kyoto, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and Yumi and Yasunori Kaneko. The final report from the 2012 Dialogue, and previous years, is available for download from the Shorenstein APARC website.

The global demand for seafood is rising rapidly with a growing population consuming larger amounts of fish in their diets. Most of the additional demand for seafood is now met by aquaculture as global catches from wild fisheries have stagnated or decreased since the mid-1980s. 

Can the aquaculture sector avoid some of the large resource and environmental problems that have plagued the agricultural and livestock sectors during the past several decades? 

Aquaculture is now the fastest-growing animal food production sector and will soon supply more than half of the world's seafood. The industry can play a vital role in ensuring access to affordable seafood and in generating income from the sale of seafood in both developed and developing countries.

Although aquaculture has the potential to feed millions of people, some types of aquaculture production may severely degrade aquatic ecosystems, pose health risks to consumers, reduce incomes and employment in the capture fisheries sector, and diminish food resources for poor populations.

A study by FSE director Rosamond L. Naylor and Stanford Ph.D. student Dane Klinger explores potential solutions to the industry's range of resource and environmental problems. These include novel culture systems; alternative feed strategies; and species choices by stage of adoption, benefits, costs and constraints. The study also considers promising technologies and policies that could provide incentives for innovation and environmental improvement.

"Rethinking aquaculture production with an integrated mind-set is needed to tackle the simultaneous challenges of feed and energy demands, containment of wastes, pathogens, and escaped fish, land and water requirements, and consumer preferences," said Klinger. 

Environmental regulations, international standards, labeling, and information strategies can help provide incentives to producers to adopt improved technologies and management practices, but they need to be coordinated and promoted with care to prevent excessive costs to producers and confusion for consumers.