357higher education research is considered increasingly important but not important
enough apparently to be funded as it deserves to be.) The major question likely
relates to the very existence of a higher education research community in Asia, as it
was identified in the literature that studies in the Asian context – and published
internationally – have been produced by only a few individual scholars on a very
small number of institutions (Jung and Horta 2013 ). Through theoretical, historical
and empirical exploration, this book has uncovered the development as well as the
challenges faced by higher education research in Asia. In light of these findings,
some strategies are suggested for broadening Asia’s higher education research
community.
Is Higher Education an Independent Academic Field
in National Contexts Across Asia?
The book commenced with a simple question regarding the recognition of higher
education as an independent academic field in Asia. Based on the contributions of
this book, it was concluded that higher education has received insufficient attention
to make it an independent field of research in most Asian countries. This is unsur-
prising given the multidisciplinary nature of higher education research (Teichler
1996 ) and its consequent openness to researchers from different fields (Macfarlane
and Grant 2012 ). In many Asian countries, higher education research is a relatively
young and emerging field. As amply illustrated by the Mongolian case study in this
book, higher education research is often regarded as a means of planning future
policy directions, evaluating policy outcomes and outlining policy implications,
rather than as an independent intellectual discipline. In addition, as indicated by the
Thailand case study, the main research areas targeted in Asian contexts are science-
and technology-based rather than related to higher education, due to governments’
policy priorities. In operational terms, higher education research in Asia is still
associated with only a limited number of specialised academic programmes, aca-
demic appointments, national scholarly associations and core journals, as evidenced
by most of the country case studies detailed in this book. The Chinese context is
somewhat different: higher education has received more recognition as a legitimate
independent academic field, as it has been officially approved by China’s Ministry
of Education and the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council.
Nevertheless, the author of the Chinese case study in this book noted that higher
education research in China still lacks the status enjoyed by other social science
disciplines.
20 Higher Education Research in Asia: History, Development and Challenges