CQUni researcher helps with snapshot of Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific
Published on 10 October, 2011
CQUniversity's Dr Erlenawati Sawir is one of three editors who have drawn together authors from a dozen different countries to produce a book on Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific: Strategic Responses to Globalization.
Working alongside other leading industry specialists, Simon Marginson and Sarjit Kaur, Dr Sawir has helped to provide an authoritative survey of tertiary education in this diverse and dynamic region.
As a Research Fellow at CQUniversity's International Education Research Centre, she has contributed to a focus on the Asia-Pacific as a whole, the strategies of individual universities, and national policies and strategies in response to the global challenge.
According to publisher Springer, this book provides unprecedented scope and detail of analysis.
"In this era of global integration, convergence and comparison, the balance of power in worldwide higher education is shifting," the publisher says.
"In less than two decades the Asia-Pacific region has come to possess the largest and fastest growing higher education sector on Earth. The countries of East and Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific together enrol 50 million tertiary students, compared to 14 million in 1991, and will soon conduct a third of all research and development.
"In China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Singapore, ‘world-class' universities are emerging at breakneck pace, fostered by modernizing governments that see knowledge and skills as key to a future shaped equally by East and West, and supported by families deeply committed to education.
"But not all Asia-Pacific countries are on this path, not all reforms are effective, and there are marked differences between nations in levels of resources, educational participation, research, state controls and academic freedom."
