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Higher Education Knowledge Production in Postcolonial-Neoliberal Asia

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Researching Higher Education in Asia

Abstract

Against a descriptive analysis or even eulogies on the neoliberal impact on Asian higher education such as “brain gain/drain,” managerialism, marketization, and globalization, this theoretical chapter takes a rather critical position regarding the ongoing neoliberalization of higher education as a field of study in Asia. It examines the discourse of Confucian heritage culture and its methodological issues in knowledge production, followed by some recent counterarguments against the universalism of research methodology by exploring the possibility of Asia as a higher education research methodology.

Universities…are dominated and influenced by the need for the kind of education that produces a system of special examinations and the trained expertness that is increasingly indispensable for modern bureaucracy– Max Weber

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Throughout this chapter, the terms “West” and “Western” are used in their broader sense, as in the “West and the rest” by Stuart Hall (1992).

  2. 2.

    For this threefold principle, I have profited from Maria Manzon’s theorization and apology of comparative education as a field (2011) albeit our few disagreements. For example, for the term discourse, instead of power relation-based one suggested by Foucault, I take a more positive stance: “ways of combining and integrating language, actions, interactions, ways of thinking, believing, valuing, and using various symbols, tools, and objects to enact a particular sort of socially recognizable identity”(Gee 2011, p. 29).

  3. 3.

    Thomson Reuters’ JCR ranking is highly selective if not elitist. Its category “education and educational research” lists only about 200 compared to more than 1000 listed by the “education” category of the SCImago Journal Rank-Scopus (2011–2013 data). The latter, despite its larger database, only lists a dozen journals on Asian issues. In November 2014, the Times Higher Education (THE) split from Thomson Reuters’ JCR ranking (Jobbins 2014). In my view, this was due to the smaller database of Thomson Reuters, which cannot serve an increasingly globalized academic institutions and their broader range of perspectives and interests.

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  1. The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Jae Park

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  1. Jae Park
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  1. The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Jisun Jung

  2. The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Hugo Horta

  3. Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

    Akiyoshi Yonezawa

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Park, J. (2018). Higher Education Knowledge Production in Postcolonial-Neoliberal Asia. In: Jung, J., Horta, H., Yonezawa, A. (eds) Researching Higher Education in Asia. Higher Education in Asia: Quality, Excellence and Governance. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4989-7_4

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