This survey provides unprecedented scope and detail of analysis on
higher education in the Asia-Pacific region. In this era of global
integration, convergence and comparison, the balance of power in
worldwide higher education is shifting. In less than two decades the
Asia-Pacific region has come to possess the largest and fastest growing
higher education sector on Earth. The countries of East and Southeast
Asia and the Western Pacific together enrol 50 million tertiary
students, compared to 14 million in 1991, and will soon conduct a third
of all research and development. In China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and
Singapore, 'world-class' universities are emerging at breakneck pace,
fostered by modernizing governments that see knowledge and skills as key
to a future shaped equally by East and West, and supported by families
deeply committed to education.
But not all Asia-Pacific countries are on this path, not all reforms are
effective, and there are marked differences between nations in levels of
resources, educational participation, research, state controls and
academic freedom. Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific: Strategic
responses to globalization provides an authoritative survey of tertiary
education in this diverse and dynamic region. Its 23 chapters, written
by authors from a dozen different countries, focus successively on the
Asia-Pacific as a whole, the strategies of individual universities, and
national policies and strategies in response to the global challenge.
