Yangson Kim

Knowledge-based innovation and collaboration: a triple-helix approach in Saudi Arabia

This study analyzed the research productivity of Saudi academics using the triple-helix model. In the analysis, we combined domestic and international collaboration by three sectors—university, industry, and government—according to the model of the triple-helix. This approach produces better results than by simply including international collaboration as fourth sector. According to the analysis, research collaboration in Saudi Arabia which is measured by the triple-helix, was “-” uncertainty (negative T-value) while scientific productivity has been dramatically increasing since the late 2000s. The triple-helix collaboration does not quite differ between domestic collaboration and “domestic and international” collaborations. In our further analysis, we found that technological development was not based on scientific research in Saudi Arabia; rather, the technological development relies on prior technology (patent references). From that point, Saudi Arabia’s current long-term strategic plan to develop a scientific base for a knowledge-based industry is well aligned to the current contexts of Saudi Arabia.

Higher Education Research in Hong Kong, Japan, China, and Malaysia: Exploring Research Community Cohesion and the Integration of Thematic Approaches.

This article analyzes higher education research published in international higher education journals by researchers from China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Malaysia from 1980 to 2013. It does so based on publication counts, and co-authorship and cross-citation mapping, examining these countries’ publication patterns in terms of thematic approach and community cohesion. The results show that each country has experienced distinct evolutions of higher education research, both in terms of the number of publications and thematic diversity. The research organization analyzed by co-authorship networks shows that higher education researchers in Hong Kong tend more to integrate two higher education research approaches – teaching and learning, and policy studies – into their research work. It is also in Hong Kong where most higher education researchers focus their research on both teaching and learning, and policy topics. Higher education researchers in China, Japan, and Malaysia are more thematically specialized in terms of both their positioning and their co-authorship preference. These findings suggest that a broader integration of different thematic areas may be linked more to path-dependent and contextual characteristics than to differences related to the development stage of higher education systems. This is confirmed by the cross-citation analysis, which shows that higher education researchers based in Hong Kong tend to cite each other more frequently than do those based in Japan, China, and Malaysia, suggesting a much greater community cohesion in Hong Kong than in these other countries. The findings highlight that while the maturity of a higher education system influences community cohesion, other factors influence thematic leaning and integration.

Research collaboration across higher education systems: maturity, language use, and regional differences

This study analyzed whether research collaboration patterns differ across higher education systems based on maturity of the systems, their language, and their geographical region. This study found that collaboration patterns differ across higher education systems: academics in developed systems are more collaborative than their colleagues in developing systems; academics in English-speaking countries are no more collaborative than their colleagues in non-English speaking countries; and academics in European countries are more collaborative internationally than their colleagues in non-European countries. In addition, it was found that publication is not associated with collaboration, either domestically or internationally. This finding implies that collaboration is a different dimension from publication. Finally, the article discusses implications of the findings for evaluation systems.

Applying research collaboration as a new way of measuring research performance in Korean universities

The purpose of this study is to explore the possibility of applying research collaboration as a new way of measuring research performance in Korean universities. In this study, we examine whether the activeness of research collaboration between university–government–industry can also enact as a way to measure the research performance aside from the typical indicators such as number of published articles or citations resulted from universities. Also this study focuses to analyze whether such performance differs according to universities’ characteristics and disciplines. For the analysis of the study, we gathered publication and citation data (2000–2009) of 46 Korean universities that are actively involved in research and analyzed their science citation index-expanded and the social sciences citation index (SSCI) data. Notable findings include (1) Several low ranked universities have shown rapid improvement with their research performance despite the rigid hierarchical characteristic of Korean higher education system, (2) Although universities in Korea are involved in various kinds of collaboration methods, it was evident that such dynamic is not necessarily reflected in existing hierarchy structure, (3) Academic relations with education oriented universities and research oriented universities have different dynamics and patterns in research collaboration, (4) In terms of the collaborative publication rate, private universities collaborate more actively amongst university sector whereas public universities collaborate more with government and industry. (5) Due to the nature of the social science subject itself, it was found that the research in SSCI is inevitably more based on the researcher’s independence, hence more international collaboration was found amongst researchers in natural science and engineering subjects.

The "Sandwich Generation" in Korean Academe: Between Traditional Academic Authority and Meritocratic Culture.

This study investigates how academics hired during the period of rapid neoliberal reforms differ from the senior academics hired before the reforms and the junior academics hired after the reforms were institutionalized. The faculty members who were employed in a period of radical reform may be impacted by the additional requirements and tasks caused by the reforms while they are also expected to do more traditional duties. They could be regarded as the ‘sandwich generation’ and may be suffering from overloaded. Through the survey data and interview data of this article, however, the authors found that the younger generation (the ‘new generation’) is overloaded, and their job stress is higher than either old generation (the ‘academic boomers’) or the sandwich generation. Although the new generation has a stronger preference for research than other generations, they spend less time on research and more time on administration than the others. Accordingly, the new generation is highly stressed. In addition, the authors found that there are differences between hard and soft disciplines in dealing with generational effects. In soft disciplines, the new generation spends more time on administration and less on research than the others, but they are not as highly stressed. On the other hand, their colleagues in hard disciplines feel more stressed though they do not spend more time on administration than their colleagues in soft disciplines.

Economic Crises and the Post-Massification of Higher Education

An economic crisis is the most influential environmental factor on contemporary higher education. This chapter overviews how the economic cycle affects higher education and presents some theoretical perspectives on it. An economic crisis is a short-term cycle and its impact on education is more direct than ever, and this is especially true in higher education more than other forms of education. In such a situation, the core question becomes how to survive without rapid tuition increases. This chapter looks at how to economize university expenditures, rather than generating more revenue. This chapter proposes to move from a strong research orientation to consider the balance between teaching and research.

Teaching and Research of Korean Academics Across Career Stages

This chapter discusses how teaching and research activities differ across academics’ career stages. Specifically, we focus on differences in their preference for teaching and research, budgeting time, teaching methods used, research approach, and research productivity. For this chapter, we analyzed a sample of 900 academics in the Korean Changing Academic Profession data. We found that senior academics lean more toward teaching but allocate more time on research; junior academics on the other hand have a stronger preference for research but spend more time on teaching and administration. In their teaching, Korean academics use lecturing as their main instructional method. In the classroom, interestingly, senior academics tend to emphasize practical and more socially oriented knowledge than do their junior colleagues. In terms of academic productivity, junior academics have a high rate of publication in international journals, while senior academics are high performers in relation to domestic journals and book publications.

Does Governance Matter? Empirical Analysis of Job Satisfaction and Research Productivity

This study investigated how governance is related to academics’ job satisfaction and their research productivity. Through the data analysis, this study grouped the governance type of 48 Korean universities into managerial, semi-managerial, and collegial governance. This study found that governance was not a significant factor in explaining either job satisfaction or their research productivity; however, collegiality culture does have effects on job satisfaction. The findings might disappoint policy makers who have believed in the effects of structural reforms on institutional performance. However, this study claimed that well-designed structural reforms are a necessary precondition for institutional performance and the authors recommend policy makers to pay more attention on developing “relevant” policy initiatives reflecting institutional missions and their own contexts. This study suggests that governance might not automatically result in job satisfaction or research productivity; instead, both are functioning as preconditions for job satisfaction and research productivity rather than sufficient conditions.

The Teaching and Research Nexus Under Research University Initiatives: A Comparative View for East Asia

The teaching and research nexus is a core policy issue as well an area of academic inquiry. Academics tend to believe that there is a positive association between research and teaching. However, the teaching and research nexus may differ across higher education systems, academics’ affiliated disciplines, their preferred types of research, or their career stages. This study investigated how the nexus differs according to these factors, using empirical international survey data—the Changing Academic Profession (CAP). This study selected Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and China as the focus of each research-focused, teaching-research balanced, or teaching-focused system. This study found that there are differences in regard to academics’ perception of teaching and research nexus according to higher education system, academic disciplines, and other individual backgrounds.