Academic partnerships in the Age of Globalization: exploring policies for cross-border collaboration in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper explores the policy agendas and forces that drive academic partnerships in one of the rapidly changing and ambitious jurisdictions of East Asia – Hong Kong, SAR, China. The jurisdiction’s affinitive relations with mainland China and other neighboring Chinese societies, including Macau, Singapore and Taiwan, shape new interdependencies that have the potential to spearhead change within higher education systems in the region. By using a multi-level analysis approach, the paper examines how global, regional and national interdependencies affect the policy agendas of academic partnerships. The study is embedded into the larger discourse of higher education studies about relational dynamics between universities and societies at the time of globalization.