Australia’s New Colombo Plan: Enhancing regional soft power through student mobility

Evolution of the New Colombo Plan

At the time of its conception, the Colombo Plan represented “the moment when Asia’s social well-being and national development were deemed critical to Australia’s regional security.” ³³ When signing Australia up as a Colombo Plan nation, then minister for External Affairs Percy Spender highlighted its significance for Australia’s regional engagement: “Geographically Australia is next door to Asia and our destiny as a nation is irrevocably conditioned by what takes place in Asia. This means that our future depends to an ever increasing degree upon the political stability of our Asian neighbours, upon the economic well being of Asian people, and upon the development of understanding and friendly relations between Australia and Asia.” ³⁴

The public diplomacy aspects and soft power implications of Australia’s involvement in the Colombo Plan have been examined with the benefit of hindsight. Lyndon Megarrity notes, “hosting of Colombo Plan students and their private counterparts was partly designed to ensure that Australia as a European-dominated country was seen in the best possible light by its regional neighbours.” ³⁵ The stories that have emerged from Colombo Plan alumni are largely positive, suggesting that participants, some of whom ended up in positions of influence in their own countries, retained enormous goodwill toward Australia. However, meaningful evaluation of the program from the perspective of its alumni is limited. Some scholars caution against placing too great a weight on the alumni impact, arguing that to suggest “Australian-trained elites would naturally benefit our diplomatic relations with Asian countries is highly simplistic.” ³⁶ Others, however, suggest that the soft power benefits of the Colombo Plan worked both ways. David Lowe and Lyndon Megarrity are among those to assert that by bringing Asian students into Australian communities and in some cases Australian homes, the Colombo Plan also helped to change Australians’ attitudes toward an otherwise “alien” Asia, paving the way for the abolition of the White Australia Policy in later years, and shifting our gaze toward opportunities within the region. ³⁷

While the Colombo Plan sets a nostalgic backdrop for the NCP, its tangible origins are found in more recent policy developments. Today’s NCP began in 2006 with Julie Bishop, who then held the education portfolio in John Howard’s coalition government. That year, Bishop hosted an inaugural meeting of Asia-Pacific education and training ministers and officials. The outcomes, articulated through the 2006 Brisbane Communiqué, recognized student and academic mobility and exchange as providing the “basis for friendship, mutual respect and understanding” essential for “prosperity, security and peace in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.” ³⁸

Bishop recalls that it occurred to her through that Brisbane meeting that “we had a growing diplomatic issue, that Australia was prepared to accept students from universities in the region but we really didn’t make enough effort to ensure that [our] students, when they chose to study overseas, went to the region.” ³⁹ According to Bishop, this was “a public diplomacy issue that Australia should address.” ⁴⁰ Shortly after the ministerial meeting, Bishop joined Australia’s foreign minister, Alexander Downer, in launching an expanded suite of inbound Australian scholarships as part of the pre-existing Endeavour Awards scheme. ⁴¹ The initiative reaffirmed the importance attached to inbound scholarships within Australia’s regional engagement strategy and set an important precedent for foreign ministry involvement in Australia’s global scholarships program, but did not address Bishop’s ideas for developing outbound mobility as public diplomacy. Although she took steps to advance an outbound scholarship policy, Bishop’s efforts were ultimately put on hold by an electoral loss the following year.

The 2007 Labor government led by Kevin Rudd also raised outbound mobility as an element of Australia’s regional engagement strategy. The Australia 2020 Summit convened by Rudd in 2008 acknowledged a strategic gap in Australia’s understanding and knowledge of the Asian region, its languages and cultures. Discussion honed in on incentives for “Australians to live, study and work in Asia,” including through a so-called “reverse Colombo Plan.” ⁴² However, the interplay of several factors, including concerns that references to the Colombo Plan would attract an unhelpful neo-colonial critique from across the region, as well as competing summit priorities, dampened interest in the “reverse Colombo Plan” and it did not move beyond discussion. ⁴³

When Julia Gillard replaced Rudd as prime minister in 2010, she re-emphasized the place of student mobility within Australia’s regional diplomatic agenda. Previously, as education minister, Gillard had advocated student mobility on that basis, noting that, “People connections … are vital to the future prosperity of our country—constituting part of what’s known as the ‘global supply chain’ and ensuring that Australia is truly ‘globally connected’ going into the future.” ⁴⁴ As prime minister, Gillard’s key policy initiative set out in the Australia in the Asian Century white paper reiterated the premise that “stronger relationships will lead to more Australians having a deeper understanding of what is happening in Asia and being able to access the benefits of growth in our region. In turn, more of our neighbours in the region will know us better than they do today.” ⁴⁵ Gillard subsequently launched AsiaBound, a high-profile student mobility program aimed at encouraging Australian students to study within the Asian region. With its AUS$30 million budget, AsiaBound, led by Australia Education International (within the Department of Education) was to “dwarf in size and scale the work that was done under the Colombo Plan.” ⁴⁶ The program was accompanied nation-wide by promotional activities, including the World Class Campaign produced by peak body Universities Australia to raise awareness among Australian students of the opportunities for overseas travel within their various programs. ⁴⁷ The volume of program funding and scale of promotional activities lifted the profile and activity of student mobility at the time. Although well regarded as an outbound student mobility program, AsiaBound was disconnected from foreign policy circles, was not recognized as public diplomacy, and was ultimately lacking in soft power influence. While the reasons for this disconnect are not clear, it is probably a reflection of the predominantly domestic focus of Australia’s education bureaucracy at the time. ⁴⁸

At the same time, although from the ranks of political opposition, Julie Bishop reignited discussions on the NCP. The concept was introduced and developed within foreign policy circles, and the 2013 bilateral Australia-Indonesia Dialogue, co-organized by the Australian Institute for International Affairs (AIIA) and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), provided an important testing ground. ⁴⁹ Subsequently, a series of strategic roundtables with vice chancellors, industry leaders, practitioners, and academics, led by the Menzies Research Centre, further shaped and developed a policy framework for the NCP. With clear business and community support, the NCP became the signature policy initiative in the coalition’s election campaign. It subsequently became the central plank of Bishop’s foreign policy agenda and one of the first policy initiatives to receive budget funding when the coalition won office later in the same year.

New Colombo Plan: New public diplomacy direction

Australian students are increasingly attracted to overseas study experiences. Universities report that more than 24,000 Australians are in some form of study overseas, with Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom rating highly as preferred destinations, but highlighting new interest in Asia. ⁵⁰ The Australian government already plays a positive role in this. In addition to AsiaBound, programs such as the International Student Exchange Program, the Endeavour Cheung Kong Student Exchange Program, as well as vocational education and training (VET) Outbound programs all contribute to increases in the outward movement of Australian students. Given these student trends, the existing landscape of mobility programs, and the emphasis on AsiaBound, some question, as Rob Maliki notes, whether the NCP reflects a new vision of student mobility or simply just another version of what has gone before. ⁵¹

It is against this backdrop of activity that the New Colombo Plan sits apart from other student mobility programs on the basis of its distinct public diplomacy direction: the NCP is located, funded, and implemented from within Australia’s foreign affairs portfolio, with the result being an outbound mobility program that is firmly aligned to public diplomacy efforts aimed primarily at deepening Australia’s engagement in the Indo-Pacific. The plan also rebalances Australia’s student mobility profile away from inbound recruitment models toward a model that ensures young Australians have the opportunity to be educated, informed, and connected within the Indo-Pacific region. Bishop personally expressed this point to her regional counterparts when inviting them to participate in and endorse the program—a public diplomacy measure in itself. Finally, drawing on the collaborative potential of public diplomacy, the NCP demonstrates a wider commitment to partnership building, encompassing public institutions, businesses, communities, and government at home and in the region within its sights. When viewed together, these features suggest that the plan is clearly aimed, as Fitzpatrick’s definition suggests, at establishing and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships and generating “networks of influence” with strategic publics across the Indo-Pacific region to advance Australia’s interests. Moreover, in doing so, it might also contribute to longer-term shared outcomes within the region. Yet as an act of public diplomacy, the New Colombo Plan faces a range of distinct challenges and opportunities, particularly in its implementation. They are addressed in the next section.

Early issues and limitations

Three key issues of geographic distribution, study timeframes, and participant criteria emerged through pilot outreach as potential limitations on the wider New Colombo Plan program. First, the geographic distribution of outbound scholarships, determined largely by student interests and university orientations, highlighted an underlying tension for the NCP as a public diplomacy tool of foreign policy. In the first pilot tranche, only five of the possible 40 NCP scholarship students chose Indonesia as their study destination, while Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore all attracted at least twice that number. ⁵⁸ Given the emphasis placed on the Yudhuyono Fellowship as an important touchstone in the Australia–Indonesia relationship, it was not surprising that the NCP secretariat quickly announced a preference for students identifying Indonesia in the second pilot tranche and subsequent rounds. ⁵⁹ Of note, Indonesia turned out to be the second most popular destination for the first round of 2015 NCP scholarships. The geographic spread and balance of outbound scholarships and mobility grants will most likely present an ongoing tension within DFAT as foreign policy priorities ebb and flow; it is a balance to be handled with both sensitivity and caution.

Second, both pilot tranches highlighted the preference among NCP scholars for short-term rather than long-term study options within the region. This preference is not unique to the NCP. Asian destinations, although increasingly attractive to Australian students, are mainly taken as short-term study options. ⁶⁰ The NCP Secretariat flagged concerns about whether short-term study would still fulfil key foreign policy objectives. ⁶¹ For some involved in Australia’s education promotion, the value of longer-term study for language immersion and skill development was at risk of being overlooked. ⁶² Depth of knowledge, including in language proficiency, comes with longer-term immersion, yet short-term study can also be transformational. The clear message to come out of the 2014 Australian International Education Conference (AIEC) reaffirmed that length of study is not always the primary issue; rather, “transformation occurs through the collision of two worlds, where old skills, knowledge and expertise must be adapted to understand and negotiate new experiences, not only personally but in terms of institutional learning.” ⁶³ On a more practical level, it appears that many host institutions, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, are best equipped at present to accommodate short-term mobility. For some regional institutions and communities, longer-term hosting of Australian students may create an unanticipated strain on internal resources and infrastructure, which in turn may lead to unexpected resentments and limited public diplomacy outcomes. Furthermore, these short-term international study programs and placements play an important role in diversifying Australian student mobility away from the traditionally preferred and comfortable destinations and toward more strategic and challenging locations. ⁶⁴

Third, the NCP Taskforce identified that the rigid criteria on age and academic background may have unnecessarily and inadvertently shut potential candidates out of the New Colombo Plan process. Practitioners and academics have expressed related concerns that the language of the NCP, aimed at “Australia’s best and brightest,” is unnecessarily exclusive. ⁶⁵ The AIEC, for example, observes that “while there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to mould future leaders, the language is not very inclusive of those who might benefit more from the experience, those with the lower grades or limited life or travel experiences.” ⁶⁶ Questions might be asked about whether the plan simply benefits privileged cohorts who already have access to overseas study opportunities, or whether it casts the net of opportunity to a wider cohort of young Australians who would not otherwise access the experience. It might be argued that as a flagship program, the NCP both requires and benefits from the status and prestige that come with a highly competitive selection process. Yet there are underlying flaws. While it is important for the plan to maintain a level of prestige in order to engage the interest and support of regional leaders, institutions, and businesses, it is equally important that a more representative cross-section of young Australians see themselves as fitting the NCP profile and vision. Not only is such an approach likely to deliver more authentic public diplomacy; it is also likely to support the wider objective that studying in the region becomes a “rite of passage” for young Australians. Greater flexibility on age and academic performance along with consideration of socio-economic factors was incorporated into the application and selection process for the New Colombo Plan in 2015. These are encouraging trends that reflect a new DFAT willingness to align foreign policy objectives more closely to domestic expectations and situations. Ongoing evaluation of the NCP’s success, including in terms of student uptake and experience, will be critical. However, deeper soft power challenges and longer-term prospects must also be addressed.

Strategic coherence

In terms of strategic coherence, the NCP policy clearly reflects and builds on a fundamental view held across the political, international education, industry, and foreign policy sectors that student mobility offers an important opportunity to enhance regional engagement. Yet it is a patchy narrative interrupted over recent years by changes to government and to the machinery of government. Political point scoring, policy imprinting, and erratic levels of promotion have at times presented a confusing picture of Australia’s student mobility offerings, particularly to regional partners and stakeholders. The awkward co-existence of the newly launched NCP and pre-existing AsiaBound provides a case in point. Administration of the two programs by different government agencies operating from separate budgets added to the confusion. The decision to roll the AsiaBound program, including its funding, into the NCP in 2015 has provided a level of much-needed coherence for those seeking to participate. The active input of Julie Bishop over the past decade, from within the education and foreign affairs portfolios and while in opposition, presents a striking thread of coherence in the recent evolution of the NCP. Bishop’s involvement has arguably mitigated against policy and program conflicts. Two aspects of Bishop’s involvement are particularly notable. First, she actively engaged influential stakeholders from across government, industry, and business in the development of the plan. Second, she sent personal invitations to and has continued to include regional leaders in her vision of the NCP. Both aspects demonstrate the effectiveness of Bishop’s own public diplomacy style as well as her overarching commitment to see the plan become a reality. Both have had a significant impact on domestic and regional buy-in to the program.

Another aspect to strategic coherence relates to the ultimate longevity of the New Colombo Plan. For the NCP to deliver on its intended foreign policy goals, both Australian and regional stakeholders require clarity of purpose and an assurance that the program will be embedded in the government’s long-term agenda. The five-year budget allocation secured by Bishop early in her term as foreign minister bodes well for the future of the NCP. A further step might be achieved through ongoing and high-profile bipartisan acknowledgement of and commitment to the plan in its current form and name. Current evidence suggests that bipartisan commitment to the NCP is developing. Bipartisan support of the NCP is understandably a less important priority for opposition parties, but as recent past history demonstrates, it is essential to building and sustaining the policy model and longer-term domestic and regional brand.

Building a partnership model

The second strategic issue relates to the ongoing development of the NCP partnership model. The NCP model will be sustained, developed, and extended through the complex set of interconnections, dynamics, and relationships. As with any complex, socially oriented network, there are multiple touch points and levers of interaction. DFAT plays a key role in fostering positive and dynamic interactions and engagements at each of these touch points. Yet, this is new territory for Australian public diplomacy and builds on emerging trends in international public diplomacy scholarship and practice, which highlight public diplomacy as both medium and model of collaboration. Indeed, as Geoffrey Cowan and Amelia Arsenault suggest, collaboration “can sometimes be the most important form of public diplomacy.” ⁶⁷ From this viewpoint, encouraging a culture of shared leadership that engages all or any members of the network at any time, ⁶⁸ rather than relying on traditional forms of heroic leadership or hierarchical instruction, is likely to lead to more effective, even transformative, soft power outcomes. The recent soft power failings of the high-profile but increasingly contentious Confucius Institutes are instructive, demonstrating that tight, top-down control mechanisms can engender suspicion within and rejection by the target audiences they were intended to engage. ⁶⁹

Capacity building at key touch points in the network is integral to working toward a shared leadership model and provides the opportunity to integrate global citizenship considerations within the NCP’s soft power framework. For example, recent steps by DFAT to engage private sector institutions in the preparation of New Colombo Plan scholars, including through cross-cultural training, are positive. Such training will position the scholars with the competencies required for them to engage effectively in very different regional environments. It also goes some way toward addressing stakeholder concerns about student preparation, while moving away from other concerns regarding government propaganda messaging, and further demonstrates external partnerships in the NCP’s core public diplomacy project.

From the university perspective, the New Colombo Plan offers a prestigious opportunity to claim scholarships and grants that will extend their institutional brand and private sector linkages into domestic and regional markets. Most Australian universities can already point to extensive regional networks. Yet outreach sessions revealed that practitioners are less confident when it comes to identifying and supporting workplace experiences within NCP host countries, including the extent to which such diplomatic support might be accessed. ⁷⁰ The plan has brought about a notable shift in the workload intensity and expectations for university staff, particularly for those in the student mobility field. Through the NCP framework, student mobility officers who previously operated “under the radar” are now program architects, faculty liaisons, deal brokers, and support crew for the plan, dealing with their own institution as well as regional partner institutions and businesses through this new public diplomacy frame. In short, they are active producers of Australian public diplomacy. While most university practitioners express philosophical support for the New Colombo Plan, they also express their concern with its tactical execution, with a particular emphasis on the demanding time frames required to identify and recruit students and develop mobility programs suitable to NCP parameters. Some practitioners confirm that, because of time and resource constraints, they simply look to their existing partners without exploring new partnership opportunities in the region. They also suggest that mobility opportunities go unrealized because of a lack of time to innovate or develop new programs combined with a lack of faculty and academic buy-in. ⁷¹ These concerns, although of a programmatic nature, are important and relevant to NCP success. Building confidence and capacity at the university level and enabling access to Australia’s diplomatic network will require some additional effort in the short term. However, it is likely to prove beneficial at a systemic level, building on the culture of shared leadership and encouraging new partnerships in the region, particularly as the NCP moves into its larger program phase.

While the individual student experience sits at the core of the NCP program, it is the potential cumulative value of those NCP experiences and relationships over time that drives soft power outcomes. Sustained alumni engagement features prominently in the public diplomacy view of international education, and universities are already well placed to build their institutional networks into a wider NCP setting, using social media and digital platforms to encourage and sustain connections across the globe. More than just alumni engagement, this paper calls for an ongoing network engagement strategy that links with and meets the needs of students as well as universities, businesses, and communities involved in NCP delivery.

To this end, there is real scope to engage the wider Australian community within the New Colombo Plan network, including through existing state and municipal government linkages, so that communities might also embrace their outgoing NCP scholars as regional experts and connectors. State and municipal governments are increasingly active in building their own regional linkages and attuned in particular to the significance of inbound student recruitment to local economies and community cohesion. Yet, they remain largely unaware of the potential of the NCP program. Improved integration with state and municipal government strategies will generate significant two-way benefits: giving regional networks local visibility, and improving the recognition and profile of NCP scholars and mobility students at home. On the latter, local communities are well placed to acknowledge and celebrate the return of their NCP scholars and facilitate their smooth transition back into Australian life, including through facilitation of professional debriefing and networking. A longer-term commitment by communities to the success of the NCP framework is key to supporting and leveraging this “rite of passage” for young Australians.

Soft power evaluation

A third strategic issue relates to the evaluation of NCP public diplomacy in soft power terms. While DFAT has stated its intention to evaluate the NCP, current indications are that such an evaluation will be aimed at measuring the plan as public diplomacy. Such evaluations continue to confound public diplomacy scholars and practitioners around the world. ⁷² While there is no single formula or approach to follow in evaluating soft power impacts, two principles emerge from current literature and practice. First, quantitative, activity-based evaluations conducted in the short term will provide insufficient measures of outcome. Second, multi-faceted approaches combining quantitative and qualitative measures over time are necessary both to evaluate the soft power of the NCP and to tease out the wider impacts as they relate to Australia’s affective and normative soft power profile.

Program-level evaluations could incorporate measures that usefully distinguish between the normative and affective dimensions of the New Colombo Plan. Factors that measure the awareness of and participation in the plan, both at home and abroad, including media coverage, speak directly to the wider attraction of the program. Factors that explore changes in the breadth and depth of NCP relationships at the individual and institutional level speak to its normative impact. That impact might include the development of longer-term relationships and associations that derive from NCP participation, such as, for example, involvement in an alumni association, involvement in relevant bilateral friendship or business associations, and ongoing travel to the region. For institutions it might include shifts in international student enrolments and alumni activity or in academic or research collaborations with relevant NCP host nations.

Furthermore, while the NCP is a limited program, its purpose is not just to promote study abroad for a few, but rather to establish and promote regional study and work abroad as a “rite of passage” for a wider audience of young Australians. An overall increase in Australia’s regional outbound student mobility during the NCP’s lifetime and increased uptake of relevant cultural and language studies more broadly through the school system would present as a powerful indicator of New Colombo Plan soft power (across both the affective and normative dimensions). Even so, while these data may provide useful insights about the NCP, gaps regarding Australia’s regional soft power remain.

An evaluation of the NCP’s impact on Australia’s regional soft power is a more difficult and nuanced task, but follows a similar pathway to the program level. In the interests of policy coherence, overall evaluation of NCP soft power impact should sit within DFAT’s overarching economic diplomacy framework. To this end, shifts in bilateral and regional recognition and engagement of Australia, evidenced through media coverage, tourism, and business activity—including trade delegations, improved political and diplomatic access, and international education opportunities—would all point to improvements in Australia’s attractiveness to the region. Increased opportunities to facilitate or engage in policy dialogue; more substantial collaborations across education, science, and industry; and increased opportunities to take on leadership roles across all sectors in the region would suggest improvements in perceived legitimacy and ability. Improvements in Australia’s affective soft power would be reflected in the friendliness and warmth of Australia’s relationships within the Indo-Pacific. Improved normative power would reflect in widening areas of shared understanding, greater depths of trust, and more productive and substantial collaborations. Improvements in both affective and normative soft power at the region level will, when taken together, offer Australia greater flexibility and leverage in advancing its foreign policy interests and pave the way for achieving formal political and diplomatic outcomes.

The evaluation approach noted above is not exhaustive, but presented to stimulate further research and discussion about the multifaceted and multidimensional nature of NCP evaluation. Such discussion is not just important for the NCP itself, but will also contribute to the ongoing evolution of public diplomacy and understanding of soft power. In terms of opportunity, such a study may contribute to wider conceptions of soft power, including a distinctly Australian view of building soft power within the diverse Indo-Pacific. As Sook Jong Lee and Jan Melissen note in their review of soft power, further contributions to this field are welcome. ⁷³