DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – DO NOT CITE

Higher Education Faculty in East Asia

David W. ChapmanUniversity of Minnesota

November, 2009

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Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the assistance of Mr. Ingo Stolz and Mr. Brad Weiner in assisting in the preparation of data tables for this study.

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I. Overview

Higher education across East Asia faces an extremely challenging era. On one hand, the idea of expanding opportunities for higher education enjoys a remarkably high level of government support. Governments understand that higher education is a key ingredient to in their efforts toward economic and social development. They recognize that the globalization of markets, high speed communications, and the expanded role of technology in all aspects of society have created an enormous need for highly skilled technical, professional and managerial leaders. They recognize that modern economies cannot be managed by only primary and secondary school graduates. At the same time, many countries across East Asia have become victims of their own success. Increased enrollments at primary and secondary levels are now fueling sharply increased demand for access to postsecondary opportunities than many countries are struggling to address. Rapid growth has come at a cost. Quality suffered.

Across the less developed countries in the region, higher education is seriously underfunded, faces escalating demand, is staffed by under-qualified academic staff and often utilizes poorly planned curricula. Many colleges and universities suffer from inadequate infrastructure and weak instruction. The result is poorly taught students (Lee and Healy 2006). No Asian university outside of Japan, Hong Kong, and Australia is ranked in the top 100 in the world. Only China, Thailand and Korea make it to the top 500 with at least two of their universities. Low quality of higher education is the biggest problem and greatest challenge facing many countries in the region, their ability to respond to this challenge seriously limited by the cost of doing so. At the same time, the two best developed higher education systems in the region face the opposite problem: declining student enrollments as the number of secondary school graduates drop. For the most part, however, higher education across East Asia faces an interwoven set of pressures that include expanding enrollments, diversifying higher education options, internationalizing the curriculum, raising instructional quality, improving research capacities and implementing stronger accountability measures, all while raising more of their own operating funds (SEAMEO-RIHED 2006; World Bank 2000).

At the center of this issue are the academic faculty1, those actually charged with teaching the courses and conducting the research that together largely define the character, quality, productivity and relevance of each institution and of the higher education system as a whole. College and university faculty are the gatekeepers of higher education reform. They control what happens in classrooms. They select, sequence, pace, and deliver instruction. They have considerable control over what knowledge is presented, how it is presented, and how student mastery of the material is assessed. Moreover, they do this largely outside the view of university administrators or other instructional staff. At the same time, they determine whether and what research is conducted, how the findings are disseminated and, in important respects, the benefitthat accrues to their university of their undertaking that research.

1 The terms faculty and academic staff are used interchangeably to indicate those individuals employed by higher education institutions to deliver instruction and conduct research.

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A key reason for the low quality of both teaching and research is that, during the rapid system expansion that has characterized the region, the demand for qualified college and university instructors has outstripped supply. This shortage is exacerbated by the ever increasing alternative employment opportunities for highly educated personnel within the rapidly growing economies of the region. Many institutions lack the resources to pay salaries that are competitive with the private sector opportunities available to would-be faculty members. They also face the related challenge of holding the attention and loyalty of those instructional staff they are able to hire. Many faculty hold supplemental employment which competes for the time they would otherwise commit to their teaching and research (Postiglione 2002).

This paper examines the role higher education faculty across East Asia play in the reform of higher education. The paper provides an overview of size and composition of the faculty across East Asia, how they are trained and recruited, their conditions of employment, and evidence of their effectiveness in both their instructional and research roles. Finally, the paper offers suggestions for strengthening recruitment, retention, and performance of these instructional and research staff. Particular attention is given to actions government and university leaders might take to improve the quality of instruction. The paper is an input to the Regional Study on Higher Education, a flagship report of the East Asia and Pacific Human Development Department which is intended to suggest ways and means to improve higher education in the East Asia region.

A web of conflicting expectations: The central argument of this paper is that, as higher education pursues multiple goals, faculty are caught in a web of conflicting and possibly irreconcilable expectations. They are asked to teach larger classes but do more research; take on more responsibilities at their institutions even as they hold second jobs to make ends meet, address the needs of academically more average entering students while ensuring that graduates have more relevant, higher quality job skills by the time they graduate. They are expected to bring higher levels of qualification to their jobs, but may be evaluated by a system still influenced by favoritism and social connections. They may be expected to do more research in a system in which their salary is still pegged to their teaching load. They are caught in this bind due to the multiple roles higher education institutions play within their countries.

Colleges and universities are particularly dependent on externally conferred legitimacy, funding, and demand for services. They operate in a highly politicized environment rife with contradictory expectations. Yet they must appear responsive to environmental demands in order to survive (Weaver 2008). Consequently, reform goals and structural changes may be enacted to signal conformity to environmental expectations, fend off external critics, and secure resources.At the same time, these higher education institutions have their own informal structures, valuesand norms that are different from those in the external culture. Conflicts arise between these societal goals and institutional objectives. Caught in this squeeze, organizations ‘decouple.’ Administrators and staff give lip-service to the symbolic goals necessary to obtain external resources but operate within an informal structure that drives actual work (Weaver 2008, 5). These contradictions converge in the day-to-day work of the faculty. They are directly caught between larger bureaucratic goals and narrower institutional pressures.

Ultimately, these contradictions need to be resolved or at least recognized and managed sensibly. This necessitates a “search for the sensible.” The solution to how academic faculty across East

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Asia will resolve these pressures may require more than just political will or effective incentives(Weaver 2008). It may require changes in the structures, policies and behaviors of higher education systems. Sensible policies must be coupled with sufficient attention to the conditions necessary for their implementation.

A caution: The analysis of issues concerning academic faculty across East Asia needs to be interpreted with attention to three factors: First, generalizations must be treated with great caution. East Asia includes the country with the largest population in the world (China) along with a number of small ones (Laos, Mongolia). It includes some of the most affluent (Japan, Singapore, South Korea) and some of the poorest economies (Cambodia, Laos). It includes one of the fastest growing higher education systems (China) and two that are on the verge of downsizing (Korea, Japan). There are wide variations in the circumstances facing higher education in the region and important differences in the capacity of governments to respond to the challenges posed by the growth of higher education. Second, strengthening higher education requires a systems perspective. Changing any one element of the higher education system of any country triggers a series of consequences on other parts of the system that require corresponding adjustments. Potential solutions cannot be evaluated in isolation, but with attention to the ripple effect of their impact. Third, data availability and quality differ across countries. Considerable data are available on some countries (e.g., Japan, China, Korea) while very little is accessible on others (e.g., Laos, Cambodia, Mongolia). Without complete data, analyses can be inadvertently distorted.

Impact of teacher quality on outcomes: Higher Education contributes to national development in three principal ways: (1) Higher education institutions (HEIs) prepare the primary and secondary teachers that shape the dimensions and quality of the overall education system of each country. (2) They train the high level technical and administrative personnel needed in government, business, and industry. And, (3) HEIs operate as incubators of innovation and creative thinking needed for an economically competitive society (Chapman 2007).

The impact of faculty quality on higher education outcomes, while intuitively appealing, is actually far more complicated than many observers recognize. Instructional staff matter. As argued earlier, they control what happens in classrooms and research laboratories where the real activities of teaching and learning take place. Countries in which college and university faculty have higher levels of education and training, better teaching materials and facilities, and more attractive conditions of employment tend to produce better trained graduates. However, the impact of faculty quality on educational outcomes is largely indirect. Outcomes are influenced by a wide variety of other economic and social factors impinging on the ability of graduates to utilize their knowledge after graduation. Looking for direct links is a fool’s errand. That said, instructional staff have more impact on the immediate outputs of education (e.g., how much students learn) than on the outcomes of education (e.g., national economic development). If conditions of employment are comparable, in aggregate, better qualified staff produce better trained graduates.

II. Context of teacher quality reform in East Asia

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This section documents the recent and anticipated future growth in the number of higher education students and faculty across Asia and the implication of that growth on the availability,professional performance, and career development of faculty. The scramble to cope with such rapid growth in enrollments is at the root of many of the dilemmas now facing faculty.

Growth of higher education systems: The expansion of higher education is one of the most impressive accomplishments of the region. The increases reflect the growth in the size of the college age population, an increased higher education participation rate among that group, and a growing middle class that results in wider availability of family resources to invest in higher education. The increase in the college age population enrolled in tertiary education is captured in Table 1. Between 1999 and 2007, this group increased by as much as 72% in Cambodia, 30% in Laos, 22%, and 15% in the Philippines. Yet at the same time the size of the college age cohort fell in Japan, Korea, Thailand and Hong Kong. The big story however is China, now the largest higher education system in the world (Altbach 2009). With a 12% increase in college age population, its numbers dwarf all the other countries in the region.

While the size of the college age population is contributing to the up-tick in enrollments, the real issue is on the increase in participation rates. Enrollments are going up faster than the size of the college age cohort is increasing. As Table 2 shows, enrollments between1999-2007 are up by as much as 668% in Laos, 318% in Cambodia, 148% in China, and 125% in Mongolia. Even countries experiencing a decline in college age population still show increase in postsecondary enrollments, most notably Korea, Japan and Thailand. Thailand, with an 8% drop in college age population still experienced a 532% increase in enrollments. Korea experienced a 13% drop in college age population but still had a 21% increase in undergraduate enrollments. Such data suggest that across Asia, students and their families understand the important of higher education. Where enrollments went up, so did the number of colleges and universities. Table 3offers a 2007 snapshot of the number of higher education institutions in selected countries of the region.

While participation rates are climbing, there is still room for enrollment growth in some countries. For example, while gross enrollment in tertiary education is as high as 46% in Thailand, it is as low as 5% in Cambodia. Similarly, the number of graduates per 1000 inhabitants range from lows of 1-2 graduates per 1000 (Cambodia, Laos) to highs of 8-13 per 1000 (Korea, Mongolia, Malaysia, Thailand) (Table 4). The message in these numbers is that contexts differ. Neither the problems nor the solutions to the issues faced by faculty are necessarily the same from country to country. Cambodia holds down the low end with just a five percent gross enrollment rate and only one graduate per 1000 inhabitants. At the high end are Thailand and Mongolia, with enrollment rates indicative of having reached mass higher education.

Percentages tell one story; sheer numbers tell another. The demand for higher education is expected to double in five years and triple in ten years in many low and middle income countries of Asia (Chapman 2007). The impact of increased participation rate on enrollment is well illustrated in China. Since the early 1990s, China’s post-secondary enrolments have grown from 5 million to 27 million.2 In just seven years, from 1998 to 2004, enrollments jumped by 647 2 Enrollment estimates differ from table to table due to differences in data sources.

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percent (Table 5) (Lai and Lo 2007). It now enrolls about 22% of its university age population (Altbach 2009). Almost half of all the students who took the National Entrance Examination were admitted to higher education, producing an enrollment rate for 1999 of 10.5 percent (Postiglione 2005).

It will only get worse, or better, depending on one’s point of view. Considerable evidence suggests that enrollment growth in higher education will continue to be strong across Asia, generally, and East Asia, in particular. Figure 1 summarizes stated national aspirations of selected countries regarding further increases in system size. The pressure on colleges and universities to hire yet more faculty and upgrade those already in the system will continue, and will certainly escalate. The pressure on faculty to meet multiple, but often seemingly conflicting, challenges will not abate any time soon.

Government response to rising enrollments: Growing enrollments triggered a wave of consequences. Government policies, faculty recruitment and personnel systems, quality assurance procedures, and financial formulas that worked fine when higher education systems were small proved inadequate and ineffective in guiding this pace of growth. Region-wide, governments tried to cope by moving in five directions: consolidation, differentiation within public higher education, decentralization, cost-containment, and development of a private sector. To understand patterns of hiring and career development of academic staff, it is necessary to understand the changes underway in their academic workplace.

Consolidation: A common pattern across East Asia was that responsibility for higher education, particularly specialized post secondary education and training, was distributed across multiple ministries. So, for example, the Ministry of Health might operate nursing colleges; the Ministry of Civil Service might run a College of Public Administration; the National Police might sponsor a College of Public Safety and Security. This led to inconsistent policies and practices across post-secondary institutions and fostered turfsmanship that impeded government efforts to develop and apply coherent policies and assure quality. Governments’ response was generally to consolidate responsibility for higher education institutions to central and/or provincial ministries of education or higher education. This pattern of consolidation is well illustrated by events in China over 50 years (1953-2003) (Table 6). In 1953, 31 of 41 (76%) centrally controlled higher education institutions were under the direct authority of ministries other than education; by 2003, only 73 of 111 (34%) were.

Differentiation: As higher education systems grew, governments and educators needed a way to make sense of a burgeoning system. They needed a plan for how to balance the often competing demands for greater access, more research, cost containment, and prestige. The growth needed to be managed. One approach to at least partially resolving this conflict is through a differentiated system. Consequently, while consolidating authority over higher education, there was concomitant move toward greater differentiation of the roles different institutions were expected to play. The general pattern was to treat some universities as special, push responsibility for the rest of public higher education to lower levels of the system (the provinces), and seek a way to out-source at least part of the responsibility (and cost) to the private sector. The results is that most higher education systems are differentiated. There are a few top-tier research institutions, a larger number of provincial level comprehensive universities,

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and then a variety of other public and private colleges devoted primarily to teaching (Altbach 2009).

Decentalization: Faced with tight finances, some governments offered greater administrative autonomy in return for colleges and universities covering more of their own costs. Major decentralization initiatives occurred in China, Malaysia, Mongolia, and Thailand. While generally welcomed by the institutions, decentralization often carries a cost. During times of rapid transition, not all components of a higher education system embrace reform at the same rate and not all participants agree on the shape of the new structure toward which they are moving (Chapman and Austin 2002), as illustrated by the experience of Mongolia (Weidman and Bat-Erdene 2002). When university administrators tried to exercise their new authority, they were sometimes challenged by opponents who believed the administrators’ actions overstep their mandate.

Cost-containment: Higher education is expensive. On average, low income countries spend 34 times more on a student in higher education than they spend on a student in primary education, and 14 times more than they spend on a student in secondary education. The corresponding figures for high-income countries are 1.8 and 1.4 (Glewwe and Kremer 2005). Well before the current economic slowdown, governments were feeling the financial pinch of accommodating more students, hiring more faculty and constructing more universities. Resource shortage constitutes a major obstacle faced by developing countries in the region (Dumong 2007).

Some countries found ways to charge at least partial tuition in public colleges and universities that had previously offered ‘free’ higher education, supported by evidence that an increasing number of students (or their families) are willing and able to participate in sharing costs if the quality is good (Ben Mimoun 2008, Bergh and Fink 2008). Others tried to slow enrollment growth in the public sector, allow and encourage the growth of the private sector, and subtly (or not so subtly) push students into these tuition-based options. While seeking new funding streams, government and higher education leaders were also implementing cost reduction strategies. Among other things, faculty salaries were allowed to fall behind inflation even as workload expectations increased. These issues will be discussed more fully latter.

The growth of private higher education: Caught in the cross-hairs of growing demand for higher education and limited funds to support its expansion, most countries in the region have permitted the expansion of private higher education options. These institutions absorb demand (Levy 1986) while, by charging tuition, shifting more of the cost to students and families.Worldwide, and certainly across East Asia, private higher education is the fastest-growing segment of post-secondary education (Altbach 2009). This growth has, in some countries, led to increasing austerity in colleges and universities (overcrowded lecture halls; outdated library holdings, less support for faculty research, deterioration of buildings, loss of secure faculty positions, faculty brain drain as the most talented faculty move abroad (Altbach, Reisberg and Rumbley 2009; Lin 2005). Often, private colleges and universities do not have a well-trained faculty. Instructional staff often are hastily assembled and draw heavily on retired professors from public universities and young people fresh from an undergraduate education. As Lin

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(2005) observes, the older faculty teach only part time to gain extra income; the younger faculty do not have any prior teaching experience.

Numbers tell the story. Over the past five years private colleges and universities in Malaysia increased in number from about a 100 to 690. Between 1998 and 2001, 46 new private institutions were founded in Mongolia. By 2004, Mongolia had a total of 129 private and 47 public colleges and universities (Sodnomtseren 2006). Indonesia has 70 public universities and almost 1700 private universities (Beerkens 2002). In Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Indonesia private universities enroll the majority of students, in some cases up to 80% (Dumong 2007: 14).

Similarly, in China, a combination of min ban (private) institutions and semiprivate offshoots of public universities are absorbing much of the new demand for access (Altbach 2009). Even though these institutions remain a relatively small part of total enrolments, private higher education has become a significant part of the overall system. About 43,00,000 students attend private post-secondary institutions – 16,00,000 in private universities, 18,00,000 in second-tier colleges of public universities, and 8,70,000 in other kinds of institutions (Altbach 2009). Across the region, most private universities serve the mass higher education market and tend to be relatively nonselective in their admissions (Dumong 2007: 14; Beerkins 2002). The growth of private institutions is illustrated, for at least some countries in Table 3 (earlier).

While higher education across the region has been reshaped by these strategies (consolidation, differentiation, decentralization, cost-containment, and growth of private higher education), the quality of teaching has dropped and research is still largely confined to only the top tier universities. Each of these changes had rippling consequences for instructional staff.

The rise of research: Economic and social development increasingly depends on innovation. Governments know this. The link between innovation, technological change and economic growth is well established. R&D provides an important contribution to output and overall productivity growth. OECD experience indicates that innovation and technological changes are among the most important factors affecting the economic performance of countries and are thought to make a significant contribution to economic growth (LaRocque 2007). A one percent increase in the level of R&D typically leads to a .05-.15 percent increase in output (LaRocque 2007).

To this end, the goal of virtually all governments across East Asia is that their higher education institutions serve as centers of innovation and creative thinking. Japan and Korea have largely accomplished this. Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and China are making progress in this direction. Moreover, the production of top level research brings international prestige to both the country and the sponsoring university. Indeed, a university cannot raise its international rankings exclusively through excellent teaching. Virtually all of the well established ranking formulas allocate significant points to research. Consequently, instruction is only one of the roles faculty are expected to play. Across much of East Asia, academic staff are coming under increased pressure to conduct research and publish scholarly papers as a key part of their job.

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While governments generally recognize the importance of scientific research in economic development, they differ widely in the priority they assign R&D in the budget process and countries differ widely in the outcomes they achieve for their investment. As Table 7 illustrates, research productivity varies widely across countries in East Asia. For example, measured as a percentage of GDP, Mongolia spends more than five times as much on research and development than Indonesia or Cambodia; China spends more than 28 times as a much as Indonesia or Cambodia. Malaysia spends four times more on R&D (as a percent of GDP) than the Philippines but produces ten times more scientific and technical journal articles per million residents. While Cambodia and Indonesia’s spending on research and development is comparable at .05% of GDP, Indonesia has 7.7 times more researchers per million residents than does Cambodia, yet produces only about two times as many scientific and technical journal articles per million residents (2003 data). While China spends over twice as much as Malaysia on research and development, the two countries have a roughly comparable number of researchers per million residents. Despite China’s spending advantage, both countries produce about the same number of scientific and journal articles per million residents.

Few universities in low and medium income countries of East Asia can launch and sustain research at a level that would establish international prominence. Indeed, most university-based research is applied research aimed at adopting existing products and ideas to the local context.As with instruction, a key element is the lack of strong research can be traced back to weakpreparation of staff to actually conduct research. It is estimated that Vietnam will require 12,000 more academics each year to meet expansion goals, and only 10 percent of the academic profession currently hold doctoral degrees (Altbach, Reisberg and Rumbley 2009). Similarly, recent evidence from the Philippines, for instance, shows that lack of research capability is closely related to the insufficient educational background of the faculty, only about 40% of whom have graduate degrees (Orbeta 2008, World Bank 2009). Simply put, across most (but not all) of East Asia there are an insufficient number of Ph.D. level researchers and an insufficient numbers of future science and technology graduate students in the pipeline (Salmi 2009).

Higher education institutions play an important, but not necessarily dominate, role in the conduct of research within most countries. Over the last decade in most countries, university-based research has progressively lost its ‘market share’ of the total funds being invested in research to private for-profit business and industry. Between 1995 and 2006, university-based research funding dropped by 8% in Japan and 2.6% in China (OECD 2008a). During this time, the same downward trend in the proportion of research conducted by universities occurred in a variety other countries, including Kazakhstan, Turkey, Israel, Spain, Singapore, Austria and Hungary. At the same time, R&D performed in the for-profit sector increased in all these countries. This increase was most pronounced in Kazakhstan (from 10.8% in 1997 to 39.3% in 2005), Israel (from 60.5% in 1996 to 73.4% in 2003), Turkey (from 26% in 1996 to 37% in 2006), and China (from 60.4% in 2001 to 71% in 2006). While the amount spent for university research continues to grow, the amount being spent on research conducted by business and industry has grown faster.

While businesses undertake most of their own research, they sometimes outsource part of it to university researchers. In that respect, higher education institutions (HEIs) are in a position to gain from this increased research sponsorship on the part of businesses. This is not, however, the

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general pattern. The increased activity of business R&D in terms of funding, performance, and internationalization does not necessarily result in corresponding gains in research funding for higher education institutions. The percentage of higher education R&D funded by industry generally remained stagnant in most recent years (1996 to 2006), though in Korea, the share of industry funding to higher education-based research decreased (Chapman, Stolz and Glushko 2009). Only in Russia and Japan did the percentage of higher education-based research and development funded by industry exceed 25% (OECD 2008c:21)

Regardless of these trends, a reasonable question is whether investing in university-based research is an effective way to promote innovation and economic development. Some observers raise questions about the extent that investing in university-based R&D will lead to the innovation and economic stimulation that advocates suggest. In high income countries, university-based research has a well established history of quality and success. However, in many low- and middle-income countries, there is skepticism about the quality of the research produced by universities (World Bank 2000; LaRocque 2007).

The low quality of research in universities is due, among other things, to the theoretical nature of much university research, the lack of qualified staff, old and outdated equipment, and differences in the timeframes and results orientation of academics and industry. These weaknesses are exacerbated by the lack of linkages between universities and industry, the fragmentation of research efforts, weak commercialization and exploitation of R&D and the lack of connection between regional economic strengths and research excellence (LaRocque 2007). The issue facing faculty, then, is: Why would an aspiring researcher seek employment as a university professor when the money and conditions of employment are better in the private sector?

III. Diagnostics on faculty and main challenges:

Strengthening instructional capacity: The rapid expansion of enrollments has affected higher education faculty in four ways: First, the demand for qualified faculty across the region currently exceeds the supply. As student enrollments have soared, colleges and universities need additional instructional staff to handle the growing number of students. The demand for instructional staff has grown faster than the supply of well prepared faculty has increased;leaving some colleges to hire less well prepared instructional staff. This had led to a significant proportion of faculty being under-prepared for their work as college and university instructors and researchers. Second, the growing higher education participation rates in many countries mean that entrants include more academically average students. As enrollments have grown, colleges and universities have accepted more academically more average students. This has placed new pressures on instructional staff as they must be equipped to deal with less well prepared and less academically able students. In short, the teaching role has gotten more difficult. The broader student intake results in more intellectual range in the student body which, in turn, requires that instructors have the skill set necessary to teach to a boarder range of student abilities. Third, in some countries universities are becoming less faculty oriented and more attuned to the needs of the student community who play an increasingly important role in the financial solvency of their institution (Salmi 2009, vii). Fourth, faculty salaries have come under considerable downward pressure as institutions allocate their available resources to expand facilities and meet the increased operating costs associated with higher student enrollments.

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Efforts of faculty to offset their low salaries through supplemental employment, some of which erodes time and commitment to their primary teaching position, are discussed later.

Finding instructional staff: As the number of students entering higher education has grown, so has the size of the academic staff, though not always at a corresponding rate (Table 8). For example, numbers of faculty increased by 22% in Indonesia, 66% in Vietnam, 121% in Laos, and 31% in Malaysia, even as enrollments in those countries rose by 30-668% (from Table 2). In 2002 there were 9,034,000 students at ordinary higher education institutions in China, a 410% increase over 1992. Yet, there was only a 59% increased in the number of instructional staff over that time. (Wei 2005). Ironically, the number of faculty even increased in the two countries experiencing the sharpest enrollment declines. In Korea, confronting an enrollment drop of 21%, tertiary instructional staff increased by 34%. In Japan, with a 9% decline in enrollment, faculty increased by 8% (Table 2, Table 8).

For the most part, colleges and universities have hired instructional staff at a rate that matches or exceeds enrollment growth, though these data do not indicate how these additional instructors were actually deployed. This is illustrated in Table 9 which reports tertiary enrollments, number of teaching staff, the number of teaching staff per 1000 students, and teacher:student ratios. As Table 9 indicates, the number of teachers per 1000 enrolled students has remained roughly level in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam but dropped, sometimes precipitously, in Mongolia, Cambodia, and Laos. In Japan and Korea, with declining numbers of secondary school graduates, the number of faculty have increased relative to the number of students. The reasons for the increase in the number of instructors, relative to students, in the Philippines are not as clear.

Student: teacher ratios offer another way of examining the teaching load in higher education. Student: teacher ratios have climbed in Mongolia, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, and Laos but dropped in Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Malaysia has dropped, only to climb again. Japan and Korea have dropping ratios because student enrollments are dropping while the number of instructional staff have remained stable or even increased.

The mixed pattern of change in student: teacher ratios associated with system expansion makes it difficult to argue that system expansion has necessarily lead to larger class sizes, though that is certainly true in some countries. Nonetheless, the expanding size of the instructional staff put pressure on higher education leaders to integrate, supervise, evaluate, and ensure the continuing professional development of a substantial influx of new faculty, even as funds to accomplish these things were drying up. In many countries, demand for more faculty still exceeds supply.

Another way to examine the growth of instructional staff across East Asia is in terms of their prevalence within the population. The number of teachers in tertiary education per 1000 inhabitants, reported in Table 10, provides a measure of the ‘density’ of instructional staff in a country. As these data, there is remarkable variation across countries and within countries over time. Some of the countries regarded as having relatively stronger higher education systems (e.g., Korea, Japan, Singapore) appear to have fewer tertiary instructional staff per capita than countries widely regarded as having weaker systems (Mongolia, Cambodia, Laos). This suggests that mere prevalence of instructional staff is not necessarily an indication of system

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quality. Adequate numbers of instructional staff may be necessary to higher education quality, but these data suggest that numbers alone are not sufficient. For the most part, the density of tertiary teachers per capita declined between 1999 and 2006 (or latest data available, depending on the country). This occurred in Cambodia, China, Japan, Korea, and Mongolia. Only small changes in higher education instructor density were observed in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Only in Laos did the density increase to an appreciable extent, more than doubling between 1999 and 2007.

Where will these faculty come from? The dilemma of supply: While cost containment may explain some of the slower growth in number of faculty relative to students, another important factor is the inadequate rate of Ph.D. production. As Table 11 illustrates, Europe produces nearly twice as many doctorates a year as all of Asia combined. North and Central American produce 3.5 times as many doctorates as all of China. Even in the three most research intensive countries in the region (Japan, Korea and China), production of graduates with doctoral degrees is limited (Table 12). The problem is magnified by the far more rapid expansion of higher education across the emerging economies of Asia (compared to Europe or North America). In short, countries across the region are unable to produce enough graduates who have both advanced degrees in their field and an interest in pursuing an academic career. Not only was production of doctorates across the region insufficient to meet the demands of higher education, there was intensified competition for these graduates from the private sector. Consequently, the practice of hiring faculty without full qualifications continues to be widely practiced out of necessity, even at it is widely cited as a reason for an erosion in education quality.

Building a research capacity: Lack of research capacity is linked to the inability of higher education systems to produce sufficient numbers of graduates with advanced degrees, the difficulty universities experience in recruiting staff with the necessary education and experience to conduct such research, and the limited financial resources to sustain an on-going program of research. The most effective strategy for increasing the stock of university-based researchers depends, in large part, on which of these factors is the dominant constraint in any particular national setting.

The density of full time researchers and research technicians is captured in Table 13. Most recent available data range from 2001 to 2007, but the table still provides an insight into the relative research effort across countries. It is little surprise that Singapore and Japan have the most researchers per capita; Cambodia, Laos and Thailand have the fewest. Variation across countries is dramatic, with Singapore having over 360 researchers for every one researcher in Lao PDR. Such differences reinforce what is already widely understood: Strategies to improve research capacity across East and Southeast Asia will need to be tailored to the specific contexts of each country. Region-wide strategies may be of limited relevance.

Nonetheless, the examination of researcher density is heavily influences by a country’s population. A more useful measure of human capacity in higher education institutions allocated to research is the prevalence of FTE researchers as a proportion of total college and university staff. From this lens, at least in one respect, the story changes. Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam appear to allocate more of their higher education staff to research than countries widely regarded as having stronger research capacity, e.g., Korea, Japan, and

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Singapore. This suggests that these low and middle income countries may be assigning new value and attention to the research function within their higher education institutions. Still, these data suggest that mere prevalence of research staff is not necessarily an indication of the strength of the research function within higher education. As with instructional staff, adequate numbers of research staff may be necessary for higher education quality, but numbers of researchers alone are not sufficient to research predict research output.

The production of researchers alone is not enough to fuel research productivity. One possible reason for the seeming loose connection between numbers of researchers and a countries’ research productivity is the difference in the educational qualifications of the researchers. These data are not widely available in a form that allows for a meaningful cross-national comparison. However, data for selected countries (and drawn from various years) is reported in Table 14. The number of researchers with advanced degrees (ISCED 6) as a percent of those with only a first degree (ISCED 5A) varies widely, from lows of 5 % in Hong Kong and 8% in Cambodia to highs of 60% in the Philippines, 39% in Malaysia, and 20% in Singapore. No obvious interpretation emerges from such a scattered pattern, other than to suggest (again) that the mere presence or prevalence of researchers is not enough to predict research productivity. Other factors appear to be in play, such as national and institutional policy, sufficient incentives for researchers to actually apply their skills, and infrastructure support for research at higher education institutions.

Despite increased production of graduate degree holders across East Asia, there tends to be an insufficient numbers of PhDs in science and technology and stiff competition for those who are available. How to prepare and retain high quality research faculty and support more research-oriented programs are critical, inter-related issues for the region.

Against that backdrop, China stands out as a success story in the region. An indicator of China’s success as an emerging science power is in the growth of highly qualified human resources. As a result of major educational reforms of the late 1990s, the number of recipients of four-year degrees increased from 405,000 in 1998 to 1.2 million in 2004 and 37% of degrees were in engineering (NSF, 2008, p. 2-39). At the same time, China joined the largest producers of S&E doctoral degrees. In 2004, the U.S. awarded more than 26,000 S&E doctoral degrees, Russia awarded 16,000, China conferred 15,000 and Germany awarded more than 12,000 degrees (NSF, 2008:2-40). The number of S&E doctoral degrees conferred in China grew more than six-fold between 1993 and 2004, which has given China the world’s second largest stock of human resources for science and technology (OECD 2008c:168). Nonetheless, China’s success should not overshadow the problems of other countries in the region in securing enough qualified researchers.

While China may be producing an increased supply of researchers, it is not clear that those researchers are headed to university-based employment. The research money and jobs are elsewhere. From 2001-2006, business-sponsored research increased by only one percent per year in the United States; by 1.8 percent in the European Union, and by 4.4 percent in Japan. In contrast, in China it increased by 23 percent in during this time (OECD 2008c:22). Even if these graduates find employment in higher education, they may have little incentive to engage in research. While espousing the importance of research, some universities still operate faculty

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incentive systems that work against the development of a strong program of research. For example, at a major university in central Vietnam, the administration strongly encourages faculty to engage in more research but still determines faculty salaries, in large part, by an instructors’ teaching load.

The ability of faculty to conduct research goes well beyond academic preparation. Research is expensive. And, it is not clear that universities necessarily have a comparative advantage in securing research funding. Countries vary widely in their expenditure on research and development as a percent of GDP, as illustrated in Table 15, ranging from a low of .03% in Laos and .04% in Cambodia and Indonesia to highs of 3.47% in Korea and 3.44% in Japan. Regardless of countries’ expenditure on R&D, higher education is a minor player in actually conducting that research. In no countries except Thailand and Hong Kong (SAR, China) does higher education perform more than 22% of that R&D.

Worldwide, most scientific research is both funded and conducted by business and industry (Table 16). Moreover, in most countries business funding for research is not affecting universities and may even roll past them and their research personnel (Chapman, Stolz and Glushko 2009). The main reason is that the majority of R&D conducted by private business is linked to product development. Undertaking the research ‘in-house’ allows for greater secrecy in product development and greater clarity about ownership of resulting ideas and products than might be the result if the research was conducted at a university. Conducting research in-house allows multi-national corporations to shift the location of the work to take advantage of the most favorable national economic and regulatory environments (Chapman, Stolz and Glushko 2009).Consequently, universities that want to recruit Ph.D. graduates to do research face stiff competition from the private sector.

Preparing future researchers: While most research is conducted outside of universities and, in many countries, the share of research funding channeled through universities has declined, universities remain important to national research endeavors. It is in universities that researchers are trained, regardless of where they eventually find employment. Universities have an important role in driving the development of a workforce with higher level technical, professional, and managerial skills.

Despite recent gains, the number of graduates in science and engineering across Asia is low relative to Europe and North America, though the proportion graduates in science and engineering versus non-science and engineering is roughly comparable across regions (Chapman 2007; see also Salmi 2009). This is illustrated in Table 11 (earlier), which provides an overview of the distribution of doctoral degrees by selected fields of study. However, with the exception of China, on a percentage basis enrollment growth in math, science, and engineering across Asia appears to be flat. While absolute number of graduates in these fields is increasing, it is only increasing at about the rate of the overall enrollment increase in higher education (Chapman 2007). These data suggest that there may be a need to encourage enrollment in fields that most directly contribute to scientific and technological innovation.

More recent data on the distribution of enrollment in tertiary education by academic area, reported in Table 17, provides two insights into higher education in the region. First, enrollment

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in science and engineering fields is considerably lower than enrollment in humanities and social sciences. This pattern of enrollment suggests that students may not regard science and engineering as particularly popular fields of study. This has implications for countries’ efforts to build their capacity in scientific research and development through the preparation of new teachers and researchers in science and technology. The less-than-robust pipeline of graduates prepared in science and technology suggests national efforts to stimulate economic growth through research and technology may be overly optimistic.

Second, one pattern observed in other regions of the world is that, when colleges and universities are rapidly increasing enrollment while facing serious fiscal constraints, they tend to favor low cost programs (e.g., business administration, social sciences, education) rather than higher cost, laboratory based programs (e.g., science, engineering) (Chapman, Al-Barwani and Ameen 2009). The enrollment patterns by subject area across Asia, reflected in Table 18, may suggest a similar pattern. Far more students are enrolled in relatively lower cost programs than in science and engineering.

Some evidence suggests that an increase in science and technology graduates is connected to higher levels of research output. In particular, the increase in PhDs in China is reflected in research productivity. The production of scientific and engineering articles has increased significantly in China since 1995 and is outperformed only by Japan among Asia-10 countries. In 1995, China produced 9,061 articles (1.6 % of the world’s articles). In 2005, China produced 41,596 S&E articles which accounted for 5.9% of the world’s S&E article output. The average annual change between 1995 and 2005 reached 16.5% which was the highest annual growth rate of S&E article output in the world (NSF, 2008, p. 5-38). At the same time, China entered the top 15 for triadic patents3 in 2005 (OECD, 2008c:168).

Regardless of the paths countries took through consolidation, differentiation, decentralization, and cost-containment, a cross-cutting issue many colleges and universities face is the need for more instructional staff capable of producing well-prepared graduates.

IV. Policies and options to improve faculty quality

Colleges and universities faced with a shortage of college and university instructors basically have four options. (a) They can hire instructors with lower qualifications. (b) They can increase student:instructor ratios in an effort to accommodate larger numbers of students with a the same number of faculty members. (c) They can try to recruit citizens who went abroad for graduate study and did not return. Or (d) they can hire expatriate instructors. All four of these options have been tried by across the region, generally in some combination. While each strategy offersat least a partial solution to the faculty shortage, each carries a cost.

Hiring those with lower qualifications: If college and universities cannot find or successfully compete for staff with the desired levels of qualifications, but enrollments continue to climb, institutional leaders have little choice but to hire from those that are available, even if that means reaching out to those with lower credentials. While hiring under-qualified staff solves a short-

3 A triadic patent is a series of corresponding patents filed at the European Patent Office, the U.S. Patent and

Trademark Office and the Japan Patent Office for the same invention by the same applicant or inventor.

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term problem, it sometimes creates a longer term dilemma. Given seniority rules and, in some cases, union rules, it is not always easy to get rid of those under-qualified staff, even when more qualified personnel become available. This dilemma, of hiring below desired qualification level, is not limited to the instructional staff. As Table 14 (earlier) suggests, a number of countries have made the same trade-off in hiring research staff. Less than 8% of research staff in Cambodia (2002) and 14 percent in Thailand (2005) had graduate degrees.

Hiring your own graduates. The practice of institutions hiring their own graduates, ‘inbreeding’, is the easiest path for recruiting and, from the perspective of those faculty already employed at the institution, offers at least three advantages. Existing faculty know the graduates they are hiring; the graduates know the institutional norms and procedures; and, the cost of recruitment is low. As a consequence, inbreeding is pervasive. In China, it is estimated that 27.4 percent of teachers in higher education institutions teach at the institution from which they graduated; 21.1 percent teach in the same program at the same institution from which they graduated (Wei 2005). The practice, while pervasive, is most common in middle and lower tier institutions. It is not uncommon to find three and four generations of graduates on the same faculty (Wei 2005). A variation on inbreeding is that undergraduate colleges affiliated with a university generally hire graduates of that university (Altbach 2009).

From the perspective of those outside the institution those same ‘advantages’ are a serious liability. Inbreeding can foster master–disciple relationships in which faculty feel constrained from disagreeing with or pushing ideas that would not be well received by their mentor (Wei2005; Altbach 2009). Inbreeding squelches creative thinking. From the perspective of many in government and the larger international higher education community, inbreeding represents a serious problem. Some countries have started taking steps to reduce academic inbreeding by putting rules in place to stop the practice, but most of the Chinese academic system still uses this hiring practice Altbach (2009).

In some cases, hiring one’s own graduates is a necessity imposed by the context. Laos requires university instruction to be offered in the Lao language, effectively narrowing the pool of instructors, mostly to those who have graduated from the major national university (Chapman 2002). This is a case where national policy (language policy, in this case) promulgated for reasons unrelated to university operations has dramatic consequences on university instructional quality.

Top tier universities increasingly seek to avoid hiring their own graduates. Perhaps the most high visibility effort to change hiring practices is Beijing University’s introduction of its new Teacher Personnel System Reform Plan that stops the practice of departments recruiting teachers from among its own immediate graduates. The new system moves to open international recruitment for all teaching position. Lecturers’ positions will be open to public recruitment both in and outside China, and vacant associate professorial and professorial positions will be filled by either external recruitment or internal promotion, with the job to be offered to the best candidate (Lin et al. 2005). Observers suggest that, given the prominence of Beijing University, this move will be a powerful inducement for top academic personnel throughout China (Lin et al. 2005). Nonetheless, the move to bar hiring of its own graduates is not without controversy. Some faculty worry about their personal futures in such merit-based systems.

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Hiring graduates of other institutions. The alternative to an institution hiring its own graduates is to hire those of other institutions or to draw instructional staff from local business and industry. When that happens, colleges and universities are competing for graduates who typically have a wide range of government and private sector employment options. In such competition, colleges and universities do not necessarily hold the comparative advantage. While being a college professor carries some level of prestige, academic appointments tend to pay less than private sector alternatives, except at top universities. The central constraint on hiring graduates from other institutions, however, is the limited pool of qualified candidates.

Hiring expatriates. Faced with a limited domestic pool, universities across many countries draw on an international pool of instructors willing to work in East Asia for money and adventure. Using international instructors introduces new ideas and cross-fertilization of instructional approaches. Some universities employ them as an informal strategy for introducing international norms for instructional quality an academic behavior. Some hire expatriate staff as a way of modeling a wider set of instructional approaches. While governments may express a desire to ‘nationalize’ their teaching force, many universities still rely on expatriate faculty.

Top tier universities tend to operate in a global labor market (Pacheco, Rumbley and Altbach 2008; Altbach 2009). They recruit internationally with salaries and conditions of service that make it feasible to attract international scholars. For example, hiring expatriate instructors has been used quite successfully by universities in Hong Kong and Singapore. However, the cost of expatriate instructional staff tends to be high, as many command international salaries. At times, these instructors are subsidized by some international organization, at times not. As many are hired on fixed-term, renewable contracts, they bring less stability to the institution. Such turnover is either an advantage or disadvantage, depending on whether the institutional emphasis is on seeding new thinking or emphasizing stability.

Hiring those who studied abroad. Many students who go abroad to study expect to return. In practice, many find better employment and life options abroad and remain away. Consequently some countries have a substantial pool of well trained talent abroad which could be tapped. Mongolia’s situation illustrates the point. Of the 313 faculty members from the national University of Mongolia who were sent to study and work overseas and the 390 who went for short-term visits, only 56 returned (Sodnomtseren 2006). China has experienced a similar situation on a much bigger scale. In 2008 approximately 892,000 Chinese were studying abroad.Over the past several decades, about 80% of Chinese graduating from universities abroad have not returned home.

Efforts to recruit instructional staff from citizens trained and still living abroad has been somewhat successful in some countries, but the strategy can be expensive. Top tier universities are increasingly willing to pay the salaries and create opportunities in its universities for foreign-trained graduates (Altbach 2009). Lower tier institutions may find that strategy out of reach. The extent these individuals are willing to return will depend on salaries and working conditions at home.

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In the meantime, colleges and universities try to make-do. One strategy for filling the instructor gap, particularly at private colleges and universities, is to hire part-time instructors, often individuals who hold full time teaching positions at other colleges and who do part-time teaching as a means of supplementing their income. The pervasiveness of this strategy differs by country. In China, teachers invited in from industry or research units comprise only 2.7 percent of all full-time teachers (Wei 2005).

Integrity of the hiring and promotion processes. Even when there are applicants, who actually gets hired does not necessarily depend on their qualifications. There is considerable anecdotal evidence that non-professional considerations can play a role in the hiring process. The importance of personal and family connections and relationships remains important in many countries across East Asia. For example, such information suggests that, in Cambodia,doctorates are sometimes awarded to government officials (and others) who have done little or no academic work to earn the degree but who believe they need the credential as a condition of promotion and salary increase in their work. Institutions award these degrees to build goodwill with those who may have budget or oversight authority over them. In the largest higher education system, China, such personal connections, “guanxi’, still served as a significant factor for academics in securing and retaining their academic status (Lai and Lo 2007). There are reports that, in some cases in China, faculty members might hold degrees they did not earn themselves, but hired others to take their tests for them (Lin et al. 2005). In some colleges, applicants for academic jobs are expected to provide payment to persons hiring them or to the hiring institution (Altbach 2009). In short, favoritism and connections are powerful factors in who gets hired and who gets promoted. This is discouraging to young faculty.

Serious efforts are underway to introduce greater transparency into the hiring process. In 1997 Hunan University caused reverberations in and outside Hunan province when it laid off all of its personnel and then reengaged them via competitive re-hiring practices (Lin et al. 2005). Zhongshan University implemented a teacher engagement and appointment system that requires a review of the staffing structure and work post arrangement of every institute and department be conducted once every academic year. Each institute and department formulates its respective teaching post basic responsibility standards, which include the relevant amounts of work to be fulfilled and other regulations.

Party influence. In several countries of East Asia, the influence of the Communist Party is an important factor in faculty promotion and career development, though the manner in which that influence operates differs by country. In Vietnam, faculty may be identified as eligible to be considered for promotion based on their merit and productivity, though the individual need to be vetted with the Party before such a promotion if finalized. The Party operates as a filter. In Laos, the Party plays a stronger role, essentially operating as a shadow government. Individualsare not even put forward for consideration unless there is Party concurrence from the start. In China, the Party has played a significant role in approving senior staff appointments (Zha 2009).Often, there will be an academically selected president and an executive vice president chosen by the Party, an arrangement that constrains faculty participation in institutional governance (Altbach 2009). To some extent, the influence of the Party is changing. Some top universities are strengthening academic leadership, giving more authority to department chairs, thereby lessening the influence of outside groups (Altbach 2009; Min 2004).

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Conditions of service: Providing an adequate number of qualified instructors is the goal (or at least the dream) of virtually all countries in East Asia. Merely hiring enough instructors is not enough. Those instructors need to do be engaged and productive once employed. Faculty engagement depends, in large part, on the conditions of service that characterize their academic workplace, key elements of which are discussed below.

Salary and compensation: Salary is perhaps the central concern of most academic staff across East Asia. In the face of rapidly increasing enrollments, available funds were shifted to construction of new facilities and meeting the increased operating costs associated with adsorbing these new students. Considerable anecdotal data indicates that faculty salaries suffered. More systematic data on faculty salaries across East Asia are not available, beyond limited data for Japan and Korea contained in OECD comparisons. Some data are available, however, on governments’ overall expenditure on education, the share of that going to tertiaryand the share of those funds that are allocated to salaries (Table 18). Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong allocate a greater share of their education spending to higher education than do most of their neighbors. The amount of higher education funding then allocated to salaries appears to vary considerable, but international data is too incomplete to offer meaningful generalizations.

Nonetheless, evidence and professional experience indicate that university salaries across East Asia vary dramatically (Altbach 2009). While top universities in Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan pay internationally competitive salaries, colleges and universities in many other countries in East Asia do not. For the most part, instructor salaries are low. The low salaries have two consequences. First, some of the best qualified professionals opt for employment opportunities outside of higher education (Altbach 2009). Second, many of those that are employed in higher education divert their time and energy away from teaching and research to chase supplemental income opportunities (Lai and Lo 2007; Hanling 2005; Postigline 2005). In China, for example, a recent study found that 53.4% of college instructors held second jobs(Hanling 2005). For half of those with supplemental employment, their second jobs were conducting classes for other colleges and universities.

One rather common way of subsidizing higher education, well-illustrated in Laos, is to underpay university faculty while allowing (and even encouraging) them to supplement their income through private consulting, sometimes allowing them to use their university offices and other facilities to support their consulting. This arrangement, at one level, represents a creative adaptive response to a difficult financial circumstance. Instructors reaped the prestige of a university appointment; universities gained a teaching staff at low cost (Chapman 2002). But these arrangements also have consequences. It constrains the ability of colleges and universities to call upon their faculty for program and curriculum development, student advisement, and institutional governance. Such activities either need to be compensated separately (such as in Indonesia), handled by others, or just dropped.

A variation on this approach is the creation of special tuition bearing courses within the instructors’ own institution which generates opportunities for extra teaching for extra compensation. Again, the experience of the National University of Laos (NUOL) illustrates this issue. During the day, the university instructional program is tuition-free for admitted students

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and taught in Lao. NUOL faculty members supplement their university salary by teaching in a special evening course, taught in English, for which students must pay a fee. While this arrangement provides a necessary financial supplement to instructors, it has made it difficult for NUOL to capture the time and attention of faculty members to participate in research and governance activities that would strengthen the regular (day) program of the university (Chapman, 2002). Some observers lament this move to ‘academic capitalism’, concerned that the drive for extra income pulls faculty away from their academic duties (Deem 2001, 12; Lai and Lo 2007). Others see some benefits as instructional staff take consulting positions that put them in more touch with the labor market, presumably increasing the relevance of the instruction they offer.

Consequently, the dominant concern of instructors employed in all but the top universities has been to find a way to supplement their salary. These salaries supplementation strategies have taken several directions. In most countries, faculty compensate for the scarcity of resources by engaging in a variety of entrepreneurial activities in order to increase their income. Common strategies for supplementing income are to take second (or third) jobs (often teaching at another university), teaching adult or evening courses at their own institution for additional funds, or consulting for private companies.

As competition for qualified instructors intensifies, as universities seek to improve the quality of their instruction, and as they attempt to create new funding streams through research, many institutions now seek ways to recapture the time, energy and loyalty of their instructional staff on behalf of institutional priorities. They are being forced to rethink their faculty compensation practices.

Non-monetary incentive systems for academic faculty: The most powerful incentives are those that tie direct compensation to the performance of the target behavior. In general, people prefer their compensation in a form that allows them to choose the benefits of their work. Hence, raising academic salaries is arguably the most direct and effective way of enhancing the attractiveness of college and university teaching. It is also one of the most expensive. Most government and higher education leaders seek strategies that will accomplish the same ends at a lower cost. Consequently, there has been widespread interest in identifying non-monetary and low-cost options.

Direct monetary benefits include the salary, allowances and fringe benefits offered to academic staff (Kemmerer, 1990). Indirect monetary benefits include those other resources provided to teachers that are financed by government, industry, and other sources that improve instructors’ worklife, such as subsidized housing, opportunities for professional advancement, and well-equipped classrooms (among other things). Non-monetary benefits refer to those things as status in their professional community and recognition and approval of significant people in their professional life (Kemmerer, 1990; Chapman, Snyder and Burchfield, 1993). Where monetary benefits are small by either absolute or relative standards, interest in low-cost or non-monetary incentives increases (Kemmerer, 1990; Chapman, Snyder & Burchfield, 1993). A central challenge for university administrators is identifying effective incentives and using them in ways that achieve better outcomes.

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The ‘complexity of worklife hypothesis’ offers a useful perspective for thinking about faculty behavior. Virtually all changes in organizational structure, expectations, or conditions of service require instructional staff to work in different ways, learn more or different content, and/or adjust their teaching methods. In short, altering faculty members’ institutional role or teaching may impinge on faculty members’ work and increase the complexity of their worklife. This increased complexity leads to faculty resistance. This resistance can be met in two ways. The complexity of the change can be lowered so that faculty do not perceive much extra effort is needed to respond to the change being introduced, incentives can be increased so that faculty members believe their extra effort is being rewarded, or some combination of both (Chapman, 1997). However, to respond effectively to faculty resistance requires an understanding of what actions have incentive value to college and university faculty.

Workload: The conflict among societal goals and institutional expectations is perhaps most clearly observed in the way these pressures play out in faculty work expectations. As previously documented, in most (though not all) countries the number of instructors has not necessarily increased at the same rate as the rise in enrollments, resulting in higher student:instructor ratios in many institutions. This has contributed to increased instructional workloads, even at a time that many faculty are under intensified pressure to engage in research and entrepreneurial activities on behalf of their institutions. Even in countries experiencing a decline in enrollment rates, most notably Japan and Korea, class sizes are still expected to decrease only slightly in the next decade (Table 19)

The increasing class size can affect workload in several ways. (1) More students require more instructor time in conversing with students, reading papers and grading tests. (2) As class sizes grow, some teachers may find it necessary to alter their pedagogical practices in ways that accommodate larger groups. (3) Larger classes may also reflect the admission of students with a wider range of academic ability, again posing a challenge for instructors use to teaching more accomplished learners. All-in-all, increase class size, depending on the numbers, is widely viewed as a source of downward pressure on quality of instruction. As one observer described their situation: Salary is based on teaching hours with instructors often expected to teach about 16 hours a week, handle classes of 50 to 70 students, and correct hundreds of student assignment books each week (Lin 2005).

China represents a good example of the squeeze on faculty as a way to meet conflicting goals (e.g., enrollment growth and cost containment). Enrollments grew; the number of faculty grewmore slowly, class sizes expanded and, as a result, instructor saw their workloads grow. The average teacher–student ratio in ordinary higher education institutions nationwide in 2002 was 1:14.6 (in some institutions it exceeded 1:30) and teaching loads were two to three times those of teachers in foreign research-type universities. Over 50 percent of higher education institutions did not make provision in establishing positions for “exigencies” in allocating personnel, which essentially deprived them of any means for arranging for teachers to take turns undertaking training or further studies. With respect to teachers, 37.9 percent believe their “workload is too heavy,” whereas 84.9 percent have neither the time nor the opportunity to undertake training because of “lack of establishment positions” and “heavy responsibilities at work” (Wei 2005).

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Changing nature of faculty work: It is not just salary and workload that are changing. In many respects, the job itself is changing for some faculty. One of the more recently emerging demands on faculty is to utilize more technology in their instruction and, in some cases, to shift to more online delivery of instruction. Already, Asia leads the world in online delivery of college-level instruction.

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) is widely advocated as a cost-effective means of providing instruction (Khan and Williams 2006; Juma and Lee 2005; Salmi 2002; World Bank 2002). A number of East Asian countries are already using this approach to great advantage (Figure 2). Large scale higher education programs through open universities are already underway in Thailand, China, and Indonesia (Salmi 2002; Chapman 2007). The main reason is money. Online instruction offers as much as a 60% cost savings over conventional campus-based instruction (Kejak and Ortmann, 2003: 3; Khan and Williams 2006). Online instruction also offers learners the opportunity to study on their own schedule and sustain other family and job responsibilities while attending college (Chapman 2008). However, sustaining student interest and engagement without the level of interpersonal contact provided in traditional courses can be a problem. Engaging students online demands different, and often new, skills on the part of instructors.

Opportunities for career advancement: One factor that shapes the attractiveness of an academic career is the prospect of career advancement and upward mobility. In some countries the composition of the teaching staff offers only limited opportunities for advancement. Senior ranks are filled with individuals who have been in place for many years, thereby limiting the promotion opportunities for younger colleagues. For example, some evidence suggests that in Japan it isdifficult for young faculty to work their way into the upper ranks of the professoriate. Similarly, in Cambodia, the faculty ranks of the major university (RUPP) have long been dominated by senior faculty who only will only reach retirement ages in the next few years (Dykstra and Chapman 2006).

Some countries are making a concerted effort to change the composition of their academic staff in ways that ‘open up’ career paths for younger faculty. China, in particular, has made good progress in developing and improving the balance among the levels of its academic staff. The ratios between professors, associate professors, lecturers, and instructors (jiaoyuan) and tutors (zhujiao) in 1991 were 4.0 : 21.4 : 38.5 : 36.0. A decade later, in 2001, they were 10.1 : 30.0 : 36.3 : 23.0 (Wei 2005). At the same time, the average age has fallen. The number of professors over sixty years of age dropped from 55.4 percent in 1991 to 17.1 percent in 2001. Those under forty years of age rose from 0.3 percent in 1991 to 17.5 percent in 2001. The number of associate professors under thirty-five years of age rose from 0.9 percent in 1991 to 9.1 percent in 2001. Instructors under the age of 45 account for about 79 percent of the total; those under the age of 35 account for about 46 percent (Wei 2005).

The incentive and motivational value of opportunities for career advancement only work if the process is seen as fair and transparent. That is a problem. Across a number of East Asian countries, career advancement is heavily influenced by non-professional factors. Two types of factors are most noteworthy. (1) As discussed earlier, in countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, and China, Party affiliation and political ideology operates as a filter in promotion decisions.

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Academic accomplishment alone is not sufficient. (2) In some countries, corruption in the promotion process is cited as a constraint on career advancement (Altbach 2009:46). In some cases, this corruption takes the form of plagiarism and the misuse, at times falsification, of data (Altbach 2009:46). At other times, it is more subtle, through the operation of guanxi.

The complexity of the promotion process is captured in Lai and Lo’s (2007) description of the process as it operated at one Chinese university: Promotion was not as straightforward as it seemed. The selection of papers for publication was not always based on the merit of the paper. Rather, academic staff using their social connections to increase the possibility of getting published. One example was of a Dean of the Faculty who, because he had strong social connections with the editors of core national journals, could help selected colleagues have their papers published simply by his recommending their papers to the editors. Another example wasof faculty members paying ‘publication fees’ in order to increase the likelihood that their work would be published. Publication fees ranged from RMB 800 to RMB 4,000, depending on the prestige of the journal. Objective evaluation of merit was undercut by favoritism and bribery.

Professional autonomy and academic freedom: While the importance of academic freedom is becoming more widely understood, it is not universally embraced across East Asia. Informal yet widely acknowledged restrictions on academic freedom exist in some fields (Altbach 2009). Altbach (2009) observes that some areas of research and interpretation are ‘off limits’ and certain kinds of criticism may result in sanctions, including dismissal or even prosecution. One example is that, in 2005, the University of Warwick (UK) dropped plans for a college hub in Singapore after Warwick faculty expressed concerns about, among other things, potential curbs on academic freedom (Burton 2007). To the extent that faculty members are constrained in their teaching and research by limits on their academic freedom, it represents an erosion in quality of instructors’ worklife.

Evaluating faculty performance: Traditionally, longevity brought rewards; ‘years of service’was an important factor in promotion decisions. Increasingly, however, higher education institutions are developing accountability systems to assess the extent that faculty are effective in their teaching, productive in their research, and if graduates are finding employment. While the nature and rigor of these evaluation systems differ by country and by type of institution, many colleges and universities are feeling the pressure to introduce more quality-oriented criteria into their promotion considerations.

Teaching evaluations: While a number of countries have implemented evaluation systems for use in personnel promotion decisions, teaching evaluation for instructional improvement is still not widely employed. One point of view is that, in setting marked by a scarcity of instructional staff, institutions cannot be too selective in recruitment or rigorous in the use of evaluations systems that faculty might view as punitive. The emphasis should be on recruiting and retaining instructors rather than on ensuring the quality of their instruction.

Despite these worries, the Chinese government formally established a teaching evaluation system of all regular higher education institutes. This evaluation involved a five-year cycle with the first round of outcomes made available to parents and the general public by late 2003. The Ministry of Education began a pilot project on university teaching evaluation in 1993. Results indicate

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that those institutes under review tended to improve their campus and teaching facilities, increase their educational spending, put extra emphasis on teaching, and closely monitor their teaching quality (Postiglione 2005).

Nonetheless, some institutions are making serious efforts to better assess their instructors’ teaching effectiveness. A description by Lai and Lo (2007) illustrate at least one such effort: The teaching evaluation done at the university level consisted of three parts, each conducted by a different group. Part 1 was teaching observation conducted by a ‘committee on teaching supervision’ composed of senior teaching colleagues in an instructor’s subject area (e.g., dean, associate deans, selected senior and retired professors). These supervisors had the right to attend any lecture (without giving the instructor prior notice) for the purpose of assessing the instructor’s teaching ability. Part 2 consisted of teaching observations conducted by fellow colleagues. Since most professors lacked interest in observing their fellow colleagues’ lectures, this component had little impact in the final evaluative decision. Part 3 was the use of student course evaluations, perceived by many instructors to be the most effective indicator of teaching performance since the student assessments affected the teachers’ prestige in the faculty. One effect of the unannounced student evaluations and colleague observations was that academicstaff felt increasing pressure in their work (Lai and Lo 2007).

Where formal evaluation systems are used in promotion considerations, there is evidence that these systems can be ‘gamed’ and abused. A criticism of faculty evaluation systems is that they are often open to personal and nonprofessional influences such as favoritism, nepotism, and bribery.

Research: The number of scholarly publications and national research grants received are growing in popularity as a metric of faculty productivity at universities intent on competing for international recognition. For example, Tianjin University pays attention to the number of papers published abroad and the frequency with which those papers are cited and quoted abroad. It has also moved to a system similar to merit pay in which instructors receive “work post subsidies” on the basis of their performance rather than their job titles (Yang Lin et al. 2005).

Program points: A further assessment measure, used in Chinese universities, involves a system of program points in which overall programs are evaluated on the basis of teacher qualifications, the academic standards of the faculty, and the amount of funding each faculty receives. The point totals are influenced by the number of faculty publications and national research projects faculty members receive. Though university deans make the initial determination, the number of points awarded to each institution has to be approved by the Ministry of Education. While intended to provide an objective basis for comparing programs across institutions, some observers suggest it is still prone to manipulation. Yang Lin et al. (2005) observe that the awarding of doctoral program points is influenced by social connectionsand, consequently, the human factor played the most important role in the approval process.

Increased evaluation encountered push-back. Some faculty thought it was a waste of time and resources and that it restricts the professional autonomy of instructors. On the other hand, some universities were pushed to improve student accommodations and libraries in a bid to increase

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their points and, by extension, their government funding (Lai and Lo 2007). In this respect, the evaluation system may have had some positive benefits.

Employability of graduates: Even as demand builds for greater access to higher education, graduates in some countries have difficulty finding employment (Lai and Lo 2007).An analysis of long-term trends in rates of return and skilled workforce shows that the demand for higher education is clearly on the rise in China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Mongolia, while rather stable, but still sustained, in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines (World Bank 2009). Still, competition for jobs is more intense than ever before and, in many cases, a university degree is not sufficient preparation to find employment. Graduates discover they need an additional qualification on top of the degree (Postiglione 2005). In some cases, this is due to employers’ concerns about the quality of the education students received (Min 2001). Insufficient workers’ skills are an issue across the region, though the extent of the gap is likely to vary across countries (World Bank 2009).

The knowledge and skill deficits are not necessarily discipline-based. In Indonesia employers report that the weakest skills for managers and professionals are creative thinking and leadership skills. In Thailand and Malaysia employers complain about weak foreign language and IT skills, lack of creative thinking, inadequate leadership skills, and poorly developed technical skills. In Vietnam, the complaint is weak foreign language skills, communication skills, and practical knowledge of the job while both employers and employees in Mongolia complain about lack of communication skills, work discipline, teamwork, and critical thinking (World Bank 2009).

Labor market needs change rapidly; universities change slowly. Mismatches develop. One reason for the slow change is that many instructional staff began their university careers 10 and 20 years ago. They differ in the extent they have kept up with the changes in their field that should have implications for the subject matter they teach and the instructional methods they are use. Some are out of touch with their own fields of practice. In response, governments, most notably China, are beginning to include employment of graduates as an indicator of institutional and program success. If graduates are unable to find employment, faculty members may find their programs scaled back or cut. This has led to action on two levels. At one level, some institutions, such as Cantu University in Vietnam, have undertaken graduate tracer studies and employer surveys as a basis for assessing the relevance of their curriculum and instruction methods. On another level, instructors are coming under more pressure to actually use this type of information to update their course content and pedagogical practices.

China faced both a serious decrease in teaching quality and a high unemployment rate among university graduates. While the rapid drop in educational quality was the focus of most faculty concern, the government was more concerned about graduates’ unemployment.Government’s response was to include graduate employment rate as a major indicator of program quality on the national ‘Assessment on the teaching standard of undergraduate programs in higher institutes.’ This focus on employment placed enormous pressure on the university faculties to quickly address the problem or otherwise face the consequences. If a specialization could not reach a graduate employment rate of 60% or above for a certain number of years, the specialization would then be eliminated. Government felt its actions had been largely successful

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when the Ministry of Education announced that the new reforms resulted in an annual graduate employment rate of 70% (Cheng 2005).

Still, there is some evidence that colleges and universities try to game the system. For example, to improve its graduates’ employment rates, one academic program would admit 30 students per year to the masters program but admit only an average of 10 per year to its undergraduate program, which served as a feeder system for the graduate program. Following graduation, students in the undergraduate program could be guaranteed a spot in the masters program, which was counted by the MOE as full employment (Lai and Lo 2007).

Relevance: The move of many countries toward market-based economies has led to rapid shifts in the knowledge and skills employers seek in recent graduates. One consequence is that often there is substantial misalignment between what universities teach and the knowledge and skill sets that employers want in recent graduates. Major challenges facing higher education institutions include (a) creating systems for monitoring alignment of curricula with labor market needs and (b) implementing incentives systems capable of encouraging instructional staff to reassess and revise the content and delivery of their instruction.

The misalignment of university supply with market demand (Ma 2003) is multifaceted. On the one hand, many public-funded universities do not have strong incentives to change their curriculum or to modify their programs to suit the need of the market (Xue and Li 2006). On the other hand, even for those private-funded colleges whose curriculum and program design are tailor-made for market, the emphasis has never been on cultivating students’ ability to apply knowledge and skills to the workplace but, rather, to constantly adjust the number of students enrolled in a particular program to align with the immediate market fluctuations. Some observers argue that the majority of higher education institutions were overly preoccupied with the expansion of institutional size and paid little attention to the relevance of the education that was being delivered (Lai & Lo 2007; Cao 2009). A contributing factor in the misalignment (of curriculum and market needs) is the different rate of change between the relatively centralized university system and the decentralized market-oriented environment (Xue 2006; Cao 2009)

III. Main policy conclusions

Supporting and strengthening academic faculty across East Asia: At one level, fixing the problem of insufficient numbers and inadequate training of faculty is easy to solve. Pay them enough for the job to be attractive. Specify and enforce clear but reasonable work expectations. Maintain and enforce quality assurance procedures that are aligned with those stated expectations. Get rid of faculty who do not meet the grade. Be transparent and consistent in doing these things. In short, increase the attractiveness of being employed as a university faculty member relative to other employment options available to bright, highly trained personnel. Easier said than done.

For the most part, there is remarkable agreement about the problems facing faculty recruitment and subsequent productivity. The sharpest disagreements are about the solutions. Each has trade-offs. The debate over appropriate solutions is really a debate over the consequences and trade-offs expected to follow. One result is that potential solutions to the problems countries

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face in recruiting, motivating, supervising, and evaluating faculty are often as much political as they are technical, often more so.

The premise of this analysis is that, as higher education pursues multiple goals, faculty are caught in a web of conflicting expectations due to the multiple roles higher education institutions play within their countries. Presumably, faculty can be successful in playing each of the roles, but only if they have the appropriate conditions to do so. Galal (2002) and Welmond (2004) offer a useful framework for considering the essential ingredients in addressing faculty issues. For faculty members to be effective, three conditions must be met. First, the inputs necessary for them to carry out their professional responsibilities must be available. These include such things as adequate classroom space, textbooks, laboratory and library facilities, and students with reasonable prior preparation. But merely having sufficient inputs is not enough. The outcomes of education depend on how those inputs are actually utilized in research and instruction.

The issue, then, is how to encourage faculty to utilize available inputs in ways that lead to better outcomes for the students and the institution. This poses a ‘principal-agent’ problem (Galal 2002). The principal (e.g., a ministry official, college administrator) is interested in obtaining particular outcomes (such as improved instruction, more research), but has to rely on an agent (e.g., faculty members) to obtain these outcomes. Faculty need to be sufficiently motivated to make good use of the available inputs. Motivation depends, in large part, on the adequacy of incentives.

Second, then, from the Galal perspective, government efforts to shape faculty behavior need to rely on the use of incentives with sufficient reward value to elicit the intended behavioral changes. Incentives include such things as salary, conditions of service, and opportunities for professional advancement. However, faculty benefits only have motivational value of they are contingent on the desired behaviors occurring. Awarding benefits without linking them to performance are gifts, not motivators. Consequently, the allocation of incentives to motivate and reward faculty must be combined with an accountability system that links instructor performance with the reward. In short, the effectiveness of an incentive system depends on consistent pairing of behavior and rewards, a short enough timeframe that the individual faculty member clearly sees the linkage, and a level of accuracy that ensures that only the deserving receive the reward.

This pairing of behavior to incentives has been a persistent problem in higher education because faculty productivity is difficult to measure, metrics are weak, and much of the work of instructors happens in classrooms and laboratories, not easily observable by those outside the instructor’s own institution. The solution is twofold. Responsibility for assessing faculty productivity needs to devolve to those close to the faculty members’ work setting who presumably have the most accurate and timely view of performance. At the same time, there needs to be increased attention to professionalization of faculty in ways that lead to more self-regulation among instructional staff. Faculty must recognize their own responsibility to ensure the quality of their own and each other’s work, a critical tenet of professionalization. The third of Galal’s conditions, then, is professionalization.

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Many aspects of higher education systems across East Asia still operate as steep hierarchies, with decision making largely concentrated at the top, limited organizational power or interaction among those at the bottom (Salvage 1990). Faculty tend to fall rather low in these hierarchies. Professionalization would involve more opportunities for collegial interaction and more attention to standards of professional behavior. Professionalization is seen as a way to build pride among instructors and researchers and encourage them to take greater responsibility for the outcomes of their work. It represents an effort to move college and university faculty away from viewing themselves as merely agents being directed by those above, toward viewing themselves as independent professionals willing to take more responsibility for their own professional activity (Hargreaves and Fink 2004).

Higher education systems across Asia face a challenge on each of the aspects raised by the Galal framework. Inputs are a problem as many institutions, particularly those below the top tier, are starved for resources. Incentives are distorted by the growing work demands on faculty even as resources decline, and by questionable allocation practices. While some countries are making progress in improving faculty accountability systems, there are still questions aboutappropriateness of criteria and the fairness in administration. Decentralization of authority and decision making is certainly underway across many countries, but the influence of central governments and Party organizations persist. Professionalization of the faculty varies across countries, but is an area where most observers believe more work is needed.

The Galal framework offers a useful structure for a consideration of possible actions to improve the preparation, recruitment, support, supervision, and assessment of higher education faculty in East Asia. The following discussion will be organized around four questions: What inputsmight realistically improve the composition and performance of academic staff? How might incentives systems be designed and administered to best encourage desired faculty behavior? How might accountability systems be improved in ways that encourage more effective faculty performance? What actions can be taken to increase the professionalization of higher education faculty in ways that improve the outcomes of higher education?

A central issue lacing through these four questions is that higher education systems seek multiple and sometimes conflicting goals. Higher education systems can pursue multiple objectives simultaneously. However, pursuing some ends may involve actions that inhibit others. The first step in strengthening faculty performance is clarifying what ends are actually being sought. Higher education systems have many stakeholders, groups that sometimes disagree on the importance of different outcomes, how those outcomes should be achieved, and how much of each outcome is enough. Governments and universities need to decide what outcomes they seek to maximize, their priorities among them, and the trade-off they are willing to make among them.

Fixing the right problem: More training, incentives, or accountability only represent solutions if lack of training, incentives or accountability is the underlying problem. There is a risk that reformers will focus on the problems that are easiest to fix rather than the problems that are most foundational. For example, discussions about improving the quality and relevance of higher education across East Asia tend to focus on measuring faculty performance, crafting policies,and finding money, perhaps because these are most directly under the control of government and university administrators. While these things are needed, they are not sufficient. It is unlikely

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that the quality of teaching or research will change meaningfully until governments and universities find a way to address issues of faculty preparation and their conditions of service. This is not to suggest such changes are easy.

Faculty members’ resistance to change often stems from five sources: (1) Faculty members do not see the problem. (2) Faculty see the problem, even agree that a change is needed, but lack the knowledge and skills needed to make the changes in their own classrooms. (3) Faculty members resist changes that increase the complexity of their worklife. (4) Proposed innovations run counter to faculty members beliefs about what constitutes effective teaching. Or, (5) the organizational structure of the university works against the easy adoption of the desired practices. This occurs, for example when faculty members are being encouraged to do more research while their salaries are still based on the number of courses and students they teach(Chapman 1997). Appropriateness of solutions depends on clearly understanding the problem.

To that end, the research and literature on academic staff across East Asia support five observations:1. Faculty members generally recognize the need to improve the quality and relevance of

instruction and research. 2. Below the top tier universities there is a significant proportion of academic staff who lack

the knowledge and skills needed to improve their instruction or conduct top level research.

3. Faculty are caught in conflicting organizational demands and a decline in their conditions of employment. Many feel caught between working for their institution and working for themselves.

4. Across the region, the incentive systems for higher education faculty need repair and the accountability systems needs alignment, consistency and transparency.

5. Much can still be done to improve the professional identity and professional support system available to assist faculty members as they meet the challenge posed by rapidly changing environmental conditions for higher education.

Academic staff may exhibit little enthusiasm or support for the introduction of new content and instructional methods, even when those changes would be likely to increase the quality and relevance of what is taught, improve the operation of the university, or serve the apparent interest of the instructor. One reason is that many of the proposed changes are designed to ‘fix’ problems that instructors don’t believe exist or don’t believe are their problems to solve. Faculty members are most likely to take on new institutional roles, adopt new instructional practices, and engage in more research when they believe those changes are needed and see some benefit in doing so. Those conditions are not always met. Faculty members do not always see that the changes being proposed will necessarily be in their best interest. It is not that they believe they cannot improve, only that they believe their current style of operating is satisfactory in helping them gain the ends they seek (Mahlck and Chapman 1993).

Different places, different issues: A reminder -- generalizations are dangerous. There are wide variations in the circumstances facing higher education in the region and important differences in the capacity of governments to respond to the challenges posed by the growth of higher education. Countries might be usefully considered in five groups as described in Figure 2. The

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explosive enrollment growth discussed earlier is primarily occurring in Groups 1-3. Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea face quite different situations, as indicated in the Figure 2. Fixing the right problem also requires fixing it in the right location.

Strategies for improving performance of academic staff: As discussed earlier, actions to improve recruitment and performance of college and university faculty have interconnected consequences and need to be understood and implemented within a systems perspective. Nonetheless, a number of actions need to be considered:

What inputs might realistically improve the composition and performance of academic staff?

Provide a decent salary and conditions of service: While arguably the most effective strategy for improving recruitment and subsequent performance of faculty, it is generally the most difficult to implement. Nonetheless, if an effective solution is the goal, offering a favorable salary and conditions of service are likely to be a valuable strategy. Such a straightforward strategy bumps up against three problems.

First, money is tight. Governments have limited resources, lots of competition for the money, and generally a belief that students, as the main beneficiaries of a higher education, should pay their own way. Governments either don’t have the money and/or would not necessarily give it to the higher education sector even if they did. Second, hiring authorities have to balance the compensation they offer newly recruited faculty against the salaries of faculty already employed in their system who came in under different arrangements and are working for less. The zeal to recruit top talent can inadvertently undermine the morale of the adequate, but middle range, faculty already doing a passable job. Hiring new faculty at a higher salary raises an equity question; raising everyone’s salary raises a fiscal capacity question. Third, universities have to determine the extent they wish to recruit in an international versus a local labor market. If they are after individuals that have international career mobility, prices climb.

Attract foreign trained national faculty back home: One reason foreign doctorally-trained national faculty did not return home after graduation was that their opportunities for research-oriented employment were better abroad. To recruit them now, governments will have to change that calculation. A related reason is that these foreign trained graduates are not always treated with much respect upon their return to their home country. They often complain that they have difficulty finding appropriate employment, they are sometimes treated with suspicion for having been trained abroad, their world views and skill sets may be suspect, and they are sometimes assigned positions unconnected with their advanced training. Some returning to positions they held before leaving discover they lost seniority by being away and were by-passed by peers who lack training but proved their ‘loyalty’ by staying home. Well trained returnees are seen as a threat to those who missed the opportunity to study abroad and resent the possibility that returnees would be treated better than they have been treated. Some evidence suggests that at least in one major university in Cambodia, foreign trained returnees threaten the less well-trained but more senior leadership institutions that sent them for training. In short, some governments and universities need to take more aggressive action to protect their investment by reconsidering their repatriation policies.

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Fund advanced education for talented prospective researchers: Governments will need to encourage more secondary school and college graduates to earn advanced degrees in science and engineering in world-class centers universities. That encouragement most likely involves government scholarships and loans for students capable of university teaching and research. Building the academic staff this way is expensive, slow, and the history of graduates actually returning is not particularly positive. Nonetheless, internationally respected research requires internationally respected researchers. One caution: Lowering the cost for talented college graduates to obtain internationally respected graduate degrees is probably a poor investment unless, at the same time, universities improve the attractiveness of employment as a faculty member in the home country. Subsidizing graduate study is only sensible if there is reason to believe the recipients of the subsidy will actually return to an academic career.

Develop research partnerships as a way to build research capacity: Building research capacity has to start with a cadre of well-trained, committed faculty interested in conducting research. Recruiting these faculty members needs to involve both a long- and a short-term strategy. The long-term strategy is to strengthening the teaching of science and technology at the secondary school level in order to prepare and entice more secondary graduates to pursue science and engineering in college and on into graduate school. Of course, that does little to solve the immediate problem. The shorter term strategy may need to involve several parts: such things as recruitment of those who went abroad to study and did not return, developing collaborations with local business and industry in a position to support campus-based research, and reducing the teaching loads of those capable and interested in conducting research.

In some countries (worldwide) universities develop partnerships with business and industry that provide some level of cost-sharing on research facilities and equipment. For example, some universities sell computer time to industry to off-set the cost of operating campus-based mainframe computers. In other cases, advanced graduate students work in laboratories of hospitals and businesses conducting collaborative research and gaining experience. These strategies, however, tend to operate at only a limited scale. They require buyers for the computer time and business that want to collaborate. While these are strategies that should be pursued, they are unlikely to resolve the demand for trained researchers.

A further type of partnership is represented by the growing variety and number of university twinning arrangements across Asia (Sakamoto and Chapman, in press; Chapman, Cummings and Postiglione, in press). While many cross border collaborative programs are focused on the delivery of instruction, cross national institutional partnerships that focus on research are also growing in size and sophistication. International research collaboration is now a major trends in academic research worldwide (Vincent-Lancrin, 2009). This trend is reflected in the growth of internationally co-authored articles (in terms of institutional affiliation). Between 1988 and 2005, the total number of international articles more than doubled, increasing from 8 to 18% of all scientific articles (Vincent-Lancrin, in press).

How might incentives systems be designed and administered to best encourage desired faculty

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behavior?

Create incentive systems that matter: Money matters, but so do other things. While the incentive value of different benefits may differ across cultures, it is important that education leaders know what actions and rewards under their ability to allocate have motivational value to academic staff. In some cases this may be free or subsidized housing, bestowing special recognition, or improving internet access. Within the area of research, incentives include dedicated time for research, legal protections for intellectual property rights, and easy access to the technology and data bases central to much modern research.

The determination of what benefits have real incentive value is an empirical question. Research can be conducted to identify those benefits capable of motivating faculty. At the same time, some incentives can have a short half-life. When an incentive is used constantly, it can come to be seen as an entitlement and lose its ‘specialness’. Removing such an incentive can come to be seen as a penalty. Consequently, it is necessary to keep incentives fresh and inventive.

Create incentives that encourage business and industry to draw on universities for research: Governments can promote university-based research through policies that stimulate private sector demand for university-based research (Hanson and Lehmann, 2006; OECD 2000; Chapman 2008). Among other things, there must be: A strong entrepreneurial climate Independence for faculty members to pursue research they believe is important Strong legal protections for intellectual property rights Favorable regulatory policies Framework for commercialization of new products and ideas A stable and supportive macroeconomic environment, including low and stable inflation Liberal trade and foreign direct investment policies that reduce barriers to international

technology transfer Availability of good communication technology infrastructure capable of facilitating

information exchange and reducing the transaction costs of international trade and foreign investment flows

How might accountability systems be improved in ways that encourage more effective faculty performance?

Institute a fair, relevant and consistent accountability system: University faculty and administrators are caught in networks of reciprocal obligations in which professional and personal relationships are interwoven in complicated ways. Consequently, it is not unusual for special considerations in professional transactions to be asked or offered based on hierarchical relationships, social connections, or family links. It is often extremely difficult to withstand the social pressure. Those asking special consideration today may be the same individuals whose favor you may need tomorrow (Chapman, Al-Barwani and Ameen 2009).

While such practices may be widely used, such networks can undercut the integrity of accountability systems. They loosen, even break, the link between personal accomplishment and professional reward. If government and institution leaders across East Asia are to raise the

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quality of higher education, they will need to persuade faculty members that their merit and performance will make a difference in their career advancement.

Improve transparency in personnel decisions: Professional recognition that leads to progressive career advancement is a powerful incentive if allocated in a way that honors the most deserving using criteria and procedures that are clearly understood and transparent. The presumption is that when decisions are more transparent, they will be grounded in more objective data. Such transparency allows faculty members the information they need to gauge their own standing, relative to their peers, and use that information in modifying their professional behavior and charting their career path.

Reduce non-academic factors in performance assessment: As discussed earlier, ideology is a factor in promotion decisions in a number of East Asian countries, most notably Laos, Vietnam and China. Party loyalty, if not an overt filter, may shade how candidates are evaluated. This shading constrains academic freedom and is a chilling influence on creative thinking.

What actions can be taken to increase the professionalization of higher education faculty in ways that improve the outcomes of higher education?

Develop professional networks and encourage faculty participation in those networks: Professional organizations can serve three purposes. First, they create a context in which faculty from the same field can meet, interact, and share ideas about their instruction and research. Such interaction help faculty break out of and go beyond the steep hierarchy that may operate within the confines of individual higher education institutions. Second, in industrialized countries, these professional organizations often play a key role in formulating and enforcing professional codes of conduct. Third, these organizations often sponsor publications series and other for a through which teaches and researchers can receive professional critique of their work. Faculty participation can be encouraged by financial support for attending professional meetings and clear valuing of faculty members’ contribution to professional networks in the promotion process.

Develop and enforce a clear code of conduct and professional performance: One factors contributing to inattentive or inappropriate professional behavior is that the instructional staff have little or no guidance as to what constitute proper professional behavior. For example, in cultures in which it is common to give gifts, instructors may not see anything wrong with accepting small gifts from students who are seeking better grades. Yet, too often a lavish gift is really intended as a covert bribe (Chapman 2005). Instructional staff need guidance on these ethical lines. While establishing an academic culture that promotes meritocracy, honesty, and academic freedom is mandatory for a successful academic system (Altbach 2009), a key component in establishing that culture is a clear code of conduct that establishes what behaviors are appropriate and appropriate.

Introduce a ‘new faculty’ mentoring program: U.S. institutions have had good success with faculty mentoring programs that pair new faculty with more senior, experienced faculty members(Sorcinelli and Austin 1992). The mentors are expected to befriend the newly hired colleagues

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and ensure (a) that they know about basic institutional policies and procedures, (b) that they are familiar with the resources available to them on campus, and (c) that they have someone they can turn to with questions. Mentoring programs can be designed as one-on-one meetings, group meetings, or some combination. Typically, the mentor and mentee are expected to meet on some regular basis, e.g., once a month. Sometimes the program provides lunch for such meetings. Many institutions provide orientation for the mentors to ensure they understand their responsibilities and the resources available to them and to their mentee. In some institutions, the mentoring is specifically focused on teaching. In those cases, the mentor is generally expected to observe one or more of the classes being taught by the new faculty member and offer suggestions for improvement.

Introduce or expand faculty career development programs: In countries in which universities have had to hire promising, but inexperienced, personnel to meet student demand or have hired less promising (but available) personnel, there is a need for systematic and sustained on-the-job capacity development. Even experienced faculty need the support of a faculty development program when they are asked to undertake new instructional tasks. For example, instructional staff in institutions struggling to adopt and utilize new communications and research technologies often face new pedagogical challenges that they are ill-prepared to meet.

While there is considerable literature available on faculty development strategies in the U.S. and other industrialized countries (Sorcinelli, Austin Eddy and Beach 2006; Gappa, Austin and Trice 2007), there is also growing interest across Asian higher education systems. There are a number of professional development activities and programs sponsored on a regional or sub-regional basis, for example, by SEAMEO-REHEID. There are considerably fewer campus-based professional development or instructional support centers. China, in particular, has tried to be proactive in encouraging faculty development. In 1996, the Chinese government issued “Rules for Training Teachers in Higher Education Institutions.” However, a 2002 survey indicated 80% of the respondents still knew very little about these rules (Wei 2005). Overall, the importance of continuing education for instructors is not widely understood, such programs are not widely available, and there are few incentives to encourage faculty to participate in them (Wei 2005).

Many university instructors express interest in undertaking systematic instructional development, expanding the range of pedagogical strategies used in the classroom, retrieving and using electronic information sources in their teaching, and student assessment. However, instructors’supplemental employment sometimes limits their ability to participate in professional development activities. If professional development activities are to be successful in changing the course of faculty careers, instructors must be strongly encouraged to participate and rewarded for actually doing so.

Data needs: As universities go forward, they will need to help faculty balance the multiple competing pressures on them to teach, develop curriculum, conduct research, and take on institutional leadership roles. But solving the right problem requires a flow of evidence as to what issues faculty face, how well they are coping with those issues, and how those issues are changing with time and shifting circumstance. Government and university leaders will need considerable information about the needs of their academic staff. One response to this need is the creation of university-based institutional research units. These units would examine such

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issues as: How much time do instructors spend in preparing lessons? In meeting with and advising students? Do academic staff feel prepared for their teaching and advising responsibilities? How much money do academic staff earn from work outside their university employment? Further, once programs and policies to recruit and retain faculty are developed, universities will need a mechanism to assess the extent to which these programs and policies actually work.

However, such institutional research efforts are only worthwhile if there is a commitment on the part of college and university administrators to act on the information. Such research efforts run the risk of being viewed with suspicion when they uncover criticism of current policies and leadership. Institutions in which there is an institutional culture of transparency and open discussion are most likely to be able to sustain a successful institutional research offices.

Support for higher education development: Across all countries in East Asia, nationalgovernments and the higher education institutions themselves provide the primary impetus for reform and the main source of financial support to underwrite the needed changes. In some cases, governments have looked to international and bilateral development assistance organizations for both funding and technical expertise to assist them in meeting higher education national priorities. To that end, international development organizations, particularly the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have supported higher education projects.

Figures 4 and 5 summarize the objectives and accomplishments of selected World Bank and ADB projects in Asia over the last decade. For the most part, attention to academic staff was an important but secondary consideration. Most funding went for facilities construction, curriculum and materials development, and administrative capacity development. Initiatives targeting academic staff were usually a by-product of projects designed with a different focus. Where faculty upgrading was included, it was often in the form of funds for overseas degree training, though in numbers that some would regard as relatively small. In short, efforts to improve the faculty recruitment, conditions of faculty service, or evaluation of faculty work have not been a central priority of external funding from development assistance organizations.

Conclusion

Higher education systems across East Asia are caught in a vortex of growing (or shrinking) pains. Most governments are struggling to accommodate rapid enrollment increases while pushing universities to be leaders in research that fuels the economy; a few are struggling to cope with declining enrollments and a potential erosion of their higher education system. Across both scenarios, college and university faculty are caught in the cross-currents, expected (in most countries) to do more teaching, more and better research, and exercise more leadership in institution building even as conditions of service erode. At the same time, there is a growing recognition that virtually any solution to the conflicting pressures on higher education systems depends, in large part, on having well-trained, talented, motivated, and engaged instructional and research staff. Over the next decade, governments will be forced (by necessity) to seek sensible strategies for recruiting, compensating, supporting, and evaluating college and university instructional staff. Those strategies should involve attention to at least five areas: adequacy of inputs, availability of appropriate incentives, operation of an effective accountability system,

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decentralization of authority and responsibility, and greater emphasis on professionalization of academic staff.

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43

Table 1

School Age Population Enrolled in Tertiary Education, Total

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Indonesia 20,580,491 20,778,201 20,961,320 21,133,846 21,293,421 21,426,281 21,513,893 21,544,647 21,513,108

Malaysia 2,059,622 2,119,782 2,185,384 2,254,922 2,323,920 2,386,387 2,438,159 2,477,114 2,504,689Philippines 7,706,313 7,837,806 7,975,269 8,119,090 8,267,237 8,418,842 8,572,354 8,726,059 8,882,156Thailand 5,495,119 5,403,279 5,323,580 5,259,501 5,209,021 5,168,537 5,131,944 5,094,563 5,056,489

Cambodia 1,002,457 1,074,901 1,161,162 1,263,046 1,377,875 1,494,352 1,597,514 1,676,784 1,727,000Laos 500,390 510,134 522,781 538,499 556,857 577,549 600,057 623,785 648,761

Mongolia 254,085 256,600 260,398 265,585 271,875 278,842 285,879 292,437 298,628

Viet Nam 7,607,259 7,734,998 7,873,364

China 98,701,353 95,900,865 94,759,578 95,517,463 97,956,850 101,455,563 105,115,204 108,247,820 110,712,166

Hong Kong 478,005 478,278 478,399 478,382 477,834 476,576 474,357 471,070 466,451

Singapore

Japan 8,737,324 8,400,279 8,099,698 7,850,126 7,643,922 7,468,440 7,301,610 7,128,052 6,945,279

Rep. Korea 3,909,938 3,829,198 3,758,562 3,697,144 3,641,418 3,585,701 3,526,401 3,460,084 3,389,331

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Custom Tables function.

44

Table 2

Enrollments in tertiary education. Undergraduate programsa). Public and private. Full and part-time

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Indonesia 2,275,326 2,370,026 2,491,349 2,582,961 2,754,044 2,870,227 2,974,059Malaysia 243,170 279,847 289,221 308,419 351,894 391,485 408,502 386,416Philippines 2,188,067 2,238,495 2,187,747 2,170,550 2,139,113 2,217,889Thailand 1,381,802 1,428,390 1,634,365 1,704,609 1,783,2991) 1,860,149 1,984,082 1,934,200 2,120,301 2

Cambodia 22,108 25,416 32,010 43,210 44,855 56,1651) 75,989 92,340Laos 4,620 6,095 6,750 6,1492) 9,167 13,742 21,499 26,668 35,462Mongolia 60,959 68,967 79,810 85,711 92,391 100,995 116,270 131,268 136,119Viet Nam 600,707 533,063 532,266 545,784 571,340 894,9491) 912,503 1,035,443

China 3,105,901 3,812,718 5,093,948 6,628,711 7,714,476

Hong Kong 85,0212) 83,404 80,461 77,743 78,989Singapore 100,887

Japan 2,778,477 2,856,137 2,894,678 2,920,650 2,941,422 2,976,974 2,983,110 3,042,022 3,034,513Rep. Korea 1,665,664 1,747,531 1,812,292 1,858,105 1,896,702 1,923,333 1,945,203 1,976,413 2,021,762

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Custom Tables function.Notes: a) numbers in table referring to UNESCO ISCED level 5A.1) Estimation by UNESCO UIS; 2) national estimation; 3) calculated based on time span from 2001 to 2007; 4) calculated based on time span from 1999 to 2006; 5) calculated based on times span from 2001 to 2006; 6) calculated based on time span from 2000 to 2007; 7) calculated based on time span from 1999 to 2003; 8) calculated based on time span from 2003 to 2007.

45

Table 3

Number of Higher Institutions in SoutheastAsia by Sector and Type 2007

Country Public Private TotalDegree Non-

degreeSubtotal Degree Non-

degreeSubtotal

Brunei Darussalam 1 10 11 - - - 11Indonesia - - 81 - - 2,435 2,516Lao PDR 24 41 65 28 11 39 104Malaysia 18 40 58 22 519 541 599Myanmar1 - - 105 - - - 105Philippines 424 1,352 1,776 1,363 2,045 3,408 5,184Thailand 66 - 66 54 401 455 521Vietnam 201 - 201 29 - 29 230Timor Leste 1 - 0 6 9 15 15

Source: Southeast Asian Education Data (2007). SEAMEO 1 Source: Yangoncity.com.mm/education/index.asp#Edu5

46

Table 4

Tertiary education coverage indicators, 2006

COUNTRY Total Enrollment

(‘000)

Gross Enrollment

Rate

Number of Graduates

Graduates per 1000

inhabitantsCambodia 57 5% 8,333 1

China 20,636 22% 5,622,795 4Indonesia 3,660 17% 612,975a 3Malaysia 697 29% a 183,940b 8Mongolia 124 47% 23,628 8

Philippines 2,403 28% 410,067 5Thailand 2,359 46% 481,895 a 8Vietnam 1,355 11% c 182,489 b 2

Korea 3,225 91% 607,982 13Source: UIS. a Data from 2004; b From 2005; c Data estimates from VHLSS 2004 (Concept paper)

47

Table 5

China: Student admission from 1998–2004____________________________

Year Number of students admitted

1998 1,084,0001999 1,597,0002000 2,200,0002001 2,600,0002002 2,750,0002003 3,300,000

______2004 7,011,000__Source: (Lai and Lo 2007). Underlying source: Ministry of Education (2002). Report on the development of national educational system 2002 and Xinhau net 26/9/2005.

48

Table 6

Structural diversity of Chinese higher education: 1953–2003_________________________________________Year Total Ministry of Other Provincial/ Education ministries local

Count % Count % Count %1953 181 10 6 31 17 140 771958 791 6 1 80 10 705 891966 434 30 7 153 35 251 581988 1075 36 3 316 29 723 671994 1080 36 3 331 31 713 661999 1071 46 4 248 23 823 772003 1379 73 5 38 3 1268 92

Source: Qiang Zha (2009), Original sources: Department of Planning of Ministry of Education of China (1984, 1986); Department of Planning & Construction of State Education Commission of China (1989); Department of Development & Planning of Ministry of Education of China (1995, 2000, 2004)

49

Table 7

Research and development outcomes

Research outcomes

Scientific & technical journal

articles per million residents

(2003)

Expenditure on R&D % of

GDP

Researchers per million residents

Cambodia 0.37 0.05%a 56 a

China 22.34 1.42%b 926 b

Indonesia* 0.78 0.05%c 433 c

Malaysia 21.70 0.60%d 917 d

Mongolia 2.79 0.26%e 671 e

Philippines* 2.11 0.14%f 109 f

Thailand 16.70 0.26% b ...Vietnam 2.59 0.19% d 505 d

Korea 286.34 3.23% a 5,340 a

Source: Concept paper Source: World Development Indicators and UIS. a Data from 2002; b Data from 2006; c Data from 2001; d Data from 2004; e Data from 2005; f Data from 2003;

50

Table 8

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs

Country 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008Percentage change

2001-2007overall female

Indonesia 217,403 251,542 233,359 271,540 271,891 265,527 22.14

% Female 40.76 39.70 39.31 39.47 39.47 40.89

Malaysia 29,9151) 30,346 34,955 45,1761) 47,0721) 45,246 39,809 31.18(2)

% Female 44.601) 44.60 43.50 47.231) 46.971) 48.09 48.16

Philippines 93,744 93,956 99,015 109,979 113,803 112,9411) 20.21(3)

% Female 54.73 54.73 55.40 55.70 55.701)

Thailand 50,170 50,639 64,055 65,5481) 70,4051) 66,43175,3981

) 17.71(4)

% Female 53.24 53.73 47.42 47.421) 51.471) 53.19 68.071) 43.54

Cambodia 1,066 1,664 2,124 2,126 2,479 3,605 2,498 3,261 53.53(2)

% Female 18.57 18.57 17.80 17.87 17.87 15.62 15.61 11.41 -

Laos 1,070 1,152 1,372 1,456 1,794 1,936 2,287 2,533 3,030 120.85

% Female 31.03 29.51 24.27 36.81 34.50 33.99 31.13 34.11 33.30

Mongolia 5,669 6,642 6,575 5,298 5,366 7,759 8,018 8,290 8,754 33.14

% Female 46.82 46.81 49.03 52.42 53.37 51.69 54.71 55.27 56.05

Viet Nam 28,035 30,309 32,205 35,938 38,608 46,7291) 47,646 53,518 66.18

% Female 36.66 37.92 38.69 39.25 39.70 40.471) 40.45 44.43

China 503,865 523,326 588,6411) 679,888 742,4611) 805,034 1,404,174 1,332,483 1,326,058 125.27

% Female 45.371) 45.37 44.401) 43.58 42.52 41.61 43.17

Hong Kong N/A

% Female N/A

Singapore 14209 N/A

% Female 34.53 N/A

Japan 465,094 472,629 477,161 482,048 490,065 496,370 496,528 511,246 515,732 8.08

% Female 16.64 16.64 16.64 16.64 17.90 17.90

Rep. Korea 136,875 144,185 150,860 163,603 172,572 176,147 190,521 192,579 201,851 33.80

% Female 25.50 26.88 27.08 28.11 28.76 29.28 30.51 30.88 31.51

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Custom Tables function.(1) Estimation by UNESCO UIS; (2) calculated based on time span from 2001 to 2006; (3) calculated based on time span from 2001 to 2005; (4) calculated based on times span from 2002 to 2008.

51

Table 9

Tertiary enrollments, number of teaching staff, instructor:student ratios, selected countries, 1999-2007

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Mongolia Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part time. Total

65272

74025

84970 90275 98031

108738

123824

138019

142411

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Total 5669 6642 6575 5298 5366 7759 8018 8290 8754 Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled students

86.85

89.73

77.38 58.69 54.74 71.36 64.75 60.06 61.47

Students per Teacher24.5

923.8

126.3

6 32.51 34.23 27.11 28.23 30.12 29.02Cambodia Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part time. Total …

22108

25416 32010 43210

45370 56810 75989

92340

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Female 198 309 378 380 443 563 390 372 ... Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled students ...

75.27

83.57 66.42 57.37 79.46 43.97 42.91 ...

Students per Teacher ...13.2

911.9

7 15.06 17.43 12.59 22.74 23.30 ...China Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part time. Total

6365625

7364111

9398581

12143723

15186217

18090814

20601219

23360535

25346279

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Total

503865

523326

588641

679888

742461

805034

1404174

1332483

1326058

Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled students

79.15

71.06

62.63 55.99 48.89 44.50 68.16 57.04 52.32

Students per Teacher12.6

314.0

715.9

7 17.86 20.45 22.47 14.67 17.53 19.11Hong Kong (China), SAR Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part time. Total ... ... ... ...

146039

147724

152294

155324

157858

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Total ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled students … … … … … … … … … Students per Teacher ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...Indonesia Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part time. Total ... ...

3017887

3175833

3441429

3551092

3660270

3657429

3755187

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Total ... ...

217403

251542

233359

271540

271891 ...

265527

Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled ... ... 72.0 79.21 67.81 76.47 74.28 ... 70.71

52

students 4

Students per Teacher ... ...13.8

8 12.63 14.75 13.08 13.46 ... 14.14Japan Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part time. Total

3940756

3982069

3972468

3966667

3984400

4031604

4038302

4084861

4032625

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Total

465094

472629

477161

482048

490065

496370 496528

511246

515732

Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled students

118.02

118.69

120.12

121.52

123.00 123.12

122.95

125.16

127.89

Students per Teacher 8.47 8.43 8.33 8.23 8.13 8.12 8.13 7.99 7.82Lao People's Democratic Republic Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part time. Total

12076

14149

16745 23018 28117 33760

47424

56716

75003

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Total 1070 1152 1372 1456 1794 1936 2287 2533 3030 Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled students

88.61

81.42

81.93 63.25 63.80 57.35 48.22

44.66 40.40

Students per Teacher11.2

912.2

812.2

0 15.81 15.67 17.44 20.7422.3

9 24.75Malaysia Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part time. Total

473357

549205

557118

632309

725865 731077

696760

749165 ...

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Total ...

29915

30346 34955 45176 47072

45246

39809 ...

Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled students ... 5.45 5.45 5.53 6.22 6.44 6.49 5.31 ...

Students per Teacher ...18.3

618.3

6 18.09 16.07 15.53 15.4018.8

2 ...Philippines Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part time. Total

2208635 ...

2432002

2467267

2427211 2420997

2402649

2483988 ...

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Total

93744 ...

93956 99015

109979 113803

112941 ... ...

Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled students

42.44 ...

38.63 40.13 45.31 47.01 47.01 ... ...

Students per Teacher23.5

6 ...25.8

8 24.92 22.07 21.27 21.27 ... ...Republic of Korea Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part time. Total

2837880

3003498

3129899

3210142

3223431 3224875

3210184

3204036

3208591

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Total

136875

144185

150860

163603

172572 176147

190521

192579

201851

Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled students

48.23

48.01

48.20 50.96 53.54 54.62 59.35

60.11 62.91

Students per Teacher20.7

320.8

320.7

5 19.62 18.68 18.31 16.8516.6

4 15.90Singapore

Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 1836

53

private. Full and part time. Total

27

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Total ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

14209

Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled students ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 77.38 Students per Teacher ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 12.92Thailand Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part time. Total

1814096

1900272

2095694

2155334

2205581 2251453

2359127

2338572

2503572

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Total

50170

50639 ... 64055 65548 ... ...

70405

66431

Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled students

27.66

26.65 ... 29.72 29.72 ... ...

30.11 26.53

Students per Teacher36.1

637.5

3 ... 33.65 33.65 ... ...33.2

2 37.69Viet Nam Enrolment in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part time. Total

810072

732187

749253

784675

829459

1328485

1354543 ...

1587609

Teaching staff in total tertiary. Public and private. Full and part-time. All programs. Total

28035

30309

32205 35938 38608 46729

47646 ...

53518

Teaching Staff per 1000 enrolled students

34.61

41.40

42.98 45.80 46.55 35.17 35.17 ... 33.71

Students per Teacher28.9

024.1

623.2

7 21.83 21.48 28.43 28.43 ... 29.66

54

Table 10

Number of Teachers in Tertiary Education per 1000 Inhabitants, 1999-2008

Country 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Mongolia 86.85 89.73 77.38 58.69 54.74 71.36 64.75 60.06 61.47 ...

Cambodia ... 75.27 83.57 66.42 57.37 79.46 43.97 42.91 ... ...

China 79.15 71.06 62.63 55.99 48.89 44.50 68.16 57.04 52.32 ...

Hong Kong ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Indonesia ... ... 13.88 12.63 14.75 13.08 13.46 ... 14.14 ...

Japan 8.47 8.43 8.33 8.23 8.13 8.12 8.13 7.99 7.82 ...

Lao PDR 11.29 12.28 12.20 15.81 15.67 17.44 20.74 22.39 24.75 ...

Malaysia ... 18.36 18.36 18.09 16.07 15.53 15.40 18.82 ... ...

Philippines 23.56 ... 25.88 24.92 22.07 21.27 21.27 ... ... ...

Korea 20.73 20.83 20.75 19.62 18.68 18.31 16.85 16.64 15.90 ...

Singapore ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 12.92 ...

Thailand 36.16 37.53 ... 33.65 33.65 ... ... 33.22 37.69 32.13

Vietnam 28.90 24.16 23.27 21.83 21.48 28.43 28.43 ... 29.66 ...Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Custom Table Function, retrieved November 2009.

55

Table 11

Earned S&E doctoral degrees in selected regions and locations, by field: 2000 or most recent year

Region and location

All doctoral degrees All S&E

Natural sciena

Math/ computer scienc

Agricult scienc

Social/behaviorsciences Engin

Non-S&E

All regions 207,383 114,337 46,715 7,389 7,761 20,054 32,418 93,046

Asiab 47,489 24,409 8,658 373 3,085 1,467 10,826 23,080China (2001) 13,001 8,153 2,655 NA 536 621 4,341 4,848India (1997) 10,408 4,764 3,498 NA 968 NA 298 5,644

Japanc (2001) 16,078 7,401 1,586 NA 1,241 610 3,964 8,677Kyrgyzstan 396 256 161 19 8 20 48 140South Korea 6,143 2,865 614 247 242 108 1,654 3,278Taiwan (2001) 1,463 970 144 107 90 108 521 493

Middle Eastb 5,759 2,902 1,307 241 265 495 594 2,857

Sub-Saharan Africab 2,064 679 253 0 142 143 141 1,385

Europeb 97,840 53,119 23,567 4,412 2,577 8,927 13,636 44,721European Free Trade Association 3,391 1,418 729 129 76 149 335 1,973Central/Eastern Europe 21,686 12,481 4,204 226 847 2,775 4,429 9,205

Georgia 467 287 91 NA 15 120 61 180

Americab 50,544 31,198 12,015 2,188 1,512 8,738 6,745 19,346North/Central America 46,475 28,590 10,824 2,095 1,039 8,421 6,211 17,885South America 4,069 2,608 1,191 93 473 317 534 1,461

Source: Science & Engineering Indicators – 2004, http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind04/c2/c2s5.htm NA not availablea Includes physical, biological, earth, atmospheric, and ocean sciences.b Includes only those locations for which relatively recent data are available.c Includes thesis doctorates, called ronbun hakase, earned by employees in industry.d Data for the United Kingdom were revised. Data are now rounded to the nearest 10. Detail may not sum to total because of rounding.NOTES: Data for doctoral degrees use the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED 97), level 6. S&E data do not include health fields.SOURCES: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Center for Education Research and innovation, Education at a Glance 2002; United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), UNESCO Institute for Statistics database, http://www.unesco.org/statistics; Iberoamerican Network of Science and Technology Indicators (RICYT), Principales Indicadores de Ciencia y Tecnología (Buenos Aires, 1999); China—National Research Center for Science and Technology for Development, special tabulations (2002); India—Department of Science and Technology, Research and Development Statistics 1996–97 (New Delhi, 1999); Japan—Government of Japan, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Monbusho Survey of Education, special tabulations (Tokyo, 2003), and Division of Higher Education, special tabulations, 2003; Taiwan—Ministry of Education, Educational Statistics of the Republic of China: 2002 (Taipei, 2002); France—National Ministry of Education and Research, Rapport sur les Études Doctorales (Paris, 2001); Germany—Federal Statistical Office, Prüfungen an Hochschulen 2001 (Wiesbaden, 2002); United Kingdom—Higher Education Statistics Agency, special tabulations (Cheltenham, 2003), Russia—Center for Science Research and Statistics, unpublished tabulations, 2001; Argentina and Chile—RICYT; Brazil—Ministry of Education and Culture, Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, unpublished tabulations, 2001; Mexico—National Association of Universites and Institutions of Higher Education, Anuario Estadistico 2001: Población Escolar de Posgrado (Mexico, 2002); and United States—National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics, Science and Engineering Doctorate Awards: 2001, NSF 03-300 (Arlington, VA, 2002).

56

Table 12

Production and saturation rate of graduates with doctoral degrees, selected countries

Graduation rates at doctoral level as percentage of relevant

age cohort. 20041

PhD graduates, per million population 2Annual growth

rate of total PhDs, 2000 to 2005 2

All DoctoratesDoctorates in Science and Engineering

TotalIn

EngineeringIn

ScienceOthers

China 0.1 0.1 NA NA NA NA

Japan 0.8 0.3 119.6 26.2 18.8 74.7 4.6

Korea 1.1 0.4 174.9 47.1 18.3 109.6 6.6

1 Source: derived from: OECD. (2007). OECD science, technology and industry: Scoreboard 2007. Paris: OECD, p.43. 2 Source: adapted from : OECD. (2008). OECD science, technology and industry: Outlook 2008. Paris: OECD, p.53.

57

Table 13

Research Staff and Technicians

Country Researchers (FTE) per million

inhabitants

% of Researchers

(FTE) in Higher

Education

Research Technicians

(FTE) per million

inhabitants

Year

Cambodia 16.86 a 12.45 a 12.82 2002

China 1070.94 b 17.44 b … 2007Hong Kong 2649.96 49.88 459.25 2006Indonesia 205.33 61.18 … 2001Japan 5572.97 26.08 588.86 2007Lao PDR 15.53 ab 34.48 ab … 2002Malaysia 371.50 52.58 43.77 2006Mongolia … … … …Philippines 80.65 28.58 10.49 2005Korea 46.27 c 16.86 c 719.92 c 2007Singapore 6087.87 34.83 528.50 2007Thailand 31.95 58.93 159.52 2005Vietnam 115.35 32.38 --- 2002

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Custom Tables function, constructed October 2009a: incomplete data based on national estimatesb: regional data sourcec: excludes social sciences

58

Table 14

Educational Attainment of Researchers

Country Researchers (FTE) per million

inhabitants

Researchers with ISCED

5A

Researchers with ISCED

5B

Researchers with ISCED 6

Year

Cambodia 16.86 a 205.85 … 17.1 2002China 1070.94 b … … … …Hong Kong 2649.96 6998.7 1693.2 377 2006Indonesia 205.33 … … … …Japan 5572.97 … … … …Lao PDR 15.53 ab … … … …Malaysia 371.50 6153 384.6 2366.8 2006Mongolia … … … … …Philippines 80.65 1593 4162 952 2005Republic of Korea 46.27 c … … … …Singapore 6087.87 20548.19 … 4067.75 2007Thailand 31.95 17017 … 2862 2005Vietnam 115.35 … … … …

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Custom Tables Function, constructed in October 2009. a: incomplete data based on national estimates

b: regional data sourcec: excludes social sciences

59

Table 15

Expenditures on Research and Development as a percent of GDP, percent of R&D performed and financed by higher education

CountryExpenditure on R&D as %

of GPD

R&D % Performed by Higher Education

R&D % Financed by

Higher Education

Year

Cambodia .04 11.79 … 2002

China 1.49 8.48 … 2007Hong Kong .80 45.29 .21 2006Indonesia .04 (2005) 4.64 (2001) .15 2005/2001Japan 3.44 12.59 5.60 2007Lao PDR .03 12.19 1.99 2002Malaysia .63 9.89 9.68 2006Mongolia .22 12.70 .49 2007Philippines .11 21.33 5.98 2005Korea 3.47 10.65 .98 2007Singapore 2.60 21.03 .94 2007Thailand .23 38.28 14.92 2005VietNam .19 17.90 .66 2002Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Custom Tables function, constructed in November 2009.

60

Table 16

R&D Performance by Sector, Selected Countries in Asia

Country/Regions Sector of R&D Performance(Percent of GERD)

Business Govern-ment

Higher Education

East Asia 62.2 21.7 14.4NIEs 63.0 11.7 18.8Hong Kong 33.2 3.1 63.6Korea 76.1 12.6 10.1Singapore 63.8 10.9 25.4Taiwan, China 62.2 24.8 12.3South East Asia 51.3 22.1 15.7Indonesia 14.3 81.1 4.6Malaysia 65.3 20.3 14.4Philippines 58.6 21.7 17.0Thailand 43.9 22.5 31.0China 62.4 27.1 10.5Developed Countries (21) 62.9 13.3 27.0Japan 75.0 9.3 13.7United States 70.1 12.2 13.6Latin America (11) 29.0 27.2 32.7Emerging Europe (9) 42.7 29.8 20.1Source: LaRocque 2007. As Cited in Gill, Indermit and Homi Kharas (2006) An East Asian Renaissance: Ideas for Economic Growth, World Bank, Washington DC, p. 120.Note: Data are for 2002-2005, latest available year. Medians are used for regions and sub-regions.

61

Table 17

Full and Part Time Tertiary Enrollments by Academic Area

Country General Program

Education Humanities and Arts

Social Science, Business and Law

Science Engineering, Manufact-uring and

Construction

Agricul-ture

Health&Welfare

Services

Cambodia 4,707 4,624 18,292 70,471 11,229 3,780 2,994 5,545 30China … … … … … … … … …Hong Kong a 71 8,450 16,683 57,531 20,667 25,923 … 9,836 6,159Indonesia … 562,982 18,060 1,904,346 305,371 614,927 185,838 147,955 …Japan … 295,796 633,505 1,173,053 117,633 636,299 89,310 504,816 229,194Lao PDR … 13,626 14,628 41,851 3,281 8,092 4,625 2,009 1,030Malaysia … 70,147 69,145 201,040 142,278 162,443 21,121 47,649 22,279Mongolia … 18,249 12,869 57,805 10,018 24,416 4,115 13,148 8,412Philippines … 409,623 78,392 678,362 286,769 376,224 78,201 319,774 17,281Korea … 203,284 585,050 703,135 281,720 893,592 39,844 297,249 204,717

Singapore … 6,157 17,170 70,461 31,134 58,519 83 12,233 2,458Thailand … … … … … … … … …VietNam 58,946 402,653 67,314 550,714 … 332,844 107,712 58,967 75,656

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statisitcs, Custom Tables function a: incomplete data based on national estimates

62

Table 18

Expenditures and Salaries

Country

Public Expenditure on Education as % of GPD

Public Expenditure Tertiary Education and Administration as % of Education Expenditure

Public Expenditure on Salaries as% of Tertiary Education Expenditure

Year

Cambodia 1.6 3.4 … 2007

China … … …

Hong Kong 3.5 31.0 … 2007

Indonesia 3. … … 2007

Japan 35 17.5 48.4 2006

Lao PDR 30 9.2* 15.9 2007/*2005

Malaysia 4.7 36.1 … 2006

Mongolia 5.1 … … 2007

Philippines 2.5 13.3 … 2005

Korea 4.2 15.0 44.5 2006

Singapore 3.2 34.4 34.4 2009

Thailand .0 17.9 … 2007

Vietnam 53 22.2 … 2008

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statisitcs, Custom Tables Function, retrieved November 2009

63

Table 19

Japan, Republic of Korea, and OECD: Projected change in faculty-student ratio

Scenario 11) Scenario 22)

Country 2005 2015 2020 2025 2015 2020 2025

Japan 11 9.6 9.5 9 10.1 10.5 10.2Rep. Korea 24.4 22.5 20.2 16.4 22.5 20.4 16.7OECD 17.2 16.7 15.7 15.3 18.2 18.3 18.8Source: adapted from: OECD. (2008). Higher education to 2030. Paris: OECD, p. 60.Note: Both scenarios are computed based on the assumption that faculty numbers remain constant1) Scenario 1: if student numbers remain at 2005 level.2) Scenario 2: if student numbers continue to grow/ decline according to particular national trend until 2005.

64

Figure 1

Aspirations for future higher education growth

Country Aspirations for future higher education growthCentral and West AsiaAfghanistan By the end or 2010, student enrolment in universities will be 100,000 with at

least 35% female students; curriculum in Afghanistan's public universities will be revised to meet the development needs of the country and private sector growth.1

Kazakhstan Not less than 30% of secondary school graduates will continue education in HE system as a result of increased access and prestige of HE and the need to satisfy social and market demand. 6

The Kazakhstan Strategy Development Plan up to 2010 focuses on strengthening of universities; support to and integration of Kazakhstan HEIs into the world education system, among other goals. 7

Pakistan Assuming past trend will be sustained, enrollments in universities, DAIs, COEs, and distance learning institutions are projected to double by 2010 and triple by 2015, reaching 1.0 and 1.9 million by these dates, respectively. Accordingly, the enrollment rate in these institutions would rise from 2.5 percent to 6.2 percent of the 17-23 age group (pg 48).12

Tajikistan A main priority in reforming the higher education is priority in financing higher Education.13

Uzbekistan National Program Third stage (2005 and over) emphasizes formation and development of the national … higher school and capacity building, staffing and informational basis of HE educational institutions.14

East AsiaChina The national goal is to achieve a 15% GER in higher education by 2010.2

Among China’s objectives for 2001-2050 is to increase the GER to 23% in 2010, 40% in 2020 and 55% in 2050; to have 1,500 engineers and scientists per million population in 2020 and 3,000 per million population in 2050.3

South AsiaIndia The 11th Five Year Plan aims to expand capacity in all institutions of higher

education by 50 per cent over the next three years. 4 The education scheme involves a package consisting of fellowships for a five-year period in basic sciences, social sciences, humanities and applied sciences and creation of 100 additional posts in colleges and universities and the setting up of computer laboratories in all government colleges and university departments and scientific labs in schools and colleges. 4

Southeast AsiaIndonesia Higher Education Long Term Strategy 2003-2010: The structural adjustment

to be carried out aims to have, by the year of 2010, a healthy higher education system, provide corresponding framework and structures.5

Lao PDR At the University level the goals are selective expansion … to continue the training-upgrading of teachers, by year 2020. Strive to increase the share of government budget for education; increase enrollment of girls and ethnic minorities in higher education and increase the student population ratio from 520/100,000 by year 2010 to 650/100,000 by 2015 and 840/100,000 by 2020. 16

65

Figure 1, continuedMalaysia Fundamental research will be activated by application to get grants of RM300

million in the 9th Malaysia plan (2006-2010); increasing the of post graduate students from 18 to 25% in the year 2010 becomes the target of MOHE. Also planned is the increase in the HE enrollment numbers of the 17-23 age cohort to 40% by the year 2010.10 The Malaysian nation’s Vision 2020 (Wawasan 2020) promotes a paradigm shift from an economy based on labor-intensive and lower-end manufactured products to an economy based on knowledge as part of the process of becoming a fully developed nation. 11

Vietnam In its Five-Year Socio-Economic Development Plan 2006-2010, the GOV sets itself an overall quantitative goal of increasing enrollment in universities and colleges by 10% annually, to reach a level of 200 students per 10,000 population by 2010.15

OtherKorea New University for Regional Development (NURI) is one of the ministry's key

projects supporting regional universities to develop areas of specialty and strength. An estimation of 1.4 trillion KRW is to be invested over a period of five years to build capacity for innovation and human resources development of regional universities during 2004-2008.8

Korea is preparing for the 2nd Brain Korea 21 project investment cycle, scaling up.9

Source: Chapman, D.W. (2007). Higher Education, Part 3 in Ordonez, V., Johanson, R. and Chapman, D.W., Investing in Education in the Asia-Pacific Region in the Future: A strategic education sector study, Manila: Asian Development Bank.

Sources: 1 The Afghanistan Compact 2006, p10.; Afghanistan - Strengthening Higher Education Program (2005). Technical Annex, World Bank.2 Wei-Meng, H. in Yonezawa & Kaiser, Eds. (2003). System-Level and Strategic Indicators for Monitoring Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century. Studies on Higher Education3 World Bank (2006). China - Higher Education Reform Project (2006). Implementation Completion and Results Report, Washington DC; World Bank (2006). East Asia Update, Washington DC. 4 Chidambaram on India's biggest challenges. Rediff India Abroad, February 05, 2007. Retrieved May 31, 2007 from http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/feb/05guest1.htm; “12 `flagship schemes” in 11th Five Year Plan. The Hindu, January 21, 2007. Retrieved May 31, 2007, http://www.hindu.com/2007/01/21/stories/2007012104630400.htm5 Djanali, S (2005). Current Update of Higher Education in Indonesia. SEAMEO –RIHED.

6 State Program for Education Development in Kazakhstan in 2005-2010. Astana, Kazakhstan; The Agency of Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Retrieved from http://www.stat.kz/index.php?lang=eng.; UNESCO (2003). Higher education in Asia and the Pacific 1998-2003, p. 67 Zhakenov (2002). Kazakhstan National Report on Higher Education System Development. UNESCO: Almaty).8 New University for Regional Development (NURI). Retrieved May 31, 2007 from http://english.moe.go.kr/; UNESCO (2003). Higher education in Asia and the Pacific 1998-2003, p. 69 Kim, G.-J. (2005). HE reform in South Korea. Policy Perspectives to a Changing World. Retrieved May 31, 2007 from http://english.moe.go.kr/10 Sulaiman, A.-N. (2005).Current Update of Higher education in Malaysia. SEAMEO –RIHED).11 Kamogawa , A. (2003).Higher Education Reform: Challenges towards a Knowledge Society in Malaysia. African and Asian Studies, 2(4), p. 546)12 World Bank (006). Pakistan, An Assessment of the Medium-Term Development Framework (2006). Higher Education Policy Note, p. 3413 European Commission (2005). Higher education in Tajikistan; FTI World Bank (2005). National Strategy For Education Development of the Republic of Tajikistan (2006-2015).

14 UNESCO (2002). EFA Assessment Reports. Uzbekistan, Paris.; EFA Global Monitoring Reports 2005, 2006.15 World Bank (2007). Vietnam: Second Higher Education Project (2007), Washington DC.; Tran Ngoc Ca (2006). Universities as Drivers of the Urban Economies in Asia: The Case of Vietnam. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3949, p.7

16 SEAMEO –RIHED (2005). The Current Situation of Higher Situation in Lao PDR.MOE Report, p.16.; UNESCO (2005). EFA Global Monitoring Report 2005, UNESCO Information System, EFA Global Monitoring Report 2003/4; UNESCO UIS, SEAMEO (2007). Southeast Asian Education Data (2007). Manila.

66

Figure 2

A sample of open universities across Asia

China Beijing Radio and TV UniversityChinese Taipei National Open UniversityThe Open University of Hong KongJiangsu Radio and TV University (China)Karnataka State Open UniversityShanghai TV University (China)Sichuan Radio & TV University(China)

Sri Lanka Open University, Sri LankaSukhothai Thammathirat Open Univ., ThailandThe University of the Philippines Open Univ.Universities Terbuka, IndonesiaVietnam Hanoi Open UniversityYunnan Radio and TV University(China)

67

Figure 3

Higher education systems organized by common characteristics

Group Country groupings

Salient characteristics

1

VietnamMongoliaCambodiaLaos

Lower and low-middle income countries in which the higher education systems are focused primarily on system expansion, increasing enrollments, and infrastructure development.

2

IndonesiaPhilippinesThailand Malaysia

Middle income countries with well established and growing higher education systems; now increasingly focused on quality improvement.

3China

Largest higher education system in the world and fastest growing system in East Asia. Higher education policies and practices are closely watched and influential across other higher education systems in the region

4SingaporeHong Kong

Small, high-income city states with mature, highly respected higher education systems, but characterized by slow or stagnant growth.

5KoreaJapan

Mature higher education systems of respected quality but now facing declining student enrollments

68

Figure 4

Summary of World Bank and Asian Development Bank Experience with Higher Education Loans

Asian Development Bank (ADB)Country Bangladesh Cambodia Indonesia Laos PDR

Name of project

Support to Bangladesh open University

Special rehabilitation project

Higher education Project

Postsecondary rationalization project

Amount (US$ million)

34.3 68.6 235 22

Date 1992-1997 1993-1997 1994-2000 1995-2003Overall assessment

Overall project was considered a success.

Internal efficiency and productivity were improved.

On balance project was rated as efficacious and efficient.

Project rated as highly relevant, very efficient, and highly effective.

ADB World BankCountry Papua New

GuineaIndonesia Vietnam Thailand

Name of project

Higher education Project

Quality of Undergraduate Education

Primary Teacher Development Project

Technical Education

Amount (US$ million)

16.5 71.2 15.6 31.6

Date 1993-2003 1997- 2004 2001-2007 1997 – 2002

Overall assessment

Project judged satisfactory, given the problems encountered.

Project rates as satisfactory

Project rates as satisfactory

Project rates as satisfactory

69

Figure 5

Summary of Recent World Bank and Asian Development Bank Loans to Higher Education in East Asia and Selected Other Asian Countries

Bangladesh-ADBPurpose Infrastructure support to main campus and 10 local study centers; provision of equipment,

furniture, vehicles, instructional materials development, staff development, international and domestic fellowships.

Rationale To prepare teachers for primary and secondary schools; support for Government policy of compulsory primary education; to address shortfall of skilled labor, particularly in agriculture, computer technology, and health

Assessment -- Overall project was considered a success. Judged highly successful than expanding access to education; successfully met needs of disadvantaged groups (women, rural poor). -- Project achieved or exceeded planned targets. However, project had low internal efficiency (e.g., low rate of return, low utilization of University Media Center). -- Following graduation, 2/3 of graduates were employed. Project helped improve living conditions of rural poor

Comments Sustainability will depend on improvements in open University ManagementCambodia-ADB

Purpose Infrastructure rebuilding in transport, power, agriculture, and education: included reconstruction of two teacher training colleges, three technical institutes, and rehabilitation of Phnom Penh University

Rationale -- To help Cambodia) free store essential economic and social infrastructure to forestall further deterioration of basic public services and to establish a basis for further reconstruction efforts following the war and civil disturbances spanning the 1970s and 80s.-- Education component focused on postsecondary education since UNICEF and other donors were working at the primary level.

Assessment Education assistance was generally implemented as envisioned at appraisal. Internal efficiency was enhanced and productivity of higher education system was improved.

Comments Project needed more consultant input than was anticipated.Indonesia-ADB

Purpose To improve academic programs, upgrades staff qualifications, provide better quality teaching, implement appropriate academic policies, improve and facilities, provide consultant services, and provide instructional materials.

Rationale To improve skills of workforce; to diversify production base to less-developed areas of the country

Assessment -- On balance, the project was rated as efficacious. Project largely achieved a physical output targets envisioned at appraisal, e.g., improved curriculum, facilities, equipment, staff development, and increased enrollment. The majority of graduates found jobs; employers were generally satisfied with graduates’ job in performance.-- The benefits of the education component were found to be enhanced internally efficiency and higher productivity at rehabilitated schools and colleges at Phnom Penh University.-- On balance, the project was rated as efficient. Estimated internal rate of return was 9.4%, slightly less than the ADB benchmark economic opportunity cost of 12%.

Comments -- Consultant services were 55.7% of appraisal estimate, largely because a large number of local Indonesian consultants were used. Management and academic staff thought this component was one of the most successful of the project.-- The fellowship component was successful but returning fellows were discouraged by lack of University support for new course development and lack of funding for research -- There were problems with ongoing maintenance of facilities after they were built and updating of curricula. There was a need for university to increase cost recovery.

70

Figure 4, continuedLaos PDR-ADB

Purpose To set up a multi-campus national University, develop and operational framework for and you (including a management system, academic structure, supporting mechanisms).

Rationale Shortage of higher education graduates poses obstacle to sustain development gains.Assessment -- Project was rated as highly relevant and very efficient. The cost of education at NUOL

was US$88/student while cost of education at the 10 postsecondary institutions before consolidation was US$264/student. After cost recovery, NUOL student costs was estimated at US$57/student. Overall the project was rated as highly effective.

Comments Project amalgamated 10 postsecondary education institutions to create the National University of Laos (NUOL)

Papua New Guinea-ADBPurpose To enable the higher education system to respond to manpower and human resource

development needs, to improve primary and secondary education through teacher education, and to rationalize and consolidate administration and management of higher education to achieve coordinated and cost-effective development of higher education sector.

Rationale -- The higher education system was unable to produce the required number of trained personnel to exploit the country’s natural resources or to assist with its social and economic development. -- Higher education was not producing enough graduates to provide needed number of primary and secondary school teachers

Assessment Overall performance was judged satisfactory, given the problems encountered.Comments Difficulties encountered in inadequate attention to implementation issues lead to excessive

project duration. Delays in contracting resulted in the loss of good fellowship candidates; government freeze on staff recruiting in the public sector restricted government capacity to fill vacancies.The number of short-term consultants was too large for government to effectively management and the lack of counterparts staff constrained workProject was rated as relevant. Country and higher education institutions benefited. Capacities of the universities have been enlarged and strengthened.Enrollment gains anticipated an appraisal were not achieved

Indonesia-World BankPurpose (a) To improve the quality of undergraduate study programs in national priority fields.

(b) To promote a more cost effective allocation of public funds by directing resources to high priority fields at both public and private universities.

Rationale (a) Improving Quality through Competitive Grants to Undergraduate Study Programs in Public and Private Universities. (b) Support to the Central Project Coordinating Unit (CPCU). (c) [Improve Discipline Service Centers through Direct Investment and Performance-Based Awards – this component cancelled]

Assessment Project objectives were achieved, given the economic crises, political unrest, terrorist attacks in East Asia during the period of project implementation.

Comments -- At project completion, about 50 percent of the grant recipients met three of the four primary performance targets. Although 27 percent of preliminary applications received were from private institutions, no private programs were selected for final awards.-- This project contributed substantially to university staff development by funding more than 180 overseas postgraduate study opportunities, and more than 600 staff to attend and present papers at international conferences. -- Focus of grants were given to support curriculum development through (a) teaching/ lecture note grants, (b) project grants, (c) research grants, and (d) policy grants. During the second year of project implementation the DGHE eased requirements for nationally centralized curricula to give greater freedom to individual universities in determining the content of academic programs for key disciplines. Centralized core curricular requirements were consequently minimized thereby shifting the curriculum focus more toward to local content.

71

Figure 4, continuedThailand-World Bank

Purpose (a) To improve the management capacity within the Royal Institute of Technology campuses; (b) strengthen curricula and linkages with industry; (c) upgrade workshops and laboratories through the provision of up-to-date equipment and physical improvements to building; (d) expand the supply and upgrade the quality of instructional materials; and (e) strengthen the practical skills of key teaching staff in advanced technologies through overseas training.

Rationale To improve linkage between education and labor market.

Assessment Based on overall outcomes, this project was rated as satisfactory.Comments The justification for this assessment was based on: (a) satisfactory project. outputs;

(b) sustained Government commitment throughout the project implementation period; (c) good private sector participation; (d) an effective implementation of the project by RIT; and (e) strong indications of client satisfaction in the implementation and outcomes.

Vietnam-World BankPurpose Project focused on teacher training. The objective of the project was to lay the

foundation for a nationwide program to upgrade the quality of the primary teaching force.

Rationale Project was designed to enhance the skills and work habits of primary school teachers and principals, along with the provision of more teaching and learning resources and their better management. Project was to help address large disparities in quality of provision, manifested in very significant differences in achievement and other key performance indicators (KPIs) between pupils in urban areas and those in remote, mountainous locations.

Assessment This project was rated as satisfactory.Comments Project was to support the phased introduction from 2002 to 2006 of a new primary

school curriculum characterized by new teaching methods, activity-based learning, increased teaching hours, and relevant applications of pupils’ knowledge and understanding to the rapid changes in the economy and the society. Effective implementation of this new curriculum depended on teachers having greater in-depth knowledge of curriculum content and how children learn in different contexts, an enhanced repertoire of pedagogical skills, and a commitment to ongoing professional development

Compiled by author based on World Bank and ADB reports.