The Expansion and Organization of Higher Education in Asia: A Comparative and Longitudinal Study, 1950 - Present

This study explores the relationship between national expansion of higher education and the international system. It examines the process through which countries expand higher education enrollments and reorganize goals of national higher education.;The theoretical framework of this study draws on the world culture/society theory, one of the strands from the new institutionalist perspective. Based on universalized ideas about the value of national progress and individual development, countries organize their national higher education enrollments and goals with reference to exemplary templates of world educational ideologies independent of local conditions.;In this study, both comparative and longitudinal methods are employed to conduct quantitative and qualitative analyses. The findings suggest that world-wide higher education enrollments have expanded consistently over time. Widened openings to higher education have transformed traditional classification of gender partition, knowledge categories, and program intensity. A new organization of knowledge creation and transmission is emerging with an increasing number of women, a progressive rise of social sciences, and a rapid expansion of undergraduate programs in world higher education.;The study further investigates regional variations in higher education expansion. By regional comparison, the expansion in Asia displays a consistent world pattern that is not associated with national characteristics and educational hegemony.;The expansion of higher education is elaborated in greater detail through a specific case. The findings suggest that the case of Hong Kong has moved towards a more "national" framed orientation that puts more emphasis on fulfilling the needs of human capital storage or satisfying demands from various competing social constituencies within Hong Kong society. But through a cross-national comparison of Hong Kong and some other Asian societies, the reorganized goals of Hong Kong's higher education are also homogenous to a "model" that emphasizes economic efficiency, social betterment, and individual development. The results indicate local or national responses to the legitimated institutional rules and conventions embedded in the increasingly transnational environment. The case-based investigation into the reorganization of higher education discourses further explicates the central role that formal statement of goals play in shaping the expansion of an active and participatory model of citizenship building in Hong Kong.