{"title":"Transnational education for regional economic development? Understanding Malaysia's and Singapore's strategic coupling in global higher education","authors":"Marc Philipp Schulze, Jana Maria Kleibert","doi":"10.1111/ijtd.12242","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Fostering innovation and upskilling labour pools have become key goals in national economic development plans and education and training system reforms since the mid-1990s. For their transformation into knowledge-based economies, countries in Southeast Asia have relied on importing transnational higher education providers and have envisioned themselves as <i>international education hubs</i>. As existing research from transnational education and higher education governance studies as well as economic geography and regional studies has not sufficiently addressed this nexus of transnational education and regional economic development, this paper investigates the role of foreign higher education institutions in economic development strategies in Malaysia and Singapore. It explores why and how states have strategically coupled their higher education systems with transnational education. The comparative case analysis draws on empirical evidence from 42 semi-structured interviews. It finds that despite the two states' ostensibly similar ambitions to attract foreign higher education institutions, policies and outcomes differ strongly. Whereas in Malaysia a <i>structural coupling</i> led foreign subsidiaries to provide foreign degrees to domestic students and generate revenue in the private higher education sector, in Singapore foreign subsidiaries have been deployed strategically to upgrade the talent pool and public higher education system of the city-state via <i>functional coupling</i>. Conceptualizing transnational education policies as forms of <i>strategic coupling</i> contributes to understanding their embeddedness within states' broader, historically formed economic development strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":46817,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Training and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2021-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ijtd.12242","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of Training and Development","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijtd.12242","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
Fostering innovation and upskilling labour pools have become key goals in national economic development plans and education and training system reforms since the mid-1990s. For their transformation into knowledge-based economies, countries in Southeast Asia have relied on importing transnational higher education providers and have envisioned themselves as international education hubs. As existing research from transnational education and higher education governance studies as well as economic geography and regional studies has not sufficiently addressed this nexus of transnational education and regional economic development, this paper investigates the role of foreign higher education institutions in economic development strategies in Malaysia and Singapore. It explores why and how states have strategically coupled their higher education systems with transnational education. The comparative case analysis draws on empirical evidence from 42 semi-structured interviews. It finds that despite the two states' ostensibly similar ambitions to attract foreign higher education institutions, policies and outcomes differ strongly. Whereas in Malaysia a structural coupling led foreign subsidiaries to provide foreign degrees to domestic students and generate revenue in the private higher education sector, in Singapore foreign subsidiaries have been deployed strategically to upgrade the talent pool and public higher education system of the city-state via functional coupling. Conceptualizing transnational education policies as forms of strategic coupling contributes to understanding their embeddedness within states' broader, historically formed economic development strategies.
期刊介绍：
Increasing international competition has led governments and corporations to focus on ways of improving national and corporate economic performance. The effective use of human resources is seen as a prerequisite, and the training and development of employees as paramount. The growth of training and development as an academic subject reflects its growth in practice. The International Journal of Training and Development is an international forum for the reporting of high-quality, original, empirical research. Multidisciplinary, international and comparative, the journal publishes research which ranges from the theoretical, conceptual and methodological to more policy-oriented types of work. The scope of the Journal is training and development, broadly defined. This includes: The determinants of training specifying and testing the explanatory variables which may be related to training identifying and analysing specific factors which give rise to a need for training and development as well as the processes by which those needs become defined, for example, training needs analysis the need for performance improvement the training and development implications of various performance improvement techniques, such as appraisal and assessment the analysis of competence Training and development practice the design, development and delivery of training the learning and development process itself competency-based approaches evaluation: the relationship between training and individual, corporate and macroeconomic performance Policy and strategy organisational aspects of training and development public policy issues questions of infrastructure issues relating to the training and development profession The Journal’s scope encompasses both corporate and public policy analysis. International and comparative work is particularly welcome, as is research which embraces emerging issues and developments.
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