Human-capital strategies to build world-class research universities in Asia: Impact on global flows

As high-and middle-income countries attempt to gain an edge in the global knowledge economy, their governments have identified investments in higher education as a priority (Knight 2008; Li 2004; Marginson et al. 2011). In particular, research universities are seen as having significant positive impacts on the localities, regions, and countries in which they are situated, through the students they educate, the jobs they create, the knowledge they produce, the innovation they foster, and the prestige they bestow (Altbach et al. 2009; Jöns & Hoyler 2013; Li 2004; Mohrman et al. 2008; Mok 2005). In recent years, ambitious countries in East and Southeast Asia (e.g. China, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) have invested vast sums to restructure their higher education sector and upgrade a select number of their national universities from largely teaching-oriented institutions to research-intensive ones with a focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (the STEM fields) (Li 2004; Sidhu et al. 2011; Zha 2009).