233English has been adopted as the lingua franca instead of Chinese despite of a majority
of the Chinese population there (Gopinathan 1989 ). Moreover, it might also be related
to political reasons for the government to close down the Chinese-medium university
for it was once the political hotbed in the 1960s; a number of political and student
activists were affiliated with the Chinese-medium university which the government
under the ruling party, the People’s Action Party, would like to tackle the problem of
having a very much politicized Chinese-medium university and eventually to close it
down not purely because of economic reasons (Wong 2000 , 2002 ).
It was not until the early 2000s when the Singapore government proposed to
grant greater autonomy to higher education institutions in the management of finan-
cial and human resources that the state control over higher education was relaxed in
order to pave the ways for corporatizing higher education institutions (Lee 2003 ;
Ministry of Education 2000 , 2005 ). Nevertheless, the policy of corporatization
should not be interpreted as means for the state to divest its influence over those
institutions (Tan 2006 ). Greater autonomy being granted to higher education institu-
tions is not without precondition, which simultaneously requires those institutions
to adhere to the principle of public and financial accountability. It is through the
institutionalization of quality assurance and audit systems that the performance of
institutions is also subject to external scrutiny. Meanwhile, the prominent role of the
state in higher education is not only confined to scrutinizing institutional perfor-
mance, but also it is the most important financier for the higher education system, in
which the Singapore government still provides heavy financial subsidies to higher
education institutions. Lee and Gopinathan ( 2003 ) refer to such change of univer-
sity governance as “centralized decentralization”, which demonstrates the combina-
tion of centralization and decentralization strategies for reforming and restructuring
higher education. This concept refers to the devolution of mainly financial and
human resource control which is matched by the centralization of policy and
decision- making power and strategic command in top management of higher educa-
tion institutions with the state authority steering the sector from a distance. As a
strategy for higher education reform, the concept of centralized decentralization has
three implications. First, it brings about changes in the role of the state in higher
education as it is a service purchaser instead of a provider. Second, decentralization
does not necessarily mean a sharing of decision-making and managerial powers
among academics, but they are more centralized with the top management. Third,
there is a reorientation of higher education institutions which are more likely run as
corporate enterprise-like public service institutions (p. 128).
Massification
Apart from addressing the prominent role of the state, most researchers note the
impacts of massification on Singapore’s higher education system. The policy of
higher education expansion, which came after the first economic recession in
Singapore in the mid-1980s, was considered viable means to upgrade the skills and
quality of workforce so as to facilitate economic restructuring (The Economic
13 Researching Higher Education in “Asia’s Global Education Hub”: Major Themes...