The past two decades have witnessed a vast expansion of higher education in the Asia Pacific with education universally accepted as a necessary condition of economic growth. Countries throughout the region have rapidly expanded access to higher education, often by loosening restrictions on the private sector to stimulate its provision. In the process, the status of higher education has shifted from a widely accepted public good to a commodity provided and purchased through market mechanisms. Expansion and privatization have created new concerns over the quality of education throughout the region. The essays in this volume underscore the fundamental interrelationships between quality, educational expansion, and the pervasive challenges of privatization.
