Globalising higher education and cities in Asia and the Pacific

Abstract

.,2004; Storper and Venables, 2004). Becausethe economies of large cities are the drivers ofthe national economy, urban universities areoften identified as a key institution and majorimpetus for the creation of knowledge in thecity economy: universities are viewed as spacesfor innovation and developing industry link-ages, as part of the broader reputation of citiesthemselves and as sites for the training of futureskilled workforces (McCarney, 2005; Goddardand Vallance, 2013). Universities are also animportant dimension of the broader urbanfabric, having impacts on local economies andgeographies, and employing and educatinglarge numbers of faculty, staff and students(Wiewel and Perry, 2008). The presence andpractices of domestic and international studentsare significant not only within the bounds of thecampus but also as ‘urban agents’ involved inthe transformation of urban landscapes (Collins,2010). Housing and the broader urban environ-ments within which students live and study havebecome an important focus for policy and strat-egies within local government and universitiesthemselves (Smith, 2008; Fincher and Shaw,2009).The relationship between universities andcities is particularly salient given contemporarytransformations of higher education systems.While universities have long been engaged inmore-than-local learning, recent decades haveseen a substantial globalisation of higher edu-cation systems. Where universities were oncetasked principally with the training of a nationalelite, many are now also focused on globalmissions based on knowledge production, insti-tutional competition and student recruitmentthat stretch across national borders (Sidhu,2006; Mohrman