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of a global schoolhouse or education hub, a strong emphasis on research and devel-
opment, the integration of skill formations into higher education and also some
other issues like higher education quality assurance and ethnic inequality of higher
education in Singapore.
Referring to the significant role played by the government in directing the devel-
opment of higher education, the research on higher education in Singapore is related
to both national policy issues and international trends. Although there is not any
research institute, academic degree programme, nor academic journal specialized in
higher education in Singapore specifically for higher education studies, there is a
non-government policy think-tank dedicated to this research area in Singapore. The
Head Foundation, together with S. Gopinathan, who serves as Academic Director of
the think-tank, has been engaging actively in higher education research in and out
of Singapore over the past few years. It has organized seminars and workshops on
higher education in Asia and forged research collaborations with internationally
renowned scholars in the field of higher education studies such as Philip Altbach
and overseas institutions such as Boston College’s Centre for International Higher
Education, East-West Centre’s Asia Pacific Higher Education Research Partnership
and the UCL Institute of Education. In addition, a new publication Higher Education
in Southeast Asia and Beyond was launched in 2016 to provide a venue for Singapore
and overseas higher education studies researchers to share their research and pro-
vide insights on higher education developments in Southeast Asia, including
Singapore (Gopinathan 2016 ). Meanwhile, at the regional level, Regional Centre
for Higher Education and Development (RIHED) of Southeast Asian Ministers of
Education Organization (SEAMEO) specializes in regional higher education devel-
opment in Southeast Asia, including Singapore.
Moreover, higher education policy research in Singapore has also been under-
taken by the government. In order to enable smooth policy implementation, the
Singapore government used to conduct policy research and reviews on higher edu-
cation concerning university governance and financial accountability (Ministry of
Education 2000 ), institutional autonomy of the state universities (Ministry of
Education 2005 ), further expansion of the university sector (Ministry of Education
2008 ) and diversification of higher education pathways (Ministry of Education
2012 ). In addition, the Singapore government has turned to pay more attention on
how to forge a close link between higher education and skills formation and upgrad-
ing so as to better equip the workforce for promoting lifelong learning and sustain-
ing long-term economic growth in Singapore with the introduction of the SkillsFuture
policy in 2015 (Shanmugaratnam 2015 ). Therefore, higher education research is
considered instrumental for the government to plan for the long-term development
of higher education policies which are supposed to serve the needs of the national
and economic developments in Singapore.
Being an independent academic field in Singapore, there has been a growing
interest among academics, think-tanks and even the government to engage in higher
education research in recent years. International collaborations have also been
forged between Singapore and international scholars and research institutions for
researching other countries’ higher education policy and reform experiences to be
learnt and adopted in Singapore, together with spreading out Singapore’s experi-
M.H. Lee