© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 37
J. Jung et al. (eds.), Researching Higher Education in Asia, Higher Education in
Asia: Quality, Excellence and Governance, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4989-7_3
Chapter 3
Foil to the West? Interrogating Perspectives
for Observing East Asian Higher Education
Rui Yang
Abstract After absorbing Western knowledge for at least one and a half centuries,
East Asian higher education has made some remarkable achievements in recent
decades. Throughout the region, a Western-styled higher education system has been
well established. The region has become the world’s third great zone of higher edu-
cation, science, and innovation, alongside North America and Western Europe/UK,
with research powerhouses, and the fastest growth in scientific output. While East
Asia’s achievement has been widely acknowledged, assessment of its future devel-
opment is not. The strikingly contrastive assessments among scholars are often due
to their perspectives employed consciously and unconsciously in their research.
This chapter attempts to delve deeply into the theorization of perspectives for
observing higher education development in East Asia. After some methodological
inquiries into research perspective and frames of reference, it critiques the current
English literature and calls for multiple perspectives for studying East Asian higher
education. It concludes that current conceptualization of East Asian higher educa-
tion development relies almost entirely on Western theoretical constructions and
argues that the perspectives that give weight to the impact of traditional East Asian
ways of cultural thinking on contemporary development are badly needed.
Introduction
Let me begin with some personal reflections. As a researcher watching and writing
about higher education in East Asia, I have been an active contributor to the litera-
ture. My academic career spans nearly three decades with roughly one decade each
in the Chinese mainland, Australia, and Hong Kong. I published mainly in the
Chinese language in the 1990s and shifted to the English language since the 2000s.
I have found it highly relevant to reflect on some of my own trajectories and experi-
ences before I critique the work by my fellow researchers in the area of higher
education in East Asia:
R. Yang (*)
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
e-mail: [email protected]