9case of South Korea is explored by Jisun Jung, which describes the development of
its higher education research and the key topics and methodologies applied.
Sheng-Ju Chan and Ying Chan focus on Taiwan and its rapid development in higher
education research despite the lack of a solid academic programme and other con-
straints. Nyamjav Sumberzul and Shagdarsuren Oyunbileg consider higher educa-
tion research in Mongolia, where it is still in the initial stages of development.
Part III examines the especially rapid development of higher education research
in Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.
Michael Lee probes the major characteristics, trends and issues in higher education
development in Singapore, under such themes as ‘centralised decentralisation’,
entrepreneurialisation, globalisation, internationalisation, marketisation and massi-
fication. Norzaini Azman and Morshidi Sirat introduce the salient features of the
evolution and current state of higher education research in Malaysia. Nopraenue
Dhirathiti focuses on Thailand through the lens of teaching courses and programmes,
national educational policy and current research and publication in higher education
research. Christian Bryan Bustamante provides an overview of the status and chal-
lenges of higher education research in the Philippines, based mainly on the policies
of the Philippines’ Commission on Higher Education (CHED).
Part IV focuses on South and Central Asia, including India, Iran and Saudi
Arabia. N. V. Varghese describes the historical and current higher education research
in India and highlights the major challenges to its future development. Abbas Arani,
Lida Kakia and Mohammad Jafari Malek provide an overview of the development
of higher education research in Iran and its key contemporary challenges, while the
chapter by Abdulrahman Abouammoh analyses the case of Saudi Arabia, where this
field of research is currently undergoing regeneration.
The concluding chapter of the book provides a summary of findings, the evolu-
tion of national higher education research communities and the challenges – com-
mon and not so common – that are still to be tackled in the region, and based on
these, a set of suggestions for the future development of the field of higher educa-
tion research in Asia is forwarded.
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1 Introduction: Higher Education Research as a Field of Study in Asia