University Governance and the Academic Profession in “Rising” East Asia

The role of universities is increasing with the rapid growth of the knowledge economy across the world. At the same time, universities are also being called upon to change their governance and management structures in order to transform themselves into the core sector of the globally competitive knowledge industry. Salmi (2008) suggests that “world-class” universities and higher education systems require favorable governance with autonomy and academic freedom. Terms such as “entrepreneurial universities” (Clark, 1998) and “academic capitalism” (Slaughter and Leslie, 1999), however, imply that traditional “collegium” governance is at risk. Most East Asian higher education systems have been established and developed through strong intervention by national governments, and, therefore, granting of academic freedom and autonomy has been relatively slow and recent. Namely, the top universities in these “Post-Confucian States” (Marginson, 2011) are now achieving “world-class” status without experiencing the strong “collegium” governance pattern of the past. Japan could be an exception, having developed strong academic freedom and autonomy led by the faculties since World War II. However, now, top Japanese universities are faced with stagnating performance in both research and education. As a result, there have been calls from business and government for drastic reforms of their governance to enhance their chances of survival in the growing competition with universities and other knowledge industries in Asia and around the world. By utilizing data from the Academic Profession in Asia (APA) survey among selected Asian countries in various development contexts gathered by Arimoto et. al., the author examines the following questions: Is it possible to establish highly competitive universities without a strong tradition of collegium culture? If so, as seen in the emerging Asian countries, what are the implications for the mature university governance typically seen in Japan and Western Europe?