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remains stationary. In fact, the same study highlighted that “the higher education
research community in Asia is heavily concentrated in a few countries and universi-
ties, resting on a relatively small number of core scholars who published research in
the international specialized higher education journals” (Jung and Horta 2013 ).
Furthermore, a tendency toward thematic specializations has also been seen among
higher education researchers in Hong Kong, China, Japan, and Malaysia (Kim et al.
2015 ).
Along with the growing interest and higher education regionalization initiatives
in Asia, a similar growth in regionalization of higher education research in Asia can
be seen. The signs of the development of a specialized community focused on
regionalization of higher education research, however, remain inexistent or minimal
at best. This section presents various regionalizations of higher education research
in Asia, including academic publications, project reports, and regional organiza-
tions’ relevant documents which form part of the region’s regionalization process.
Based on the selected publications presented in Appendix 4, regionalization of
higher education research in Asia started roughly in the early 2000s with its focal
topics evolving from simple to more complex and interdisciplinary topics. Research
during the period 2003–2009 tend to focus on higher education (restructuring,
privatization, quality and equity issues, massification, governance, rankings, and
world-class universities) with East Asia, Asia, or the Asia Pacific region taken as a
geographic boundary, context, and/or a point of comparison. Among the publica-
tions in that period, three publications did focus on regionalisms and how interna-
tional and regional organizations should and/or are approaching East Asian higher
education (Yepes 2006 ; Robertson 2008 ) and the development of transnational edu-
cation in East Asia (Huang 2007 ).
In contrast, post-2010 publications have significantly refocused their topics on
various issues and challenges to East Asian regionalism. In fact, an increased focus
on higher education regional cooperation, internationalization (including regional
higher education hubs and student mobility trends), regional quality assurance, and
the establishment of regional organizations and networks related to higher educa-
tion is gaining ground in regionalization of higher education research in Asia.
Furthermore, similar to regionalization research presented in the earlier sections,
research in education policy transfer and its power dynamics has also been gaining
ground especially in relation to Europe, the Bologna Process, the European Higher
Education Area, and their impact and influence in the Asia/Asia Pacific region’s
regionalization of higher education processes.
The evolution of focal topics in regionalization of higher education research in
Asian is also reinforced even in subcategories of research including edited volumes
(Appendix 5), journal articles (Appendix 6), and even selected chapters of a recently
published book (published 2015) on the European Higher Education Area (Appendix
7). Edited volumes and journal articles related to regionalization of higher educa-
tion research evolved from using East Asia/Asia/Asia Pacific as a context, to the
challenges in regionalization of higher education in Asia, and eventually to the pro-
cess, power asymmetries, and policy borrowing, transfer, and mobility within
regionalization of higher education in the region. Furthermore, the editors (or at
R.Y. Chao Jr.