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

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tertiary level is less than 15%, which is far below to the world average of 26.4%. The higher
education in this region is passing through transition phase driven by market competition and is
accelerated by international forces. Today Asian countries like Malaysia, Qatar and Japan have
become net exporter of education. Likewise the region has some of the largest higher education
systems o f the world i.e. China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. In this context this region is
becoming a hub of international organizations‟ activities in different fields including higher
education, which is evident from the fact that the World Bank made the biggest investment in
Asian higher education in terms of both lending and number of projects during the last decade;
UNESCO has the biggest network in this region; OECD is enhancing its presence in Asia.
1.2.4 Why do from 1990 to onward?
The end of the cold war and later on the end of bipolar world, in the early 1990s, opened new
prospects for IOs to expand their roles and functions in order to promote global governance
(Diehl, 2005). Consequently a clear policy shift with these IGOs is evident during that period
towards education and particularly higher education. Furthermore, during 1990s the research
conducted to study the rate of return of education supported the idea that investment in higher
education is good for society. This also affected the IGOs policies towards education. With the
advent of a new era of ideological freedom, UNESCO embarked on Global Model that promotes
new ideological perspectives based on universal philosophy and international cooperation
(Pavone, 2007). Since 1990s we see that the importance of higher education is continuously
increasing and the IGOs‟ engagement and activities in this sub-sector are also expanding.
1.2.5 Selection of the countries for the study
Asia comprises of 48 independent countries where more than 3.7 billion people live. In Asia the
distribution of population shows a huge variation; China and India with more than one billion
population each whereas Brunei and Maldives with a population of less than 0.5 million. In order
to make a selection of the countries the researcher used population as a filter; in this study only
those independent Asian countries were included that had a population greater than twenty
million. As a result 24 countries passed through this filter where more than 95% of the Asian
population lives. So it is clear that this study covers a major portion of the Asian population. The
countries included in this research study are as follow: