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With strong intention to enhance the global competitiveness of their higher education systems, the governments of Singapore and Malaysia have made attempts to develop their societies into regional hubs of education; hence transnational education has become increasingly popular in these societies. In order to attract more students from overseas to study in their countries (or create more educational opportunities for their citizens), these governments have invited foreign universities to set up their campuses to provide more higher education programs. In the last decade, the proliferation of higher education providers and the transnationalization of education have raised the concerns regarding the search for new governance and regulatory frameworks in governing the rapidly expanding transnational education organizations in these Asian societies. Higher education governance has become more complex in Singapore and Malaysia amid the quest for being regional hubs of education as nation states have to deal with multinational corporations when they are becoming increasingly active in running transnational education programs. This article sets out against this context of growing trend of transnationalization in education to compare and contrast the models and approaches that Singapore and Malaysia have adopted to govern and manage the diversity of players in offering transnational education programs.

Using the case of education, we consider how global cultural and economic forces affect national education spending policies. Our analysis includes both an historical analysis of the construction and transformation of ideas about education at the global level and a statistical assessment of the implementation of conflicting approaches to state education funding within countries. In the historical analysis, we show how the idea of free education, although institutionalized in international law, was subject to powerful challenges from international financial institutions, which advocated user fees for public services, including education. Ultimately, the principle of free education prevailed despite the financial clout behind the opposing view. Using data from poor- and middle-income countries from 1983 to 2004, we also show that the presence of international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) advocating child rights was linked to an increase in the levels of state funding for education. This suggests that embeddedness in global discourses, as evidenced by country-specific linkages to INGOs, is critical in making governments more accountable for supporting institutionalized ideas concerning education.

If managerialism points to the ideological foundations and bureaucratisation of contemporary education, marketisation signals its commodification, image and exchange. This paper brings to bear the prevailing influence of marketisation on education. It begins with a brief description of the European context and development of learning outcomes, and outlines the (economic) rationale for their existence. It then sets out to explore the logic of learning outcomes, asking: what is lost in the process of education being exchanged as a commodity? We argue that marketisation, through its constituent concepts of commodification, image and exchange, seduces as an education 'spectacle' and ultimately shapes individuals' value positions. In essence, marketisation, grounded in contemporary neoliberal economics, privileges quantitative, at the expense of genuinely qualitative, educational substance. Further, we argue that learning outcomes are a simulacrum: like other signifiers of commodities, they appear meaningful (although they do exhibit meaning) but are ultimately incapable of delivering what they promise: transferable skills, at most, but not education. Ethical consequences are stark and signal the loss of the intrinsic value of education - a loss that begins with its own commodification.

"Japan's current education system has its origins in postwar reform, overemphasizing individualism and underemphasizing on Japan's history, traditions, and culture, resulting in the continuing decline in scholastic, physical, and socializing ability to date. This essay reviews the IIPS proposal on educational reform, which was supervised by former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, with the addition of the author's personal views. The IIPS proposal set the ultimate goal of education in Japan to be raising healthy people who have self-confidence and pride as Japanese who can thrive in the era of globalization. Then, the proposal presents what a Japanese should learn and how he should serve at each life stage beginning with early childhood education through the compulsory education period, adolescence and young adulthood, maturity, and into the elderly period. Moreover, the organizational reform on administrating education policy is presented, with a focus on abandoning the current board of education system."

There is a growing body of literature discussing evidence-based education, practice, policy, and decision-making from a critical perspective. In this article, drawing on the literature and policy documents related to evidence-based education in the USA, Britain, and Canada, I join this critique and offer an anticolonial perspective. I argue that proponents of evidence-based education unknowingly promote a colonial discourse and material relations of power that continue from the American-European colonial era. I posit that this colonial discourse is evident in at least three ways: (1) the discourse of civilizing the profession of education, (2) the promotion of colonial hierarchies of knowledge and monocultures of the mind, and (3) the interconnection between neoliberal educational policies and global exploitation of colonized labor. I conclude with the decolonizing implications of revealing some of the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research, and neoliberal reform

"To ratify possibilities for worldly linguistic connectivities and critical theorising there is a need to forgo the exclusionary preoccupation with English and Western critical theories. The debates informing the international circulation of Bourdieu's (1977, 1993, 1999, 2004) ideas provide methodological lessons for moving from critical sociology of education to educational research for critique. This study reports on the use of Chinese metaphors to critically theorise evidence of Australian education. It provides an analysis of the translation of Chinese metaphors, their use as theoretical tools and the preempting of the antagonistic reception of Chinese metaphors by Western Anglophone educators. A worldly education of linguistic connectivities and critical theorising is shown to engage in the reflexivity necessary for making Chinese research students' bi- or multilingual competence a presence in Australian teacher-researcher education. At the, same time they are articulating claims for reconfiguring its internationalisation."

This study aims to understand Korean students' motivations for studying in US graduate schools. For this purpose, I conducted in-depth interviews with 50 Korean graduate students who were enrolled in a research-centered US university at the time of the interview. In these interviews, I sought to understand how their motivations are connected not only with their family, school, and occupational backgrounds, but also with the stratification of global higher education. Theoretically, this paper attempts to combine the concept of global positional competition with Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital in the field of global education. By critically examining a push-pull model of transnational higher education choice-making, this study situates Korean students' aspirations in the contexts of global power and the hierarchy of knowledge-degree production and consumption. After analyzing the students' qualitative interviews, I classify their motivations for earning US degrees within four categories: enhancing their class positions and enlarging their job opportunities; pursuing learning in the global center of learning; escaping the undemocratic system and culture in Korean universities; and fulfilling desires to become cosmopolitan elites armed with English communication skills and connections within the global professional network. Based on this analysis, I argue that Korean students pursue advanced degrees in the United States in order to succeed in the global positional competition within Korea as well as in the global job marketplace. As they pursue advanced US degrees, Korean students internalize US hegemony as it reproduces the global hierarchy of higher education, but at the same time Korean students see US higher education as a means of liberation that resolves some of the inner contradictions of Korean higher education, including gender discrimination, a degree caste system, and an authoritarian learning culture. Therefore, this study links Korean students'

"In this article I seek to reconsider the social and economic purposes of higher education. It begins with the premise that there appears to be a general trend towards governments positioning higher education primarily in terms of the economic role that it can fulfil. Such a trend, however, has attracted considerable criticism. In this article I argue that the problem for higher education is not it having an economic role, but the narrowness of the way in which that role is often conceptualised. Drawing on critical theory I explore the interrelation of economic and social factors within higher education and the wider society in which it is situated. This article argues for a redefinition of the purposes of higher education to ensure that both universities and workplaces are sites of human creativity and that the profound and exciting work within institutions of higher education benefits all members of society."

The race to establish regional education hubs is a recent development in cross-border higher education. This article briefly examines the rationales and strategies used by three countries in the Middle East and three in South East Asia which are working towards positioning themselves as regional education hubs. The different approaches and purposes among the six countries highlight the need for a typology of education hubs. Three types are proposed: the student hub, the training and skilled workforce hub, and the knowledge/innovation hub. The final section of the paper takes a closer look at Malaysia's cross-border education initiatives and its actions to establish itself as a competitive education hub in a region where Singapore and Hong Kong have similar intentions. Whether Malaysia has the ability to make a quantum leap from being a student hub to becoming a knowledge/innovation hub remains to be seen and appears to be an optimistic outlook.

"Public-private partnerships in education (ePPP) are acquiring increasing centrality in the agendas of international organizations and development agencies dealing with educational affairs. They are designed as an opportunity to correct inefficiencies in the public delivery of education and to mobilize new resources to increase the access to and cost-effectiveness of education in low-income contexts. This article explores the emergence of ePPP as a 'programmatic idea' and, in particular, the semiotic strategies by means of which this idea has been located in the global education agenda and promoted internationally among practice communities by a network of policy entrepreneurs. The analysis is supported by extensive fieldwork and by a new approach to the analysis of the framing and mobilization of new policy ideas, which incorporates literature on agenda setting, policy entrepreneurs, and policy frame analysis. The approach reveals the complex way in which policy ideas, political actors, institutions, and material factors interact to strategically put forward new policy alternatives in developing contexts."

"This article examines the intensification, since the creation of the so-called Shanghai list of world universities in June 2003, of a political struggle in which a variety of actors, universities, national governments, and, more recently, supranational institutions have sought to define global higher education. This competition over global higher education has highlighted issues such as the internationalization and denationalization of higher education, the international mobility of students, the role of English language as the language of science, and the privatization of higher education. In contrast to IPE or Marxist analyses, we analyze the symbolic logic of ranking lists in higher education, their uses, and the European Commission's initiative to create an alternative world university classification (see World Social Science Report, UNESCO Publishing; Europa zwischen Fiktion und Realpolitik/L'Europe-Fictions et réalités politiques, Transcript for analysis). This initiative represents a political move in a process of rapid restructuration of higher education at the global level."

Driven by neo-liberal principles, globalization attempts to position education as the source of prosperity and a great social equalizer. As globalization intensifies, Jamaica is actively reforming its educational policies in order to reap the benefits of the new "knowledge economy." However, significant policy approaches, which accompany the emerging policy changes-referred to as policy discourses-have the unintended consequence of perpetuating disempowerment of low income Jamaicans. I identify and critically analyze education as (private) investment as one of Jamaica's dominant policies. I note that the neo-liberal ideology that influences this discourse is fundamentally inconsistent with the post-war/post-independence social welfare approaches that Jamaica used to address social asymmetries of colonialism. The result is that education as (private) investment predicates educational opportunity on the capacity to pay, thus limiting the likelihood of education to be the great socio-economic equalizer.

"This article discusses findings from two case studies examining the impact of neoliberal education reform on the classroom practice of teachers and adult educators in Ontario, Canada. We asked educators to comment on the impacts of 20 years of policy shifts in their classrooms. Teachers in public schools and adult literacy programmes echoed each other on issues of managerialism, privatisation and punitive accountability mechanisms. Both schoolteachers and adult educators made references to a reduction in autonomy and to an emerging 'culture of fear' in educational institutions and programmes. The experience of teachers highlights contradictions between the promises of neoliberalism and the ground-level impact of policy."

This paper examines the emergence of Hyderabad as a hub of the global information technology economy, and in particular, the role of higher education in Hyderabad's transformation as the labor market for the new economy. The extensive network of professional education institutions that service the global economy illustrates the ways in which neoliberal globalization is produced through educational restructuring and new modes of urban development. Neoliberal globalization, however, is a variegated process wherein local social hierarchies articulate with state policies and global capital. This study shows how caste and class relations in the education sector in Andhra Pradesh are instrumental to forming Hyderabad's connection to the global economy. The contradictions of these regional realignments of education, geography and economy are manifest in the uneven development of the region and the rise of new socio-political struggles for the right to the city.

"The purpose of this paper is to explore the dominant positions in the debates on globalization in American social studies education. Specifically, the paper illustrates that, first, globalization is conceived of as more of an unprecedented new age and less of a historical development. Second, it is conceived of as more of a natural process and less as an ideological project. All in all, this paper argues that globalization should be approached as a historic and discursive condition in the field of social studies education. To do so, educators should include more skeptical perspectives and critical voices about globalization. Also, they need to approach the vocabulary used to frame globalization discursively, rather than as an objective fact. The paper contends that the different positions taken in the debates on globalization are part and parcel of the social imaginary of globalization. The paper has ramifications not only for American social studies education but also for related subjects such as civics and citizenship education elsewhere."

"This article presents an empirical study of transnational higher education in China at the institutional level. The units of analysis are the Chinese partner universities of transnational higher education programs. Through comparison of research universities and teaching universities, the study finds that transnational higher education programs are developed and perceived differently by these two categories of universities. For teaching universities, transnational higher education is mainly used to expand enrollment. It is the most active internationalization activity on campus. For research universities, especially top research universities, transnational higher education's major function is to provide academic opportunities for those aspiring for advanced professional degrees. It is only one of the many internationalization activities on campus. Teaching universities tend to use transnational higher education more to generate revenue and reduce cost."

The geography of trade in services is becoming increasingly important for a developing country such as Malaysia. But, present discussion on trade in education services, in particular, higher education and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in Malaysia is rather limited and takes a short-term perspective. This is especially so with respect to the analysis of the impact of the GATS negotiations on the Malaysian higher education system. This article discusses Malaysia's current negotiating position insofar as trade in higher education services is concerned. Malaysia's prospects of gaining from trade in higher education services are analyzed.

"This paper examines discussions of Generation Y within higher education discourse, arguing the sector's use of the term to describe students is misguided for three reasons. First, portraying students as belonging to Generation Y homogenises people undertaking higher education as young, middle-class and technologically literate. Second, speaking of Generation Y students allows constructivism to be reinvented as a 'new' learning and teaching philosophy. Third, the Generation Y university student has become a central figure in concerns about technology's role in learning and teaching. While the notion of the 'Generation Y student' creates the illusion that higher education institutions understand their constituents, ultimately, it is of little value in explaining young adults' educational experiences."

"Linking key policy themes of interest in the published literature on development studies and comparative education, the article initially explores the potential benefits and risks of partnering transnationally for contextually informed research and sustainable development from the perspective of Southern and Northern higher education institutions. Higher education partnerships recently supported by the development-assistance agencies of Canada and the United States are compared and critically assessed according to the internationally relevant themes of external and internal funding, the involvement of additional partners and funders, and project duration. Comparative analysis of datasets compiled from AUCC- and HED-managed sources that encompass 74 CIDA-supported and 186 USAID-supported university partnerships active during 2007-2009 shows that CIDA awards tend to be substantially larger in amount and longer in duration than most USAID awards and that participating universities have contributed impressive cost-share resources. The concluding section draws out wider implications of study findings for North-South higher education partnerships with sustainable-development objectives and for the literature on the possibilities and limitations they embody."

"This article adopts the critical theory approach to reflect and analyse the impacts of globalization on the internationalization process of higher education in the Asia-Pacific region. It argues that globalization forces many of the higher education institutions in the region to follow global practices and ideologies of the Anglo-American paradigm without developing their own unique systems and honouring the rich cultures of their own countries. While higher education institutions are indulging in internationalization in terms of marketization and economic pragmatism, they have to ask themselves, 'What is missing in the process of internationalization?' This article argues that internationalization of higher education contributes to building more than economically competitive and politically powerful states. It represents a commitment to the development of an internationalized curriculum where the pursuit of global citizenship, human harmony and a climate of global peace is of paramount importance."