By LIZ GOOCH


KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Attending a university overseas has long been an aspiration for many Chinese.

“My father said: ‘Why do you want to stay in China? Open your mind, look at the world,’” said Bao Qianqian, a 25-year-old woman from the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo.

But Ms. Bao decided to stay close to home and spend much less, while giving her the chance to improve her English and converse with Chinese speakers. She chose Malaysia, where she is a third-year business student at HELP University College.

With the appetite for higher education showing no signs of abating among Asia’s growing middle class, some Asian countries are seeking to attract more students like Ms. Bao.

In 2007, more than 2.8 million students were enrolled in institutions of higher education outside their home country, a 53 percent increase from 1999, according to a Unesco report released in July. The United States, Britain and other Western countries continue to draw the most Asian students, but the report showed that Asians were increasingly attending Asian universities.

Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong want to attract thousands more international students. All three are trying to capitalize on being able to offer a university education in English, and for considerably less than what many Western institutions charge.

Singapore, which has only three public universities, has tried to attract the involvement of foreign institutions. Some, like the University of Nevada and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, have established branch campuses there. Others, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, offer joint degree programs through local universities.

Hong Kong may be better positioned to attract international students, with three of its institutions ranked among the world’s top 50 universities in the Times Higher Education rankings for 2008, published by a magazine in London. Malaysia may have an edge among price-conscious students.

“There are more suppliers coming into the industry,” said Chris Nyland, a professor of international business at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, “but there are more and more people in China and India who can afford higher education.”