ABSTRACT
There may be a good deal of truth to the well-known stereotype about East Asian education. School children in Singapore and Hong Kong nearly lead the world in mathematics and science achievement. Despite the stereotype, education and social development across East Asia has been highly uneven, with each country's sociocultural context contributing differentially to its academic results. Moreover, school policies and practices are seldom, if ever, autonomous from their sociocultural contexts. In the case of higher education, the sociocultural context is also driven by a world system in which some Asian nations, with their national flagship universities, aspire to move from periphery to core. Economic reforms that made way for market forces created a larger role for schools in social stratification systems. Fee paying education became the norm and once more, private schools for the middle class families became a reality.
