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Is There a Community of Higher Education Researchers
in Asian Countries?
Rather than defining higher education research as a field, Tight ( 2004 ) described
higher education ‘communities of practice’ comprising ‘groups or networks which
help guide, regulate and make meaning of our lives, both in work and outside’
(p. 398). The growth of these communities is reflected by an increase in specialised
academic programmes and academic appointments and the emergence of national
scholarly societies and core journals (Altbach et al. 2006 ; Blackwell and Blackmore
2003 ; Jones 2012 ). Some countries in Asia, such as Japan and China, have long
boasted national communities of higher education researchers. However, Asia’s
higher education community of practice is still vulnerable. Further academic spe-
cialisation and differentiation are needed to build up a community of Asian higher
education scholars.
Researchers
To identify an academic community, it is important to determine the key national
and international groups of researchers. In China and Japan, for example, the higher
education research community has become more visible (since the 1990s in Japan
and the 2000s in China) due to an increase in the number of professional higher
education researchers and the volume of higher education policy research. This, in
turn, arose from the establishment of specialised postgraduate programmes on
higher education and the return of Chinese students enrolled on higher education
courses overseas. In Korea, some major research universities have very recently
recruited academics who specialise in higher education, and their research visibility
is increasing. However, in many countries, the ‘critical mass’ of specialists (Jones
2012 ) required for the development of higher education research is lacking, as
researchers are from very diverse academic backgrounds. In some places, special-
ists in higher education are almost non-existent. In Macau, for example, there are
very few local higher education researchers; most of the research in this field is
conducted by scholars from universities in mainland China and some from Hong
Kong. They tend to write short introductory papers on the history and development
of Macau’s higher education or to conduct comparative studies of Macau, Hong
Kong and/or other places. In Mongolia, higher education research is carried out
almost exclusively by students and faculty members at state-owned higher educa-
tion institutions and members of the National Institute for Educational Research
under the Ministry of Education.
J. Jung et al.