동북아시아에서의 고등교육 지역화 현상에 대한 연구

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to overview recent developments in the regionalization of higher education in Northeast Asia, and to investigate related issues, particularly focusing on China, Japan, and South Korea. To achieve this purpose, this study investigates some crucial features of the three Northeast Asian economies, and shows how they currently depend on each other in terms of intra-regional trade and cross-border higher education activities. The investigation reveals that, although the regionalization of higher education in this region has drastically increased since the early 2000s, East Asia’s extreme diversity and uneven level of economic and higher education development has made it difficult to achieve a region-wide approach. Therefore, at least in the near future, neighboring countries in East Asia are likely to continue focusing their efforts on establishing a more solid cooperation framework at a sub-regional level than at a pan-regional level. In this process, to more effectively promote the regionalizaton of higher education in this region, the governments in the Northeast Asian countries should tackle some tricky issues at hand, such as a rivalry competition between newly emerging China and Japan, the evolving nature of market-driven cross border higher education provision, and last but not least the issue of quality assurance and recognition.