Book Review: Bob Adamson, Jon Nixon and Feng Su, The Reorientation of Higher Education: Challenging the East–West Dichotomy
| DOI | 10.1177/0019556117689856 |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| Author | G. Kamalakar |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Indian Journal of Public
Administration
63(1) 157–163
© 2017 IIPA
SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/0019556117689856
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Book Reviews
Bob Adamson, Jon Nixon and Feng Su, The Reorientation of Higher
Education: Challenging the East–West Dichotomy. China: Comparative
Education Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong/Springer,
2012, 314 pp., HKD250/USD38/`1,896.
The challenges and issues before the education planners in this century lie in
solving the problems of access and equity, quality, international dimension, job-
oriented education and financing among others. Global governance, institutional
organisation and academic practices are complementary elements within the
process of institutional repositioning. While systems, institutions and individuals
in different contexts are subjected to similar global trends and pressures, the
reorientation of higher education takes diverse forms as a result of the particularities
of those contexts. That reorientation cannot be explained in terms of East-West
dichotomies and divisions but only with reference to interflow across and within
systems. Reorientation is what we do prior to changing, developing, improving,
innovating, restructuring or transforming suggests that individual contributors
also collect understanding of how higher education is situated and the options
available in a particular situation. This volume seeks creative ways of valuing the
local in the global and the global in the local and falsifies this dichotomy, and also
highlights the importance of higher education from the tactical to pragmatic
adaptability and to flexibility, consultation, negotiations, etc.
The book is an attempt to put across 15 relevant themes for higher education in
a simple but exhaustive way. The reorientation can be explained not only in terms
of East-West dichotomies and divisions but also with reference to the interflow
across and within systems. The reason for placing these chapters at the end rather
than at the beginning of the book is to avoid any false impression of a pre-specified
framework the themes of this volume bring their own unique experiences and
expertise to the chapters that comprise this book in geographical and cultural
terms. The book is not intended to provide an encyclopaedic documentation of
reorientation of higher education; but the volume provides a lens through which
clarity is sought and issues are explored regarding how the reorientations are
taking place. This book is based on the assumption that the initial and ongoing
value orientation of any development within the field of higher education policy
and practice is crucial to its long-term sustainability. It focuses on comparative
education reorientation discussed in the East and the West and constructs that are
developed; higher education reorientation is viewed as a multilevel interactive
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