Research assessment and changing missions of Higher Education in a Global Age: comparative case studies in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Japan

Abstract

In the intensified globalization process, higher education has been reconfigured through the global ranking regime, typically the world-class university movement. This presentation aims to critically examine the worldwide phenomenon, based on comparative case studies in China, Hong Kong and Japan. With the empirical data collected through the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) project on “World-class Universities, Publication and Research Assessment: Rethinking the Mission of Higher Education in the Global Age” (RDF/WUN Ref.: 4930217), this paper problematizes the assessment exercises in the three East Asian societies, each unique and rich of its own socio-political, -economic and -educational context. It also compares their impacts on the evaluation scheme of faculty performance as well as on the re-orientation of institutional mission. The author argues that the so-called global ranking regime needs to be seriously interrogated in the bigger context of globalization, which has served in fact as an ideological instrument for the dominant English-speaking world, creating identity crises and unequal status in the non-English world, especially in East Asian contexts and further reconfiguring higher education around the globe. With reflections on the historical and global realities, the paper urges alternative models of the university, such as the Chinese University 3.0, to re-build the indigenous and diverse mission of higher education in the new era of reform.