Prior to the era of globalization, education in Southeast Asia was viewed in the context of the national state and it was deployed in the service of state and nation-building and national economic development. States monopolized education, and public-funded centralized education systems were established to teach literacy, transmit national cultures and promote social cohesion, and to produce literate workers. Globalization forces, however, dramatically impacted in varying ways and degrees the national education systems across the region. As states begun to see their citizens as resources to enhance the countries' competitiveness in the global market, it, among other things, led to the increasing demand for highly skilled and qualified human capital. The accompanying neoliberal ideology led to varying degrees of decentralization, privatization and internationalization of education, especially of higher education, in Southeast Asia. The chapters in this volume focus on a number of issues and challenges confronting the education sector in Southeast Asia, including: (i) the contrasting language in education policy in Singapore and Malaysia; (ii) the introduction of an English-medium private education sector in Malaysia; (iii) the internationalization of Thai higher education; (iv) access and quality issues in the massification of Malaysian higher education; (v) secondary school quality and higher education participation in Indonesia; (vi) equity, access and retention in primary school education in Malaysia; and (vii) reforms in the primary and secondary education in Myanmar.

Over the last decade, many local students have preferred to study overseas. This has caused governments to announce the creation of programs and developments in the higher education sector to upgrade South-East Asia to a leading education hub. Moreover, many governments declared that they would work on the insurance of learning to increase the quality of the degrees and the teaching itself. This has led many to question the results of these declarations. Higher Education Challenges in South-East Asia provides an overview of what has been happening over the last ten years in higher education in South-East Asia. It also works to solve the challenges in modern education such as the impacts of digitalization, globalization, and Generation Y and Z learning styles. Covering topics that include globalization, educational technologies, and comparative teaching, this book impacts academic institutions, policymakers, government officials, university and college administrators and leaders, academicians, researchers, and students.

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.

The book explores the growing tension between indigenous education, the teaching and learning of native knowledge, cultural heritage and traditions and the dynamics of globalization from the Asian perspective. It brings together a distinguished and multidisciplinary group of Asian scholars and practitioners from Nepal, Korea, India, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, and the United States. After showcasing six in-depth case studies of local cultural traditions from East, South and Southeast Asia, the book examines a variety of pedagogical strategies in the teaching and learning of indigenous knowledge and culture in the region, reflecting both international trends and the distinctive local and regional characteristics resulting from the tremendous diversity within Asian societies.

This book provides a central, authoritative source of reference on the most essential topics of higher education. The International Handbook of Higher Education combines a rich diversity of scholarly perspectives with a wide range of internationally derived descriptions and analyses. Chapters in the first volume cover central themes in the study of higher education, while contributors to the second volume focuses on contemporary higher education issues within specific countries or regions. Together, these volumes provide a centralized, easily accessible, yet scholarly source of information.

Bridging the gap between higher education research and policy making was always a challenge, but the recent calls for more evidence-based policies have opened a window of unprecedented opportunity for researchers to bring more contributions to shaping the future of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Encouraged by the success of the 2011 first edition, Romania and Armenia have organised a 2nd edition of the Future of Higher Education – Bologna Process Researchers’ Conference (FOHE-BPRC) in November 2014, with the support of the Italian Presidency of the European Union and as part of the official EHEA agenda. Reuniting over 170 researchers from more than 30 countries, the event was a forum to debate the trends and challenges faced by higher education today and look at the future of European cooperation in higher education. The research volumes offer unique insights regarding the state of affairs of European higher education and research, as well as forward-looking policy proposals. More than 50 articles focus on essential themes in higher education: Internationalization of higher education; Financing and governance; Excellence and the diversification of missions; Teaching, learning and student engagement; Equity and the social dimension of higher education; Education, research and innovation; Quality assurance, The impacts of the Bologna Process on the EHEA and beyond and Evidence-based policies in higher education. "The Bologna process was launched at a time of great optimism about the future of the European project – to which, of course, the reform of higher education across the continent has made a major contribution. Today, for the present, that optimism has faded as economic troubles have accumulated in the Euro-zone, political tensions have been increased on issues such as immigration and armed conflict has broken out in Ukraine. There is clearly a risk that, against this troubled background, the Bologna process itself may falter. There are already signs that it has been downgraded in some countries with evidence of political withdrawal. All the more reason for the voice of higher education researchers to be heard. Since the first conference they have established themselves as powerful stakeholders in the development of the EHEA, who are helping to maintain the momentum of the Bologna process. Their pivotal role has been strengthened by the second Bucharest conference." Peter Scott, Institute of Education, London (General Rapporteur of the FOHE-BPRC first edition)

Yasushi Hirosato and Yuto Kitamura Developing countries, including Southeast Asian countries, face an enormous challenge in ensuring equitable access to quality education in the context of deepening globalization and increasing international competition. They must simultaneously meet the goals of Education for All (EFA) at the basic education level and of developing a more sophisticated workforce required by the knowledge-based economy at the post-basic, especially tertiary, education level. To meet this challenge, developing countries need to reform/renovate their education systems and service deliveries as an integral part of national development. However, most of them have not yet fully developed the individual, institutional, and system capacities in undertaking necessary education reforms, especially under decentralization and privatization requiring new roles at various (central and local, or public and private) levels of administration and stakeholders. Provided that an ultimate vision of educational development and cooperation in the twenty-first century would be to develop indigenous capacity in engineering education reforms, this book analyzes the overall education reform context and capacity, including the status of sector program support using the sector-wide approach (SWAp)/program-based approach (PBA) in developing countries. We also address how different stakeholders have been interacting in order to promote equitable access to quality education, particularly from the perspectives of capacity development under the system of decentralization.