Higher education in Asian countries and the role of international ...

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According to the World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty-first Century: Vision
and Action, adopted by the World Conference on Higher Education (October, 1998), the central
task of higher education is “to provide opportunities for higher learning and for learning
throughout life, as well as an opportunity for individual development and social mobility”
[Article, 1 (b) (UNESCO, 1998)].
Today knowledge has become a dividing line between the world economies. This knowledge
divide is both deep and wide (Sanyal & Varghese, 2006). Efficient investment in the production
and propagation of knowledge has become key component for socio-economic development.
Higher education plays a fundamental role in the generation of intellectual capital that is a
prerequisite for knowledge based economy. Many economic theories have been established to
study the relationship between education and growth at the macro level and the relationship
between education and employability at graduate labor market at the micro level. Research in the
field of economics of education has supported economic theories and further enforced the idea
that investment in education is profitable both for individual and society (Bourdon, Bydanova, &
Giret, 2010). Thus the supply of and demand for higher education is growing continuously. The
world indicators envisage that in the future, this trend will continue in most of the countries. In
this context, the importance of the investment in higher education is growing around the world
and states and institutions are allocating more and more resources to higher education.
Higher education is more than a repository of knowledge, ideas, innovation, modernity and
actions. It acts as an agent of social and cultural change; it functions as an engine of economic
growth; and it is a mean to achieve national and international objectives. Perhaps because of
these reasons higher education has always been at a respectable place since the ancient times. In
today‟s technology dependent life, knowledge driven society, knowledge based economic world
its importance has further augmented. The world elevated interest in higher education, for the
last few decades, is linked to its potentials to raise human capacity in their profession and the
field of interest.
Asia is the fastest growing region when seen on economic, education, and population indicators.
In this region higher education is experiencing a dramatic increase in demand and supply: the
growth and expansion of higher education is unparallel in the higher education history of the
region. The process of re-organization and restructurization of higher education helped in the