Higher Education in Asia: Expanding Out, Expanding Up
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REPUBLIC OF KOREA China, Hong Kong MYANMAR China, Macao LAO PDR HIG HER EDUCATION STATISTICS IN ASIA: for Expanding Out, Expanding Up BRUNEI DARUSSALAM The rise of graduate education and university research INSTITUTE INSTITUTE UNESCO HIGHER EDUCATION IN ASIA: Expanding Out, Expanding Up The rise of graduate education and university research UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY UNU-IIST International Institute International Institute for for Educational Planning Software Technology UNESCO The constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was adopted by 20 countries at the London Conference in November 1945 and entered into effect on 4 November 1946. The Organization currently has 195 Member States and 9 Associate Members. The main objective of UNESCO is to contribute to peace and security in the world by promoting collaboration among nations through education, science, culture and communication in order to foster universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and human rights and fundamental freedoms that are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations. To fulfill its mandate, UNESCO performs five principal functions: 1) prospective studies on education, science, culture and communication for tomorrow’s world; 2) the advancement, transfer and sharing of knowledge through research, training and teaching activities; 3) standard-setting actions for the preparation and adoption of internal instruments and statutory recommendations; 4) expertise through technical co-operation to Member States for their development policies and projects; and 5) the exchange of specialised information. UNESCO is headquartered in Paris, France. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is the statistical office of UNESCO and is the UN depository for global statistics in the fields of education, science and technology, culture and communication. The UIS was established in 1999. It was created to improve UNESCO’s statistical programme and to develop and deliver the timely, accurate and policy-relevant statistics needed in today’s increasingly complex and rapidly changing social, political and economic environments. The UIS is based in Montreal, Canada. Published in 2014 by: UNESCO Institute for Statistics P.O. Box 6128, Succursale Centre-Ville Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7 Canada Tel: (1 514) 343-6880 Email: [email protected] http://www.uis.unesco.org © UNESCO-UIS 2014 Ref: UIS/2014/ED/SD/2 ISBN: 978-92-9189-147-4 Typesetting: Em Dash Design / www.emdashdesign.ca Photo credits: Frontcover: arek_malang/Shutterstock, Flickr/123_456, Norman Chan/Shutterstock, Chris Quintana/IRRI Photo Backcover: zeber/Shutterstock, Shinya ICHINOHE, World Bank Photo Collection, Bart Coenders/GettyImages Printing: Tri-Graphik / LBF Printing This publication is available in Open Access under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/). By using the content of this publication, the users accept to be bound by the terms of use of the UNESCO Open Access Repository (http://www.unesco.org/open-access/terms-use-ccbysa-en). The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors; they are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization. CONTENTS Foreword 7 Acknowledgements 9 Executive summary 11 Chapter 1. The reshaping of higher education across Asia 15 1.1 Introduction and overview 15 1.2 The expansion of higher education and its consequences 16 1.3 Summary 34 Chapter 2. Expanding out and up: What are the system-level dynamics? Case study of Malaysia and Thailand 37 2.1 National strategies for expanding graduate education: The views from two countries 37 2.2 Methodology 39 2.3 Findings 39 2.4 Conclusions 48 Chapter 3. The case for graduate education: Does university-based research really lead to national economic development? 49 3.1 The contribution of research to national development 49 3.2 What do the data tell us? 56 3.3 Summary and conclusions 63 Chapter 4. University research productivity across Asia 65 Part 1. International university ranking systems: How do they compare? 65 4.1.1 How are universities ranked? 65 4.1.2 The position of Asian universities in world university rankings over time 67 4.1.3 Government and university response to rankings 67 4.1.4 Conclusions 68 Part 2. Looking for research excellence in the right places 69 4.2.1 Rating universities’ research performance by subject 69 4.2.2 Data source and methodology 70 4.2.3 Results and discussion 72 4.2.4 Conclusions 79 Part 3. International scientific collaboration 79 4.3.1 Tracking publication output and research collaboration 79 4.3.2 Methodology 80 4.3.3 Results and discussion 81 4.3.4 Conclusions 92 HIG HER EDUCATION IN ASIA: EXPANDING OUT, EXPANDING UP Chapter 5. Summary and conclusions 93 References 95 Appendix I. Definitions 105 Appendix II. Reader’s guide 111 Appendix III. Indicators and weights used in the three international university ranking systems 114 Appendix IV. Research performance of Asian universities which achieved above average ratings by broad subject area 115 Appendix V. Number of niche subject areas of Asian universities by performance band 129 Appendix VI. Asian universities with the highest growth rates and in-region collaboration in research by broad subject area 139 Appendix VII. Main disciplinary foci, international scientific collaboration and growth in publications in Asian countries 147 Appendix VIII. Statistical tables 151 B1. Tertiary education / Enrolment and teaching staff / 2011 152 B2. Tertiary education / Internationally (degree-seeking) mobile students by host country and region of origin / 2011 154 B3 Tertiary education / International flows of (degree-seeking) mobile students by country of origin / 2011 155 B4. Tertiary education / Graduates by broad fields of education / 2011 156 B5. Public expenditure on education / Financial year ending in 2011 158 B6. Total R&D efforts / 2011 159 B7. Researchers in full-time equivalent by sector of employment / 2011 160 B8. R&D expenditure by type of R&D activity (%) / 2011 161 B9. Female researchers in headcounts as a percentage of the total number of researchers / 2011 162 B10. Researchers in headcounts in the higher education sector by field of science (%) / 2011 163 List of boxes Box 1. Classifying higher education programmes 17 Box 2. Measuring participation in higher education 19 Box 3. Understanding the gender parity index 25 Box 4. The concentration curve and concentration index for access to higher education 28 Box 5. Definition of international (or mobile) students 33 Box 6. Areas of inquiry during the interviews 40 Box 7. Measuring the impact of research 50 Box 8. Collecting R&D data from countries: Coverage and quality 56 Box 9. Types of R&D activity 61 List of text tables Table 1. Correspondence between ISCED 2011 and ISCED 1997 17 Table 2. Number and type of higher education institutions in selected countries, 2012 or most recent year available 23 Table 3. Distribution of the population aged 20 to 24 years by attendance and household wealth in Viet Nam, 2011 28 4 HIG HER EDUCATION IN ASIA: EXPANDING OUT, EXPANDING UP Table 4. Enrolment in Master’s and doctoral programmes by type of higher education institutions, 2011 or most recent year available 30 Table 5. Number of Master’s and doctoral graduates and the proportion that graduated from science and technology fields, 2011 or most recent year available 32 Table 6. Percentage of higher education instructors with a Master’s or doctoral degree by type of institution, 2012 or most recent year available 34 Table 7. Enrolment by type of programme and institution in Malaysia, 2007 and 2010 38 Table 8. Enrolment by type of programme and institution in Thailand, 2007 and 2012 38 Table 9. Enrolment in research universities included in this study 39 Table 10. Number of interviewees by function 39 Table 11. Distribution of graduates’ employment by occupation in 2012 47 Table 12. GDP per capita and selected R&D indicators for the Republic of Korea, 1965-2011 55 Table 13. R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP, 2001-2011 59 Table 14. Number of universities in top world university rankings, 2012 66 Table 15. Number of universities in Top 500 Academic Ranking of World Universities, 2004, 2008 and 2012 67 Table 16. Illustration of institutional actions to promote high rankings 68 Table 17. Broad fields of study and list of countries considered in this analysis 70 Table 18. Indicators used in the bibliometric analysis 71 Table 19. Number of universities by research performance in broad subject areas, 2008-2011 72 Table 20. Number of universities by range of research-active areas, 2008-2011 73 Table 21. Distribution of universities by research performance in niche areas, 2008-2011 74 Table 22. Asian universities with world class research performance in at least one niche subject area, 2008-2011 75 Table 23. Universities with world class research performance in niche subject areas and their positions in selected international university rankings 76 Table 24. Number of universities with the highest publication growth rate by broad subject area and country or territory, 2008-2011 77 Table 25. Number of universities with the highest in-region collaboration by broad subject area and country or territory, 2008-2011 78 Table 26. Main research questions and bibliometric indicators used in this study 80 Table 27. Schematic overview of trends in bibliometric indicators per development phase 83 Table 28. Country classifications based on the trend in the percentage of international coauthored publications between 2003 and 2012 84 Table 29.