Through the DRAP-AUF, the PURSEA project also relies on the Conference of Rectors of Universities of the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie en Asie Pacifique (CONFRASIE) to support HEIs in the region in their desire to join the university dynamic underway in Southeast Asia.

CONFRASIE, a forum for dialogue between institutional leaders, accompanies innovations in the field of academic governance of its member institutions, and is fully associated with the PURSEA project. CONFRASIE made some recommendations at its General Assembly (April 2017, Thailand) on the academic governance of its member HEIs:

• Enhance its role as a development operator in the service of socio-economic challenges.
• Combine the empowerment process with a performance logic: targeted objectives, adequate resources (human, financial, material, technological and infrastructure) and measurable results (qualitative and quantitative indicators).
• Develop a strategy for diversifying resources (human, financial, material, technological and infrastructure) to serve operational and contextualized action plans.

With a view to embedding these various recommendations in an Erasmus+ project, AUF-DRAP and the CONFRASIE Office conducted a survey in June 2018 among project partner HEIs.

This survey helped identify the priority areas for strengthening their university governance in a context of empowerment:

• To become aware of the changes and ruptures that affect the university systems in the region, and particularly in each HEI.
• To have a strategic vision over set periods of time that engages decisions and resources of partner HEIs.
• Articulate strategic visions and societal responsibility of universities through the impact of its decisions on society and the challenges it faces.

The affiliation of all the Cambodian and Vietnamese partner HEIs to CONFRASIE ensures a wide dissemination at the end of the project to the 88 member HEIs of the Regional Conference spread over the different countries of the region: if the project develops initially in Vietnam and Cambodia, all the countries of South-East Asia will benefit from it.

CONFRASIE is also a place of exchange and consultation between the heads of institutions from several countries in the region. It plays a major role in the identification of the potentialities of expertise within its members as well as in the definition of the orientations in higher education and research.

It accompanies innovations in the field of university governance of its member institutions through its offer of expertise on university governance: this contribution constitutes a privileged instrument which must allow institutional decision-makers to ensure permanently the relevance and the effectiveness of the policies and strategies implemented within their HEIs.