74
South Korea and later Australia, India, and New Zealand into an East Asian region-
alization project. East Asian regionalism, however, has been seen to be lopsided with
a strong focus on economic regionalism along with the development of regional
governance mechanisms (Jayasuriya 2004a, b; Chao 2013 ).
Regionalization of higher education in Asia was influenced by European higher
education developments with the Bologna Process and the establishment of the
European Higher Education Area in 1999 and 2010, respectively. Although it started
as European projects, the establishment of regions and the regionalization of higher
education expanded from its European origin and influenced regionalisms and
regionalization of higher education worldwide. In fact, Chao ( 2011 ) has stated that
the “Bolognazation of Global Higher Education^1 can be seen as Europe’s initiative
to remain competitive and emerge as the leader in the higher education space.” The
influence of the Bologna Process and the developments of the European higher
education regionalization project have influenced the East Asian and the Asia Pacific
regions (Chao 2011 , 2014a, b). East Asian regionalization of higher education, how-
ever, is a complex project given its multiple stakeholders, frameworks, power asym-
metries within the region and its regional organizations and frameworks, and the
ASEAN way of consultation and consensus building.
Aside from the influence of Asian regional organizations (e.g., ASEAN, Southeast
Asian Ministers of Education Organization-Regional Centre for Higher Education
and Development (SEAMEO-RIHED)) and its member nation states, various exter-
nal institutions such as the European Union; Asia-Europe Meeting; United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and the Asian
Development Bank (ADB) significantly influence policy transfer through a number
of mechanisms including technical assistance, study visits, project funding, and
publications (Dale and Robertson 2012 ; Dang 2013 ; Chao 2014a, b). As such aside
from the political, organizational, and functional approaches to regionalization of
higher education (Knight 2013 ), path dependency, power asymmetries, and the
maturity of a region’s regionalization project need to be considered (Chao 2014a).
Given the importance of higher education within the global knowledge-based
economy discourse, understanding the extent of knowledge production, who are the
knowledge producers, and the evolution and direction of higher education research is
increasingly becoming a necessity. In spite of Asia’s accelerated expansion of higher
education in the past two decades, it has been noted that little attention has been
given to the evolution of higher education research in Asia (Jung and Horta 2013 ).
Similarly in spite of the increased focus on the regionalization of higher education
in research and policy circles since the early 2000s, little attention has been placed
on higher education research evolution in Asia.
This chapter is an exploratory study to fill in the knowledge gap related to region-
alization of higher education research in Asia and its relationship with the broader
Asian regionalism literature and facilitate a better understanding of its evolution and
future direction. Key concepts related to regionalization of higher education, the
(^1) Defined as “the process by which the Bologna Process is creating harmony (not standardization)
and convergence in higher education systems across the world” (Chao 2011 )
R.Y. Chao Jr.