ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The selected works in the book, social context, ethnicity, and globalization, are divided into three thematic sections: Contexts: society and education; Processes: pluralism and assimilation; and, Institutions: universities and globalization. The selections hardly do justice to the complexity of education in Asia, a region arrayed with political systems that take different approaches to principles and practices of democracy and equality. In 1998, Asia experienced a regional economic crisis that had a significant effect on higher education by pushing universities toward public-private partnerships in order to survive. A decade later, Asia was rocked by a global economic recession. China handled the earlier Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s by expanding higher education in order to keep youth out of a tight labor market for four more years until the crisis subsided.
