The Governance and Management of Universities in Asia

Global Influences and Local Responses

Chang Da Wan, Molly N.N. Lee, Hoe Yeong Loke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429765162
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

This volume seeks to identify and explore the dynamics of global forces on the development of higher education in Asia, in particular, how neoliberalism has affected reforms on university governance and management in the region. It includes a set of country-specific studies on how various countries have responded to the dominant neoliberal ideology at the systemic, institutional, and process levels. The focus is on the relationship between the state and the universities, which is usually reflected in the degree of autonomy and accountability allowed in a particular higher education system. The selected countries are Cambodia, China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand. Each case study examines the establishment of corporatised or autonomous universities in the country focusing on (i) the acts, reports, and/or policies that led to such a move as well as the rationales behind the move; (ii) the changes in the governance and organisational structure of the universities, highlighting the kinds of autonomy that the universities have; (iii) the new management strategies, techniques, and practices that have been introduced to the university including the internal and external quality assurance mechanisms, and (iv) some of the tensions, conflicts, and acts of resistance that may have emerged.

1
Introduction

Molly N.N. Lee, Chang Da Wan, and Hoe Yeong Loke

University reforms are very much the result of interactions between global influences and national responses. The development of universities is embedded in their socio-economic and political context and, at the same time, it is also influenced by global trends which provide a source of policy borrowing and a backdrop of policy choices. In recent years, the development of higher education throughout the world has been heavily influenced by the hegemonic economic discourse of neoliberalism. The purpose of this book is to examine how neoliberal ideology has been incorporated in university reforms in the Asian region, in particular, in the realm of university governance and management.

Neoliberalism and higher education

Neoliberalism is defined as a “theory of political economic practices which proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade” (Harvey, 2005, p. 2). The policy tenets that derived from this ideology emphasise (i) re-establishing the rule of the market, (ii) reducing taxes, (iii) reducing public expenditure, (iv) deregulating the private sector, (v) privatising the private sector, and (vi) replacing the concept of “public good” with “individual responsibility” (Nef & Robles, 2000). Neoliberalism privileges the market over the state in the provision of public services. Market is deemed the best mechanism to allocate resources to society. Neoliberalism seeks to make the existing market wider and to create new markets where they did not exist before (Connell, 2013).

Under the neoliberal ideology, many governments are cutting back their public and social expenditure, which has resulted in drastic cuts in public funding to universities. In more matured higher education systems such as those in the West, the “retreat of the state” from direct funding and provision of higher education began in earnest in the 1980s, most notably in the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Sirat & Kaur, 2010; Barr & Crawford, 2005). To overcome these budgetary constraints, universities needed to seek alternative sources of funding, and they were given the freedom to generate their own revenues through engaging in different kinds of market-related activities. In many aspects, higher education is often seen as a dynamic business which seeks profit from the buying and selling of education “services” (Ball, 2012).

As universities find themselves operating increasingly in a competitive and market-oriented environment, they need to be flexible and to respond quickly to changing market demands. Therefore, many academic leaders recognise the nature and force of these pressures and have started searching ways to make their universities more entrepreneurial and autonomous. As many universities continue to grow and expand within this climate of limited resources, their stakeholders, including the state, become concerned with the quality of education they are able to provide. This leads, in turn, to universities being increasingly subjected to external pressures to achieve greater accountability for their performances.

Besides the marketisation of higher education, neoliberal policies also place great emphasis on accountability and performativity. As pointed out by Olssen and Peters (2005),

In neoliberalism the patterning of power is established on contract, which in turn is premised upon a need for compliance, monitoring and accountability organized in a management line and established through a purchase contract based on measurable outputs. (p. 325)

The role of the state in higher education is to create an appropriate market by providing the conditions, laws, and institutions for its operation. The state in its new role develops techniques of auditing, accounting, and management. Universities are encouraged to formulate clearly defined visions and missions, adopt new public management techniques and a results-based management approach. Under neoliberal influence, the relationship between the state and universities is being redefined in that the state demands more accountability on the one hand and the universities insisting on more autonomy on the other hand (Neave & van Vught, 1991). The emerging trend in university governance and management is an increase in institutional autonomy in return for more public accountability.

Following this global trend, a number of countries in the Asian region have undertaken reforms on the governance and management of their public universities. For example, in Japan in 2004, national public universities were corporatised and became independent administrative corporations in the country’s move to revitalise the university system and in its attempt to create dynamic, internationally competitive universities (Yamamoto, 2004). Similarly, Malaysia, Singapore, and South Korea have corporatised their public universities whereas autonomous universities were established in Indonesia and Thailand. Generally, the shift in university governance and management has been towards greater institutional autonomy and public accountability. University leaders and ministry officials have to work out different ways in relating and working with one another. Furthermore, ministries have established external quality assurance mechanisms to supervise and monitor the performance of universities while university leaders have institution-alised new management practices so as to increase efficiency and productivity.

Outline of the book

However, much of the aforementioned debates and discussion has hitherto focused on the systemic level. Both policymakers and university leaders have been exploring and experimenting with innovative ways to institutionalise these reforms, yet not much have been written on the implementation and outcomes of these reforms. The aim of this book is to examine what happens when various countries adopt neoliberal higher education policies, in general, and more specifically, what actually happens at the institutional level as a result of the reforms in the governance and management of universities. The nine selected cases are Cambodia, China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand. The comparative study examines the establishment of corporatised or autonomous universities in these countries focusing on (i) the acts, reports, and/or policies that led to such a move as well as the rationales behind the move; (ii) the changes in the governance and organisational structure of the universities, highlighting the kinds of autonomy that universities have; (iii) the new management strategies, techniques, and practices that have been introduced to the university including the internal and external quality assurance mechanisms, and (iv) some of the tensions, conflicts, and acts of resistance that may have emerged.

The Cambodian chapter examines the governance and management of public universities that are granted the status “public administrative institution” (PAI), which can be considered as semi-autonomous institutions. The chapter on Chinese higher education focuses on the dual concerns of the Chinese state, that is, developing world-class universities while maintaining political stability. It examines the complexity of changing higher education governance under the state’s twin expectations. The Malaysian case studied two selected universities to examine how their governance and management have changed and evolved over time at the institutional and process level. The case study on India analyses the multiple layers of decision-making – federal, state, and institutional levels – and multiplicity of regulatory bodies thus making the governance and management of the system a complex task. The Indian higher education system is moving towards a new system of graded autonomy based on the academic performance of institutions. Under the new framework of graded autonomy, a small number of institutions will enjoy a high degree of autonomy, and a large share of institutions will be under close scrutiny and control. In the Indonesian case, the key focus is on the higher education institution’s readiness to receive institutional autonomy, as there are many challenges faced in the implementation of this new policy. In the case of Japan, the author analyses the impact of national policy in institutional settings. It focuses on government interventions on university governance and management against the historical background that Japanese universities have always enjoyed a high level of academic autonomy and freedom for a long time, particularly at the level of individual professors. The case study on Singapore focuses on one particular privately run university to gain insights into how the concept of autonomous university is operationalised in the tightly state-controlled environment. The South Korean case examines the perception gap between senior managers and academics on the amount of decision-making power they have over various matters relating to the governance and management of universities. The Thai case presents the stories of two public universities which have undergone university reforms to see how they differ in their governance and management practices.

The main argument of the book is that the interplay between global influences and national responses could result in hybridised reform agenda. Using the hybridisation perspective (see 2017 special issue of Studies in Higher Education), the book analyses how the governance and management of universities have changed over time in the selected Asian countries. It examines how the hegemonic spread of neoliberal ideology has impacted on the development of higher education systems in the region. It also analyses how different countries have responded to this dominant ideology at the systemic, institutional, and process levels. The focus is on the relationship between the state and the universities, which is usually reflected in the degree of autonomy and accountability allowed in a particular higher education system. Generally, it is concluded that while it is possible to find convergence in university reforms in the region, their impacts at the institutional level do vary among the universities within a country and across countries.

References

Ball, S. (2012). Performativity, commodification and commitment: An I-spy guide to the neoliberal university. British Journal of Educational Studies, 60 (1), 17–28.

Barr, N., & Crawford, I. (2005). Financing higher education: Answers from the U.K. London and New York, NY: Routledge.

Connell, R. (2013). The neoliberal cascade and education: An essay on the market agenda and its consequences. Critical Studies in Education, 54 (2), 99–112.

Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Neave, G., & van Vught, F. A. (Eds.). (1991). Prometheus bound: The changing relationship between government and higher education in Western Europe. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Nef, J., & Robles, W. (2000). Globalization, neoliberalism and the state of under-development in the new periphery. Journal of Developing Societies, 16 (1), 27–48.

Olssen, M., & Peters, M. A. (2005). Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: From the free market to knowledge capitalism. Journal of Education Policy, 20(3), 313–345.

Sirat, M., & Kaur, S. (2010). Changing state-university relations: The experiences of Japan and lessons for Malaysia. Comparative Education, 46 (2), 189–205.

Special Issue. (2017). The hybrid university in East Asia: History, development and challenges. Studies in Higher Education, 42 (10).

Yamamoto, K. (2004). Corporatization of national universities in Japan: An analysis of the impact on governance and finance. Retrieved July 26, 2018 from http://ump.p.u-tokyo.ac.jp/crump/resource/crump_wp_no3.pdf

2
Governance in “public administrative institution” universities

Towards public autonomous universities in Cambodia?

Say Sok, Leang Un, and Rinna Bunry

Introduction

The provision of higher education prior to 1997 was entirely within the domain of the state, and the eight higher education institutions (HEIs) were tasked to produce graduates on government subsidy to serve the (respective) state machineries. They were all public HEIs receiving national budget for the operation and aid from Eastern bloc countries for technical and personnel support up to 1991 and bilateral aid from different donor agencies after then. In between 1997 and 1998, some public HEIs were allowed to begin offering fee-paying academic programmes, and this practice was later extended to all public HEIs to generate revenue for institutional development and quality improvement, albeit not necessarily through legislation.

In the meantime, the government passed the Royal Decree on Public Administrative Institution (PAI) in 1997 as a public entity with “semi-autonomy” in terms of the freedom to generate and manage the self-generated revenue (Un & Sok, 2014). The government then used this sub-decree to transform some public HEIs that generated revenues into PAI HEIs. The first public university transformed into a PAI was the Royal University of Agriculture, and three other public universities, namely the Royal University of Fine Arts, National University of Management, and University of Health Sciences, were subsequently transformed into PAI HEIs too. As of now, there are nine PAI HEIs in Cambodia (Touch, Mak, & You, 2014).

Cambodian public higher education landscape has transformed significantly over the past two decades; however, the transformation has not been documented, analysed, discussed, and debated in the academic literature extensively. The first attempt to understand PAI HEIs was a small survey-based study by Visalsok Touch et al. (2014), which tries to understand the perception amongst the staff and institutional administrators of two PAI HEIs in terms of the change within their institutions following the transformation. This chapter, therefore, represents another rare attempt to look into governance in PAI HEIs and expands upon the previous study. The information and data presented are based on the authors’ years-long interactions and discussions with five of the nine PAI HEIs and other key stakeholders on various occasions and settings. The study also relies upon other previous studies and reports – published and unpublished – policies, and regulations.

This chapter is divided into five sections. Section 1 discusses the key issues of university governance and management in the Cambodian context. Section 2 presents the system level governance that enables the establishment of PAI HEIs. Section 3 discusses the structure, processes, and objects of decision-making in PAI HEIs, and is followed by Section 4, which highlights some of the intended and unintended outcomes of the reform. The final section concludes with a tentative proposal as to how the public higher education governance can be moved towards more “complete autonomy and accountability” and some potential opportunities and challenges for such a reform to materialise.

National context

Cambodia is yet to establish a “fully autonomous university”. The few HEIs designated as PAIs can, however, be regarded as “semi-autonomous HEIs” given that they are granted relatively more autonomy. Despite the more autonomy, PAI HEIs, like their public HEIs counterpart, have relatively much less autonomy – both substantive and procedural – and less rigorous institutional accountability mechanisms and instruments, compared with their counterparts in more advanced ASEAN countries (see ADB, 2012; Berdahl, 1971; Sok, 2016; Varghese & Martin, 2013). They are still treated like “government machinery” and run likewise (Touch et al., 2014).

In 1997, the state, apparently led by the M...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Governance in “public administrative institution” universities: towards public autonomous universities in Cambodia?
• 3 World-class university construction and higher education governance reform in China: a policy trajectory
• 4 Institutional autonomy and governance of higher education institutions in India
• 5 Autonomous higher education institutions in Indonesia: challenges and potentials
• 6 National university reforms introduced by the Japanese government: university autonomy under fire?
• 7 Governance and management of public universities in Malaysia: a tale of two universities
• 8 University governance and management in Singapore: the case of the Singapore Institute of Management University (UNISIM)
• 9 Governance and management under transformation in Korean higher education: perception gaps between senior managers and academics
• 10 Governance and management of universities in Thailand
• 11 Conclusion: reforms of university governance and management in Asia
• Index