Globalisation and the evolution of the knowledge-based economy have caused dramatic changes in the character and functions of higher education in most countries around the world. However, the impacts of globalisation on universities are not uniform even though similar business-like practices have been adopted to cope with competition in the global marketplace. The pressure for restructuring and reforming higher education is mainly derived from growing expectations and demands of different stakeholders in society. In the last decade, government bureaucracy, public service institutions and higher education institutions and universities have been significantly affected by the tidal wave of the public sector reform around the world. Apart from improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public services, universities are confronted with a situation in which the principles of financial accountability and responsiveness to stakeholders prevail amidst the massification stage under the condition of global economic retrenchment. In response to such pressing demands for change, policies and strategies of decentralisation, privatisation and marketisation are becoming increasingly popular measures in university governance. Reform strategies and measures like quality assurance, performance evaluation, financial audit, corporate management and market competition are adopted to reform and improve the performance of the higher education sector. This article examines the most recent higher education reforms and restructuring in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China, with particular reference to the issues related to globalisation of decentralisation and marketisation in higher education.
[Copyright of Higher Education Research & Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0729436032000083580]

Hong Kong has undergone a series of educational reforms since the mid 1990s in response to the tidal wave of globalisation. This article tries to examine the recent education reforms in Hong Kong's higher education within the global context, by putting into perspective a discussion of its policy implications of marketisation, privatisation and corporatisation, through the examination of three important dimensions of education governance, namely: regulation, provision and financing. It finally concludes that the higher education governance in Hong Kong is transforming itself with a new state–education relationship under the impact of globalisation.
[Copyright of Globalisation, Societies & Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14767720601133504]

Singapore and Hong Kong are vying to be the principal educational hub for the Asia-Pacific region and have begun to compete with Australia, Britain, Canada and the USA in providing cross-border education. Although these four Anglo-American countries still dominate cross-border education, Singapore and Hong Kong hope to make inroads into this export market and compete on the global stage. To create "world-class" universities, Singapore and Hong Kong have introduced quality assurance mechanisms, diversified funding sources, and restructured their university governance systems. This article compares the accountability measures introduced into Hong Kong and Singapore universities, and the responses of academics and administrators to these measures. The results indicate that both countries introduced greater autonomy as they augmented accountability for their universities, and the term "decentralised centralism" describes the kind of government control exerted in these Asian universities in the twenty-first century.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188790701845972]