Researching Higher Education in Asia History, Development and Future

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Along with the obvious progress in higher education research, research methods
employed is the essential issue to be investigated. Surprisingly, among the 989
papers reviewed, up to 86% are based on qualitative approach while only 14% is
conducted by quantitative methods. The qualitative approach in this study covers
case study, content analysis, interview, comparative education method, literature/
document analyses, historical review, action research and ethnography, etc. Such
tendency towards qualitative approach, on one hand, might point to the unique
nature and needs of higher education research. On the other hand, this also reflects
the difficulties of mobilizing statistical and quantitative analyses in Taiwan. For
example, the response rate is generally low (about 10% to 20% in general) while
distributing questionnaire and survey. The absence of large-scale official database
and survey further plagues the adoption of quantitative research. In hope of bridging
this gap, the recent launch of Taiwan Institutional Research Association in 2016
may provide systematic dataset for statistical examination so as to tackle the prob-
lems of decision-making at the university level.
Finally, we aim to decipher the main themes explored in these 989 articles. Based
on previous literature, we synthesize the different categories from Clark and Neave
( 1992 ), Tight ( 2003 ), and David ( 2011 ). There are nine themes including teaching,
curriculum design, student experiences, quality/evaluation, system/policy, institu-
tional management, academic work, knowledge, and internationalization. The major
proportion of research themes explored in Fig. 11.2, as previous interviews have
revealed, focused on system/policy (33%) and quality/evaluation (16%). They are
followed by curriculum design (11%), student experiences (9%), teaching (9%), and
academic work (9%). This distribution highlights that management-oriented research
to some extent dominates the field. However, it is noted that teaching and learning is
another major area as indicated by Horta and Jung ( 2014 ) across Asia. Some emerg-
ing themes such as academic work (9%) and internationalization (5%) attract greater
attention and diversify the higher education research themes in Taiwan.

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(^8684)
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Fig. 11.1 The publication volume in higher education field from 1990 to 2015
S.-J. Chan and T.-M. Huang