In the sort of formal ceremony beloved in this part of the world, VIPs posed on stage, holding shovels decorated with giant gold bows, to mark the launch of a University of Hong Kong (HKU) campus redevelopment project. The event held in January, could be viewed only online. However, the message was clear. Not even a pandemic is going to stop construction on a new home for the business school, sports facilities and residences. Over the next few years, HKU plans several other infrastructure projects and hundreds of new hires at the professorial level. Hong Kong’s flagship institution is not alone in engaging in what seems like a spending spree. Similar developments are happening at universities across the more affluent parts of East and South-east Asia, where new institutes, departments and degree programmes are sprouting. Much of this recent rise in spending comes from state coffers, as well as from government messaging to business that education should be a target for philanthropy. Mainland China’s higher education budget, for example, grew by 12 percent from 2019 to 2020. Meanwhile, companies with close state ties have responded to the siren call that they are expected to pitch in, especially in fields of study deemed politically or socially important. Vanke, a property conglomerate with links to the government, funded an eponymous public health school at Tsinghua University in spring 2020, right at the height of the country’s Covid outbreak. Japan may not have the same annual budget increases as mainland China, but it too is making a concerted effort towards new financing. The government announced this year that it aims to raise capital for an eye-popping ¥10 trillion (Rs.6 lakh crore) university research fund by 2022. If it succeeds, it will have a fund double the size of Harvard University’s endowment. Relatively smaller high-tech states are also trying to muscle in on the competition for top academics and students. Taiwan (pop.23 million) will spend an additional NT$83.6 billion (Rs.22,210 crore) over five years to develop universities, teaching and innovation, according to a 2019-20 report from the education ministry. The ‘Higher Education Sprout Project’ will also include incentives to offer “internationally competitive packages” for foreign academics, while Taiwan’s defence ministry will pitch into higher education institutions for the first time with an additional NT$5 billion programme for research. Growth is happening in developing nations, too. Malaysia, for example, has set aside an impressive 20 percent of its entire 2021 national budget for education. There are also signs of development in other parts of Asia, even if they have been harder hit by Covid. India has ambitions to double the size of its higher education sector under its new National Education Policy 2020. Meanwhile, its latest budget, announced in February, included Rs.50,000 crore for the first five years of a new National Research Foundation (NRF). While state universities are struggling financially, private institutions have grown rapidly despite the Covid crisis. One case in point is O.P. Jindal Global University, which welcomed 209 new faculty in…
