Putting Higher Education to Work
Skills and Research for Growth in East Asia
Putting Higher Education to Work: Skills and Research for Growth in East Asia is a comprehensive look at higher education in East Asia—how it has changed, how it will continue to evolve, and how it can be improved to become more responsive and relevant to the needs of the labor market and the economy as a whole. Using innovative firm surveys and the latest available evidence from the region, the authors shed light on the functional skills that workers must possess to be employable and to support firms’ competitiveness and productivity. They also examine how higher education systems can produce the commercially applicable research that will help countries apply, assimilate, adapt, and develop the new technologies that will drive growth.
Though this volume focuses specifically on the developing countries of East Asia, its methodologies, messages, and analysis will be important resources for students, researchers, and policy makers who study and shape the delivery of higher education and training in other regions around the world. The authors offer valuable and succinct guidance on some of the most effective policy measures being deployed by national and regional governments, by firms, and by universities themselves to enhance the contribution that higher education systems can make to economic change.
Higher education will continue to be a core issue for the World Bank and its client countries, and it will also constitute a central pillar of the labor and educational agenda for years to come. I am confident that this volume, the first in the East Asia and Pacific Regional Report Series, will help the region’s economies embrace the challenge of achieving rapid growth led by gains in productivity. The measures proposed in this volume should help East Asia reach this objective in an increasingly competitive global environment.