One Size Does Not Fit All: Guidelines for Promoting Community Engagement and Higher Education’s Contribution to Regional Development

With the rapid expansion of higher education in the Asia-Pacific Region, the need for community engagement by higher education institutions (HEIs) becomes a more important institutional and social goal. In addition to the traditional moral and ethical objective of service and outreach by HEIs, there are political and economic motivations of engagement in the massified higher education system. HEIs need political support for greater budget allocation from the government, greater tuition revenue from more students, and other revenues from business activities with local firms. Also, democratization of the society is likely to push for social engagement of HEIs. HEIs are an important element of social capital of the community, and policy-makers should look for an opportunity to expand the HEIs’ curricular, outreach, and partnership activities within the community in order to promote economic and social development of the region. However, since the regions and HEIs are very diverse, the effective community engagement model can differ drastically depending on the characteristics of the region and the HEIs in the region. Local leadership (rather than central government) is much better positioned to identify the strength and weakness of the region. Therefore, the local dialogue and common vision building among the local government, HEIs, local firms and other stakeholders should be encouraged. In the process, the incentives of the stakeholders need to be articulated so that win-win strategy for the region can be developed in order to create an effective and sustainable roadmap.