Introduction

Internationalisation of higher education has been a trend in quite many developing countries. This trend together with few other phenomena, like increasing international competition, pursuing higher ranking in global university league tables, and the quest for creating world-class universities, have generated significant impacts on the higher education systems in Asia. Given the fact that most today’s world-class universities are in the major English-speaking countries, especially in the US and the UK, the impression of internationalisation of higher education is to transplant the Anglo-American standards and practices in Asia. Such a development has caused many debates and controversies in several Asian academic communities, including in Taiwan’s.

Some scholars argue that the process of internationalising higher education has resulted in the marginalisation of local scholarship and studies (Deem et al. 2008). The hegemony of the English-speaking systems in the academic world gives a forceful reason for academics from non-English speaking countries to abandon writing and publishing in indigenous languages (that is Chinese in Taiwan). Some also argue that the emphasis on research has also threatened universities’ role in teaching (Lewis 2006). These issues led scholars to explore the possible ways of integrating international dimensions with local dimensions, particularly in the developing world (Jones 2008; Marginson and Rhoades 2002 for example).

This paper is set to investigate the possible framework for encouraging the presence of local dimensions in an internationalised and globally competitive system by using Taiwan’s higher education system as a case. It begins by discussing the notion of internationalisation and its implications for higher education. It then turns to look at Taiwan’s responses to these global developments. It also reviews different opinions on the position and importance of local dimensions in the world of globalised higher education. Based on these perspectives, the paper advocates promoting the concept of state-building in Taiwan’s as well as in other higher education systems for preserving or even strengthening the local dimensions of individual academic systems operating in the international knowledge network.

The trends toward internationalisation in higher education

Internationalisation has become a popular term in higher education in recent years. For some, internationalisation is a fairly broad idea that sometimes is interchangeable with ‘globalisation’. To distinguish the two terms, some argue that globalisation represents integration on a worldwide scale, while internationalisation refers to a circumstance beyond and across national border. However, Altbach (2004b) suggests that, for higher education, globalisation can mean ‘the broad economic, technological, and scientific trends that directly affect higher education and are largely inevitable’, while internationalisation ‘includes specific policies and programmes undertaken by governments, academic systems and institutions, and even individual departments or institutions to cope with or exploit globalisation’ (p. 5–6). Knight and de Wit (1995) further elaborate that internationalisation of higher education is ‘the process of integrating an international dimension into the teaching, research and service functions of an institution of higher education’ (p. 15). It should be taken as ‘a long-term strategic policy for the establishment of overseas links for the purposes of student mobility, staff development and curriculum innovation’ (Rubzki 1995, p. 422), which can be achieved through ‘international cooperation and development projects; institutional agreements and networks; the international/intercultural dimension of the teaching/learning process, curriculum and research; campus-based extracurricular clubs and activities; mobility of academics through exchange, field work, sabbaticals and consultancy work; recruitment of international students; student exchange programs and semesters abroad; joint/double degree programs; twinning partnerships; and branch campuses’ (Knight 2006, p. 18). These definitions provide some practical guidelines for implementing internationalisation in reality.

Yet, in addition to facilitating cross-border activities and infrastructures, the implication for national higher education systems should not be neglected in defining internationalisation. As Hawkins (2008) says, ‘in many cases, issues of higher education reform appear in the context of aligning limited capacity with expanding social needs, while creating or retaining quality’ (p. 532). Thus, a stratification of higher education sectors has appeared in many developing countries, where ‘institutions of lesser status are expanding rapidly and new institutions are coming into existence’ to meet expanding social needs, while ‘institutions of considerable age and distinction are… demonstrating their “competitiveness” by exhibiting “world class” attributes—a not very disguised code for developing competitive international research capacities and attracting the best students’ (p. 532). In this context, internationalisation of higher education often implies the pursuit of international image and quality in order to make the selected top institutions more globally competitive, especially in Asia (Deem et al. 2008). Hence, quality assurance mechanism and international benchmarking, which emphasise output monitoring and measurements and systems of accountability and auditing, have become more popular worldwide (Marginson 2007). Indeed, higher education has entered ‘an era of open global competition between nations and between individual HEIs as global actors in their own right’, in which despite the unequal distribution of resources and educational status and the dominance of the English language and institutions from the Anglo-American nations, ‘international comparisons are constantly made’ (Marginson and van der Wende 2007, p. 307). This illustration of global transformation in higher education specifies international competition in two ways. First, there is a recognition that top universities in the global era are necessary to transcend the boundaries of nations, and that they have to involve in the global academic community to validate their international stature (Mohrman et al. 2008). In this sense, if universities wish to pursue excellence in the global age and compete for an internationally recognised status, they seemingly have no alternative but abandon the locally-focused approach. Second, given the prevalence of global university rankings and their metrics for assessment, stepping up specific criteria used in the influential global league tables, like those prepared by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute of Higher Education (SJTUIHE) and the Times Higher Education (THE), becomes a smart way to win in the reputation race on a global scale (Altbach 2007; Marginson and van der Wende 2007).

Such an interpretation of internationalisation and its connection with the global transformation in higher education have rationalised the increasing prevalence of international university rankings because, on the one hand, they are taken as a symbolic and powerful indicator to prove and advertise the standard of universities in today’s competitive global education market (Lynch 2006). In fact, since there is an internationally open market for higher education, reputation derived from league tables is becoming increasingly critical for students in their decision-making (Hazelkorn 2008). On the other hand, international ranking systems are considered as a form of practical application of internationalisation in terms of upholding and developing quality awareness and performativity culture in many higher education systems. Nevertheless, this interpretation of internationalisation also generates a harmonising effect under which transplanting the image of major universities in the developed world is being set as the policy goal in higher education of many developing countries. This phenomenon is considered as a form of neo-colonialism in higher education (Chan and Lo 2008; Denman 2002), which may marginalise local dimensions in academic community. This point will be further elaborated later in this paper.

How ranking matters

Ranking is nothing new in higher education, and it has always been important. In fact, commercial university rankings have been existed in the West for a number of years. However, as widely observed, climbing on league tables has become far more important than in the past (Frank 2001; Lynch 2006 for example) because as pointed out by Frank and Cook (1995), ‘the economic reward for elite educational credentials has jumped sharply in recent decades’ (p. 5). This statement focuses mainly on the impacts of ranking on recruitment of elite students and prestigious faculty (p. 6–7). Meanwhile, the new but increasingly prevalent international rankings such the two introduced by the SJTUIHE and the THE have contributed to this effort (Altbach 2007, p. 7).

In East Asia, many governments and universities take these ranking exercises seriously in recent years and influences of the ranking are expanding rapidly in the academic field of the region (Mok 2007), despite the criticisms that many of these ranking exercises are still far from systemic and scientific (Lynch 2006). Higher ranking in the global university league, however, not only means making a difference in credentials of the institutions, but also serves the national goal of higher education policy in many East Asian countries. For example, in China, Japan and South Korea, the governments have launched special initiatives for selected universities to improve their performance in global university ranking. These special programmes like China’s 211 and 985 projects, Japan’s Centre of Excellence in the twentyfirst century (COE21) program and South Korea’s Brain Korea 21 (BK21) program focus on improving research capacity of selected institutions or research units, thereby facilitating them to achieve world-class status (Kim and Nam 2007; Liu 2007; Yonezawa 2007). Malaysia recently has adopted similar strategies to promote the notion of world-class university. While Universiti Sains Malaysia was granted the Accelerated Programme for Excellence (Apex) status with which the university would enjoy high autonomy in finance, personnel, student recruitment, tuition fee and determining the senior management, it was required to reach the world’s top 100 universities by 2020 (http://www.mohe.gov.my).

In Taiwan, higher education has accomplished the move from an elite higher education system to mass access. Indeed, Taiwan’s higher education has gone though a rapid expansion since the late 1990s. In 1991, the number of higher education institutions in Taiwan was 50, but the number increased to 163 in 2007, with substantial contributions from the private sector. The number of private higher education institutions and the number of students admitted to private institutions have also exceeded those of public institutions. This development rationalises the change from quantitative expansion to qualitative consolidation. In addition, Taiwan’s entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001 and the subsequent General Agreements on Trade and Services (GATS) has drawn the local academic community’s attention to forthcoming competition with foreign universities (Chen and Lo 2007).

As a consequence, the Taiwan government have made a series of attempts to pursue quality excellence in higher education since the late 1990s. In 1998, for example, the MOE launched a 5 year Program for Promoting Academic Excellence of Universities, which primarily aims to enhance research capacity of Taiwan’s universities. In the first round of the Academic Excellence Program, a total amount of NT$4.3 billion was allocated to fund 19 projects and three of which were offered conditionally. The second round of the Program was launched and had been implemented from 2002 to 2006. There were 148 research project applications in this round and twelve projects had been granted with a total amount of NT$2.1 billion (MOE 2003). The government considers the Academic Excellence Program to be successful in allowing effective integration of resources, fostering cooperation and exchange between outstanding institutions and talented researchers, and boosting research capacity (NSC 2005).

In response to the quest for world-class status across the globe, the government launched the Program for Developing First-class University and Top Research Centres in 2005. The program aims to develop at least one university as one of the world’s top 100 universities in 5 years and at least 15 key departments or cross-university research centres as the top in Asia in 10 years (Chen and Lo 2007). To achieve this goal, an amount of NT$50 billion has been budgeted for this 5 year long program. Twelve research universities were selected to be funded in 2005. The selected institutions are required to complete a five-stage process ranging over the funding period in order to make their projects fully granted. This ‘five-year-fifty-billion’ program can be linked with other strategies like wholesale restructuring of higher education system for internationalising Taiwan’s higher education sector. More importantly, it marked Taiwan’s intention to join the competition between higher education systems in the region under the theme of building ‘world-class’ university.

Promoting performativity culture

Research is seen as a key measure to reach world-class status because world-class universities are necessarily research-oriented and -intensive (Altbach 2004a). Therefore, to promote research culture and atmosphere in the domestic academic fields, heavy weight has been placed on research output in measuring university performance worldwide.

To promote international benchmarking, the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT), a statutory body established and commissioned by the MOE to develop a performance indicator for ranking universities, have developed the “performance ranking” to reflect universities’ performance in terms of their research output. The “performance ranking” employs data drawn from SCI and SSCI to evaluate universities’ research performance. It considers publishing in international peer reviewed journal as the predominant mode of scientific research output, thus taking statistics on articles published in listed publications as an effective indicator of reflecting universities’ research performance. It claims that analyses of SCI and SSCI make global university ranking fairer, with an emphasis on both quality and quantity of publications. It also takes account of recent research performance in order to make a fair comparison between institutions with different length of history. Furthermore, it incorporates average number of criteria in its calculation of the score so as to prevent a predominance of large universities.

Based on these sets of criteria, the HEEACT has analyzed universities in a number of countries and regions in East Asia, and recently has released its 2008 worldwide university performance ranking. Accordingly to the ranking, institutions in US and UK still occupy predominant positions in the international higher education landscape. It is noteworthy that all the world’s top 10 universities in the table are US universities, while only two universities in the Asian-Pacific region are ranked within the world’s top 30 universities, and both of them are from Japan. This is different from other well-known league tables, in which universities in the Asian-Pacific region has risen significantly in recent years. For instance in the Times Higher Education Supplement 2007 World University Rankings, the Asian-Pacific region has five of the world’s top 30 universities. As for Taiwan’s universities, four universities are ranked by the HEEACT within the world’s top 500, and none of them are within the world’s top 100 (see Table 1).

Table 1 Ranks of Taiwan’s universities in HEEACT performance ranking for world universities (2007–2008)
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In addition to developing league table, the HEEACT is also commissioned to conduct a nation-wide university program evaluation, which will evaluate 78 universities, and over 2,000 departments and research institutes in 5 years. There are five criteria used for assessing performance of departments and research institutes, including: (1) aims, features and self-improvement; (2) curricula design and teaching; (3) learning and student affair; (4) research and professional performance; (5) performance of graduates. A pass in the evaluation exercise is vital for survival. If a department fails to pass the evaluation for two consecutive years, the MOE would request the university to terminate its enrolment and operation.

Currently, three rounds of evaluation have been conducted, and results of the first two rounds have been released. Among 549 departments, 389 of them have passed the evaluation, while 123 and 37 departments are classified as “to be re-evaluated” and “failed” respectively (http://www.heeact.edu.tw).

In general, academics in Taiwan are confronted with the reality that special weight is attached to research output, therefore accepting a shift of emphasis on their duties from teaching to research. However, the tension between local and global (as yet dominated by the Anglo-American paradigms) scholarships remains an obstacle to promoting research output measurements, although effort on counterbalancing the pressure to publish in indigenous languages (like launching domestic citation indices and ranking in Taiwan) has been put to release anxiety from the academia in the region.

Phasing the local dimensions out: the cost of an international image?

Previous discussions have found that similar to some Asian societies Taiwan has been attempting to actively participate in the world of globalised higher education by internationalising itself. Yet, the development of internationalising higher education in Asia has drawn the academic community’s attention to the issue of ‘neo-colonialism’ in academia. Discussions focus particularly on several issues like the dominant role of English, the declining status of local studies, the emergence of performativity culture and the negative impacts of role differentiation. For those standing against the trend, the strategies for internationalising higher education merely means a sort of corruption of Asian tradition and culture in academia. Deem et al. (2008), for example, argue that:

The quest for world-class universities… not only created a new ‘dependency culture’ but also reinforced the American-dominated ‘hegemony’, particularly in relation to league tables, citation indexes and the kind of research that counts as high status. Asian societies seem to have treated ‘internationalisation’ as ‘westernisation’ and ‘modernisation’ or ‘Americanisation’ since the nineteenth century (p. 93).

Clearly, the emphasis on indexes and performance measures has become a phenomenon that commonly exists in Asia. With an attempt to achieve an international image or the “world-class” status, output and quality measures in the West have been transplanted to the East in recent years. As regards to the policy domain, the phenomenon was criticised as policy copying (Deem et al. 2008).

Such a situation is likely to be the case for Taiwan too. Though academics in the island-state seem to agree that their pedagogical and academic freedom was well protected, they think the value of local studies especially those written in Chinese is under the threat from the dominance of Anglo-American standards and practices. A Taiwan academic from the field of social sciences expresses:

There should not be a sole definition of “quality”, but should be different versions of “quality”. Good researches do not have to be written in English. We should respect the value of local researches… I believe there is a matching point between personal research interest and the MOE’s standard (fieldwork in Taiwan, April 2008).

Nevertheless, in his recent book on transforming research universities in developing countries, Altbach (2007) points out that ‘involvement in world science (and scholarship, added by the author) means, in general, adherence to established research paradigms and themes’, and it seems not practical to ‘build an infrastructure that permits research on local or regional themes if a university wishes to join the “big leagues” (p. 16). He agrees an unequal global knowledge system dominated by wealthy countries generates pressure to its participants, especially institutions from poorer countries. But, he also stresses the global academic network permitting worldwide exchange of personnel, technologies and knowledge. Moreover, there is a recognition that top universities in the global era are necessary to transcend the boundaries of nations, and that they have to participate with international organisations to validate their international stature (Mohrman et al. 2008). In this sense, if universities wish to pursue high quality in the global age and compete for an internationally recognised status, they seemingly have no way but abandon the locally-focused approach.

Regarding this tension between globally- and locally-focused perspectives, scholars have explored the possible ways to release the resistance from local structure to the global trends. Marginson and Rhoades (2002) use a three-dimension framework, which they call a glonacal agency heuristic, to connect global versions, national policies and local practices. They argue that the interactions between local, national, and global layers do not need to work in a linear pattern but in a more complex way by which moving into the international niches does not necessarily mean stepping back from the local and national dimensions. Based on this framework, Jones (2008) develops the global higher education matrix to provide a conceptual foundation for how a local university can be a global institution. He argues that there is a multiple-level perspective, from which academic units within an institution, institutions and system-level authorities are seen as various autonomous cells and can operate within a complex inter-relationship network and at the local, national and/or global dimensions simultaneously. According to Jones (2008):

A university that may be a strong actor in the global dimension in terms of its institution-level activities, may also have a large number of component parts that focus primarily on the local or national dimensions… an academic unit is oriented towards each of the local, national, and global dimensions may be quite different than the ways in which other academic units in the same institutions are oriented towards these dimensions, and these dimensional profiles may be quite different than the ways in which the university, at the institutional level, participates in each plane of activity (p. 465).

He views this matrix as the way of upholding internationalisation in higher education without overlooking the local dimensions. At individual level, Mohrman et al. (2008) note that academics should take on multiple responsibilities to accomplish their global mission by producing internationally recognised research outputs and teaching students from different parts of the world on the one hand, and to benefit local and national communities by adopting their knowledge on the other.

These notions provide useful conceptual bases to frame the integration of global and local perspectives. However, the superiority of research and English in the academic world provides strong incentives for academics, particularly those from non-English speaking developing countries, to concentrate their efforts onto producing academic publications in international English-writing outlets. Obviously, efforts to the research and/or English domains can generate more impacts at international level and possibly at local level as well, thereby enhancing the academics’ stranding internationally and locally (Marginson and Rhoades 2002). Nevertheless, in many circumstances, staying away from (undergraduate) teaching and from using indigenous languages means losing connections and interactions with the local communities. Moreover, the assigned missions and the patterns of funding under the differentiated systems usually limit and discourage the top universities to engage in local activities. Providing incentives for academics in involving in these activities therefore becomes essential in upholding the above global-local integrating notions.

Promoting the concept of state-building: a parallel development

Establishing a differentiated system is a common way of providing enhanced resources to selective universities to pursue the world-class status across the world. The general practice of differentiation is to form a tiered model, in which the apex usually constitutes research universities with an international outlook that serves the purpose of building world-class universities. These institutions thus focus primarily on enhancing their research capacity for producing publishable outputs in specific publication venues, thereby validating their international stature. In many higher education systems, financial resources largely concentrate on these apex universities. The majority of the higher education systems are located at lower part of the tiered system, where they might be further divided in several tiers but often are categorised together as teaching institutions focusing on the local dimensions (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

A common differentiated academic system

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It is argued that such a differentiated academic system exists in Taiwan’s higher education sector. Figure 2 identifies the four levels of the differentiated academic system in Taiwan. The apex of the system refers to the top tier (labelled as 1 in the figure) which consists of the twelve research-oriented universities the Program for Promoting Academic Excellence of Universities (also known as the ‘five-year-fifty-billion’ program). As mentioned, these institutions are requested to achieve the national goal of building at least one world-class university in a decade. They hence aim to make an endeavour to join the global academic community by adopting the internationalisation policies discussed earlier. The second tier (labelled as 2) consists of 28 universities funded by the Program for Promoting Teaching Excellence in Universities. These universities are locally prestigious and multi-purposed but not research-oriented. Under the ‘teaching excellence programme’, they are granted to improve their overall teaching quality. The third layer (labelled as 3) includes the institutions funded by the Program for Nurturing Talented in Key Areas. Some of these institutions are not comprehensive universities but are sponsored to enhance their teaching quality in specific disciplines. Others (labelled as 4) without any special funding come to the bottom of the system. These tiers form the differentiated Taiwan’s higher education system, in which only a few universities (those located in 1) are identified as research-oriented and the majority (those located in 2–4) are teaching-oriented. Nonetheless, to facilitate the exchange and communication between different tiers, the MOE launched the Program for Regional Teaching Resource Centre by which universities at upper tiers play the role of regional teaching centre to share their teaching with their counterparts at lower tiers (labelled as 5) (http://www.csal.fcu.edu.tw/Edu). For example, National Cheng Kung University, one of the twelve universities at the apex, plays a role of the central institutions in the Yunlin, Chiayi and Tainan Regional Teaching Resource Centre which functions as a network to integrate and share teaching resources among Cheng Kung and other 16 institutions in southern Taiwan. The program is designed as a bridge between the different tiers of the academic systems through institutional collaboration and integration.

Fig. 2
figure 2

The differentiated academic system in Taiwan. Notes: (1) Research-oriented institutions funded by the Program for Promoting Academic Excellence of Universities. (2) Teaching-oriented institutions funded by the Program for Promoting Teaching Excellence in Universities. (3) Teaching-oriented institutions funded by the Program for Nurturing Talented in Key Areas. (4) Teaching-oriented institutions without any special funding. (5) The Program for Regional Teaching Resource Centre

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To certain extent, this model shows an intention of integrating the international and local dimensions by bridging different tiers. However, as it was set to differentiate institutions with diverse missions, the current differentiated system constructs distinct boundaries between the research-oriented and teaching-oriented tiers, thereby facilitating the separation of internationally-focused and the locally-focused sectors. This means individual institutions are less likely to develop a multiple dimensional profile with the present patterns of funding and structures of differentiated system.

To promote the local dimensions in the process of enhancing the quality of higher education, the author argues that the notion of ‘state-building’ can be introduced to develop the differentiated academic system. The concept of state-building university is originated in Mexico where this type of universities refers to the largest and most research-oriented universities that play the role of centre of political activism and of cradle of political and intellectual leaders in the country (Altbach 2007, p. 8). In this paper, the term ‘state-building’ ,however, is adapted to describe the implications of higher education for national and community developments. In this sense, state-building means:

  • having a strong vision in the local dimensions;

  • pursuing excellence in teaching (mainly at undergraduate and taught master’s levels);

  • devoting efforts to both basic and applied research for benefiting domestic industry and social good;

  • training national and local leaders;

  • generating influences in public policy by bottom-up approaches.

Instead of research capacity, state-building universities primarily concern with their presence in local community. Hence, faculty members’ participation in community services, successful cases of outreach to domestic industry and local governmental and/or non government organisations, articles in local journals and newspaper columns, and graduates’ role in community leadership are more suitable performance indicators for state-building institutions. In terms of funding, department-based funding is considered to be the suitable funding strategy because the activities of state-building are more likely to be those of outreach and collaboration at departmental level. Based on this, component parts of institutions can be more autonomous to explore their ways to reach out to and serve the domestic industry and community. In addition, faculty members from different academic departments can involve in the outreach activities as a project team through which multi- and cross-disciplinary collaboration and partnership can be encouraged. Furthermore, different to research-oriented institutions, state-building universities are not necessarily the comprehensive universities but strong actors in local communities. On this ground, small institutions can compete with large, comprehensive universities more equally.

More importantly, the goal of developing world-class university and the concept of state-building are not mutually exclusive. While there is the continuity of funding selective universities to pursue the world-class status, some institutions, including those identified as potential world-class universities, can be encouraged to develop themselves as state-building universities. These ideas project a new differentiated model (Fig. 3) in which institutions are able to develop a multiple dimensional profile. In this differentiated system, though the majority of universities (those located in tier 2 in the figure) are still teaching-oriented and locally-focused, the apex of the system no longer necessarily refers to the most internationalised and research-intensive institutions (those located in 1). By upholding the notion of state-building, the apex has now shifted to those institutions whose performances are outstanding as international/research universities (labelled as 1) but also with quality teaching and strong components and presence in local domains (labelled as 3). Moreover, as it is in the existing system, cross-tier institutional cooperation (labelled as 4) should be encouraged to strengthen the global-local integration in higher education system.

Fig. 3
figure 3

The differentiated academic system integrating the international and local dimensions. Notes: (1) Institutions are research-oriented and internationally-focused. (2) Institutions are teaching-oriented and locally-focused. (3) Institutions have state-building components. (4) Inter-institutional collaboration

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Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the idea of state-building is conceptually different from localisation. Localisation refers to a process of translating global approaches into local practices in a top-down mode. The idea of state-building, however, primarily concerns with the presence of the local dimensions in the process of constructing and restructuring the higher education systems in developing countries. It tends to use a bottom-up approach as it focuses on the interactions and relationships between universities and local communities, though international perspectives can be adopted in the process.

The notion of state-building is considered as a counterbalance to the powerful quest for world-class universities in Taiwan as well as other Asian societies because adopting the notion as a parallel development in higher education not only provides a possible ideological framework to preserve or even strengthen the local dimension in universities, it is also practically relevant to models of managerialism that are widely accommodated by contemporary universities (Deem et al. 2007). As mentioned, the pursuit of international image and world-class status in Taiwan as well as in East Asia at large is facilitated by a performativity culture that is implemented by employing ‘carrots-and-sticks’ management technologies to motivate faculty members. Then, the performance indicators proposed earlier for state-building institutions can be used as another set of carrots and sticks to balance the research-oriented global dimension and promote the local dimension with an emphasis on teaching. All in all, the concept of state-building reasserts the importance of local dimensions in the age of globalisation where scholarships within different contexts are requested to develop toward a common direction on the theme of internationalisation. This is important because acceptance of international standard does not mean giving up local distinctive cultural frameworks and surrendering to the homogeneity of the global scholarship, despite the fact that pursuing the world-class excellence demonstrates the way of being at the cutting edge of world knowledge (Niland 2000). In this regard, the prospect of higher education development described in this paper is to fill higher education systems with local visions and missions while remaining globally connected.

Conclusion

This paper is developed on the basis of agreeing academic systems in the developing world to join the ‘world championship league’ of the global higher education sector. It is important to note that active and deep involvements in the global academic community are, in many senses, beneficial to the development of the knowledge production systems in most developing countries. In fact, with the use of information technology, the rapid flow of personnel and the erasing of boundary between academic systems, academia in different parts of the globe would inevitably involve in the international network of science and scholarship in today’s globalised world.

Bearing this in mind, the focus of future discussion is to identify the local dimensions of scholarship with various backgrounds and to find the way of retaining their best and brightest part in the progress of internationalisation of higher education. In this sense, the concept of state-building may be a useful conceptual foundation for reaching a sustainable and, in some instances, less controversial way of internationalising higher education. It is recognised that similar to the quest for building world-class university the notion of state-building relies heavily on the support of national higher education policy (Balán 2007). However, different to the world-class league which is in line with the emergence of global higher education market and competition, there is no externality facilitating systemwide institutional change to uphold the idea of state-building. This condition further highlights the importance of government plans and policies in driving the development.

Last, but not least, in spite of greater investment in local dimension, it is likely that the centre-periphery pattern of global higher education landscape will not be fundamentally changed. As pointed out by Altbach (2007), ‘there will always be centers and peripheries’ (p. 2) in the world of globalised higher education because the status of world-class will always be selective and the game will always be competitive. Major universities in the developed world will still play a leading role in global academic community, at least for a period of time. However, advocating the concept of state-building provides a new perspective from which the purpose of examining the global landscape of higher education is no longer to navigate where the centre of global higher education is, but is to identify how many successful centres of state-building there are.