Mobility, migration and the road to the innovative university: implications for the Asia-Pacific region

It seems there are a number of stages, some of them occurring simultaneously, that higher education (HE) institutions (HEIs) go through as the current higher education transformation process continues to unfold in the Asia-Pacific region. We have, over the past decade, witnessed the dramatic expansion of HEIs throughout the region as governments struggled and in some cases rushed to provide capacity to satisfy the enormous demand of a more informed population who see access to HE as the key to their children's chances for success in the workplace. Now, HE is being asked not just to be excellent or ‘world class’ but to be ‘innovative’ in the broadest sense of the word. In this article, we look at this transformation in the context of mobility and migration and the impact that these may have on the rise of the ‘innovative’ university.