Week 6 Research question & Reading - Higher education in East Asia and Singapore

Proposed question:
I am studying the move to mass higher education in China, because I want to find out its impact on marginalised groups such as pupils in rural areas and children of migrant workers, in order to better understand their barriers to accessing higher education and the effectiveness of higher education policies, so that we will know more about ways to improve fair access.

The reading I'm using for this week's reflection:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-010-9384-9#citeas

Marginson, S. (2011). Higher education in East Asia and Singapore: rise of the Confucian Model. Higher Education, 61(5), 587–611.

The author studied the phenomenon of massive growth of post-secondary students in the Asia-Pacific region since the 1990s, with a focus on China, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam, since 1990s. Except for Vietnam and Japan, these systems exhibit a distinctive model of higher education more effective in some respects than systems in the Western world. These nations are not “Confucian” in all respects; rather, they have different languages, national traditions and political system. They do, however, have a common approach to organising education and share some commonality in their educational traditions.

Supported by past research and statistics, the author reviewed and discussed the four interdependent elements of the Confucian-influenced higher education system:

1) strong nation-state shaping of structures, funding and priorities;

2) a tendency to universal tertiary participation, partly financed by household funding of tuition;

3) “one chance” national examinations that mediate social competition and university hierarchy and focus family commitments to education;

4) accelerated public investment in research and “world-class” universities.

In these systems, public investment is not essential to the expansion of access, as private findings play a greater role in tertiary education. State funding and responsibility are likely to focus on high-status public institutions in teaching and research; student loans and grants tend to favour high achievers in higher quality institutions. China’s gross enrolment rate rose sharply from 4 to 23% between 1990 and 2007, and adult literacy reached 93% in 2008. However, there is regional unevenness. What about poorer families in lower status institutions that do not have the same secondary educational resources? Since their families are not likely to provide them with the same level of financial support, how do we close the gap in access?