John, it's about money, prestige and politics. Locals in some of these countries take a complete control of not only the business part but also the academic part, and standards as well as the language itself are often compromised. You can't teach the way they speak in your homeland, you must teach the way the locals speak your language. Foreign academics or none academic backpackers get often evaluated according to local standards, and so you may see either some FT suckups or frustrated desperados that'd like to change things (I am one of them).Then, you get these that get out of teaching and into local recruiting or editing where they further suck it up. Results are quite worrying on mainland China with respect to that. What sucks mostly is that the highly ethical and so human foreign schools, companies and their products often part with the locals for their personal reasons. At home, they preach one thing but abroad another. It sure doesn't get better, if western countries politicians increase cooperation in the area of education with some countries and that knowing there are great issues locals do not seek to solve. Some western countries have seemingly decided to compete with the rest of the world in the area of education and they would "cut throats" to get to momey and prestige. I hail the latest measures that UK education has taken against foreign students. Countries like the US or Australia are clearly going in the other direction as it's more of a business and prestige to them rather than the value of the education. Say for example, the US is currently putting a lot into student exchange programs as well as it is opening the door wide to foreign students into its higher education programs. Doing so, they are literally bending over to get as much as they can from the largest markets such as Indonesia or China. Quality of local students isn't as important as money that some filthy rich Chinese parents are so willing to pay. Their own "recruiters" on the other end of the ocean facilitate the process and even choose some "appropriate subjects" to study for some disrespectful high school dropouts.
Now,
Cheers and beers :)