Book Review: Higher Education in Southeast Asia: Blurring Borders, Changing Balance

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. ISSN 2153-9669 (print) 2153-9677 (online) | doi: 10.5195/ehe.2011.51 | http://ehe.pitt.edu Higher Education in Southeast Asia: Blurring Borders, Changing Balance addresses the challenge facing five countries of Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam) of increasing access to higher education. Although this is a common goal shared by these countries, “none are in the position to provide public higher education to all who aspire to it. Hence, private higher education is growing swiftly, sharpening problems in governance within a sector that is, in several cases already stretched to capacity” (p. 1). Welch introduces his book by describing the seemingly contradictory roles and functions of universities using Manuel Castells’ well known taxonomy. These functions and roles are translated into four broad goals listed on page 2 and which are: “train skilled labor as demanded by societies, cultivate elites, generate and transmit ideology and create and apply new knowledge.” A measure of success of developing countries is how well they manage these contradictory functions in order to achieve “growth,” “reform,” “equity,” and “social integration.” Although Castells does not “distinguish” between private and public institutions, the emergence of private institutions as well as its regulation complicates this endeavor. It is well-known that it is expensive to provide higher education because of the enormous amount of resources needed especially in the areas of science, technology and engineering. Developing countries often do not have these needed resources as developed nations do. In his introduction, Anthony R. Welch provides some statistical data on the five countries ranging from their GPD to number of patents granted. He also offers other characteristics common to the five countries such as the demographic pressure exerted in higher education institutions (HEIs) as well as the rise of private higher education. He points out that with the increase in HEIs there have been some challenges and problems such as the governance in higher education. The rise of HEIs has neither created growth in regulation nor transparency. In addition, the impact of limited resources has put pressure on governments in providing quality control over an ever growing number of institutions with no additional staff. This problem has been aggravated by the location of new institutions which are sometimes in scattered areas. Moreover, the transnational and cross border programs and institutions has put more pressure to regulatory agencies. Last, the impact of corruption has been felt in the higher education sector, ranging from people receiving bribes, enrolling unqualified students to “bogus” universities who have left hundreds of students “stranded” having lost their investment in higher education. In his introduction Welch concludes that,