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programmes at the postgraduate level, although some colleges of education provide
a few higher education-related curricula.
The situation is similar in many Southeast Asian countries. There are few mas-
ter’s programmes focusing on higher education in Malaysia and only one special-
ised doctoral programme (an EdD in higher education) offered by one of the
country’s public universities. In Thailand, as revealed in the case study in this book,
higher education is not yet offered as an independent course. Leading public univer-
sities offer courses covering higher education issues, but these belong to other gen-
eral education subjects, such as course and curriculum instruction, education
management, education technology and subject-based education. The authors of the
Taiwanese case study identified the reasons for the lack of academic programmes in
higher education in Taiwan. Several attempts have been made to establish master’s-
level programmes at various universities, but most have failed due to the limited job
prospects for graduates. Although graduates of higher education programmes gen-
erally have expertise in university management, they find it difficult to acquire jobs
in Asia’s higher education sector because university employees in many Asian pub-
lic universities have civil-servant status and are thus required to take a national
exam rather than majoring in higher education at the postgraduate level. In Japan,
higher education postgraduate scholars tend to work full time in the higher educa-
tion sector or even for the government and thus find it difficult to secure enough
time and energy to pursue research leading to high-quality publications.
National Journals
Few national journals in Asia focus exclusively on higher education. To ensure its
recognition as an independent area of enquiry, higher education requires an estab-
lished core of journals (Bayer 1983 ). In China and Japan, there are a few domestic
academic associations specialising in higher education that issue journals on higher
education research in Chinese and Japanese, respectively. Approximately 400 jour-
nals devoted to higher education are published in China, but only half a dozen are
published nationally, while all the others are bounded by individual universities and
seldom circulated outside their sponsoring institutions (Altbach et al. 2006 ).
However, higher education issues in Asia are usually dealt with in other general
educational journals. As evident from the Korean and Taiwanese case studies, higher
education issues are often published in journals in the fields of educational admin-
istration and policy, curriculum and instruction and educational technology and
learning. In some cases, a specific field of knowledge leads higher education
research. For example, Mongolia’s Journal of Medical Education publishes many
innovative teaching issues. However, there are reasons to expect some change
regarding the emergence of national publications focused on higher education
research: the Saudi Journal of Higher Education has been published biannually
since 2004, and the Saudi Higher Education Observatory at the Ministry of
J. Jung et al.