83Asia research community. Evolving from a subcommunity within the broader higher
education research community, its members include Asian studying and working in
other regions, higher education scholars, and practitioners affiliated with institu-
tions with an interest in higher education in Asia. Most of these scholars/research-
ers, however, are focused on key themes within Knight’s functional, operational,
and political approaches to regionalization of higher education and are also engaged
in other higher education-related topics. Furthermore, it was observed that the the-
matic focus of these researchers tends to evolve along with contemporary develop-
ments in Asian regionalism and the ongoing higher education discourse and
dialogues within the region. As such, it may be more practical to assume a subgenre
of the higher education research community in Asia that includes research in region-
alization of higher education in Asia.
The members of this regionalization of higher education in Asia research com-
munity are spread out across and even outside the region. Although most are affili-
ated with academic institutions, some researchers working for international and
regional organizations contribute to regionalization of higher education research as
part of their institutions’ thematic or geographic focus and constitute part of this
research community. For example, Hou ( 2011 , 2012 ; Hou et al. 2015a, b), who is
currently the vice president of the Asia Pacific Quality Assurance Network, has
been engaged in quality and quality assurance-related research mostly related to
Taiwan and the Asia Pacific region. Furthermore, Asian academic institutions have
jointly hosted a number of East West Center’s higher education events leading to
edited volumes related to regionalization of higher education in Asia (see Appendix
8). These two cases illustrate the different methods one contributes to regionaliza-
tion of higher education research in Asia and its community.
As shown in Appendixes 8, the Asian Development Bank, Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation, East West Center, SEAMEO-RIHED, and UNESCO form part of the
regionalization of higher education in Asia research community. To a lesser extent,
but increasingly over the past years, the ASEAN University Network (AUN) is
expected to contribute to research and become part of the community. Although
their initial focus was on subnational higher education cooperation between AUN
member universities, the past years have seen the organization increasingly focuses
on regional higher education cooperation at ASEAN and ASEAN plus 3/6 levels. As
mentioned earlier in this chapter, the 9.6 million Euro European funding project will
at least ensure that AUN and their related research projects will contribute and focus
on regionalization of higher education in Asia.
Path Dependency
The themes in regionalization of higher education research in Asia, and possibly
worldwide, tend to be path dependent based on global and regional economic, secu-
rity, and political developments, the evolution of Asian regionalism, and the actors
engaged with regionalization of higher education in Asia. Path dependency,
5 Regionalism, Regionalization of Higher Education, and Higher Education Research...