Australia is once again confronting a fundamental question: how well equipped is it to engage with Asia?

The reasons for this renewed attention are clear. Four of Australia’s five largest trading partners are in Asia, while about 17 per cent of Australians identify as having Asian heritage. Australia’s economic, strategic, cultural and social relationships with the region are not peripheral to national life.

The federal parliamentary report Security and Prosperity in Asia, released in June, describes ‘Asia capability’ as a ‘vital sovereign capability’. Following extensive inquiry including with Monash academics through submissions and public hearings, it recommends a 10-year national strategy, stronger language pathways, university language hubs, expanded mobility opportunities and clearer connections between education and employment. Its concern with the educational ‘pipeline’ is well founded: as noted by Monash’s submissions to the Inquiry, deep linguistic and regional expertise takes years to develop and can be difficult to rebuild once lost.

For universities, rather than simply asking how we can produce more ‘Asia-capable’ graduates, we might interrogate  how universities contribute to developing and deepening different forms of knowledge, expertise and relationships across Australia and Asia.　At Monash, this question is particularly pertinent: the university has campuses in Malaysia and Indonesia, almost 98,000 alumni across 25 Asian countries, and extensive student mobility and research partnerships across the region.　

We already know the classroom is only part of the story

Australian scholarship has long challenged conventional accounts of ‘Asia literacy.’ Kirrilee Hughes questions the implicit separation between ‘Australia’ and ‘Asia’ that imagines Asia literacy primarily as knowledge Australians acquire about an external region. Her work draws attention instead to linguistic, cultural and transnational knowledge already developed through homes, communities and travel.      

Michael Singh makes a related argument about international, migrant and refugee students from Asia, whose linguistic resources are not always fully recognised or mobilised within Australian educational institutions.

Research also points to less formal pathways. Thomas Baudinette’s work on young Australian consumers of Japanese and Korean popular culture suggests sustained cultural engagement can contribute to intercultural communicative competence, although this is clearly not equivalent to linguistic or specialist expertise. Ly Tran and Thu Do’s research on Australian students studying in Vietnam shifts attention from what individuals ‘acquire’ overseas towards the relationships and longer-term transnational connections that mobility can foster.

Policy commentary increasingly raises a related question: what happens to this knowledge afterwards? The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia has called for greater recognition of Asian diaspora communities as partners in Australia’s engagement with the region, while Carmen Chung and Andre Kwok have drawn attention respectively to capabilities already present within Australian communities and to whether Australia remains connected to expertise developed through language and mobility programs.

What helps knowledge deepen?

Someone drawn into a language through popular culture may carry that interest into sustained study, where classroom learning complicates what media exposure first suggested. A heritage speaker may arrive at university with linguistic and cultural knowledge and develop new analytical ways of understanding it. Time spent studying or working in the region can test existing knowledge in ways a classroom alone cannot.

These forms of knowledge are not interchangeable: heritage does not automatically confer specialist knowledge, and popular-cultural interest is not equivalent to language proficiency. But knowledge can be deepened, challenged and transformed as people move between different settings and relationships. Stronger connections between formal education and heritage and community-language education, for example, can bring forms of linguistic and cultural knowledge that often remain separate into productive relationship. Universities can help create and sustain such connections. 

What might universities contribute?

One part of the answer lies in community engagement. At Monash, Chinese Studies has sustained a secondary-school debating competition on Asia-related issues for more than a decade, connecting school-based learning with university expertise. Japanese Studies has maintained an online exchange with Waseda University since 2015, allowing students in Australia and Japan to develop language learning and intercultural engagement through an ongoing relationship rather than a one-off mobility experience. Korean Studies has trained students to teach Korean language and culture through community classes at Hampton Park Library, extending university learning into the wider community. These activities all create connections between the university and communities beyond the campus, allowing knowledge and relationships to circulate in both directions.

Universities also contribute through the research capabilities they sustain. At Monash, for example, Indonesian Studies researchers work with Indonesian partners through DFAT’s KONEKSI program on climate resilience in vulnerable communities, bringing regional knowledge into collaborative research on issues of shared significance. Research on Australia–Korea relations is similarly examining shared challenges at the intersection of gender-based violence, emerging technologies and national security, including how AI is reshaping experiences of violence, everyday safety and institutional responses across Australia and the Asia-Pacific. Research capability is therefore itself a form of Asia capability.

Recognise, deepen, sustain

These initiatives suggest a deeper and broader role for universities than simply producing more ‘Asia-capable’ graduates. Universities can recognise knowledge, expertise and relationships that enrolments, qualifications and formal programs may overlook; deepen them by connecting education, research, mobility and community engagement; and sustain them by investing in the people, pathways and relationships through which expertise continues to develop.

This requires universities to take a longer view of their impact. The value of language study, an exchange experience or a research relationship may only become visible years later - through careers, collaborations, communities and continued engagement. 

Universities therefore need to ask not simply how much ‘Asia capability’ they produce, but what knowledge and relationships they recognise, what allows them to deepen, and what conditions sustain them and enable continued growth. As home to one of Australia’s most comprehensive suites of Asian language and Studies programs Monash is well equipped to lead.