Charting a new path toward economic prosperity: Comparing policies for higher education hubs in Hong Kong and South Korea

Abstract

This article presents a comparative analysis of national policies, implementation strategies, and regional and global aspirations to establish education hubs in Hong Kong and South Korea. The authors argue that existing definitions of education hubs do not yet sufficiently consider whether a hub’s orientation is global or regional and how its funding sources direct its mission and vision. The authors first review current definitions of education hubs and then use Ranga and Etzkowitz’s Triple Helix conceptual framework to analyze Hong Kong and South Korea’s national policies and their hubs’ distinct vision, goals, strategies, rationales, and major stakeholders. The article concludes with an updated definition for education hubs which is inclusive of purpose, mission, role in the knowledge economy, and relationships between key stakeholders, including government, higher education institutions, and industry. This research identifies key indicators of a successful hub and provides additional necessary insights for policy makers working to develop future education hubs.

Keywords

Cross-border education education hub higher education knowledge-based economy

Background

The global knowledge economy

The forces of globalization coupled with the power of technology have created synergies that enable people, ideas, culture, and capital to spread across the globe at speeds previously unimaginable (Campbell, 2004; Suarez-Orozco and Qin-Hilliard, 2004; Spring, 2008). Today, skilled knowledge workers are essential to support the large diversity of emerging technology, bioengineering, pharmaceutical, and other industries that make up the global knowledge economy now driving the “fourth industrial revolution” (Schwab, 2017). This revolution “is characterised by the fusion of technologies and the blurring of the lines between the physical, digital and biological aspects of life” (Schwab, 2017).

Although new nationalistic political movements are currently challenging global systems, other competing societal changes also continue to encourage globalization (Hazelkorn, 2014; Yemini, 2015). These include unconstrained technological advances, the decline of older industries and the rise of new ones, growing streams of displaced persons and immigrants, and demographic changes such as aging populations in many northern countries of the globe concurrent with a youth bulge in many southern cone countries. Together the trends of globalization, the fourth industrial revolution, and the growth of the knowledge economy are creating new opportunities for national economies to thrive as demand increases for their knowledge workers and natural resources. In response, some countries have sought to rebrand their images as regional or global destinations for industries such as tourism, banking and finance, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals (Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka, 2006).

Nations have used various policy initiatives to strengthen their competitive advantages in the global knowledge economy. One such policy involves building the nation’s capacity of skilled knowledge workers to compete as an innovation “hub” and a globally desirable location for corporate operations (Hemsley-Brown and Goonawardana, 2007). To accomplish this policy goal, nations have recognized that they must also build the capacity of their higher education sector, since universities play a critical role in educating students to become knowledge workers in high-demand fields and in producing innovations that will help fuel economic growth. Initiatives of this type are emerging with particular vigor in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Malaysia, Botswana, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea (Beecher, 2016; Beecher and Streitwieser, 2017; Knight, 2018; Schofer and Meyer, 2005; Slaughter and Rhodes, 2004; Streitwieser and Beecher, 2017;).

The purpose of this article is to examine the economic, social, and geopolitical impact of education hubs. Education hubs host foreign and domestic education providers in a common geographical location with shared goals; further definitions from the literature will follow to define the characteristics of an education hub. Specifically, in this article, we compare and contrast the education hubs of Hong Kong and South Korea and each nation’s rationale, policies, and practices for developing their hubs. We also explore how their positions as education hubs support their economic development and societal aspirations.

These hubs were selected because both represent societal and economic changes their national governments aspire to achieve in the global knowledge economy. They also are located in a region influenced by the economic, geopolitical, and military power of China. We end our analysis by proposing a new conceptual perspective for analyzing education hubs and defining indicators of likely success for them. While we focus on the development of education hubs in Hong Kong and South Korea, our proposed new conceptual perspective can also apply to other hubs in which industry, government, and academia explicitly interact to influence the success of its hub. Since education hubs are a relatively new development, this article will be of use to senior higher education administrators who are determining whether or not to establish an international branch campus at an existing hub, as well as policy makers who may be considering investing in a global education hub.

The importance of education hubs

The meaning of mobility in education has transcended the mere movement of people. Today, mobility is characterized by the convergence of technology, privatization, mass enrollment in higher education, commercialization, and the cross-border movement of programs, researchers, and institutions (Chan and Ng, 2008; Knight, 2006; Robertson, 2009). One evolution of educational mobility and globalization is the establishment of higher education hubs that bring together globally minded students, scholars, researchers, and academic program providers (Jon et al., 2014; Kinser and Lane, 2015; Knight, 2006; Knight, 2011b; Lee, 2014; Mok, 2008). With modest or ambitious support from national governments, partnerships between higher education, governments, and industry are manifesting in the form of education hubs as policy responses to the globally competitive knowledge economy. Currently, there are four higher education hubs in Southeast and Northeast Asia, including hubs in Kuala Lumpur Education City, Iskandar (Malaysia), Singapore, Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ, South Korea); Jeju Global is an emerging education hub in South Korea with early indications that its focus is on secondary education (C-BERT, 2019). Education hubs represent new opportunities for the host countries to build capacity in their higher education sector and to offer academic programs that may not be currently available. These hubs also have the potential to bring new skills and innovations into their societies and thereby to help shift their economies toward new industries and sectors.

There is a limited body of knowledge about education hubs, including why national governments have established and supported hubs, what their long-term societal and economic goals are, and how national policies compare across hubs (Kinser and Lane, 2015; Knight, 2006; Knight, 2011a; Lee, 2014). Further exploration of such issues would help to improve current and future policies related to education hubs. Education hubs represent a major investment of public and private funds. Greater knowledge of their roles in the higher education landscape would help policy makers decide whether establishing an education hub would align with their economic and societal aspirations (Streitwieser and Beecher, 2017).

What constitutes an education hub?

Education hubs are a recent development in international higher education, and competing, contested, or incomplete definitions exist about this new phenomenon. Importantly, Kinser and Lane (2015) suggest that, due to the limited research on this topic, there is not yet an agreed-on definition of what constitutes an education hub. Governments approach funding and implementation of hubs in different ways: “Hubs can include different combinations of domestic institutions, international branch campuses, and foreign partnerships” (Kinser and Lane, 2015: 18).

Kinser and Lane also provide a framework for making sense of the spatial distribution of education hubs that form within a country, using the metaphors of an “archipelago” and an “acropolis.” In an archipelago hub, the higher education institutions comprising the hub are spread across the country, while in an acropolis hub the institutions are concentrated in a single geographical location (2015). In earlier research (2011), Lane and Kinser described an education hub as “a designated region intended to attract foreign investment, retain local students, build a regional reputation by providing access to high-quality education and training for both international and domestic students, and create a knowledge-based economy” (p. 82).

Jane Knight defined an education hub as an

effort to build a critical mass of local and foreign actors—including students, education institutions, training companies, knowledge industries, science and technology centers who through interaction and in some cases colocation, engage in education, training, knowledge production, and innovation initiatives. (Knight, 2011a: 233)

Knight also developed a typology that classified education hubs into three broad categories: student hubs, talent hubs, and knowledge/innovation hubs (Knight, 2011b). The boundaries that define these types can be imprecise, however, because national governments themselves constitute a hub. Some governments use the term “hub” as a form of marketing or branding in the global economy to attract international students and providers (Knight 2011b; Knight, 2013; Knight, 2018).

Knight (2011a) describes how education hubs can reside at the country, zone, or city level. Hong Kong, for example, is a Special Administrative Region within China. Knight notes that education hubs are not necessarily initiated by the higher education sector; often their impetus and funding may come from “economic development boards, tourism authorities, science and technology parks, and multinational investment companies” (2011b: 3). According to Knight and Lee, an education hub “is not a static entity cast in perpetuity” (2014: 30) but can evolve as the nation’s policy, purpose, and rationale changes.

Global education hubs as Triple Helix systems

Although there is no generally agreed definition for education hubs, there are some common characteristics across these hubs that make the phenomenon distinctive. First, global education hubs include some level of involvement by a host government to establish its country as a destination for education. Second, hubs can host both domestic and foreign higher education providers. Third, they aspire to change how the host country participates and positions itself in the global economy, since becoming a global education hub may bolster local companies, entice international companies to establish operations, and attract new industries.

The Triple Helix framework developed by Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (2000) and Ranga and Etzkowitz (2013) helps to enrich the discourse concerning global education hubs by addressing concepts that are missing from extant analyses. This framework analyzes innovation systems in terms of the relationship between government, industry, and education in knowledge societies. This triadic relationship provides a way to make sense of the role global hubs play in their societies and economies. Välimaa and Hoffman (2008) emphasize the importance of the role of higher education institutions in these global knowledge economies. Higher education hubs become epicenters for collaboration among the stakeholders in the triadic relationship.

Ranga and Etzkowitz (2013) describe Triple Helix systems from two perspectives: the institutional and the evolutionary. The institutional perspective analyzes the larger role of universities in innovation systems using three different configurations: statist, laissez-faire, and balanced. In the statist configuration, the government leads the relationship and creates a favorable policy environment for industry and academia to help it achieve its goals. In the laissez-faire configuration, intervention by the state is limited. In the balanced configuration, the focus is on fostering a more equal partnership between government, industry, and academia, in which academia leads in the transition to a knowledge economy (Ranga and Etzkowitz, 2013). The evolutionary perspective, by contrast, sees universities, industry, and government as evolving social systems interacting through networks and organizations to formulate their institutional interactions and relationships (Ranga and Etzkowitz, 2013).

The three configurations of the institutional perspective for Triple Helix systems—statist, laissez-faire, and balanced—provide a means of understanding the structure of relationships in an education hub and the interactions of the entities that comprise these systems. The evolutionary perspective provides a means of analyzing the role of education hubs in the global knowledge economy and the effects of technology not only on the economy and society but also on the educations hubs themselves.

In the next section, we explore Hong Kong and South Korea as education hubs and discuss the policies implemented by each government to foster relations between government, industry, and education, and we use a Triple Helix conceptual framework to conduct this analysis to describe the motivations of these hubs in developing a knowledge-based economy.

Hong Kong

Overview of Hong Kong

Hong Kong, officially known as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People’s Republic of China, is a cosmopolitan city that sits adjacent to the Pearl River Delta (PRD) by the South China Sea. Hong Kong became a British crown colony and a vital trading post in 1842. More than 150 years later, on July 1, 1997, Hong Kong was returned once again to Chinese sovereignty. The legislation that accomplished this stipulated, however, that Hong Kong would maintain its autonomy as a special administrative region governed under the “one country, two systems” constitutional principle (Law, 2004).

With its primary dependence on human resources, Hong Kong’s government has invested substantially to improve its quality of education and raise its educational attainment. During his 2004 Policy Address, Tung Chee-Hwa, the Hong Kong Chief Executive, remarked that “every cent spent on education is an investment, not an expense” (Chief Executive’s Policy Address, 2004: 16). Although Hong Kong’s publicly funded universities only offer 15,000 degree placements, and its private higher education sector is self-funded, the government is expanding its self-financing program, consisting of private sector institutions, to provide students with increased access to higher education. The government provides support to self-financing institutions through initiatives such as the Land Grant Scheme and Start-Up Loan Scheme (Education Bureau, 2010).

A vision for an education hub

The University Grants Committee, a body that advises the Hong Kong government on the funding and strategic development of its higher education sector, described its aspirations to become an education hub as “a policy of investment in the competitive knowledge economy” (University Grants Committee, 2010: 54). In 2004, Tung declared Hong Kong’s aspiration to become a regional education hub and promoted the city state as “Asia’s World City, on par with the role that New York plays in North America and London in Europe” (Chief Executive’s Policy Address, 2004: 2). Hong Kong has had to balance its autonomous role as a city state with its need to focus internationalization efforts on the mainland (Chao, 2012).

In response to the global financial crisis of 2008, however, the Hong Kong government decided to diversify its economic portfolio beyond the traditional core industries of financial services, trading and logistics, tourism, and professional services (Mok and Bodycott, 2014). It initiated a Task Force on Economic Challenges to evaluate the impact of the financial crisis on Hong Kong’s economy and proposed six new economic pillars, including education services, medical services, environmental industries, innovation and technology, testing and certification, and cultural and creative industries (Chief Executive’s Policy Address, 2008). Hong Kong is committed to diversifying its economic portfolio by developing education services and positioning itself as a regional education hub.

Opportunities

One of Hong Kong’s biggest opportunities is to capitalize on China’s markets, especially in the PRD Metropolitan Region. The PRD is the country’s leading manufacturing center and is essential to China’s future economic and social growth. This area consists of a network of nine major cities—Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Jiangmen, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Huizhou, and Zhaoqing—and two special administrative regions Macau and Hong Kong. As of the 2015 census, this emerging megacity covers 7000 square kilometers with more than 108.5 million people across the nine cities and two special regions and a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$1.2 trillion (Fuller, 2017). Hong Kong has played and will continue to play a crucial role in facilitating this area’s growth by supplying the PRD with a pool of skilled workforce and talent needed to support the economy.

Ultimately, the Hong Kong government is most interested in stimulating the city state’s social and economic development. Policies to expand the privatization of its higher education sector are directed at improving and expanding access to education. Hong Kong’s marketization approach provides locals with a variety of choices. Not only can the public choose from nonlocal courses delivered by foreign providers vetted by the government; they can also elect to take local courses provided by public institutions. More educational opportunities provide greater choice in Hong Kong, which in turn can generate the diverse skills, knowledge, and experience needed to fulfill market demands. Hong Kong’s focus on research performance (Deem et al., 2008) creates opportunities to establish partnerships with industry and collaborate on innovations that power the fourth industrial revolution.

Risks

Although Hong Kong has repeatedly affirmed its aspirations to become an education hub and leading scholars on internationalization, including Knight (2018), classify Hong Kong as an education hub, its education policy lacks concrete planning and its implementation strategies are unclear. Policy documents do not elaborate on how this will be achieved, nor are plans available that specify how Hong Kong will collaborate with the PRD. In fact, a number of scholars have questioned whether Hong Kong’s education hub is sustainable in comparison to neighboring hubs, such as Singapore and Malaysia, due to its lack of developmental momentum (Knight, 2011a; Kinser and Lane, 2015) or attention to the proper utilization of local resources (Postiglione, 2013). To become a sustainable education hub, policy makers in the city state must not only take the next step to drive their vision forward but must also develop a coherent policy framework to make the planning, designing, and execution of an education hub a reality (Lo, 2015; Lee, 2015) and to properly situate activity in Hong Kong within the wider regionalization of higher education (Chao, 2018).

In recent years, the relationship between Hong Kong and China has been strained by simmering political and social tensions, which have also affected the development of the higher education sector in Hong Kong due to the impact of the “Umbrella Revolution” on academia (Chao and Postiglione, 2017). As 2047 looms, when Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” 50-year agreement is set to expire, there is a big question about its future. In 2014, large-scale prodemocracy protests, later dubbed the Umbrella Revolution, erupted as a result of China’s involvement in Hong Kong’s election process. This was viewed as a threat to Hong Kong’s civil liberties because the central government was gaining more influence over its affairs. Also, Hong Kong residents have expressed rising dissatisfaction with and resentment toward the overwhelming influx of Mainland Chinese, which they see as depleting educational resources in an already overcrowded city (Lo, 2015). The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has reported that 45,000 Mainland Chinese immigrants enter Hong Kong each year (2013).

Using Ranga and Etzkowitz’s (2013) Triple Helix framework, we would characterize Hong Kong’s educational policies as a laissez-faire, market-oriented approach. There is a growing movement in Hong Kong toward privatization to diversify sources of human capital, which drives the rapid expansion of sub-degree programs (equivalent to an associate’s degree) and nonlocal academic programs (Chan and Ng, 2008). Foreign providers are free to enter the higher education market and the government will not interfere as long as they are properly registered with the Education Bureau and are not collaborating with degree-granting higher education institutions in Hong Kong, which exempts them from the registration process (Chao, 2012; Chao and Postiglione, 2017). The government’s main role is to provide quality assurance and transparency so that consumers have the information they need to make informed decisions.

South Korea

Overview of South Korea

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the South Korean government took deliberate actions to shift its economy from a purely manufacturing orientation to a services and high-value manufacturing orientation in response to the pressures of neoliberal globalization. As such, the government promoted public policies to advance trade liberalization and international investment (Park, 2005). A confluence of events led to the liberalization of South Korea’s economy, but its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 was the major catalyst for liberalizing trade with other countries (Republic of Korea and WTO, 2018). Soon after its entry into the WTO, the government opened its higher education sector to foreign entrants to collaborate on curricula and establish research partnerships and international branch campuses (Byun and Kim, 2011).

The opening of its higher education sector served two purposes: first, to stem the flow of South Koreans studying abroad and not returning home, thereby reversing the effects of a previously systemic brain drain; and second, to make their economy more competitive within the newly emerging high-growth economies of Southeast and Northeast Asia. One result of the government’s outward focus was the development of special economic zones, free economic zones, and international free cities, where taxes and regulations are treated differently than in the rest of South Korea (Park, 2005). Another important policy for liberalizing trade and attracting international investment was to create knowledge centers in these economic zones.

A vision for an education hub

The Incheon Global Campus (IGC) is a high-profile project developed in cooperation with the Incheon regional authorities and the South Korean government. Its missions are to “build the best educational hub in Northeast Asia for universities and research institutions to produce next generation world leaders and contribute to the advancement of academia and society worldwide”; to host 10 world-leading universities with a total of 10,000 students; to become financially independent by 2025; and to be recognized as a top education hub in Northeast Asia (Incheon Global Campus—Vision Statement, 2018).

Free economic zones play an important role as part of South Korea’s vision for an education hub fusing the country’s industrial know-how with financial support from the government to create new research facilities and encourage collaboration with global higher education institutions, with the ultimate goal of building out skills the government believes are essential for competing in the global knowledge economy (Korean Free Economic Zones, 2018). The IFEZ purposefully invested in and built a higher education hub to attract world-class foreign universities through its IGC. While the IGC is a regional initiative, it is also a national project that aligns with its country’s greater aspirations through the investment of US$1 billion by the South Korean government (Incheon Global Campus—About IGC, 2018). Currently, the IGC comprises SUNY Korea (Stony Brook and the Fashion Institute of Technology), George Mason University, the University of Utah, and Ghent University. It is located in what is known as “Biotechnology Valley,” which aspires to become the biotechnology equivalent of Silicon Valley; hence, the IGC was designed to closely collaborate with the industries in Songdo.

Opportunities

With declining birth rates and the desire of college-age students to study in the United States, the IGC sought to offer an alternative for South Korean students to study in South Korea at top international universities and reverse the effects of brain drain. The IGC established a project called the Global Startup Campus. With an objective to grow 200 global businesses and create 10,000 jobs, it receives funding from the municipal government and utilizes IGC universities as sources for projects (Incheon Global Campus—Global Startup Campus, 2018). By explicitly importing expertise to align with its economic ambitions, South Korea is building a global innovation center through the start-ups it incubates with IGC universities. This Global Startup project aligns with the IGC’s aspiration to become a destination for higher education in Northeast Asia and expand its appeal by becoming an innovation center.

The IGC promotes its tight partnership between industry, research and development, and academia as an attraction for student recruitment and a source of job opportunities for future graduates (Incheon Global Campus—About IGC, 2018). Songdo is a growing city with industrial, bioengineering, diplomatic, and policy-oriented industries that are emerging within IFEZ. Globally recognized companies, such as Boeing, DB Schenker, BMW, Samsung, LG, and POSCO, operate within IFEZ, and universities in the IGC have signed memoranda of understanding to establish a Songdo Bio Cluster in conjunction with Samsung Biologics and Celltrion (Incheon Global Campus—Why IGC?, 2018). Actively participating in these global research networks is viewed favorably by the South Korean government, which seeks to compete successfully in the global knowledge economy and to become a hub of economic activity in Northeast Asia.

Risks

South Korea is located geographically and politically in one of the world’s more unstable regions. Its neighbor North Korea, with its nuclear arsenal, has created uncertainty about physical safety in South Korea, Japan, China, and the United States. This geopolitical instability in the region poses one of the greatest risks to the IGC and significantly impacts perceptions of safety for those living in a hot spot where armed conflict could occur at any time. An important goal for the IGC is to recruit Chinese students and other students from abroad. These students are sought after to support IFEZ’s longer-term economic aspirations for developing an economic hub in Northeast Asia and to help offset declining birth rates and the brain drain. This geopolitical risk in South Korea may prompt the Chinese government to redirect their students to Chinese universities.

Just as leadership and policy priorities change within national governments, so too do changes occur within universities. If a university with a branch campus at the IGC changes its leadership or priorities or faces financial difficulties, the branch campus at the IGC may no longer be viewed as an initiative worth maintaining. Or if, after years of subsidized operations, the branch campus can no longer cover its costs through tuition fees, the home campus leadership may decide to shutter the branch campus. Closing a campus at the IGC may be viewed as a larger failure of the IGC and impact the remaining branch campuses’ recruiting efforts.

Recruiting students is another risk. Foreign universities at located at the IGC may not have the same level of brand recognition with students and their parents as domestic universities in South Korea. These international branch campuses need to focus on what they do well, which is offer their globally ranked top 100 academic programs to attract students. Offering competing academic programs at the hub is a risk since it may cause tension among the members of the IGC and disrupt student recruiting efforts.

The IGC is supported by the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy (MoTIE), which ultimately funds the IGC Foundation and provides the start-up funding for the branch campuses. For the foreign universities to operate in South Korea, their academic programs must be accredited by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST). These agencies may have differing priorities and agendas. The MoTIE may want the branch campuses to begin operating as soon as possible to begin realizing a return on their investment, while the MoEST may need time to accredit the academic programs to ensure they are of high quality to meet South Korean standards. Navigating the differing priorities and agendas of these ministries can cause confusion and possible delays for foreign universities that seek to open a branch at the IGC.

The next section provides a comparative analysis of South Korea’s and Hong Kong’s public policies pertaining to their development as global education hubs. The analysis considers Knight’s (2014) typology, Kinser and Lane’s (2015) framework, and Ranga and Etzkowitz’s Triple Helix framework (2013) to craft a new working definition of education hubs that is broadly applicable in any setting in which government, industry, and higher education intersect.

Hong Kong and South Korea: A comparative analysis

Similarities

South Korea and Hong Kong share similar policies regarding their status as education hubs. First, both entities have emphasized the importance of education in their national development. At a macro level, both are large cosmopolitan regions situated in Asia, whose governments demonstrate a commitment to cultivating and attracting human capital to support economic and societal aspirations. Both governments also express the importance of investing in the education of its citizenry to boost its intellectual capital and develop the competencies needed to enrich the country’s economic prospects. Both hubs share a similar evolutionary perspective according to the Triple Helix framework, in that each is emphasizing academic programs that address the needs of the fourth industrial revolution.

Second, both South Korea and Hong Kong are shifting their primary means of economic development from an industrial economy to a service-oriented economy. Both focus on attracting human capital to boost their nation’s competitiveness in global markets. This shift in economic development has been more pronounced since the launch of the General Agreement on Trade and Services and the liberalization in trade in education services after both countries became members of the WTO in 1995 and after the Asian financial crisis had an economic impact in 2007. Investments in education are seen not only as a vital component to diversifying each country’s economic portfolio but also as the engine for transforming their societies and preparing their citizens to better address future economic demands. Both South Korea and Hong Kong centered their national educational policies around economic expansion by purposefully attracting foreign talent and offering educational services to increase the supply and the quality of educated citizens to meet the demands of the competitive knowledge economy. In terms of Knight and Lee’s typology (2014), both countries are oriented to talent hubs where students are educated to work in knowledge and service-led economies and establish the hub’s regional or global status.

Third, mainland China is a dynamic trading partner for both South Korea and Hong Kong. China’s population, economy, and geography loom large over South Korea and Hong Kong, and in the global knowledge economy, China acts as both an ally and a competitor. Hong Kong’s partnership with mainland China makes it distinct from other education hubs. From an economic standpoint, Hong Kong and China work interdependently to maximize each other’s financial interests and further the motherland’s political agenda (Chao, 2012; Hong Kong Monthly Digest of Statistics, 2016). For South Korea, China is its largest trading partner as seen in the bilateral free-trade agreement signed in 2015. The Northeast and Southeast Asia regions are dynamic economically and geopolitically. Their locations also present risks, however, especially for South Korea with a nuclear neighbor to its north. These shared geographical, economic, and geopolitical characteristics reinforce how each hub is oriented toward Knight and Lee’s (2014) talent hub, where foreign students move to a host country for education, training, and employment.

This discussion of similarities also demonstrates that researchers need to understand the roles that government, universities, and industries play if they are to make sense of the institutional configuration of these entities using the Triple Helix framework. If, for example, there is a balanced configuration like the IGC, then there is greater coordination across government policies, educational practice, and policy and expected industrial and economic outcomes. If, on the other hand, there is a laissez-faire and market-oriented approach similar to Hong Kong’s approach, then branch campuses located at the hub will be under pressure to break even financial or possibly earn profit earlier in its implementation; this orientation may impede greater collaborations with industry and the Hong Kong government.

Differences

Our analysis also revealed key differences in the policies and practices of South Korea and Hong Kong in developing global education hubs. The South Korean government has established clear objectives to turn its vision for an education hub into a reality. As mentioned above, the IGC plans to host 10 world-class universities, receive recognition as a top education hub in Northeast Asia, and reach financial independence by 2025. The government plans to achieve this vision by creating a close collaboration of academic, industrial, and economic policies, which represents the balanced configuration of the Triple Helix (Ranga and Etzkowitz, 2013).

The Hong Kong government stated its goal to become an education hub and created the policy framework to support the initiatives to achieve this goal, but its Education Bureau has not clearly defined its policies to become an education hub. The HKSAR has developed several immigration and education reforms, outlined above, to demonstrate its priority in recruiting human capital. The need to coordinate policies across government agencies demonstrates the complexities of education hubs and one of the challenges associated with a laissez-faire configuration of Triple Helix systems.

Hong Kong is openly inviting foreign institutions to set up branch campuses through a competitive bidding process and is promoting the expansion of self-financing programs (in parallel with publicly funded institutions) to expand educational access and choice. It is also using proximity to the Chinese market to recruit students. It is important to note that publicly funded institutions also offer self-funded programs and have established their own community colleges, which are self-funded programs that directly compete with the public sector.

These hubs also demonstrate structural differences. Spatially, Hong Kong aligns with Kinser and Lane’s (2015) archipelago model in that its branch campuses are not only scattered across the Kowloon Peninsula and Hong Kong Island but are also in other cities outside its autonomous territory within the PRD region; namely Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Nansha. In addition, Hong Kong has partnered with the Chinese government to establish joint degree programs, dual degree programs, and branch campuses within China, and they have also collaborated on numerous ongoing laboratory initiatives to develop knowledge in science and technology. South Korea, on the other hand, follows an acropolis model whereby the IGC is an education hub organized as a single location in the city of Songdo, which hosts multiple foreign branch campuses.

South Korea and Hong Kong differ in the extent to which they have erected barriers to foreign entry into their education hubs. Significant differences exist between these two entities in their government’s level of involvement with their education hubs, their approaches with foreign countries, and their stated goals and objectives. The education hub initiative is one strategy the South Korean government uses in response to national issues, such as low birth rate and brain drain challenges. As a result, the South Korean government has carefully selected foreign universities they believe will provide a long-term return on investment for its economy. Hong Kong’s level of involvement, on the other hand, is defined by limited governance. It adopts free market principles, which represent the cornerstone of Hong Kong’s economic policy and fuel its international trade and finance activity. In terms of their respective Triple Helix configurations, South Korea represents a balanced configuration, whereas Hong Kong operates in a laissez-faire manner (Ranga and Etzkowitz, 2013).

Funding sources for the education hubs also vary between South Korea and Hong Kong. While South Korea’s education hub initiatives are heavily regulated and funded by the state, Hong Kong’s are strictly driven by the market. As noted earlier, the South Korean Government is investing US$1 billion into the hub (Incheon Global Campus—About IGC, 2018). Furthermore, funding and subsidies are provided by the MoTIE from the central government in partnership with the Incheon regional level. Under Hong Kong’s laissez-faire approach, foreign institutions are free to enter the higher education market. The government will not interfere as long as foreign providers are properly registered with the Education Bureau and maintain quality standards. The government’s main role is to assess quality and provide transparency so that consumers have the information they need to make informed decisions. From a funding perspective, this provides further evidence that Hong Kong operates in a laissez-faire configuration, whereas the IGC has tendencies toward a statist configuration but overall operates in a balanced way in cooperation with government policies, industry, and education providers (Ranga and Etzkowitz, 2013).

Current classifications for education hubs

Both Hong Kong and South Korea fit into Knight’s (2011) description of a talent hub. To a lesser degree, both hubs could also be classified as a student hub and South Korea as a knowledge hub (Knight, 2011). That is not to say that Knight’s typology is too narrow, but rather that there is overlap. For this reason, we believe that researchers who continue to study hubs in the future need to take a more nuanced approach in utilizing Knight’s typology. Because these hubs serve multiple purposes, it is more useful to view them as variances of a broader category than defining a hub within a single category of the typology. In that way, Knight’s typology can be extended more broadly to fit a greater variety of contexts, which we believe is warranted to account for Triple Helix configurations of government, industry, and the education sector. Further efforts to define an education hub should consider the multiple roles the hub plays for students, the host country, and foreign universities located at the hub.

One role of an education hub in addition to those outlined by Knight’s (2011) typology is to aid in societal change. This is the case with South Korea, which is addressing the lowest birth rates among OECD countries. Its birth rate dilemma not only has implications for social safety nets and the care and living standards of the elderly but also has serious economic implications, as an aging society may be less innovative than a youthful one. The IGC could impact South Korean society not only by attracting foreign students to study at this education hub but also by giving them reason to live in South Korea after they complete a degree, thus creating a potential to reverse some of the effects of the low birth rate.

What could be added to the larger discussion of the characteristics of education hubs is how the mission, vision, and orientation of the hub ties back to the organization that is funding it. So far this is missing in the literature and discussion on education hubs. We need to ask what leads an education hub to become a student hub, talent hub, or innovation hub as defined by Knight (2011). In the case of the IGC, it is funded through the MoTIE, which orients the first core value of this hub to workforce development (Incheon Global Campus—Vision Statement, 2018). Hong Kong’s education hub policies are funded by the Education Bureau. The mission and vision statements for each education hub are an outgrowth of the ministry funding the policy. The IGC in South Korea is focused on workforce development and attracting foreign universities to help achieve its goals, whereas Hong Kong has a broader economic and societal perspective for how foreign universities should aid the city state in becoming a global city. In these cases, the funding authority determines the orientation of the education offered to focus it on economic and larger societal needs.

A second component of the orientation discussion relates to the regional or global focus of the education hub. In the case of South Korea, the government aspires to build a top education hub in Northeast Asia, which is a regional focus. Hong Kong, on the other hand, aspires to become a global city, and education hubs play a role in achieving this goal (Chan and Ng, 2008); hence, Hong Kong’s policy has both regional and global orientations. The existing definitions of education hubs do not sufficiently consider the orientation of an education hub from the global versus regional perspective and the impact of its funding agency on its mission and vision.

Rethinking the definitions of an education hub

Expanding on the definition

As noted earlier, the literature on education hubs includes multiple definitions of what an education hub is and what its purposes and defining characteristics are (Jon et al., 2014; Kinser and Lane, 2015; Knight, 2006; Knight, 2011b; Lee, 2014). Individual countries establish education hubs for various reasons to align their purpose and mission with national policy goals and initiatives. Therefore, creating a singular definition for an education hub does not provide researchers, policy makers, and administrators with a broader understanding of the hub’s purpose and its impact.

We argue that, as global education hubs evolve, so too should the aspects that define a hub and its purpose. Three key aspects emerge from our analysis: (1) the policy implementation and spatial orientation of the hub (Kinser and Lane, 2015); (2) the justification for the hub from an academic and educational perspective (Knight, 2011a); and (3) the configuration of government policies, industry needs, and education as Triple Helix systems (Ranga and Etzkowitz, 2013). We argue that considering all three of these together would provide a wider, but also more nuanced, way to understand the purposes of education hubs in a broad range of settings and their role in a society and economy.

The cases of Hong Kong and South Korea provide further evidence for why a robust definition is difficult to achieve. The motivations for and implementation of education hub policies differ drastically across governments. While there are similarities in motivations in these two cases, the implementation of education hub policies is quite disparate. An overarching motivation for opening both the Hong Kong and South Korean higher education sectors to foreign providers was to diversify their respective economies by bringing in new skills and expertise that could help build new industries.

It takes years to develop knowledge hubs. Hong Kong and South Korea have both used education hubs as a policy approach to develop the industries and skills needed to accelerate their ability to compete in the knowledge economy. Knowledge hubs become important locations in the global knowledge economy. Transnational corporations and organizations seek to establish operations in hubs where they know there will be a ready pool of talent and innovation.

A new conceptual perspective for education hubs

Knight (2011b) and Kinser and Lane (2015) have provided important foundational definitions for education hubs. However, we believe these definitions need to be extended to include the hub’s broader orientation. Therefore, we suggest a new definition for education hubs that has emerged from our analysis:

An education hub represents a national initiative to create knowledge centers that will support the development of new skills to compete regionally and globally in the knowledge economy. Education hubs strengthen the development of local and regional human capital by concentrating education, industrial and economic policies that attract foreign expertise. Their primary goals are to educate students, create expertise in their workforce that is valued in the knowledge economy and drive economic prosperity and societal progress by forming strategic partnerships between governments, universities and industries.

We believe that this definition captures the multiple roles an education hub can play from both economic and societal perspectives, as well as from a policy stance. Our definition also extends previous formulations by more clearly recognizing the relationships and interdependencies between national policy, higher education, and industry that make up the global knowledge economy. Education hubs represent an emerging development in the processes of internationalizing higher education, but challenges remain in measuring their success and ensuring their sustainability. If governments themselves can designate their systems as “education hubs,” then how many regional education hubs can exist? Who determines what a successful education hub is? How does the orientation and source of funding for the hub impact its mission and culture? Our analysis has attempted to provide a definition for scholars as they address these broader questions.

Finally, as definitions of education hubs continue to evolve, university leaders and practitioners may be better able to determine whether their branch campus will align with the mission of the hub and adequately serve the needs of the local higher education marketplace. The fourth wave of international branch campuses sees government-sponsored education hubs as increasingly attractive to foreign higher education providers since the risks are shared between the host government and the foreign university (Beecher, 2016). Education hubs, as seen in the examples of Hong Kong and South Korea, demonstrate the diversity of education policies and the important role they play in their respective societies.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Bradley Beecher

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