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.

Today’s academic revolution is unprecedented. Mass higher education has become a worldwide phenomenon, with enrollments growing from 100 million to 150 million in just a decade. The implications of massification are immense—greatly increased participation for a more diverse population including women and many traditionally underrepresented socio-economic groups; the rise of private higher education; diversification of academic institutions and systems; and an overall weakening of academic standards at non-elite institutions in many countries. At the same time, higher education is recognized as a key driver of the new knowledge economy. Because of this research universities, at the top of academic systems, have become central institutions in contemporary society. Trends in Global Higher Education analyses these and other key forces shaping higher education today. Using up-to-date UNESCO statistics, trends defining higher education are placed in a comparative and international framework. Patterns of globalization, the flow of students and scholars across borders, the impact of information technology, and other key forces are critically assessed. This book is a key resource for understanding the present and future of global higher education.

Theorising Learning to Teach in Higher Education provides both lecturers embarking on a career in higher education and established members of staff with the capacity to improve their teaching. The process of learning to teach, and the associated field of professional academic development for teaching, is absolutely central to higher education. Offering innovative alternatives to some of the dominant work on teaching theory, this volume explores three significant approaches in detail: critical and social realist, social practice and sociomaterial approaches, which are divided into four sections: Sociomaterialism Practice theories Critical and social realism Crossover perspectives. Readers will benefit from discussions on the role and place of theory in the process of learning to teach, whilst international case studies demonstrate the kinds of insights and recommendations that could emanate from the three approaches examined, drawing together contributions from Europe, Africa and Australasia. Both challenging and enlightening, this book argues the need for theory in order to advance scholarship in the field and achieve goals related to social justice in higher education systems across the world. It draws attention to newly emerging theoretical perspectives and relatively underused perspectives to demonstrate the need for theory in relation to learning to teach. This book will appeal to academics interested in how they come to learn to teach, to administrators and academic developers responsible for professional development strategies at universities and masters and PhD level students researching professional development in higher education.

This book presents the state-specific dimensions of the governance of higher education in Bihar, India, based on a real-case perspective. It discusses the policies of the center and state governments, and their implications on the state's higher education system. It addresses the issues and challenges faced by the higher education sector from the point of view of multiple stakeholders at center, state, university and college levels, while examining influential power centers. The volume focuses on select universities in the state and looks at how they manage policies, schemes and regulations. It deals with key themes such as the role of state and regulatory bodies such as the University Grants Commission; the balance of power; resource scarcity; the inadequacy of top-down governance models; governance failure; and the autonomy of universities. It explores the conflict between the politics and economics of governance and efficiency; the promotion and recruitment of senior office-bearers and teachers; the privatization of colleges; and financing, admission and examination systems. Through an in-depth study using empirical unit-level data from the All-India Survey of Higher Education, examples and theoretical frameworks, the book analyzes the reasons for the underperformance of the governance system of higher education in Bihar. It also offers suggestions and policy recommendations to help improve its planning and management via participative and responsible governance and informed institutional leadership. This book will be of interest to students, teachers and researchers of education, higher education, economics, governance and public administration, and development studies. It will also be useful to educationists and experts, education administrators, policymakers, bureaucrats and the governing bodies of higher education institutions.

This book inspects higher education reform in market-oriented socialist Vietnam, with a focus on newness narratives and enquiry. Engaging in dialogic conversations with global and regional forces and exploring convergences in the domains of policy, curriculum, research, pedagogy, and society, chapter authors analyse ideologies that have entered Vietnam’s educational landscape. Chapters include discussions of post-Soviet legacies, socialist thought, privatization, neoliberalism, global rankings, academic freedom, autonomy, and elitism, as well as the actors, discourses and practices through which they manifest. In so doing, authors’ commentaries juxtapose phenomena in Vietnam with other national contexts such as the Philippines, Brunei Darussalam, Japan, Australia, and Trinidad and Tobago.

This Handbook discusses the theoretical and disciplinary background to the study of English-medium instruction (EMI) in higher education worldwide. It highlights issues relating to EMI pedagogy, varying motivations for EMI education, and the delivery of EMI in diverse contexts across the world. The spread of English as a teaching medium and the lingua franca of the academic world has been the subject of various debates in recent years on the perceived hegemony of the English language and the ‘domain loss’ of non-English languages in academic communication. Encompassing a wide range of contributions to the field of EMI, the chapters of this Handbook are arranged in four distinct parts: Part I provides an overview of English-medium instruction in higher education worldwide; Part II focusses on EMI in Europe; Part III on EMI in the Middle East, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa; and Part IV on EMI in the Asian region. The overall scope and level of expertise of this Handbook provides an unrivalled overview of this field of education. It serves as an essential reference for many courses dealing with applied linguistics, English language education, multilingualism, sociolinguistics, and related subjects at many levels of education, including Master’s and PhD-level studies. This Handbook serves as a valuable edition for university libraries across the world and an essential read for many faculty, undergraduate and postgraduate students, educators, and policymakers.

This book investigates the changing opportunities in higher education for different social groups during China’s transition from the socialist regime to a market economy. The first part of the book provides a historical and comparative analysis of the development of the idea of meritocracy, since its early origins in China, and in more recent western thought. The second part then explores higher education reforms in China, the part played by supposedly meritocratic forms of selection, and the implications of these for social mobility. Based on original empirical data, Ye Liu sheds light on the socio-economic, gender and geographical inequalities behind the meritocratic façade of the Gaokao (高考). Liu argues that the Chinese philosophical belief in education-based meritocracy had a modern makeover in the Gaokao, and that this ideology induces working-class and rural students to believe in upward social mobility through higher education. When the Gaokao broke the promise of status improvement for rural students, they turned to the Chinese Communist Party and sought political connections by actively applying for its membership. This book reveals a bleak picture of visible and invisible inequality in terms of access to and participation in higher education in contemporary China. Written in an accessible style, it offers a valuable resource for researchers and non-specialist readers alike.

The world of tertiary education has changed significantly in the past fifteen years. Developing countries have seen tremendous enrollment growth, especially in the private sector. Many nations are facing an exponentially rising demand as more young people graduate from high school as a result of the successful implementation of the Education for All agenda. The launch of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations in September 2015 has given renewed consideration to the importance of education for development and the urgency of putting in place viable financing strategies. Against this background this book explores the crucial role played by tertiary education towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. It observes that tertiary education finds itself at a crossroad today, as national systems are pulled in several directions by a combination of factors—crisis factors, rupture factors, and stimulation factors—bringing about both opportunities and challenges. How these forces in the tertiary education ecosystem play out in each country will determine the new “perils” and “promises” that are likely to shape the contribution of tertiary education to economic and social development in the years to come.

Several decades ago, private higher education already ranked as a major force in the higher education realm in many countries. Expansion in Latin America had begun in the 1960s, and the private sector was dominant in several key East Asian nations. At that stage, the forces shaping higher education were relatively stable.

The latest volume in the Routledge International Studies in Higher Education series, Accountability in Higher Education takes an in-depth look at accountability initiatives around the world. Various evaluations, reporting schemes, and indicator systems have been initiated both to inform the public about higher education performance and to help transform universities and colleges and improve their functioning. This edited collection provides a comparative analysis of the promises, perils and paradoxes of accountability, and the potential effect on power structures and higher education autonomy, trust and the legitimacy of the sector. Part I describes how accountability is perceived and understood in different regions of the world, identifies some of the most common elements in established accountability initiatives, especially related to quality assurance, and provides direction for possible future development. Part II focuses on responses to new demands for accountability at institutional, national and international levels, and provides practical guidance for handling accountability going forward, emphasizing the dynamic relationship between international development, government strategies and organizational change. This volume is a must-have resource for HE managers, administrators, policy makers, researchers, HE graduate students and those interested or involved with HE accountability practices.