Keywords

1 Introduction

Over the last three decades, globalization has had a significant influence on higher education. Regarding the relationship between higher education and globalization, a report by Marginson and van der Wende (2009) has been widely cited as arguing for the increasing role of higher education in the age of globalization. In their report, the authors adopted a neutral definition of globalization as “the expansion, deepening, and acceleration of global interconnectedness” (Held et al., 1999, p. 2). However, they do not perceive globalization as a single, universal phenomenon, but rather as phenomena with subtle differences depending on the country or region, the language used, and the academic culture. Furthermore, the manifestation of its effects varies greatly depending on the type of higher education institution.

Within university education, undergraduate education today plays an important role in helping students gain international perspectives. Especially in the Asia–Pacific region, national curriculums and their link with the entrance examinations for higher education have traditionally posed strong national characteristics with regard to primary and secondary education for the purpose of national integration, social inclusion, and citizenship (UNESCO Bangkok Office, 2015). By contrast, graduate education and the labor market tend to be directly linked with global settings, and the need to study and work with peers from other countries with various linguistic and cultural backgrounds is inevitable. Under these circumstances, over the last quarter of a century, liberal arts education has experienced substantial development, especially in Asia, and has strong relations with a globalized economy that requires globally competent knowledge workers (Godwin & Altbach, 2016).

Today, undergraduates, especially those undertaking liberal arts education in various countries and institutions, tend to stress “international” aspects, promoting English medium instruction (EMI) and employing co-learning between domestic and international students. The spread of “international liberal arts education,” however, has also led to a variety of educational patterns and directions.

This chapter presents the practices of international undergraduate education by focusing on the liberal arts in five, mostly medium-sized, countries with quite different geopolitical contexts: the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan. We examine whether the reforms of undergraduate education in these countries are moving in the direction of global convergence or differentiation based on the respective contexts of each country’s society and higher education system. We further assess whether the trend is based on intrinsic values and directions inherent to universities and higher education arising from their day-to-day education and research activities, or and directions demanded by society and industry outside universities and higher education, such as human resource development and contributions to industrial innovation.

2 Changing Context of Undergraduate Education

2.1 Impact of Globalization

For most countries in the Asia–Pacific region, the period from the end of World War II to the 1980s can be identified as that in which higher education systems developed mainly in connection with nation building, whereas the period from the 1990s to the very recent past was that in which the nature of higher education systems changed in connection with globalization (Altbach & Umakoshi, 2004). In the last three decades, university education, especially undergraduate education, has been challenged with responding to globalization in many ways.

First, the decline and transformation of Soviet and Eastern European higher education with the end of the Cold War increased the global influence of Western higher education systems, especially that of the United States (US). With the collapse of socialist systems, Russia and other Eastern European countries abolished Marxist education and underwent some painful university reforms, including the collapse of university finances and the acceptance of self-financed students (Huisman et al., 2018). In China and Vietnam, which adopted market economies under socialist regimes, structural reforms modeled by the US and Western Europe were implemented, including the integration of previously existing Soviet-style single universities and the construction of comprehensive universities (Hayhoe et al., 2012; Trần et al., 2014).

Second, the dominance of English as a global lingua franca became apparent through the drastic increase in international student mobility worldwide. The international mobility of students has expanded significantly in the twenty-first century, with the number of students worldwide enrolled at universities outside their home countries continuing to grow, from 1.97 million in 1998 (74.5% of whom were studying in member countries of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: OECD) to 5.34 million in 2017 (69.7% of whom were studying in OECD countries) (OECD, 2020, 2021). To encourage an increasing number of students to rapidly move across borders, most of the higher education systems and institutions in East Asia and the world expanded their provision of programs instructed in the English language (Galloway et al., 2020). Part of this demand has been commercialized in anticipation of tuition income, whereas some countries, such as Japan and China, have expanded their acceptance of international students while maintaining their own languages as the primary languages of instruction. Under this context, when such programs are based on national (non-English) languages and cultures, undergraduate education tends to face more difficulties in terms of attracting international students. While English is widely used as the academic lingua franca in graduate education and research activities, even in non-English-speaking countries, national languages are also actively used as the medium of instruction at the undergraduate level in, for example, Japan, South Korea, and the Netherlands. As shown in Table 3.1, in many countries, the ratio of international students in universities is higher for graduate programs than for undergraduate programs.

Table 3.1 Share of international students in major OECD countries (2020, %)
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Third, learner-centered approaches have become widespread in university education, partly in close relationship with internationalization in higher education (Gaebel et al., 2018). The institutionalization of quality assurance in higher education became dominant under new public management policies, which required university education to be accountable to students and taxpayers. The measurement of learning outcomes as an indicator of the development of students’ knowledge and skills has attracted policy attention (Tight, 2019). Although these ideas and methods related to the assessment of learning can be applied across national borders, in reality, each country tends to maintain its ownership in terms of the quality assurance of higher education, with a loose or partial commitment to international quality assurance networks. In Europe, the Bologna Declaration, which aimed to establish a regional higher education arena, was issued in 1999, although governmental intervention in quality assurance has continuously been an issue (Chu & Westerheijden, 2018). As the Bologna Process expanded beyond Europe, the idea of basing the formation of students’ skills and knowledge on international quality assurance and the international mutual recognition of degrees and qualifications became widespread (Alemu, 2019).

Fourth, with the expansion of graduate schools, the main role of bachelor’s programs has changed from that of terminal education to an interim step for postgraduate education. As a result of the Bologna Process, countries in Europe, such as Germany, which originally had an integrated system of education up to the master’s degree level, newly institutionalized bachelor’s and master’s programs, creating the need to redefine the aims and scope of such bachelor’s programs (Dunkel, 2009). Some Australian universities, such as the University of Melbourne and the University of Western Australia, implemented curriculum reforms to consolidate their highly segmented bachelor’s programs with the systemic development of postgraduate study (James & McPhee, 2012). The massification of higher education has also provided an opportunity to integrate non-university institutions, which had previously been distinguished from higher education as postsecondary education, as an equivalent to undergraduate university education, as seen among universities of applied sciences in Europe (Adelman, 2009). In Japan, since the late 1980s, many junior colleges have been upgraded to four-year universities. In South Korea, the recorded statistical rate of higher education enrollment of around 100% was partly achieved due to the upgraded status of specialized universities as a part of its university system (Yonezawa & Kim, 2008).

The widening influence of the US higher education model, the emergence of a global higher education market with EMI, the rapidly developed international networks of higher education quality assurance, and the further expansion and upgrading of higher education systems, as described above, are all interrelated and manifest the progressive transformation of national, regional, and even global higher education.

2.2 Rise of Nationalism

Since the mid-2010s, however, the rise of nationalism has had a tangible impact on higher education systems (Douglass, 2021). The Trump administration in the US imposed restrictions on the acceptance and entry of students from certain countries (Hacker & Bellmore, 2020), and the treatment of students from European countries emerged as a social issue in the wake of the withdrawal by the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) (Mayhew, 2022).

In response to the significant development of higher education in East Asia, moves were made to develop an East Asian higher education arena, such as the CAMPUS Asia project launched based on initiatives of China, South Korea, and Japan in 2010. However, this scheme has occasionally been stalled due to the different national interests among these influential countries, although the continuous development of regional collaboration has been realized as a wider and more diverse regional network of Association of South East Asian (ASEAN) and “+3 (China, South Korea and Japan)” or wider regional collaborative frameworks (Chun, 2016).

In line with this, the discussion and actions regarding “internationalization” in higher education have progressed as a response to the globalization of society. In the 1990s, the internationalization of higher education grew in importance as an international discussion by the OECD and other organizations (OECD, 1999). However, as early as the 2010s, the internationalization of higher education began to be perceived as a negative phenomenon and as a norm and a pressure rather than an opportunity (Brandenburg & de Wit, 2011). There have been notable cases of the growing movements of “anti-globalism” and “nationalism” actually affecting the international mobility of students and researchers, such as the assault of a South Asian student in Australia and the delay in the issuance of visas to students and researchers from certain countries in the US and the UK.

Altbach and De Wit (2017) pointed out that nationalism has a high affinity with the commercial internationalization industry, whereas the realization of internal internationalization at home in universities and the fostering of global citizenship are delayed in societies where nationalism is on the rise. The global and national views are not necessarily diametrically opposed, as national contexts and perspectives as part of everyday knowledge still remain, even in elite research universities oriented toward global activities (Friedman, 2017).

3 Dynamism of Undergraduate Education Reforms

The various changes that have taken place in bachelor’s programs all over the world can be summarized as university education reforms linked to globalization, and liberal arts education is no exception (Lewis, 2018). Nevertheless, one of the reasons why university education continues to be in need of “reform” is that in the current education system, university education, especially bachelor’s programs, is strongly required to function as a nexus between secondary education under the national curriculums and the globalized postgraduate education and labor market for highly skilled workers. Figure 3.1 is a simplified representation of the position of undergraduate education in the current educational and social systems. This figure shows how today’s undergraduate education is required to play a role in transforming students’ perspectives from national and domestic to global and international ones.

Fig. 3.1
A model diagram of the functions of undergraduate education. It describes how it is related to globalized markets, higher education, secondary education, and other sectors.

Role of undergraduate education in the global age

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3.1 Theoretical Models on Global Complexity and Dynamism

However, the actual higher education reforms and changes observed over the past 30 years in various countries and regions have been diverse and complex and are hardly a unanimous phenomenon moving in a single direction. In the studies of international higher education, a center-periphery model prevails, where Western/American higher education exerts an influence on higher education in other parts of the world. The “peripheral” higher education systems tend to be trapped into a syndrome of catching up with the trends seen at the “center.” Consequently, the imbalanced power structures between East and West have been recognized as one of the dominant theoretical perspectives (Altbach, 1998; Altbach & Selvaratnam, 1989). However, Umakoshi (2004) and Cummings (1997) also point out tendencies unique to East Asia, where the family and private sector take a complementary role with regard to state-provided education in terms of higher education investment, typically seen in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Marginson and Xu (2022) further highlight the differences in higher education between East and West, which are deeply rooted in cultural and conceptual ideas concerning civilization.

In the current world faced with globalization, more diverse and intertwined regional and national factors shape patterns of ideas and practices regarding university education. Each country and university now needs to explore possible approaches in relation to the internationalization of university education according to its own internal and external context. Diverse directions can be taken in terms of the prospects and implementation of undergraduate education, and a comprehensive discussion on the frameworks is needed to explain this complexity and dynamism.

O’Byrne and Hensby (2011) conducted a theoretical review of global studies and indicated the coexistence of multiple models of global perspectives: (1) globalization (a “one world” orientation), (2) liberalization (the erosion of barriers between nation-states), (3) polarization (the world is divided into rich and poor), (4) Americanization (the American empire is sustained through hard and soft power), (5) McDonaldization (the standardization of practices across the world), (6) creolization (ongoing local transformations through regional flows), (7) transnationalization (the emergence of a level of governance above the nation-state), and (8) balkanization (the division of the world into distinct and conflicting cultural blocs). This model variety reflects the processes and dynamics involved in all aspects of contemporary social life, including university education. O’Byrne and Hensby (2011) stress that there is no single way of looking at the world. Their allowance regarding the use of multiple models to interpret the world clearly contradicts the view that universities all over the world should catch up with “global trends” based on a single standardized future direction (i.e., an idea similar to that of the “McDonaldization” model mentioned above) (Kariya, 2018).

3.2 Variation in the Global Landscape

The variation in the direction of university reforms, especially those symbolically implemented in the undergraduate programs related to the international liberal arts of each country, can be defined according to its position in the global landscape of higher education and society. This is because university education, as well as the higher education sector as a whole, are now inseparable from global geopolitics and the national arms race in terms of knowledge and innovation (Hazelkorn, 2017; Marginson, 2018), as described below.

First, US higher education has been the main model of university education since World War II, and this tendency has been strengthened under globalization. For example, since the end of World War II, Japan has consistently referred to US trends in higher education to formulate its future vision, which includes modifications with regard to the country’s own national context, and this tendency is still strong today (Breaden & Goodman, 2020). However, this does not mean that the US itself has not been affected by globalization over the past 30 years (Johnstone et al., 2010). The US is still the world’s largest host country for international students, but its share of the world market has been declining, and the international student flow is more evident at the postgraduate level than at the undergraduate level (Bound et al., 2021). Under the rapidly changing geopolitical environment, the US has also been making various efforts to reform its undergraduate programs and make them internationally compatible to respond to globalization. In the domestic context, employability and the relevance fit to social and industrial needs tend to be stressed. However, among the top most selective universities and colleges, values based on their liberal education tradition have been maintained and developed through the expansion of the international student market.

Second, the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have increased their global presence in higher education, backed by the rapid increase in the student population (Schwartzman et al., 2015). China is the world’s largest higher education system in terms of the size of its student body, and the international competitiveness of its top universities, particularly in terms of research capacity, ranks highly in Asia and is likely to increase further (Gu et al., 2018). However, due to its scale and diversity, Chinese higher education faces major domestic contradictions, such as disparities in wealth and poverty and conflicts arising from ethnic and cultural diversity (Yang, 2018). Furthermore, these BRICS higher education systems exert great influence on other countries, affecting not only their neighbors but also countries with a large intake of international students, such as the UK and Australia (Marginson & Xu, 2022). Together with the surrounding Greater China region, China appears to be strengthening its confidence in terms of developing its own identity in university education and reacting to the demand for human resource development by its own society (Marginson & Yang, 2020).

Third, major advanced economies other than the US, represented by Japan, Germany, and other members of the G7, are facing tough challenges related to university education reforms in response to global competition, symbolized as university rankings (Hazelkorn, 2017). These countries have mature higher education systems with a strong path-dependence structure, especially up to secondary education, as in the established national schooling tradition (Ben-David, 1977). However, they do not have economic and social scales equivalent to those of the US and China, nor are they flexible and agile in response to the rapidly changing global environment, as seen in smaller-scale countries, such as Singapore. These difficulties in terms of higher education reforms have been particularly pronounced over the past three decades for the UK, a major English-speaking nation that should have an advantage regarding globalization (Deem et al., 2007). The UK has been facing direct competition with other Anglophone countries in relation to flows of people, knowledge, and capital. The UK has also faced a dilemma with regard to its integration with or separation from the rest of Europe. Under this tough international context, the UK’s higher education reforms, such as the introduction of quality assurance and the research excellence framework, have strongly promoted a pseudo-market approach in the past 30 years during this era of globalization, and the student and knowledge industries have emerged as the main players in university education reforms. The Higher Education Funding Council, which had served as a buffer body between the state and universities, was dismantled and replaced by the Office for Students, which deals with students and student affairs policy, and Research UK, which deals with research policy.

Another example of a country facing complications is Japan. To respond to globalization, Japan has implemented various higher education reforms, highlighting British new public management as one of its major models since the 1990s in addition to its continuous referencing of US higher education (Yonezawa, 2019, 2021). German universities have also faced challenges in response to globalization and regionalization. However, at least among the leading universities, the academic values symbolized as “excellence” have been more or less maintained and even further developed through national policies, such as academic excellence initiatives and strategies (de Wit & Altbach, 2021).

Lastly, under globalization, some countries with relatively small populations have shown a strong presence as “successful” models in higher education reforms, especially with the provision of competitive international university education. Singapore, an international city-state, is such an extreme model, referred to as a “knowledge hub” by Knight (2014). Australia, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Malaysia also belong to this category. Contrary to the assumption derived from the center-periphery model, these countries that have provided swift and agile responses to globalization are now perceived as good practice models for countries with larger populations and economies, such as Japan and Germany, to refer to. However, the directions these countries are pursuing in their higher education reforms should be examined in further detail because the approaches of these countries, as well as their universities, are quite different from one another.

4 Framework

Based on intensive discussion among international project members and external experts, we identified the two axes mentioned above—convergence and divergence and intrinsic and extrinsic—and developed a framework.

In order to examine the impact of globalization on higher education, van Damme (2019) suggests a framework based on the axes of convergence and divergence. Referring to Marginson and van der Wende (2009), Van Damme (2019, p. 13) reconfirmed that “higher education institutions and systems are firmly embedded in national, regional and local contexts, but define themselves within global space characterized by specific ordering principles and power relations.” In this context, university education and the related skill development and qualification systems show various patterns in the balancing of the convergence of globalization trends and divergence in response to national and local societal needs.

Here, “convergence” refers to the idea that university education around the world will eventually merge into a single model, often recognized as being the ideological model that represents English-speaking countries, such as the US and the UK. “Divergence,” by contrast, refers to the idea that university education around the world will differentiate into multiple models; for example, China and countries in Europe, such as Germany, will continue to present their own ideas and models of university education based on their own intellectual and cultural heritage. The direction taken by each country and university lies in the balance between these two opposing philosophies.

In addition to the convergence–divergence axis, we should assume another axis exists—that of intrinsic–extrinsic values. In reforming university education, faculty members may wish to define the curriculums, contents, and pedagogies of university education in accordance with the intrinsic values or the value generated from daily academic and education activities. However, the government and the market (students and industry) expect universities to set the nature of university education in accordance with the needs of learners and society, represented as the idea of human resource development and human capital (extrinsic value).

5 Positioning of Country Cases

The focus of the discussion in this chapter is on the current context and directions of reforms in international undergraduate education, in many cases with interdisciplinary and liberal arts components. As a comparative research project with international members, we identified five countries, namely Australia, the Netherlands, South Korea, Malaysia, and Japan, as case studies in the development of international undergraduate education. This study was originally designed to provide implications of Japan’s undergraduate education reform through comparative case studies (Yonezawa et al., 2022). The above four countries other than Japan, which had a population of 126 million in 2020, are included in the last category discussed at the end of the previous section: countries with relatively small populations (ranging from 17 million in the Netherlands to 52 million in South Korea) and regarded as “successful models” of international education. Because of their relatively small sizes and the fact that they are surrounded by strong neighbors with reference to the latters’ economies and populations, both the higher education and societies of these countries have engaged in active adaptation to the emergence and development of a knowledge-based global economy. Japan, a G7 member country that is facing declines both in terms of its population and presence in the global economy, may find these cases useful to consider with regard to its future orientation.

We implemented site visits to survey the representative practices of international, mostly undergraduate level, university education in these case study countries from 2016 to 2020. We analyzed related policy and university documents and interview survey data collected through site visits with research expert members from the respective countries. The following sections summarize the findings of our survey analyses, and Fig. 3.2 shows the relative positions of the countries in terms of the approaches taken.

Fig. 3.2
An illustrated graph ranges from convergence to divergence on the x-axis and intrinsic to extrinsic on the y-axis. Malaysia, Australia, Netherlands, and South Korea are marked and Japanese industry, government, and universities are highlighted.

Directions taken in undergraduate education reforms

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5.1 Australia

In 2016, 28% of Australian citizens were foreign born, and 21% were second-generation immigrants with foreign-born parents (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], ). Under these circumstances, the Australian curriculum, which provides comprehensive guidelines for the content and achievement goals of school education up to secondary education, is based on the concept of “intercultural understanding,” which is the ability to identify similarities and differences between one’s own culture, language, and beliefs and those of others, and to discover connections between oneself and others and to promote mutual respect.

However, Australian higher education has been recognized as a major export industry, in which international students can learn under a curriculum with global standards in English (Harman, 2005). The government and universities in Australia have also committed to higher education reforms that enhance the skills and competence fit to the global economy backed by the rise of Asia. For that purpose, some universities, such as the University of Melbourne, have reorganized undergraduate programs so that students can pursue broad and interdisciplinary studies (James & McPhee, 2012). Furthermore, Asian literacy was stressed and placed at the core of the Australian national higher education policy, and this policy trend has continued as the New Colombo Plan, the current government program for study exchange (Jones, 2018).

The state’s demand for global marketing among universities as an educational service industry will take precedence over multiculturalism rooted in its own education and local society. In this sense, the orientation toward “extrinsic convergence” can be identified as a key characteristic of Australian university education, especially with undergraduate programs being opened up to a wide range of international students. Therefore, this orientation encompasses the discrepancy between the university campus community and the local multicultural society that spreads out around it.

Initiatives to internationalize the university curriculum and to find common ground between Australian students and international students through international collaborative learning in the classroom are also promoted (Arkoudis et al., 2010; Leask, 2015). However, we also observed a strong tendency for Australian universities to encourage the centralized assimilation of international students from diverse backgrounds, resulting in a lack of multiculturalism rooted in the country’s society and campus community. The internationalization of university education in Australia is especially aimed at capturing the growth potential of neighboring Asia and meeting the career needs of international students and the global labor market.

5.2 The Netherlands

Dutch universities, which have a tradition of offering discipline-based, long-term expertise education up to the master’s level in Dutch, have pursued drastic educational reforms to respond to economic globalization and regional integration, particularly the Bologna Process, which, since 1999, has aimed to create a European higher education arena with a common regional framework of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs (Witte et al., 2008).

Specifically, with an awareness of liberal arts education in US as well as UK Oxbridge-style college settings, Dutch “university colleges” have been designed to provide liberal arts and science undergraduate education in the English language for co-learning among international and Dutch students (Adriaansens, 2017). 10 out of 13 universities in the Netherlands have established affiliated university colleges, and their educational practices have also influenced a wide range of existing expertise education at Dutch universities.

The process of these university reforms has elements of both traditional continental European university education (“divergence”) and the elite liberal arts education in English languages that originated in the US and is expanding around the world (“convergence”). These reforms can be identified as being driven by a university’s own educational values (“intrinsic”) (Bog & van der Wende, 2016). The education settings of university colleges place more importance on interdisciplinary twenty-first-century skill education in small-sized classes not directly linked with employability skills, based on the knowledge that, in the Netherlands and the UK, 80% to 90% of university college graduates typically proceed to master’s programs (Law, 2016; Redden, 2013). Although the country’s national policy maintains its position of placing its own language and culture at the foundation of higher education, the reality of Dutch university education is that it is moving toward convergence, with English being widely used to meet the needs of students who are interested in regional and global citizenship and career development (Earls, 2016; Sklad et al., 2016). Thus, we can identify the characteristics of university reforms in the Netherlands symbolized by the development of university colleges as at the boundary between intrinsic differentiation and intrinsic convergence.

5.3 South Korea

Historically, Korean higher education has been shaped by a combination of various foreign influences, including Confucian ideas introduced from China, the colonization by Japan in the first half of the twentieth century, and the development of a national higher education system with strong linkages with the US (Jung, 2018). Since, and even before, independence in 1945, many Korean students studied at universities in English-speaking countries, especially in the US (Kim, 2018). At the graduate level, nearly 60% of Korean students who study abroad choose the US (Shin & Choi, 2016).

Under the conditions of studying abroad and career development through global mobility woven into the fabric of national elitism, both undergraduate and graduate classes and programs targeting Korean students but given in the English language have expanded and become widespread (Park, 2011; Pillar & Cho, 2013).

The shift from Korean to the English language in research and teaching at Korean universities has proceeded in close connection with both the posed incentivization through government policies in response to globalization as well as national and international university ranking indicators. Through Brain Korea 21, the national academic excellence initiative, governmental incentives are also offered for programs that provide EMI to attract international students to Korea. However, these universities have also been actively committed to providing EMI, for example, requiring teaching in English for newly recruited faculties (Byun et al., 2011).

In the late 1990s, English was introduced as a medium of instruction in particular degree programs at top private universities, such as Yonsei University and Ewha Women’s University. According to a study by Kim (2017), the percentage of English courses at prestigious universities in Seoul between 2005 and 2010 experienced a twofold to threefold increase. Although the curriculums and content of these EMI programs, especially at the undergraduate level, are based on interdisciplinary studies or liberal arts, the dimension of interdisciplinary and liberal arts learning is not emphasized as students and their parents are mainly interested in practical skills and disciplines, such as English language skills and business management knowledge. Our interview survey during the site visits revealed that many parents and students understand the value of liberal arts and have a strong interest in education and studying abroad in the US. However, we also identified their enthusiasm for practical studies and the value of English as an essential skill for employability. Even at elite universities, majors that do not lead to careers are not popular, emphasizing the importance of cultivating expertise through majors and minors (double majors).

Thus, the undergraduate education of Korean higher education has intrinsic drive to adapt global values under the dominant influence of US university education both on the circulation of academic human resource and knowledge production. In this case, an “intrinsic–convergence” approach to university education is prominent.

5.4 Malaysia

Composed of a multi-ethnic and linguistic population, Malaysia has pursued its unique identity of university education under strong governmental initiatives for nation building since its independence from British colonization in 1957 (Sato, 2007). The Malaysian government rebuilt the education system, which historically used different educational languages in a complex combination of four languages (English, Malay, Chinese, and Tamil) and different curriculums, into an education system with Malay as the language of education and unified national educational content and curriculums, which include subjects on Islamic civilization (Lee, 2004). The use of the Malay language was made mandatory at all levels of public education, including higher education.

Since the 1990s, however, due to the globalization of the economy and multiculturalism, privatization, and deregulation, the use of English in education has been allowed and partially promoted. In 2002, the government made English the language of instruction in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses in elementary and secondary education, as well as in university education and research (Gill, 2005). In 1996, the Private Higher Education Institution Act was enacted. Since then, at private universities and higher education institutions, including foreign university branch campuses, programs instructed in non-Malay language (English), with only a small portion of compulsory Malay language and society subjects, have been widely diffused. National universities, similar to their counterparts in Japan, Korea, and China, are expected to provide world-class education, nurture human resources, which will contribute to Malaysia’s future development, and conduct globally competitive research with the goal of improving their positions in the world university rankings.

Under the circumstances discussed above, however, the challenges of developing a university education with unique national profiles are ongoing (Wahi, 2015). Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), which was established in 1970 as the first national university with Malay as its language of instruction, has established its mission and strategy as affirming and promoting the value of the Malay language while globalizing knowledge within the framework of national culture. UKM also confirms that it does not exclude other languages from instruction, and we found that English is mainly used in programs, especially in STEM fields, with the acceptance of international students with various linguistic backgrounds. We also found that Malaysian students at UKM are well adapted to the bilingual and multi-lingual learning environment. Although Malay is required for one’s thesis, dissertation, and presentation, postgraduate students publish articles in English.

The above-mentioned higher education development that stresses both the national language and culture as well as international competition can be identified as “extrinsic” in the sense that the university responds rather passively to the demands of the state and society. Nevertheless, the choice between the English language and the Malay language in university education is notable for its oscillation between the influence of the global context (“convergence”) and the movement toward national integration (“divergence”) with regard to multi-ethnic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds. Thus, the Malaysian case could be placed somewhere between the “extrinsic–convergence” and “extrinsic–divergence” axes.

5.5 Japan

Unlike other country cases with medium-sized populations that are renowned for their agile responses to globalization, Japan, as a G7 member, is facing greater difficulty in its response to internationalization and global competition in university education. Although Japan is located in the East Asian region where most higher education systems have experienced significant success both in terms of internationalization and improvements in their rankings, Japan’s universities have generally been criticized for their unmet expectations regarding their positions in the rankings due to both the slow process of responding to internationalization and underinvestment by the government (Yonezawa, 2020).

We could argue that the difficulties that Japan’s university education system is facing are based on discrepancies among the major stakeholders with regard to internationalization. The universities, the government, and industry in Japan have strong national contexts and a desire for “internationalization.” However, the approaches taken toward internationalization chosen by the three stakeholder groups (universities, the state, and the market) are different and do not seem to be integrated into one common direction.

From the standpoint of universities and faculty members, although Japan’s bachelor’s degree programs have undergone various educational and governance reforms, the content of education has basically been developed within universities by faculty members who belong to national academic communities and have relatively weak linkages, either with international academic communities or the globalized industrial world.

However, there is an “extrinsic” factor in that the universities are increasingly exposed to the “demands of government” and “demands of industry,” which push them toward “convergence,” even though these entities, like the universities, also have strong national characteristics (Yonezawa, 2021). The Top Global University Project, a ten-year government project to promote the internationalization of universities, which has aimed to achieve academic excellence from 2013 onward, can be identified as an example of such incentive programs provided by the government. EMI has also been promoted, although it is not necessarily recognized as such an established mainstream educational initiative as internationalization at home (Shimauchi, 2018).

The discrepancy in higher education and academic systems between universities, the government (nation-state), and industry (market) was shown by Clark (1983) through an international comparison of higher education systems, including that of Japan. However, Marginson and Rhoades (2002), referring to Australia and other countries that have responded remarkably well to the progress of globalization, argued that a higher education system is formed as an agency that integrates universities, the state, and industry across global, national, and local dimensions. This new framework for the twenty-first century integrates universities, the state, and industry as an agency to create a higher education system that is global, national, and local. These arguments are also referred to in Japan as “industry-government-academia collaboration” and “all-Japan” approaches to higher education reform. However, these ideas have still not been integrated into one overall initiative yet, as seen in the other cases we included in this chapter.

6 Conclusion and Implications

This chapter discussed how universities and countries are reforming their university education, especially with regard to international liberal arts education at the undergraduate level. In the countries examined as providing successful models in terms of their active responses to globalization, namely Australia, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Malaysia, we observed variety in the approaches followed in relation to both the convergence–divergence and intrinsic–extrinsic axes. Thus, our findings from the comparative analysis indicate that no single direction can be identified as a “global trend.” This implies that each country and university should carefully examine and identify the global landscape and its position in it and identify the most relevant direction it should pursue with regard to its university education, especially in international liberal arts education at the undergraduate level.

We also found that Japan’s case indicates a discrepancy between the three parties (universities, the state, and the market) concerning the direction of university reforms in relation to internationalization. This discrepancy poses a barrier to generating a decisive moving force in university reform and leads to the underachievement of educational performance, especially from international and global perspectives. In the other cases with smaller populations examined in this chapter, such an apparent discrepancy was not observed. In other words, these higher education systems with medium-sized populations have continuously faced significant challenges from the globalized economy, society, and academic community, and the three parties have had to take cooperative actions in the form of integrated agency.

The spread of COVID-19 in 2020 developed into a pandemic involving the entire world, forcing a major shift in the nature of international education at universities around the world. As an alternative, online exchange programs, courses, and education and training for international understanding are rapidly expanding, opening up the possibility of providing a wider range of students with international learning experiences in cyberspace without traditional physical travel. These cyberspace learning experiences are not limited to cognitive learning, such as language training and specialized lectures, but also include international co-curricular programs that promote interaction among students from different countries and cultural backgrounds through online cooperation among multiple universities.

In the midst of the above changes, how will the framework shown in Fig. 3.2 and the positioning of each case study change in the future? University education is influenced by both the intrinsic value of the university itself and the extrinsic value of external societies, such as government and industry, and there can be both global convergence and divergence in university education, even in a new environment where education in cyberspace is more widespread than before.

In terms of the functions expected of bachelor’s degree programs, the fact that the pandemic has temporarily eliminated most of the opportunities for international experience is nothing but a great loss. Focusing on shifting from a national perspective to a global perspective in bachelor’s education, we see that the opportunities for international experience provided by overseas study, through physical interaction with international students in classrooms and on campuses, have become more valuable.

The most likely scenario is that a sense of crisis and a full-fledged response to such a situation will take the form of unification among universities, government, and industry under the slogan of industry-academia-government collaboration. Thus, there will be a risk that the movement will become more domestically confined under economic nationalism. We stress the importance of the development of liberal arts in undergraduate programs to suit the local context, while a mutual understanding and the respect of “others” are gradually but inevitably becoming the core values of university education.