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The aim of this paper is to identify key challenges facing Japan's higher education since the early 1990s and their impacts on major research themes. In this paper key challenges include those resulting from the decline in the 18-year population, the cultivation of high-quality university graduates, the incorporation of national universities, the diversification of higher education systems, and globalization and internationalization of higher education. The paper concludes by arguing that challenges facing Japan's higher education and research are unquestionable and considerable. Because several challenges are different from that of any other countries, Japan has to find out solutions to tackle them by its own efforts. Furthermore, in response to these challenges, there has seen an evident transformation in a vast majority of higher education research institutes and centers from a purely academic-based research to more practical and operational research. Besides, at a policy level, numerous research themes and agenda have been developed and implemented by the Japanese government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the features of the Soviet higher education system that have been crucial to the formation of the current system and then focus on the main changes that it has endured in the past 20 years. We pay special attention to the current challenges in the sphere of higher education and the counter-measures taken by the government and the academic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education has been continuously growing, changing and developing since the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in China. With development of more than 30 years, Chinese higher education has achieved many breakthroughs. Meanwhile, it has been facing some new situations – demographic changes, economic development and massification itself – which all have direct influences. Some policy choices have been made responsively, including reforming the college entrance examination system, improving the quality of higher education, developing modern university system, promoting marketization and internationalization, and enhancing the quality guarantee system, which are currently the priorities of Chinese Government. There are also a number of conflicts involved in the policies of higher education development as well as in the policy-making process, such as conflicts between scale and quality, values of utilitarian and non-utilitarian, centralization and decentralization, and localization and internationalization, that have already brought about and will definitely continue to have important effects to the future development of Chinese higher education broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on higher education research and policies in small and/or peripheral countries that usually occupy a marginal position in contemporary international debates. The region discussed here is South-eastern Europe and especially the Western Balkans. First, an outline of emerging research centres and the developments in higher education research over the past two decades is given. The original survey carried out in 2012 is discussed and the problems that have occurred in the policy transfer from ‘centres’ to the ‘periphery’ (i.e. this region) and the policy transformation in local contexts are analysed. In the final section, specific problems in the development of higher education in the region arising from the dichotomy between the ambition for the nation-building and pressures of the global market are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]