Assessing East Asian Higher Education Development: a focus on academic culture

Abstract

East Asian higher education has been making impressive progress recently. 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 established. East Asia has 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 East Asia’s achievement in higher education has been widely agreed, assessment of its future development is not. To some, East Asian universities are leaping ahead to join the distinguished league of the world’s leading universities. To others, East Asian universities generally still lag behind the best universities in the West. While both views cite culture as the reason, neither of them is cultural enough. A cultural perspective that gives weight to the impact of traditional ways of cultural thinking on contemporary development in East Asia has been lacking. Examining the cultural tensions of East Asian universities as foreign/Western transplants, this paper explores the possibility of integrating East Asia’s cultural roots and heritages with Western higher education values.