"Students will benefit from getting world-class education and greater international exposure when they study in top Asian universities, and also get a better understanding of how things are done in Asia."
The National University of Singapore, which opened its University Town residential college last year, said in its advertisement in last Thursday's Herald: "Here, students will live and learn together in an intellectually, socially and culturally vibrant environment to explore subjects of global importance with Asian perspectives."
University of Auckland professor of Asian studies Manying Ip said the recruitment drive was part of a global exercise to attract top talent to Asia.
"These universities want to internationalise, they want to globalise and are keen to attract some of their own people back who have got foreign experience," Professor Ip said.
"All the growing economies are short of young people, including China, and this is one way of recruiting them."
But Professor Ip said university education in New Zealand was liberal and open, while at some Asian universities, "unorthodox thinking is not really encouraged".
She did not think local graduates would be disadvantaged in any way in finding top jobs overseas.
"I know of New Zealand graduates who are in finance, and in engineering, who are really successful in China and other parts of Asia now," she said.
Massey University sociologist Paul Spoonley did not think the number of international students heading to Asia would have much impact on the local export-education sector.
