University league tables at national, regional, international levels are increasingly complex, influential and controversial. In spite of criticisms on robustness of methodology and bias of indicators, higher education institutions continue to have an appetite for them and use or misuse them in their planning, policymaking and promotion activities. This publication will contribute to the much needed analysis of the implications, benefits and unintended consequences related to rankings and the broader issues of quality assurance in the Asia Pacific region.

This edited volume examines the importance of quality issues in contemporary higher education systems in the Asia Pacific. Part One foregrounds relevant discussions of ‘quality’ within today’s globalized, interconnected, and complex higher education systems while Part Two focuses on selected universities in the Asia Pacific region. Chapter contributors discuss how quality issues and quality assurance mechanisms are implemented in their situation-specific systems. Part Three extends the research of higher education quality assurance in Hawaii Pacific University (HPU) and the diverse international student body in the Australian higher education system. The conclusion chapter discusses a typology of methods used by higher education systems in establishing effective quality assurance mechanisms.

Introduction: The background for and the ambitions of the current book -- PART 1. The Global Study. External quality assurance: The landscape, the players and developmental trends -- Quality assurance: Legitimacy, efficiency and control issues -- External quality assurance: Comparative reflections -- Institutional quality management: Comparative reflections -- PART 2. Regional Studies. QA in higher education in Africa: A synoptic view -- The Arab States: Quality assurance trends in higher education -- Internal and external quality assurance of higher education in the Asia-Pacific region -- Eastern Europe: Quality assurance trends and challenges -- Latin America and the Caribbean: Quality assurance trends and challenges -- Northern America: Quality assurance trends and challenges -- Western Europe: Quality assurance trends and challenges.

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.

Expansion and privatization have created new concerns over the quality of education throughout the Asia/Pacific region. This volume provides a framework to examine these challenges in the region and beyond.