The Emergent Knowledge Society and the Future of Higher Education

Book excerpt: The nature of higher education is by no means fixed: it has evolved over time; different models of higher education co-exist alongside each other at present; and, worldwide, there are demands for higher education to change to better help support economic growth and to better fit chagning social and economic circumstances. This book examines, from an Asian perspective, the debates about how higher education should change. It considers questions of funding, and of who will attend universities, and the fundamental question of what universities are for, especially as the three key funcations of universities - knowledge creation through research, knowledge dissemination through teaching and service, and knowledge conservation through libraries, the disciplinary structuring of knowledge and in other ways - are increasingly being carried out much more widely outside universities in the new "knowledge society". Throughout, the book discusses the extent to which the countries of East Asia are developing new models of higher education, thereby better preparing themselves for the "new "knowledge society", rather than simply following old Western models.