Crossing Borders in East Asian Higher Education

This book examines issues that have emerged as higher education systems and individual institutions across East Asia confront and adapt to the changing economic, social, and educational environments in which they now operate. The book’s focus is on how higher education systems learn from each other and on the ways in which they collaborate to address new challenges. The sub-theme that runs through this volume concerns the changing nature of cross-border sharing. In particular, the provision of technical assistance by more industrialized countries to lower and middle income countries has given way to collaborations that place the latter’s participating institutions on a more equal footing. At the same time, there is a greater number of partnerships that link higher education systems in the East Asian region to one another. Even as boundaries become more porous and permeable, there is growing acceptance of the view that cross border collaboration, if done well, can offer mutually beneficial advantages on multiple levels. There is a new recognition that the intensified international sharing of ideas, strategies of learning, and students is not only of enormous value to systems and institutions but essential to their long term survival. To this end, the chapters in this volume examine various motivations, goals, mechanisms, outcomes and challenges associated with cross-border collaboration in higher education.

David W. Chapman is the Birkmaier Professor of Educational Leadership in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota. He has worked in more than 45 developing countries, assisting national governments and international organizations in the areas of educational policy and planning, program design and evaluation. The author of over 125 journal articles and book chapters, he was awarded a Fulbright New Century Scholars grant for the 2007-08 academic year.

William K. Cummings is Professor of International Education and International Affairs at George Washington University. He has been involved in development work for over 25 years, focusing on evaluation and monitoring, policy analysis, sector assessment, management analysis, and teacher training. He has written extensively on the challenges of development and on models of successful development strategies, and has written or edited over 100 articles and 20 books or monographs. He is a past president of the Comparative and International Education Society.

Gerard A. Postiglione is Professor and Head, Division of Policy, Administration and Social Sciences Education, and Director of the Wah Ching Centre of Research on Education in China, Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong. He has published 10 books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters. He worked on higher education projects for the Asian Development Bank, United Nations Development Programme, World Bank, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Ford Foundation, and the International Institute for International Education.