In contrary to many countries, China moved away from a centralized higher education system to where the government will act a facilitator. It is interesting to see some countries finding that centralizing their systems while China felt it was better to just facilitate it from a government level. Thay also moved to cost sharing policy where students had to pay fees and also began to accept students who would pay for tuition fully by private sponsors. In China private higher education is a new idea as higher education was predominantly public and students did not contribute as much financially. In the reading , Vietnam is the poorest of the group that was observed in the study but one of the first to move toward private higher education which makes sense as they were looking for ways to increase revenue. They even moved to internationalization of higher education sooner than the other countries. To improve their higher education system they went through reform on curriculum and teaching methods. This reform was implemented in 1987 which is rather early compared to the other countried but have these reform plans set out until 2020 to increase enrollment and diversity through university research. As the smallest country in the study it seems that Vietnam had one of the most advanced thoughts in higher education. Cambodia spent aprtion of the 1990’s looking for qualified teaching staff to refill positions that were vacant due to foreign staff leaving. The same idea Vietnam included in their higher education policy, Camodia did in 2000 where fee paying and government sponsored students were allowed to enroll. I wonder if there was controversy due to the fact that not all the teachers were qualified to teach and if the reform hired enough to make the institution worthy of the tuition fee paying students and government sponsored students were paying. In the study Japan was the most successful in higher education out of the other countries. It is interesting to see that they are the only country that introduce a slef-evaluation and external evaluation systems to ensure that they are meeting the changing requirements. Japan finally had an accreditation system put in place for all higher education institutions by the NIAD-UE since 2004. Though all these countries are located in Asia they have had very different approaches in bettering their higher education system but were effected by their different economic-socio statuses. At this time each country had moved toward some form of evaluation for teaching and curriculum development. Economicaly, they have also moved toward allowing students to pay certain fees or tuition and have opened up to private higher education.
Week 10-Governance Reforms and Automony
This week we focused on university governance, reforms and autonomy in Asia, Europe and Latin America. First, Global Trends in University Governance looks at how governments plan and direct their higher education sectors. Second, Governance reforms and university autonomy in Asia examines the move towards autonomy and how it has played out in China, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Japan and Indonesia. And again, comparative analysis was useful to see what works for one region or country may not work for another and that in the study of higher education internationalization, it is imperative to understand the diversity of geopolitical and socio-economic issues that intersect and interact. For me personally, having worked at both public and private higher ed institutions, the concepts of autonomy and governance are interesting ones to consider. I realized that the autonomy enjoyed by many American universities is not at all a universal concept but reading about recent governance trends toward autonomy was heartening but also tempered by better understanding what some of the challenges are through both readings.
The concepts of autonomy and academic freedom took center stage in this week’s readings and I think the connection between the two is important to understand in gaining an understanding of how higher education is different from other sectors and what makes it a unique sector to regulate. In general, autonomy reforms serve to propagate that the notion that higher ed institutions should be free to manage their affairs. The move from a state control model in many countries to a state supervising model bolsters the role of academic freedom for universities and colleges to be in charge of their own academic programs and developments as well as mission and vision.
Of course, there are growing pains we see with autonomy for countries that are trending from complete state controlled models. It is clear that for less developed and more previously totalitarian regimes, governance reforms cannot be implemented in a vacuum and must take into context the historical context from which they are coming, such as Malaysia or Cambodia. Japan, on the other hand, as a more developed country has been able to withstand the corporatization reforms of much less state control toward that of private, independent universities and colleges.
While full assessment of the impact of autonomy may be premature, it seems certain that the state supervisory model allows room for higher ed institutions to be more open to internationalization efforts such as cross-border partnerships and other market driven academic entrepreneurial intiatives.