Higher Education in Asia - Expanding Out, Expanding Up: The rise of graduate education and university research

Abstract

The report examines the dynamics associated with the growth of graduate education in Asia, with particular attention to the middle-income countries of Southeast Asia (see the Reader's Guide for the list of countries analysed in this report).The analysis is primarily based on data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), which are complemented by data from national authorities and international organizations.The report is designed to: a) describe the extent of and reasons for the expansion of undergraduate and graduate education across the region; b) clarify the extent to which key actors perceive a tension between expanding out and expanding up; c) examine how universities gauge the quality of their graduate programmes and the actions they take to raise programme quality; d) identify research strength, rates of productivity and extent of international collaboration among countries at both the national and institutional levels; and e) highlight continuing issues that education and government leaders face as they seek to expand higher education opportunity, ensure a qualified instructional staff and promote university-based research.Enrolment in higher education has experienced explosive growth across Asia over the last 20 years, the result of high birth rates, increasing school participation rates, and the perceived importance of advanced education in subsequent life opportunities.To accommodate these enrolment increases, higher education systems have had to 'expand out' by constructing new universities, hiring new faculty members, and allowing and encouraging the entry of private higher education providers.Faced with escalating demand for instructional staff to serve the expanding number of public universities and the fast-emerging private universities, many countries across the region have needed to 'expand up' by introducing graduate programmes to prepare future instructors.From the perspective of many governments, expanding graduate education has an attractive secondary benefit.Many governments see universities as centers of research that will yield positive economic returns to the country.University research is typically done at the graduate level (Master's and doctoral).Hence, expanding graduate education is viewed as a means of increasing the economic competitiveness of the country.cHapter 1 analyses the convergence of pressures that have resulted in dramatic enrolment increases in undergraduate education over the last 20 years.This enrolment growth put financial pressure on many governments.In response, governments sought ways to lower the cost of instruction in public universities and shift more of the cost of higher education to students and their families.Public universities introduced new tuition-bearing programmes and auxiliary enterprises aimed at covering more of their operating costs.Some universities also sought less expensive means of instructional delivery, such as online instruction and other forms of distance education.East and Southeast Asia now lead the world in the delivery of distance education.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 68 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.