ABSTRACT
Guided by a predominantly neoliberal ideology, many governments are cutting back on their public and social expenditure, resulting in drastic cuts in public funding for universities. As universities find themselves operating increasingly in a competitive and market-oriented environment, they have found that they need to be flexible and respond quickly to changing market demands. Besides the marketisation of higher education, neoliberal policies also place great emphasis on accountability and performativity. The emerging trend in university governance and management is an increase in institutional autonomy in return for more public accountability. The aim of this study has been to examine what happens when various countries adopt neoliberal higher education policies in general, and more specifically what actually happens at the institutional level as a result of the reforms in the governance and management of universities in nine Asian countries. The main argument is that the interplay between global influences and national responses could result in hybridised reform agenda. Using the hybridisation perspective, the book analyses how the governance and management of universities have changed over time in the selected Asian countries.
