Asia's Educational Edge: Current Achievements in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China and India (review)

The advantage of brain gain in the United States has been challenged by the rapid economic and educational development in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, and India. As a Chinese scholar, I have personally witnessed this change. In 1991, I received an admirable chance to study in a British university and found then that most Chinese students in Britain did not plan to go back to China after their study. In 2000, I had a second opportunity to go abroad as a visiting scholar in an American university. In less than a decade, the situation had changed dramatically. Many of the Chinese students and visiting scholars I met intended to go back to China after studying abroad.

The reasons for this change between 1991 and 2000 are complex, and an in-depth discussion is beyond the scope of this review. More to the point, however, my experience does reflect the remarkable progress made in narrowing the gap between Chinese society and western societies in terms of academic foundations and living standards.

Asia's Educational Edge, authored by Yugui Guo, is the product of a research project on the educational system changes in five Asian economies and their impact on the supply of technical workers in the United States. In contrast to theoretical research, this research is policy oriented and is concerned both with the decline in the United States's historic advantage in attracting foreign talents and with the poor performance of U.S. K-12 students in international academic assessments.

The author raises two specific questions for exploration: How does economic and education development in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, and India affect the workforce in science and engineering (S&E) in the United States? Why do academic differences exist between American students and students in other economies? Guo chose these five Asian economies because they are not only very dynamic but also constitute major home settings of international students in the United States; 45% of the total foreign-born U.S. residents with S&E doctorates come from these five economies (p. 232).

The author employs mainly descriptive, comparative, and prescriptive methods. He painstakingly presents rich and updated data on the five economies (India is less well documented), including administration, finance, enrollments, curricula, and international education, from the elementary to the tertiary level. He describes and compares each educational system with the U.S. system and provides specific suggestions for improving American education.

The book can speak not only to policymakers, but also to comparative scholars. Collecting and analyzing data from five economies require great effort and intellectual skill, and the author's cultural background is a significant factor in his important analysis.

After a careful study of each educational system, Guo draws some conclusions which deserve some attention in this review. First, Guo's discussion of centralization versus decentralization needs further elaboration. These are two approaches in educational administration, and the distinction between the two is a matter of degree. He seems to favor the active role played by central governments in specifying common standards and core curricula in the five economies and, he suggests, in the United States as well. This implication is arguable. It is true that the central governments of the five nations used to play crucial roles in their educational systems; but those economies, particularly China's, have partially reversed this trend by delegating more authority to local governments and institutions. For example, local Chinese governments and institutions now have the authority to determine curricula, examinations, textbooks, and so forth. Korea made a similar move in its local autonomy law in 1991, and Japan demonstrated the same approach by stipulating the National University Corporation Law in 2003.

Guo writes in the last chapter that many people, including himself, have been haunted by the question of...