IEMA
Special Journal Issues - Academic Profession, Entrepreneurial Universities and Scholarship of Application
Volume 10, 2018


Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education
Theme
The theme of the Special Issue is “Academic Profession, Entrepreneurial Universities and Scholarship of Application.” Each article examines the application of entrepreneurialism in higher education and explores how it is impacting the academic profession by changing the notion of “scholarship.
Issue Objectives
1. Examines the application of entrepreneurialism in higher education and explores how it is impacting the academic profession by changing the notion of “scholarship.”
2. Describe how, in this century, “scholarship” has changed from a strictly academic application that includes research and publishing to a focus on “scholarship of application” that is demonstrated by acquiring external grants and by demonstrating applicable knowledge of the field through collaborations with industry and business, and the effects of these changes.
Issue
Co-editors
Dr Tang Hei-hang Hayes
Assistant Professor
Department of Education Policy and Leadership
Research Fellow
Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change
The Education University of Hong Kong
China


: hhhtang@eduhk.hk
Dr Roger Yap Chao JR
Independent Education Development Consultant

: rylimchao@yahoo.com
Contributors
The 2018 Special Issue includes contributions by Roger Chao Jr. (Independent Education Development Consultant), Beatrice Yan-yan Dang (HKU SPACE Po Leung Kuk Stanley Ho Community College, the University of Hong Kong), Moon Sook Jeong (Korea University of Technology and Education), and Wai-wan (Vivien) Chan (China and Junior Fellow, Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, Southern University of Science and Technology).

The JCIHE Winter Special Issue 2018 also includes the JCIHE annual Graduate Student Work-in-Progress issue. Contributions are made by graduate students who are currently studying in a MA, Ed.D., or Ph.D. programs at New York University, George Mason University, George Washington University, Old Dominion University, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Georgia, University of Maryland, College Park, University of Oxford, and University of Texas at Austin. The selected students for this issue highlight a range of emergent issues for the field and illustrate how their research will contribute to the field of comparative and international higher education.
 

Dr Tang Hei-hang Hayes

The Education University of Hong Kong
China


( Corresponding author )

Academic Profession, Entrepreneurial Universities and Scholarship of Application:
The Imperative of Impact

http://ojed.org/index.php/jcihe/article/view/683


 

Dr Roger Yap Chao JR
Independent Education Development Consultant


( Corresponding author )

Entrepreneurial Universities in ASEAN Nations:
Insights from Policy Perspective
http://ojed.org/index.php/jcihe/article/view/684

Introduction

The combination of neo-liberalism and the massification of higher education combined with the diminished public funds for higher education contributed to the rise of academic capitalism and entrepreneurship across higher education systems and institutions across the world. In particular, the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATs) not only established education, including higher education, as a commodity subject to the rules of international trade, but it also contributed to the increasingly global perception of higher education as a private, rather than a public, good rationalizing that the benefits of higher education significantly accrue to the individual students rather than the public.

With the focus on human capital development and its contribution to economic development, higher education is increasingly located within the globally accepted knowledge-based economy discourse. Higher education systems worldwide have moved from elite systems to massification and even post-massification of higher education, especially in Western countries especially from the 1980s onwards (Mok 2013; Mok & Jiang 2016; Wu & Hawkins 2018). According to UNESCO UIS database (n.d.), the world higher education gross enrollment ratio significantly increased from 12.39 percent and 13.65 percent in 1980 and 1990s to 29.32 percent and 36.77 percent in 2010 and 2016 respectively.

Fiscal challenges, changes in funding mechanisms and the enhanced use of New Public Management in higher education, shifted funding of higher education to individual students and their families, supported the growth of private higher education, and promulgated the privatization of public higher education institutions. Most governments are utilizing New Public Management, which increases public accountability and transparency in the utilization of public funds, including those for higher education. Furthermore, there is an increasing trend and focus on research with economic and social applications rather than fundamental research.

The above-mentioned trends and developments highlight the changing characteristic of higher education systems and institutions towards the scholarship of application, academic capitalism and entrepreneurship (Berman 2012; Fetters et al. 2010; Tang 2014; Wong 2011). These trends also hold in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, which aside from being influenced by globalization and its discourses, are ongoing a complex regionalization process to establish an ASEAN Community. This article seeks to understand public policy-related factors that contributes to academic capitalism and the establishment or reconfiguration of ASEAN universities into entrepreneurial universities.

 

Dr Chan Wai-wan Vivien

Southern University of Science and Technology,
China


( Corresponding author )
Social Capital – A “Super Connector” for Internationalization and Integration:
The Role of Hong Kong Universities in the Development of the Greater Bay Area
http://ojed.org/index.php/jcihe/article/view/685

Introduction
At the beginning of 2018, the Beijing government announced the state plan concerning The Greater Bay Area (GBA) integration of Guangdong Province, Hong Kong and Macau’ (“Dawan district”). Since then, there have been numerous discussions among local governments, government departments, businesses and academics about this plan. With this call for “greater political and national assimilation”, it is time for Hong Kong to review its position in the Greater Bay Area. What role can Hong Kong play? What are the pros and cons of this regional economic and social integration?

Deloitte (2018) recently published, “From ‘World Factory’ to ‘World-class Metropolitan Area’”(The Whitepaper for Developing Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area).This report points out that the Greater Bay Area has the potential to become a world-class bay area based on five major benchmarking criteria: land size, resident population, economic growth, port volume, and air traffic. The report suggests that it has the potential to outcompete the New York Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Tokyo Bay Area. On top of this, the Greater Bay Area can further upgrade the innovation and technology of Chinese manufacturing; and, under the Belt and Road Initiative, it can facilitate international trade, technology, and manufacturing.

The GBA development plan is a released recently guiding policy for the on-going implementation of the integration of Guangdong Province, Hong Kong and Macau. Presently, the availability of data is very limited. Therefore, the methodology of this paper only reviews secondary data from existing academic articles, newspaper reports, other reports, university websites and policy papers.

This paper analyses and discusses the role of Hong Kong universities in the development of the Greater Bay Area from the perspective of educational sociology. It proposes that the social capital of Hong Kong universities for internationalization and integration should be the main driver behind the development of the innovative knowledge economy in the Greater Bay Area.

The concept of social capital highlights the importance of using social connections and social relations in achieving goals. Social capital theory has been widely applied to the field of business studies, but not in the research of higher education in China. The concept of “institutional social capital” has been used to examine British degree programs offered in Hong Kong and their implications for young people locally (Waters and Leung 2013), but there is no research about why, how and to what extent the institutional social capital of Hong Kong universities can contribute to the development and internationalization of the new Greater Bay Area development plan in China.Universities as institutional actors are indeed motivated by their own instrumental needs to engage other actors to access their resources for the purpose of gaining better outcomes. Applying the concept of social capital will help us to deepen our understanding of the dynamic interaction between social capital embedded in Hong Kong’s higher education institutions and the internationalization and development of higher education in the Greater Bay Area in mainland China. This paper is the first paper to apply the “social capital” theory to identify the possible structural opportunities under the new political, economic and social agenda of developing and integrating the Greater Bay Area.

 

Dr Dang Y Y Beatrice
HKU SPACE Po Leung Kuk Stanley Ho Community College
China


( Corresponding author )

Embracing Entrepreneurship:
Impact of Knowledge Transfer Policies on Academic Profession in Hong Kong Higher Education
http://ojed.org/index.php/jcihe/article/view/686

Introduction

Over the past 20 years, the ethos of academic entrepreneurialism has significantly influenced the Hong Kong higher education sector (Chan and Lo 2007; Mok 2005; Mok and Jiang 2018; Yang 2012). The practices of commercialization of research and teaching activities, knowledge production and transmission, and contributions to economic growth are typical entrepreneurial behaviors. As entrepreneurialism is an increasingly popular restructuring strategy for Hong Kong universities, they have begun to shift their paradigms from purely upholding the mission of research and teaching to the third mission of promoting economic and social development (Mok 2005). Knowledge transfer (KT), which involves licensing, spin-offs, consultancy, collaborative research between universities and industry, is one common strategy to achieve such goal.

While the HKSAR Government and University Grant Committee (UGC) strongly encourages universities to develop closer collaboration with the local industry and community, the scale and complexity of KT activities has increased. One major concern being raised is the assessment on academics’ performance. Under such academic entrepreneurship, academic profession in Hong Kong has encountered a range of challenges such as increased demand of performativity and accountability. To some extent, while this phenomenon seems able to alter their career prospects, status and even academic autonomy, research on exploring KT activities and their impact on academics is unexplored. This article focuses on knowledge transfer polices of Hong Kong universities and attempts to examine their impact on academic profession.

 

Dr Moon Sook Jeong
Korea University of Technology and Education
Korea

( Corresponding author )

New Mission for New Time in Korean Higher Education
http://ojed.org/index.php/jcihe/article/view/687

Introduction

In the 1990s, South Korea (Korea hereafter) was confronted with a new social environment, characterized as globalization and knowledge-based economy. In order to respond to the new environment, there have been considerable reform efforts in Korea higher education over the past two decades. Universities in Korea accordingly transformed their educational structures and contents while becoming familiar with policy buzz words such as change, reform, restructuring, and innovation. Scholarly works identified the feature of Korean higher education reform during that time as neo-liberal and this policy reform thrust was analyzed with both international and domestic pressures (Kim 2010; Jeong 2012; Yim 2012 as cited in Jeong, 2014a). As a result, neo-liberal market principles like competition, marketization, and decentralization (autonomy and accountability) were settled down in policy practice (Jeong 2014a), while creating unique locality in policy appropriations (Kang 2004; Jeong 2014b). Neo-liberalism was highlighted as the fundamental mechanism of extensive reform in Korean higher education in national funding projects which were executed as strong governance in the country (Kim 2008, Jeong 2014b). It should not be overlooked that the other powerful mechanism of reform, ideological process, significantly affected educational change in Korea (Jeong 2015).

Subsequent to an educational reform fever for globalization and knowledge-based economy, Korean higher education entered into another stage of mega-turbulence. Indeed, there was a strong tension about the sustainability of university education connected to a new social environment which is distinguished from the one in the twentieth century. Recognizing this atmosphere, I, insider of Korean higher education and a critical researcher in the field of Educational Policy Studies, feel the responsibility to answer the question, “what is a dominant policy discourse in current Korean higher education?’’ based on the questions of “what is going on now in Korean higher education?” To answer the above question, I will figure out emerging policy issues in Korean higher education and look into how a dominant policy discourse is created and operated as a policy imperative in Korea. By doing so, I wish this short study reveals a policy response of Korean higher education to new social change, while providing the source of Korean case for the development of the comparative and international education.