Global Assemblage: Singapore, Foreign Universities, and the Construction of a "Global Education Hub"

Abstract

In the late 1990s and early 2000s select cities in Pacific Asia formed or significantly deepened formal institutional linkages with a variety of foreign (mainly Western) universities. The objective of this paper is to examine: the policy objectives of Singapore, a Pacific Asian city-state, in opening up its territory to new forms of foreign educational knowledge, institutional structures, practices, and technologies; the specific programs and practices that have enabled the Singaporean state to implement these policy objectives; and, the preliminary implications of various "modes of entry" that the foreign universities have adopted for the formation of university-industry linkages in Singapore.