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The super-emphasis on HE knowledge production is a dated problem in the
West. John Henry Cardinal Newman argued that research is neither the main nor the
maiden mission of a university, and it should rather be done outside the campus
(Barnett 1990 ). Earlier across Europe, the Humboldtian idea of a university argued
for a balance between teaching and research (Anderson 2010 ). I agree with Robert
Anderson that the proportion of research and teaching, even social projection,
should not have a fixed proportion but a flexible and adaptable model. When we turn
our eyes to the Asian context, what we see is a huge continent that houses the richest
and poorest nations on earth in a frantic neoliberal race. In this regard, I find Simon
Marginson’s pragmatic analysis of HE in East Asia and Singapore ( 2011 ) bundling
them together as a phenomenon linked to Confucius or Confucianism. Marginson
looks at numerical facts such as state investment on research; thus, Asian universi-
ties are divided into research universities and the rest. Marginson’s thin version of
Confucian culture only renders an oversimplified and generalized neoliberal
argument.
My opinion is that, on the one hand, East Asian nations have both thin and thick
value systems coexisting side by side and, on the other hand, that many HE statisti-
cal figures and policies are the results of structural and agential problems Asian HE
inherited from her colonial past and that are still embedded in the mind-heart of HE
stakeholders. Do Asian universities buy an archaic British ideal of a university in
Henry Newman’s fashion and should hence, perhaps, strongly orient toward human-
istic discoveries? Not at all! Asian HE is, in a way, more neoliberal than the conser-
vative half of the United States.
To sum up the section, all the problems in Asian HE knowledge production call
for a keen ability to look inwardly, examining the Asian knowledge production with
an Asian, humanistic, historical, and, if possible, philosophical perspective.
Knowledge Mobility in Asia
So far, this chapter has mostly looked into the problems inherent to the first two
missions of HE—research and teaching—in a multifarious context of Asian moder-
nity. In this final section, I address the convoluted problem of knowledge mobility
in Asia, that is: What is knowledge produced by HE for and where does it go?
We mentioned that, by nature, knowledge production is not an egocentric or
hermitic endeavor; it tends to be disseminated and communicated to become a
shared oral and written wisdom tradition of a society while shaping its history.
Knowledge mobility studies the process of produced knowledge to different clusters
of the society (Fenwick and Farrell 2012 ). It is not only about the transfer and use
of research but also its discourse, politics, and ethical dimensions. I organize the
discussion by two usual destinations of produced knowledge: scholarly publications
and the larger community. We will see that Asian HE has significant predicaments
in either of them.
J. Park