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Due to global attention on student employability, employers are expected to be involved in institutional governance in higher education and quality assurance (QA). Due to the difficulties in recruiting motivated employers to participate in external QA governance and process, this has become a challenging issue in many Asian nations. The paper aims to explore employer legitimacy in Asian national higher education regulations and EQA system according to a four-dimensional diagram of institutional governance model. There are two major findings. First, Asian governments developed QA policies with a focus on employer engagement but the emerging practice is still ineffective. Second, approaches of employer engagement in QA governance vary context to context, such as HK and Malaysia in the excellence mode; Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand belong to advanced type; and China, Thailand, and Vietnam fall in the intermediate category.

The impact of COVID-19 on higher education and quality assurance (QA) has already elicited global attention and discussion. QA agencies and networks quickly learned to adapt in order to carry out assessments, accreditations, recognitions, and reviews in a full virtual mode. These practices include using shared folders for virtual desk review, video conferencing platforms for interviews, and virtual site visits. In order to respond to the 2020 pandemic, The International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) swiftly adopted a virtual mode of the GGP review exercise for the GGP alignment applicants. The Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT) was the first case that underwent a thorough virtual review process of GGP alignment during the 2020 pandemic. Therefore, this study aims to outline the impact of the pandemic in Taiwan higher education as well as provide the meta-analysis of the virtual review process of the INQAAHE GGP alignment by using HEEACT as a case study.

Due to global attention on student employability, employers are expected to be involved in institutional governance in higher education and quality assurance (QA). Due to the difficulties in recruiting motivated employers to participate in external QA governance and process, this has become a challenging issue in many Asian nations. The paper aims to explore employer legitimacy in Asian national higher education regulations and EQA system according to a four-dimensional diagram of institutional governance model. There are two major findings. First, Asian governments developed QA policies with a focus on employer engagement but the emerging practice is still ineffective. Second, approaches of employer engagement in QA governance vary context to context, such as HK and Malaysia in the excellence mode; Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand belong to advanced type; and China, Thailand, and Vietnam fall in the intermediate category., Author(s): Angela Yung Chi Hou [sup.1] , Christopher Hill [sup.2] , Dewin Justiniano [sup.1] , Arianna Fang Yu Lin [sup.1] , Sandy Tasi [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.412042.1, 0000 0001 [...]

In the last years, 'new' policy issues, such as sustainability, have emerged, and old ones, such as social inclusion, have resurfaced on the political and public agendas. Higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly expected to respond to these 'new' challenges. But how are HE systems and HEIs (namely in Europe and Asia) looking at these 'new' policy issues and assessing them? This article focuses on what issues are being looked at by two of the most well-known tools or mechanisms used to assess the quality of HE -- quality assurance and rankings -- and how are these tools dealing with these 'new' challenges. This article concludes that the role of the 'new' policy issues in the assessment of institutional performance and quality is still very limited. Developing indicators that may be used for accountability purposes or improvement purposes is a major challenge that lies ahead. Facilitating the exchange of ideas, experiences, and knowledge on how to measure performance on the 'new' policy issues and on how to use that information in any of the rationale settings seems to be a promising way forward to get the 'new' policy issues embedded in quality assurance tools.

Due to global influence and local demand, Taiwan's higher education system has experienced great changes in policy agenda and system reform over the past few decades. After President Tsai took the presidential office in 2016, the Ministry of Education (MOE) shifted its focus towards universities' autonomy and social responsibility, which encouraged institutions to strengthen their partnerships and collaborations with other ASEAN countries. Based on this new ideological and political paradigm shift, three key national higher education projects, including the new cycle of self-accreditation policy, higher education sprout project, and new southbound policy, were implemented. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present the current development of these three MOE initiatives since 2016, and analyze the paradigm shift of Taiwan higher education policymaking in terms of egalitarianism. Four major findings are addressed as follows. First, policy and politics mattered in the process of educational policy shift under a doctrine of egalitarianism; second, national accreditation continued to be used by university leaders for institutional effectiveness; third, global competitiveness in Taiwan higher education is declining gradually; fourth, the loss of Chinese students was not offset by the new Southbound program.

As massification of higher education developed, employment challenges in changing labour markets aroused the attention of scholars globally. An interdisciplinary approach called world-system theory is applied by scholars from the social sciences, history, anthropology and cultural studies. This study applied the theory in a bibliometric analysis of graduate employment research using R and CiteSpace. It identified the main characteristics (e.g. authors and countries) of relevant research, investigated the social and economic context of certain milestone publications and visualised research hot spots. World-system theory, as a macrosociological approach to describing the world economy and social system, is innovatively applied in illustrating the findings of the current work. Results indicate that core countries not only are economically influential but also dominating the academic research. Scholars in semi-peripheral and peripheral countries are encouraged to establish transnational networks and foster academic collaborations.

The engagement of quality assurance in the recognition process of overseas qualifications became an emerging issue in Asian nations with the increased interest in student mobility in the region in the 21st Century. This study explores the links between quality assurance and qualification recognition, and approaches adopted within national regulatory frameworks in the Asia Pacific region from the perspective of quality assurance agencies. Three major findings are obtained. First, governments are primarily responsible for academic qualification recognition in Asia. Second, professional qualification recognition is heavily restricted by governments due to nationalism and protectionism within the job market. Third, a divergence model between quality assurance and qualification recognition exists in the Asian context.

Driven by global rankings and national quality assurance (QA) initiatives, Taiwan's higher education institutions were encouraged to develop strategic plans and initiatives, in order to improve graduate student employability. The purpose of this study is to explore the polices and strategies adopted by Taiwanese higher education institutions, with a particular focus on 'employability', in terms of standards and indicators of QS ranking and Higher Education Evaluation & Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT) programme accreditation in 2017. This paper analysed strategic plans and self-assessments reports from 20 Taiwanese universities in order to determine the impact of ranking and QA on employability initiatives and associated implications for institutional policy. The study presents three major findings. First, the emergence of global ranking and national quality assurance systems pressured Taiwanese universities to situate several employability initiatives within their institutional strategic plans. Second, Taiwanese universities applied varying approaches to the integration of graduate employability into institutional policies and strategic plans, according to ranking and national accreditation standards. Third, the gap between institutional policy making and actual implementation of employability initiatives exists in the Taiwanese context.

The literature suggests that recent years have witnessed a fundamental shift in higher education internationalisation. This paper argues that a reorientation of policy, which is upheld through an initiative known as the Higher Education Sprout Project, indicates the fundamental shift in higher education internationalisation in Taiwan. The paper begins with an explanation of how the notion of world-class university induced elitism in East Asian higher education. Next, it reviews the last two decades of Taiwan's efforts on developing world-class universities. In particular, the paper explains how perceived domestic problems in higher education, such as an overemphasis on certain performance indicators and the resulting effects of homogenisation, and the phenomenon of emphasising research but neglecting teaching, are considered the consequences of emphasising global competition and the associated quest for building world-class universities. The paper argues that the recent policy change reveals an intention to uphold egalitarianism, thereby reaching a balance between fulfilling global ambition and addressing local needs in higher education. This intention highlights the political essence of internationalisation policy for higher education. It also reaffirms the significance of the global-local dynamics in higher education policy.

In recent years, governmental policy changes have exerted significant impact on the structural transformation, role diversity and commercialisation of national quality assurance agencies in many nations. Due to policy change, ongoing structural transformation and emerging roles, four national quality assurance agencies in Australia, Japan, Malaysia and Taiwan were selected as case studies. The study presents three major findings. First, although a state-controlled governance model remained popular in all cases, the university-led and supermarket models were chosen due to changes in policy. Second, case agencies intended to develop new roles in order to respond to policy change and public demands, particularly enhancing professionalism, redefining the relationship with universities as partners, strengthening the linkage with international quality assurance networks, providing quality assurance services with foreign providers. Third, autonomy and independence remain a considerable challenge for quality assurance agencies.

Malaysia, Singapore, China, and South Korea employed branch campuses as a means to develop and promote economic growth and global competitiveness. The aim of this study was to explore national policies and regulatory frameworks for international branch campuses in the four key nations identified above. The development of internal quality assurance mechanisms and external review approaches in international branch campuses were investigated, via in-depth interview and document analysis. The study presented three major findings. First, an inclusive model of internal quality has been developed in international branch campuses found in the four nations. Second, the international branch campuses' external quality assurance approaches, in the four countries, were diverse and included exemption, reliance on home country accreditation, duplication, and international accreditation. Third, South Korea and Singapore were more closely aligned to "liberal regulation with minimal quality assurance," whereas Malaysia and China were in the category of "liberal regulation and restrict regulation," respectively, but with comprehensive quality assurance process.

In 2012, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education launched a new quality assurance policy entitled 'self-accreditation', aimed at enhancing institutional autonomy, as well as establishing its internal quality review mechanism. In the self-accreditation policy, higher education institutions are encouraged to develop their own quality assurance frameworks based on strategic direction and institutionally specific features. The study adopts qualitative and quantitative approaches to explore the impacts and challenges of the 2012 Ministry of Education self-accreditation policy over Taiwanese universities and accrediting bodies. There are three major findings. 1. Self-accreditation policy had positive consequences and outcomes on university's internal quality assurance capacity building. 2. Inappropriate selection processes of reviewers, arbitrary elimination of standards and indicators, inconsistency across review decisions are the challenges that self-accrediting universities encountered. 3. Under the new quality assurance policy, the roles and responsibilities of external quality assurance agencies should be redefined.

Since the 1950s, the Council of Europe has established conventions and information networks to enhance student mobility and qualification recognition in Europe. In contrast, Asia did not take this issue into consideration until 1983, when the UNESCO Regional Convention on the Recognition of Studies, Diplomas and Degrees in Higher Education in Asia and the Pacific (the "1983 Convention") was adopted. The recognition of a joint degree when the schools are in two different countries is even more challenging than for a conventional degree, because they do not belong to any single national higher education system. The first purpose of this study is to describe the current situation in the recognition of foreign qualifications in higher education institutions in Europe and Asia. Next, schemes, procedures and challenges for recognizing a joint degree will be analyzed. The role of recognition bodies and quality assurance agencies in qualification recognition will be discussed at the end of the paper.

In 2012, Taiwan implemented a dual-track quality assurance system comprising accreditation and self-accreditation in higher education institutions. Self-accrediting institutions can accredit their programs without requiring approval from external quality assurance agencies. In contrast to other countries, the Ministry of Education of Taiwan authorized self-accrediting institutions to develop their own evaluation standards. This study investigated the institution-based accreditation standards and their implications on institutional internal quality assurance. Content analysis revealed that 37% of the indicators of self-accreditation were new and not used as review indicators in the original accreditation track. Two frequently added indicators were featured indicators and levels of internationalization. The results also indicated that institutions tend to structure their internal quality assurance systems uniquely. Three types of approaches for developing institution-based standards were identified: bottom-up, hybrid, and innovative approaches. Self-accreditation has benefited institutions committed to educational quality and pursuing excellence by enabling them to employ a fitness-for-purpose approach. The diversity of higher education and educational policy changes constitute new challenges to higher education. Balancing between accountability and autonomy is critical for all stakeholders of higher education.

As quality guardians of higher education, quality assurance agencies are required to guarantee the credibility of the review process and to ensure the objectivity and transparency of their decisions and recommendations. These agencies are therefore expected to use a range of internal and external approaches to prove the quality of their review activities. Quality assurance agencies in Asia are attempting to enhance their quality capacity through several internal and external approaches. The purpose of this study is to explore internal and external quality assurance mechanisms used by quality assurance agencies in Asian nations, through an international survey of 17 APQN full members and their use of the International Network of Quality assurance Agencies in Higher Education and the Asia-Pacific Quality Network guidelines. The balance between external review and autonomy is discussed at the national and international levels. The challenges and strategies that Asian quality assurance agencies are facing and dealing with are presented as a conclusion at the end of the paper.