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This study aims to fill this research gap by providing a comprehensive exploration of the transnationalization of higher education in China and Asia, with a particular focus on how institutions maintain quality assurance and how student learning experiences are reported.

The transnationalization of higher education involves educational programs and services provided by institutions or universities in a country other than their home country where students from diverse countries are trained. The goal of transnational education is to offer higher education to students who face obstacles in physically entering the host country of a transnational program, encourage globalization, enhance cross-cultural communication and improve the quality of education by expanding students' learning opportunities, providing diverse educational experiences and elevating academic standards. The transnationalization of higher education has become a crucial endeavor in Asia, especially in countries such as China, Malaysia and Singapore, where rapid economic development and globalization have prompted the need to evolve into knowledge-driven economies to meet the increasing demand for higher education. The factors driving the expansion of transnational higher education in China and Asia include the desire for top-quality education, the allure of international students, the establishment of worldwide collaborations and aspirations to be recognized as centers of academic distinction. The rapid expansion and increasing importance of transnational higher education has underscored the vital role of quality assurance. To guarantee educational quality, maintain institutional reputation and improve overall student outcomes, several agencies and frameworks have been established to uphold international standards.

Based upon extensive literature reveiw and case analysis, our findings indicated the quality assurance assessment varies and is primarily influenced by host countries and provider polices. However, students in transnational higher education programs report satisfaction with their experienes and the quality of their programs, which tends to meet their expecations.

This study presents the first comprehsensive literatrue rewiew and case analysis of how transnational higher education in China, Sinapore, Malaysia and Vietnam uphold quality assurance and report students learning experiences. Additionally, the findings highlight why future researceh on this topic is crucial and why forestering colloboration among countries in Asian regions is imporant in term of growing geo-politics.

The article aims to offer an introduction to the special issue on changing education governance in Asia.

A brief overview of the issue is provided.

The article notes that one of the prominent issues running through the issue is the dilemma between the assertion of academic freedom and the deepening governance/management reforms in schools and universities.

The article highlights that the issue offers a distinct comparative perspective in analyzing recent changes in education governance and management in selected Asian societies.

The principal goal of the article is to examine how Singapore, one of the East Asian tiger economies, has attempted to diversify its higher education system by developing “transnational education” in the island state.

With particular reference to the most recent education reforms and changing higher education governance in Singapore, this article focuses on how the Singapore government has changed its higher education governance models in enhancing the global competitiveness of its higher education system by adopting more pro‐competition policy instruments and allowing the growth of transnational education in the city state.

The findings suggest the choice of policy tools (the choice of market forces in higher education and the rise of transnational education in the present case) is highly political and governments should pay particular attention to the particular socio‐economic and socio‐political contexts of their countries when making such choices.

The paper shows that the role of government in East Asia is still important, especially when there is a strong need for government to set up appropriate regulations, social protection and welfare, hence, governments in East Asia are very much conceived as a complement to the markets.

In Hong Kong higher education, students' learning outcomes are increasingly treated as evidence to inform course and teaching improvement. Therefore, outcome-based teaching and learning (OBTL) has been encouraged by the University Grants Committee (UGC) since 2007. OBTL has gradually been implemented by Hong Kong higher education institutions (HEIs) to enhance student learning outcomes. Relating OBTL to the social cohesion/regulation matrix, this chapter aims at analyzing how OBTL is being implemented by the HEIs in Hong Kong. Given the high institutional autonomy and academic freedom afforded to individual HEIs, each university has established its own systematic framework for integrating outcome-based approaches into its teaching, learning, and assessment. Unlike other higher education systems in Asia with strong government supervision, the government in Hong Kong acts as an enabler and facilitator, leaving the UGC to invite international experts as an independent audit body to assure the quality of student learning. As a result, this chapter chooses the eight UGC-funded universities to investigate how they engage their faculty members in OBTL, and what the enabling and hindering factors are. Based upon the social cohesion/regulation matrix, the Hong Kong higher education system is featured by the individualist way of promoting OBTL. Nonetheless, while universities are empowered with institutional autonomy to decide upon teaching, and student learning matters, their strong orientation with OBTL means they cannot simply do whatever they like. Adopting a robust quality assurance mechanism in evaluating university performance through University Accountability Agreements, the institutional autonomy that universities enjoy rests heavily upon their performance in teaching and student learning, which is assessed through rigorous international benchmarking via the Quality Assurance Audit conducted by the UGC and research performance through the Research Assessment Exercise. This chapter discusses the unique university governance of Hong Kong through the critical review of OBTL being adopted in teaching and learning in Hong Kong universities.

Globalization and the evolution of a knowledge‐based economy have caused dramatic changes to the character and functions of education in most countries around the world. In order to enhance the overall competitiveness of individual nation‐states in the global market environment, comprehensive education reforms have been launched in different parts of the globe to strengthen manpower training. Realizing the fact that there is only one resource in Singapore – human capital – the Singapore government therefore has tried to maximize the potential of its citizens in the further advancement of its economic modernization. In order to make its citizens more creative and innovative, the Singapore government openly acknowledges the importance of allowing more autonomy for schools in charting their own courses of development. By introducing a policy of decentralization, the Singapore government hopes that schools could have more autonomy and flexibility to develop their strengths and thereby individual schools can evolve with their own unique features. One way to promote quality education is the introduction of the “school excellence model” (SEM) to engage schools in self‐improvement and self‐assessment exercises. This paper sets out in this policy context to examine and study the newly proposed SEM, with particular reference to examining and studying the philosophy and principles, major features and detailed procedures of this quality assurance model. More specifically, this paper will also analyze this model in light of the global trends of educational decentralization and marketization, reflecting upon the changing role of the Singapore government in educational governance.

Although the existing literature indicates the strategy of decentralization adopted by the Chinese government has permitted the introduction of transnational higher education (TNHE) into mainland China at its very beginning in the 1980s, relatively little research has been conducted to explore the effects of the ensuing-released policies on the development of TNHE after then, especially at institutional level. The purpose of this paper is to fill this research gap by presenting data/information about recent development of TNHE in China and analyzing teachers’/students’ perceptions of autonomy enjoyed by the newly emerging cooperation type, Sino-foreign cooperation universities.

Based upon the purposive sampling method, we chose University A and B as case studies in this research to ensure the representativeness, since they cooperate separately with the major exporters of TNHE in China. In addition, key informants and snowball sampling were adopted to select our respondents. In total 5 administrative staff and 12 students were interviewed to evaluate their working/ learning experience there. The detailed information about the interviewees are listed as Appendix.

The fieldwork conducted in 2014 and 2015 reveals the governance model toward Sino-foreign cooperation universities could be categorized as predominantly decentralized. Specifically, the authors listed the most obvious aspects showing the different level of autonomy enjoyed by different cooperation types below: the internal administrative structure, the enrollment capacity, the criteria of admission and the quality assurance method.

This paper critically explores how local education bureaus regulate these TNHE programs in general and monitor the operation of the overseas university campuses being founded in China in particular. In addition, this paper also reports the field interviews with faculty members and students, particularly their evaluation of working/learning experiences in the field of TNHE. Most important of all, this paper critically reflects upon the changing educational governance and explores what regulatory regime could better conceptualize the changing state-TNHE relations in China.

The article aims to use the globalization theory and the implications of democratization for social policy to analyze the school governance reforms in Taiwan and South Korea.

The article describes the main features of decentralization policy in the school sectors in the two societies with a historical review of their democratic transition and educational reforms during the 1990s. It then classifies decentralization into two categories, namely managerial decentralization and societal decentralization, by conceptualizing their context, rationales and policy instruments. It closes by considering the implications of Taiwan's and South Korea's experiences for educational decentralization and education reforms.

It is found that in Taiwan there is a comprehensive and institutionalized empowerment of teachers and parents but full institutionalization of involvement of the school community is still in progress in South Korea.

This article reviews and compares the development and major changes of school governance in Taiwan and South Korea.