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Asia Pacic Educ. Rev. (2009) 10:113 DOI 10.1007/s12564-009-9011-6
New challenges for higher education: global and Asia-Pacic perspectives
Jung Cheol Shin Grant Harman
Received: 6 March 2009 / Revised: 7 March 2009 / Accepted: 10 March 2009 / Published online: 24 April 2009 Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 2009
Abstract With rapid socio-economic changes, twenty-rst century higher education is facing major challenges to its governance systems, curriculum, mission focus, external relations, research, and nancing. A theoretical framework to analyze these post-massication challenges is suggested, with a focus on the Asia-Pacic region as well as global issues. Five main topic areas provide the basis for the theoretical framework: massication, privatization, accountability and governance, internationalization, and ranking and world-class universities. Some discussion of the possible effects of the nancial crisis that commenced in 2008 is provided.
Keywords New challenges Mass higher education
Privatization Internationalization Governance
Ranking World class university Economic crisis
Introduction
With rapid socio-economic changes, twenty-rst century higher education faces major challenges to its governance systems, curriculum, mission focus, external relations, research, and nancing. While these challenges can be viewed as both threats and opportunities, diagnosing what
is going on in contemporary higher education can provide basis for designing the future. In discussing where higher education is going, scholars have identied a variety of challenges, but we will concentrate discussion on massication, privatization, accountability and governance, internationalization, and rankings and world-class universities (e.g., Altbach 2005; Bok 2003; Gumport et al. 1997; Zusman 2005).
Contemporary higher education has been inuenced by two mega-trendsmassication and globalization. We focus on massication not simply because it is an extension of enhanced access but because scale has changed the whole higher education landscape, impacting on governance, nance, quality, curriculum, faculty, and student demographics. Growing numbers of private institutions have helped expand access (Geiger 1986; Zusman 2005) while quality assurance has become a critical issue (Alexander 2000; Brennan and Shah 2000; Jeliazkova and Westerheijden 2002) inuencing new regulatory agencies. In addition, there has been growing concern about student issues, effective instructional methods, and students career development (Volkwein et al. 1988; Silverman 1987).
Although there is some degree of ambiguity about the concept of globalization (e.g., Stromquist 2007; Marginson 2006), market competition is clearly a key outcome. With the growing...