Abstract
Since the 1990s, higher education in the developing countries has gone through great changes in response to their fundamental political and socio-economic reforms. China and Malaysia, the two main Asian developing countries with emerging economies and ambitious goals, were picked up for a comparison of higher education development to better illustrate this general trend. In this comparative framework, comparability about the two countries is analyzed firstly, followed by the consideration of three key dimensions, and George Bereday’s method of comparison is accordingly used. It is noted from the comparison that both Chinese and Malaysian higher education systems have experienced massification, marketization and internationalization, and are currently striding toward universalization with more excellence-driven initiatives of higher education, which involve the main mechanisms and rules, as well as strategies and policies of marketization and internationalization. Yet other than the commonalities at a macro level, in these three areas concerning higher education there are some remarkable differences and disparities, such as the actual paths of size expansion, the growth and fate of private institutions, the conception of internationalization, due to different historical paths, national agendas and socio-political environments. Along this comparative approach, there are three common issues that need further elaborate discussions, namely, the unbalanced structure of quantitative development, centralized decentralization, and internationalization at home.
Highlights
There are four universal driving factors that have underpinned the development of higher education community from the 1990s, namely, the formation of knowledge-based economy, the correspondingly increasing demand for more human resources with qualifications of higher education, and the dilemma between the demand for more seats at universities and university’s lack of capacity to accommodate due to amounting fiscal pressure, as well as information science and technological advances in operating academic activities
This quantitative development of higher education in Malaysia demonstrated a story of Malay primacy, and has led to a defining feature of current Malaysian higher education structuring, namely, public sector is always Malay-dominant, while private sector is open to all applicants, including foreigners
It is the public universities that are far more internationalized by having a very international composition of students, so is the same with scientific research, whose internationally-linked programs outnumber the private universities a lot. Quite unlike this internationalization differentiation claim between the private sector and the public sector in Malaysia, in China public institutions of higher education have been the sole practioners of internationalization, while private institutions, preoccupied with their struggle for survival, hardly have had the capability to join in the process
Summary
There are four universal driving factors that have underpinned the development of higher education community from the 1990s, namely, the formation of knowledge-based economy, the correspondingly increasing demand for more human resources with qualifications of higher education, and the dilemma between the demand for more seats at universities and university’s lack of capacity to accommodate due to amounting fiscal pressure, as well as information science and technological advances in operating academic activities. Since the early 1990s, China and Malaysia have demonstrated their own efforts on the part of the developing world, to meet the foregoing challenges so as to work out their ambitious blueprints. To better illustrate this big picture, this article attempts to define and compare the main changes of higher education in the two countries mainly from the 1990s onwards, and differences and similarities would be highlighted and referred to here. Chen Li: The Development of Higher Education in China and Malaysia: A Comparative Perspective empirical researches on the visiting students’ experiences in particular [15,16,17]. The scarcity of Sino-Malaysia comparative study of higher education is clear, especially very little has been found in the literature that develops a comparative view of higher education changes over the past two decades across the two countries
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
