The quest for regional hub of education: Growing heterarchies, organizational hybridization, and new governance in Singapore and Malaysia

Abstract

With strong intention to enhance the global competitiveness of their higher education systems, the governments of Singapore and Malaysia have made attempts to develop their societies into regional hubs of education; hence transnational education has become increasingly popular in these societies. In order to attract more students from overseas to study in their countries (or create more educational opportunities for their citizens), these governments have invited foreign universities to set up their campuses to provide more higher education programs. In the last decade, the proliferation of higher education providers and the transnationalization of education have raised the concerns regarding the search for new governance and regulatory frameworks in governing the rapidly expanding transnational education organizations in these Asian societies. Higher education governance has become more complex in Singapore and Malaysia amid the quest for being regional hubs of education as nation states have to deal with multinational corporations when they are becoming increasingly active in running transnational education programs. This article sets out against this context of growing trend of transnationalization in education to compare and contrast the models and approaches that Singapore and Malaysia have adopted to govern and manage the diversity of players in offering transnational education programs. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.