Western Practicality Fused with Confucian Virtues: How Far Can It Take East Asia's Higher Education?

Abstract

Higher education development has been achieving highly in most East Asian societies including China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. The achievement becomes even more remarkable when compared with other non-Western societies. Throughout East Asia, a Western-styled modern higher education system has been well established, after absorbing Western knowledge for one and a half centuries. East Asia has now become the world's 3rd great zone of higher education, science and innovation, alongside North America and Western Europe/UK, with research powerhouses, and the fastest growth in scientific output. While Japan has been a powerhouse in world science and technology for some time, growth of research in China, Korea and Singapore is impressive, and Taiwan is not far behind. At institutional level, East Asian universities are rigorous in setting global research as their performance standard. The National University of Singapore, for example, is stronger than all of Australia's universities in both research paper quantity and citation impact. Some middle-sized East Asian universities of science and technology have higher citation rates than the Australian National University.