Preface 'We can be heroes Just for one day … ' ~Heroes, David Bowie, 1977 1 • An early version of Chap. 2 by Simon Marginson, "Asia-Pacific universities in the global space: Visions of university presidents", was presented to the World Class Universities conference (WCU-3) at the Graduate School of Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, November 2-4, 2009. • Most of Chap. 3 by Simon Marginson, "The Confucian Model of higher education in East Asia and Singapore" was published as "Higher education in East Asia and Singapore: The rise of the Confucian Model", Higher Education, 61 (5), 2011. • Part of Chap. 4 by Lijing Yang, "The disappearing role of education finance policies in higher education access: Panel data analysis of twenty-one Asia-Pacific countries in a global setting" was presented at the annual conference of the Association for Studies in Higher Education, Vancouver, Canada, November 4-7, 2009. • An early version of Chap. 10 by Simon Marginson and Erlenawati Sawir, "Globalization, resources and strategies: A comparison of Universitas Indonesia and the Australian National University" was published as "University leaders' strategies in the global environment: A comparative study of Universitas Indonesia and the Australian National University" in Higher Education, 52, 2006, pp. 343-373. • A prior version of most of Chap. 20 by Simon Marginson, "Global position and position-taking in higher education: The case of Australia", was published as "Global position and position-taking: The case of Australia", on