As Asia alone holds the majority of the world’s fast-expanding private higher education (PHE), this volume probes the character, diversity, and significance of Asian PHE.

Across seven national case studies, astride both developing and developed countries, older and newer HE systems, in entrenched democracies to creakier ones, to Communist rule, the volume systematically addresses a common PHE typology. This fosters volume coherence and cross-national comparison.The two most central comparisons within each country are private vs public and private versus private. Authors all identify significant differences between PHE and its longer standing public counterparts, though with variation in the degree and contours of blurring across sectors. Even more novel for scholarship on this subject matter, authors dig into patterns of differences and similarities across the now quite varied manifestations of PHE: religious, gender, nationally elite, increasingly business and job-oriented, international, nonprofit, for-profit etc. However rigorous the comparative frameworks contributing to volume coherence, authors integrate particulars of national historical and contemporary context wherever their national expertise leads them. This helps make the book appropriate for those generally interested in Asian affairs, especially in East and Southeast Asia. At the same, the private-public and private-private comparisons engage most key issues of top concern to those keenly interested in higher education generally: institutional autonomy versus government control, regulation, competition across institutions, management, effectiveness and innovation, faculty composition and roles, student composition and roles, accountability measures, challenges of quality assurance amid rapid expansion, the partial privatization of public institutions, tuition, internationalization, and so forth.

The volume will be valuable for all concerned with global PHE and HE overall. It should likewise be an important work for those studying, working in, or making policy within or for PHE in Asia.