The present volume sets out in the wider context of globalization to critically examine how selected countries / societies in Asia have responded to the growing pressures of globalization for improving university performance in the global market place. In order to enhance the global competitiveness of their higher education systems, many governments in Asia have started comprehensive reforms and adopted new governance measures to enhance their universities. Incorporation and corporatization have been identified as important strategies to restructure and re-engineer university governance around the world. Contributors in this volume critically examine how the quest for world-class university status (as a global movement) has affected the way their universities are governed. Despite the popularity of management reforms and restructuring exercises in line with neoliberalism and managerialism worldwide, whether and how these reforms have actually transformed the heart of the public sector is still subject to debate. This book offers critical reflections on the governance change taking place in the Asian university systems and examines how far the restructuring of higher education governance through incorporation, privatization, and corporatization has really transformed the values and practices of those who work in the higher education sector.

This book documents experimentation with various policy and governance approaches that produce structural differences in the composition and organisation of Asia’s higher education systems. In view of the wide variation in the public and private provision of higher education, it showcases how issues of access, equity and modes of participation are addressed, how institutional and programme quality are managed and how academic labour is treated and developed. The book both maps these differences and analyses the country-level dynamics, policy approaches and the problems faced by a variety of states in Asia in the race to develop competitive higher education systems. Focusing on the intersection of governance and higher education policy, it addresses the challenges facing higher education in Asia and the national responses of governments in terms of the organisation of the sector.

This book deepens our understanding of how higher education governance has recently changed in the rapidly developing higher education systems of East Asia. Focusing on China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan, it explains the implications of how state-centered political systems interpret political and economic environments such as neoliberalism, as well as how each system is coping with global pressures. The book makes a valuable contribution to organization studies in higher education by investigating and detailing how individual higher education institutions are responding to their new environments.

This book discusses higher education research as a field of study in Asia. It traces the evolution of research in the field of higher education in several Asian countries, and shares ideas about the evolving higher education research communities in Asia. It also identifies common and dissimilar challenges across national communities, providing researchers and policymakers essential new insights into the relevance of a greater regional articulation of national higher education research communities, and their further integration into and contribution to the international higher education research community as a whole.

This volume explores convergence and divergence in the governance of higher education systems from a global and comparative perspective.

This volume seeks to identify and explore the dynamics of global forces on the development of higher education in Asia, in particular, how neoliberalism has affected reforms on university governance and management in the region. It includes a set of country-specific studies on how various countries have responded to the dominant neoliberal ideology at the systemic, institutional, and process levels. The focus is on the relationship between the state and the universities, which is usually reflected in the degree of autonomy and accountability allowed in a particular higher education system. The selected countries are Cambodia, China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand. Each case study examines the establishment of corporatised or autonomous universities in the country focusing on (i) the acts, reports, and/or policies that led to such a move as well as the rationales behind the move; (ii) the changes in the governance and organisational structure of the universities, highlighting the kinds of autonomy that the universities have; (iii) the new management strategies, techniques, and practices that have been introduced to the university including the internal and external quality assurance mechanisms, and (iv) some of the tensions, conflicts, and acts of resistance that may have emerged.

The search for good governance has become an increasingly important element of public policy and public management and is high on the political agenda of East Asian countries. The need for robust governance structures and institutions was brought into sharp focus by the Asian Financial Crisis which adversely affected most East Asian societies. Since then they have begun to look for ways to restructure their public administration and political systems in order to develop new mechanisms and structures to promote good governance. This book focuses on how selected Asian states have responded to the growing impact of "liberalizing and marketizing trends" in public policy formulation and public management. To what extent is the "state-guided" regime in Asia still relevant to governing public policy / public management? What are the policy implications for a growing number of Asian states which are pursuing more pro-competition policy instruments? The book is a timely and important collection that offers critical analysis of the search for new governance in Asia and compares and contrasts experiences in selected Asian societies such as China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and other parts of South East Asia. Chapters are written by leading scholars in the fields of comparative development, policy and governance studies from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Japan and the United Kingdom.