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This paper aims to review and analyze the functions, strategies and related issues of developing a regional education hub in the trends of education development in China as well as the Asian Pacific region.

Taking Hong Kong as an emerging case, it examines through literature and international comparison the relationship between education hub development and higher education development as well as the strategic functions of an education hub to the future development of Hong Kong.

The development of an education hub was found closely linked to the demand for higher education in the Asian Pacific region as well as the internal dynamic of higher education and society in Hong Kong. The mode of education hub development in Hong Kong should be driven by soft‐power building instead of industrialization. The requirements for successful implementation include the huge demands for higher education in the region, the strengths of the higher education sector, the supporting policies and measures for international students and education service providers, and the leadership and support of central agencies.

This paper provides a new typology of higher education developments and a new mode of education hub development to analyze the strategic functions and requirements of developing education hub in the context of Asia‐Pacific Region. The discussion and analysis in this paper will contribute to the related literature, policy development and initiative implementation in the areas of education hub and higher education not only in Hong Kong but also other parts of the world.

The purpose of this paper is to discover how higher education institutions may segment the market in a competitive higher education hub and to assess the usefulness of strategic group analysis as an analytical technique for market and competitor analysis. As a case example of a competitive higher education market, this research investigates how higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) position themselves and compete with one another.

The research relied mainly on secondary data, which were obtained from the websites of institutions and regulatory bodies. Then, hierarchical cluster analysis was used to identify strategic groups and institutional competitive strategies in the UAE higher education market. A panel of experts helped interpret and explain the cluster results.

Eight distinct institutional clusters were identified, which include public- and privately-owned institutions, as well as elite and specialist institutions. Institution and programme accreditation were found to be particularly important in the UAE market. The institutions in each group appear to operate in a particular market segment, targeting students who have similar needs and wants, and who often share similar demographic features.

It is concluded that strategic group analysis may help institutions to evaluate potential markets, select target segments and develop competitive strategies. In the UAE market context, the results demonstrate how institutions may position themselves to create strong and distinctive identities. The results of the research may be of interest to higher education institutions that operate in competitive markets, and particularly those that want to evaluate foreign markets.

This is believed to be the first study to use a strategic group approach for analysing competitors in a higher education hub.

Despite the multitude of regional-based collaborations in higher education, regionalism theories have received relatively little attention in the literature on higher education. In view of this gap, this chapter seeks to make a case for the study of regionalism and explores how this field could enrich higher education research. This chapter discusses the context of the rise of the regional landscape vis-à-vis the acceleration of globalisation and internationalisation of higher education. It further probes into theoretical and empirical insights, elucidating in particular core regionalism concepts, theories and approaches within the more recent ‘turns’ in regionalism. Empirical cases from regions across the world are presented to help expound on the conceptual points raised.

The research aims to assess the achievements and challenges of international branch campuses (IBCs) to date and to consider how IBC development may progress in the future.

The article presents a review of the scholarly and grey literatures on IBCs. The commentary and discussion is structured around the objectives, perspectives and experiences of three key stakeholder groups, namely the institutions that own IBCs, students and host countries.

Some IBCs have failed to achieve their student recruitment and financial targets, while others have been successful, often expanding and moving into new, larger, purpose-built campuses. In the last few years, several countries have announced their intention to become a transnational education hub, or at least to allow the establishment of IBCs. It may be reasonable to assume that when there is demand for a product, supply will eventually follow. IBCs will survive and prosper as long as they provide benefits to each of their main stakeholder groups (i.e. students, institutions and governments), and as long as the local demand for higher education places exceeds the total supply.

The article provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of IBC developments and research during the period 2000–2020. The findings and conclusions will be of interest to both researchers and practitioners.

The main purpose of the present paper is twofold: to examine and compare the current strategies and policies that are employed by the UK, Australia and Singapore and to recommend appropriate strategies and policies to higher education institutions and the Hong Kong government and elsewhere that are interested in expanding their efforts in recruiting the growing number of students from other countries who are planning to study overseas.

The data for this project were obtained primarily from documents and in‐depth interviews. Documents include government reports, policy addresses, official statistics, etc. The in‐depth interviews were conducted in Hong Kong as well as in the four studied cities – Mumbai, New Delhi, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur. Interviewees included government officials, academics, higher education institutions’ representatives, consultant generals, and officials from policy bodies.

It is clear from the findings of this present study that a set of favorable policies and strategies at the national level was behind the success of these competitors. Such policies are not confined to educational policies but are extended to population and employment policies.

Though the study examined policies and strategies employed by three countries, findings from the study may generate useful information to countries that may be interested in exporting their higher education to Asian markets.

The paper suggests that if Hong Kong is to attain success in becoming an international exporter of education services, it may need to adopt favorable policies at institute and system level, and in so doing it can definitely benefit by carefully studying the strategies and policies employed by these three competitors.

Few studies have examined and compared strategies and policies employed by these three key major players of higher education services. This study provides some useful strategies and policy recommendation to education decision makers in Hong Kong and elsewhere that may be interested in entering Asian markets.

The principal goal of the article is to examine how Singapore, one of the East Asian tiger economies, has attempted to diversify its higher education system by developing “transnational education” in the island state.

With particular reference to the most recent education reforms and changing higher education governance in Singapore, this article focuses on how the Singapore government has changed its higher education governance models in enhancing the global competitiveness of its higher education system by adopting more pro‐competition policy instruments and allowing the growth of transnational education in the city state.

The findings suggest the choice of policy tools (the choice of market forces in higher education and the rise of transnational education in the present case) is highly political and governments should pay particular attention to the particular socio‐economic and socio‐political contexts of their countries when making such choices.

The paper shows that the role of government in East Asia is still important, especially when there is a strong need for government to set up appropriate regulations, social protection and welfare, hence, governments in East Asia are very much conceived as a complement to the markets.

The purpose of the chapter is to elaborate the theory of academic capitalism by focusing on rarely examined forerunners of academic capitalism: namely, business schools.

A research-based essay.

The findings emphasize that there are different forms of academic capitalism. Our example from Dubai context shows how more extreme form of academic capitalism, which we label Acamanic Capitalism, developed as a result of free educational markets.

The chapter provides scholarly value through novel conceptualization. The phenomenon of acamanic capitalism should also be acknowledged in academia and in critical management education.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the policies and practices of internationalisation of higher education in Malaysia, and to specifically explore how Sustainable Development Goals are translated into policies and practices.

This paper takes a chronological and historical approach to examine policies and practices on internationalisation of higher education in Malaysia. This includes identifying patterns, trends and shifts on internationalisation at the system and institutional levels.

At the system level, Malaysia has transformed from a sending to receiving country, from being an aid recipient to an equal partner, and from a host to a provider. At the institutional level, internationalisation transforms from a fad to a norm, and from having unilateral collaboration to setting up multinational collaborations with international partners. Equally important, the paper discusses the role of internationalisation to address the global Sustainable Development Goals, and identify policy gaps at the national level and the de facto practices of Sustainable Development Goals at the institutional level.

This paper charts the changes of internationalisation of higher education in Malaysia, and importantly, shows gaps to incorporate the global Sustainable Development Goals and to relate this global agenda to the internationalisation of higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to achieve a better understanding of the current phenomenon regarding challenges of and potential for increased international recruitment and enhancement of the teaching and learning experience in Thai HE. The focus on what made these people choose Thailand, and their actual perceptions and experiences in Thai universities, are two main foci of this paper.

A qualitative approach through narrative interviews was selected as the researchers did not want to constrain this study with preconceived notions that might unduly steer the findings. During the interviews, detailed notes were taken, and the conversations were taped recorded, and then transcribed and analysed. The analytic approach adopted was a thematic analysis. NVivo qualitative data analysis software (QSR International Pty Ltd Version 11, 2017) was used to help organise and analyse the data.

The findings show that availability of scholarships, word-of-mouth referrals, and geographical and cultural proximity to a home country appear to be important pull factors. A series of interviews with international students from many different cultures, from both developed and developing countries, yielded some surprising insights including strong research support in some disciplines and the fact that academic life is personalised in Thai universities.

The findings from this study suggested that engaging returnees as ambassadors, creating links between international student community and home student community before, during and after the education abroad experience could potentially help Thai HE to be more marketable at a global scale. International students have potentials to be future contacts for inducing the flow of international students evident by the social network or word-of-mouth referrals as one of the prominent pull factors.

The findings from this paper provide advice and guidance on how values-based, rather than purely numbers-driven strategies can help Thai HEIs across the country to be more attractive to students and to enhance their experience once they come to study in Thai HEIs.

This study will make an important critique of current theories of academic mobility that primarily focus on developed countries. Current literature in international education favours native English language countries and overlooks experiences of international students in developing countries. This study will contribute to the existing literature which is lacking in reported perceptions and experiences of international students in Asian countries, particularly the new emerging educational hub in Southeast Asia like Thailand. The paper includes experiences of students from developed countries such as Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the USA, filling in the gap in the current literature that dominantly reports experiences of Asian students in the developed English-speaking countries. Additionally, this study also reports the experiences of international students from the countries that are lesser known in the context of international education, including Cambodia, Egypt, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, South Africa, Sudan and Uganda.

As an emerging market of international education, Asian countries ambitiously launched internationalization initiatives and strategies to attract international talent. Since the 1990s, Taiwan's government has implemented various internationalization policies. Partly affected by the political forces of neighboring China, Taiwan's government launched the New Southbound Policy (NSP) as the main regional strategy in 2016. One of the aims of this strategy was to promote mutual talent mobility between Taiwan and New Southbound Policy countries (NSPC). The purpose of this study is to explore how the NSP influences the student mobility scheme in Taiwan.

This study adopted the qualitative document analysis to investigate and compare the major Asian countries' internationalization focus and summarize Taiwan's internationalization development process and policy priorities. Moreover, a qualitative approach was adopted in order to collect data from 2005 to 2018 to examine Taiwan's student mobility scheme under the policy change.

Under the influence of the NSP after 2016, the student mobility scheme between Taiwan and NSPC could be categorized into five categories in accordance with the mobility rate. Although the nation-driven policy was considered powerful, the unbalanced flow between Taiwan and NSPC became severe.

The study lacked statistics on the degree level of outbound Taiwanese students going to NSPC. It could not compare the student mobility scheme between Taiwan and NSPC by degree level.

The research looked at the initiatives Asian countries have developed in order to raise higher education internationalization and regional status, which shed light on the national/regional approaches under the global change.