A Humanistic Model for the Higher Education Excellence: Embedding Confucianism and Islamic Principles

Both Confucianism and Islam offer a humanistic approach towards the concept of leadership, emphasizing ethical practices such as integrity, trust, moral characters, and justice. These philosophies and religions are perceived as a means of providing moral values and countering the negativity associated with modernity. They provide the cultural and moral capital to university leaders, which affect leadership practices and organizational cultures of private higher education institutions in Asia. Leaders are expected to maintain a high level of integrity and responsibility. University leaders and administrators are often guided by their respect for cultural traditions and this study helps to provide an understanding of higher education leadership in the selected three countries. This article offers a comprehensive view of excellence in higher education ranging from policies to practices of university leaders and academics, based on previous and current works of the author. Subsequently, the findings provide the basis for developing a humanistic multidimensional model for higher education excellence, embedding the principles of Confucianism and Islam, The rigor and richness of the findings will contribute to the development of higher education leadership in Asia. This paper draws upon the findings of the previous works of the author and gives them new perspectives from the Confucian and Islamic viewpoints.