The past two decades have witnessed a vast expansion of higher education in the Asia/Pacific with education universally accepted as a necessary condition of economic growth. Countries throughout the region have rapidly expanded access to higher education, often by loosening restrictions on the private sector to stimulate its provision. In the process, the status of higher education has shifted from a widely accepted public good to a commodity provided and purchased through market mechanisms. Expansion and privatization have created new concerns over the quality of education throughout the region. The essays in this volume underscore the fundamental interrelationships between quality, educational expansion, and the pervasive challenges of privatization.

Details and ordering information at Palgrave Macmillan

CONTENTS

• Quality and the Public Good: An Inseparable Linkage
• The Growing Importance of the Privateness in Education: Challenges for Higher Education Governance in China
• Redefining Public and Private in Asia Pacific Higher Education
• Increasing Privatization of U.S. Higher Education: Forerunner or Deviant Case?
• Rankings and Quality--A European Perspective
• Future Directions for U.S. Higher Education Accreditation
• The Transformation of Quality Assurance in Higher Education in China
• Quality Assurance and Higher Education in Japan
• Quality Assurance in Higher Education: A Developing Country Perspective and Experience
• Quality Assurance in Higher Education: The Taiwan Experience
• Quality Assurance in Indonesian Higher Education
• The Challenges of Creating and Maintaining Higher Education Quality under Conditions of Rapid Economic Development in Thailand
• The Future Directions of Higher Education Quality Assurance in Korea
• Accreditation in the Philippines: A Case Study
• Constructing a General Framework for Quality Evaluation in Higher Education
• Doing Quality as Public Policy