SCI Index-China
CHAPTER 6: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
6.4 S TATE P REFERENCE
7.4.2 A review on state capabilities
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within the nation-states. Moreover, international and national top university rankings have drawn the attention of nation-states and attribute to the benchmarks for education systems. However, different from the Western, European mainly, experiences that the new instruments of quality assurance, such as evaluation and accreditation processes, are not necessary elude state controls and weaken state influence. Instead, in the case of internationalisation of HE in Taiwan, most of the HEIs still find it bound by the criteria set in evaluation by the government although MOE have claimed to have given more autonomy in operation to HEIs throughout the years.
In the development of HE, the experiences discovered in this study show that the state of Taiwan and China have realised that HEIs are gradually shaped by internationalisation. Although both states take the strategy of pragmatic approach, different state capacity and preference may have influenced HEIs goals achieving, process of policy decision making and ways of problems solving occurring in the state structural and institutional reforms.
7.4.2 A review on state capabilities
As the essential challenges for comparative researches are that ‘what do we compare’ and ‘how much we do compare’, it is important to make the room for comparability in research design and case selection (Reale 2014). The two cases in this study have similarities in culture and language; politically, Taiwan has completed and transformed into a democratic polity while Mainland China is still under Party-state rule, which in a way affect Party-state policies formation, making as well as implementation. The value of works in comparative research, such as this study, is then to contribute to broader, multidisciplinary analysis that discovers the neglected causal relationships among state agents in the statehood.
The state-centred approach is the newly-developed type of approach in the understanding of state development provided by the neo-Marxists who prefer to call themselves neo-statists. The state-centred studies beginning from the early 1980s started to explore concepts such as political leadership (Migdal 1988), state capacity/autonomy (Nordlinger, 1981, Krasner 1984, Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol 1985) to understand how state capabilities may affect, or even dominate a nation-state's development. The state centred approach provides a framework of
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analysis different from the long-lasting society-centred approach that pluralism favours in the1960s to 1970s. By adopting the state-centred approach in the context of internationalisation of higher education in Taiwan and Mainland China, this study summarises the findings in the following:
Policy formation
Both of the state governments initiate project plans to promote internationalisation in their HEIs, for instance Plan to Develop First-class Universities and Top-level Research Centres in Taiwan; Project 211 and Project 985 in China.
Education reforms and practices in higher education
State restructuring can be observed in the state's responses to globalisation although the initiation in Taiwan is more through the bottom-up (society) means while it is still quite top-down (state) in China. The main structural HE systems reforms in Taiwan began in the 1994 Protest in the appeal of empowerment as a symbol of decentralisation from the central government to local government and HEIs. In the internationalisation of HE, although block-funding is provided to the HEIs in the hope that HEIs can carry out their own internationalisation plan, the structural relations between MOE and HEIs remains relatively unchanged in Taiwan. China's HE reforms came along with the Open Door Policy. The central government utilise Project 211 and Project 985 to allocate funding to key select HEIs in order to enhance the overall quality of HEIs. The structural reforms within the state as well as inside of some top universities can be observed. A model of higher education governance with Chinese characteristics may emerge in the coming years although more observations need to be made before making any concluding remarks.
International academic achievement
HEIs in both states make prominent academic achievement along with the project funding given by the states. According to the UNESCO 2014 Report, China owns the most numbers of Top-universities and excellence in broad subject areas in Asia; Taiwan exceeds China on average of Total performance of research in niche areas.
State preference
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State preference is observed by the fact that both the state of Taiwan and state of China wish to promote internationalisation in its HEIs so as to enhance the state's global competitiveness in the long term. The internationalisation of HE is generally accepted by the actors in the HEIs in Taiwan. Nonetheless, the state is relatively weak in strategically planning in the practices of internationalisation although it repeatedly highlights the importance of internationalisation in the development of higher education. The internationalisation of HE in China is a policy prioritised by government state clearly. By emphasising the national identity in its HEIs even in the pursuit of world-class university, the state of China remains its control in managing HE affairs and strives to create HEIs not just by following the Western ideology of globalisation.
In the development of state, broadly speaking, the state of Taiwan is stepping into the stage of democratisation while the state of China resorts to the peaceful means (和 平崛起). Stronger state capabilities can be observed in the HE development in the case of China when the state also grows economically stronger in the globalised era. It is crucial to understand further whether the changes of state structures would allow more room for non-state social actors to be more involved, and whether the society can become a type of power in shaping state will in the long term in China.
Concluding from the findings in this study, it can be expected that HEIs will become a driving force to a state and society in the globalised era although such assumption still depends greatly on whether the preferences between the state and the society can be made congruently among those key stakeholders.
Last but not least, learning from the experiences of Europe’s Bologna Declaration, it is likely that Asian countries would expect ASEAN to develop quality assurance systems at programmes and institutional levels to promote mutual recognition and networking in the near future (ASEAN University network, 2010). While China is the key actor in ASEAN, it may have more stands, comparing to Taiwan, in bringing along important issues high on the policy agenda in HE. It is foreseeable that HE in China will increasingly function as a promoter of both social and individual development domestically and state of China will continue utilising its HE to build an international dimension to its knowledge base by using an international template to
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view domestic development in a fresh light. The HE development in China will likely be linked continuously with the global community while HEIs in Taiwan may be skating on thin ice struggling in a more and more challenging internationalised world.
7.5CONCLUDING REMARKS
The outcome of this study provides a deeper understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of internationalisation particularly in higher education. The study delves into the multiple comparisons of state capacity, state autonomy, university capacity and university autonomy. Adopting the state-centred approach, the study provides a critical analysis for the practitioner in the field as well as state policy makers and stakeholders concerning the development of higher education. This study has critically examined policies and strategies adopted by the governments in China mainland and Taiwan in response to the growing pressures to internationalisation and international benchmark for universities across different parts of the globe. Despite the controversial debates over the definitions of ‘world-class university’, both the governments in China and Taiwan have adopted a more pragmatic approach to address the issue.
The continuous neglect of state capabilities in the study of comparative higher education would possibly hamper our understanding about the future prospect of international higher education in EA. As Deardorff, De Wit and Heyl argue that the role of national governments has been a driving force in propelling international higher education forward in many of the cases in the region of Africa, Asia, Latin American and the Middle East (Deardorff, De Wit and Heyl 2012). It means that a growth in research and scholarship on international issues form non-Western perspectives may explain better what international higher education really means to these non-Western countries. A state-centred approach in the study of higher education is exactly such a trial in the studies of comparative higher education development in EA. After all, China has been a great influence in EA's development historically; Confucianism has always been taken as a social and cultural norm even today in many Asian countries. A comparative study on a state which is influenced more by the mentality of Sinocentrism and on a state which is influenced rather by the mixture of Western and Eastern ideology shall reflect to future critical analysis of internationalisation of HE, particularly in various political, social and cultural contexts.
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APPENDIX
APPENDIX I:INTERVIEW QUESTIONS