55are prominent with another two rising stars in the category of education studies,
namely, educational technology and environmental-ecological studies (2011–2013
data).^3 Higher education-related academic journals have not only attained high
ranks and impact factors but are also significantly more represented in the field of
education than traditional areas such as curriculum studies and language instruc-
tion. In the same ranking, no Asian educational journal has reached the top quartile,
and a journal of Asian HE is yet to be listed, which can suggest that Asian higher
education as a field of study will continue to have a sizable presence within the
international higher education field until it is able to substantiate its independence
as a field of study with significant growth in the coming years doing justice to grow-
ing numbers as well as invested efforts and resources of HE in Asia (UNESCO
Institute for Statistics 2013 ).
The biggest challenge to be a field is the first principle: “an inner coherence of
the substantive subject matter with identifiable boundaries.” We all know that
“higher education” and “Asian higher education research” would sit more comfort-
ably within the field of education as a subfield or area of enquiry, for example,
education studies and Asian studies, or perhaps as a subfield of higher education,
although it is, in turn, under education studies. The boundaries of its subject matter
are rather weak. When the demarcations are weak, smaller subjects tend to merge
with other subjects in order to gain in weight or perish.
Yet, why not? If a community of scholars such as A happily organize themselves
and they are free to utter what they deem important to the world, what could prevent
them to do so? Polanyi argued: “To accept the pursuit of science as a reasonable and
successful enterprise is to share the kind of commitments on which scientists enter
by undertaking this enterprise” ( 1983 , p. 25). This brings us back to the point of
departure. Perhaps, instead of an almost Renascence argument of “to be or not to
be,” what is more interesting and fruitful is to examine the sort of issues and prob-
lems mankind faces and figure out what could possibly be solved or alleviated by
Asian higher education research. I think, this is the only plausible justification to
regard HE as a (sub)field of study.
Ad Hoc Methodology for Higher Education?
Perhaps the most critical of the threefold characteristic of a field discussed in the
previous section is discourse. It denotes claims and research findings of a field worth
being disseminated in benefit of the society, which denotes the identity of a
(^3) Thomson Reuters’ JCR ranking is highly selective if not elitist. Its category “education and edu-
cational research” lists only about 200 compared to more than 1000 listed by the “education” cat-
egory of the SCImago Journal Rank-Scopus (2011–2013 data). The latter, despite its larger
database, only lists a dozen journals on Asian issues. In November 2014, the Times Higher
Education (THE) split from Thomson Reuters’ JCR ranking (Jobbins 2014 ). In my view, this was
due to the smaller database of Thomson Reuters, which cannot serve an increasingly globalized
academic institutions and their broader range of perspectives and interests.
4 Higher Education Knowledge Production in Postcolonial-Neoliberal Asia