Author: Ailei Xie

Trump may be bad news for US universities, but Chinese institutions could benefit Gerard A. Postiglione Like never before, universities have become instruments of competition between nations. Diplomatic relations can have major repercussions. When the US and China were on the verge of normalising relations in the 1970s, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping ( 鄧小平 ) became adamant that China should have a thousand talented scientists who would be recognised around the world. Ezra Vogel recounts the story of a 1978 phone call to president Jimmy Carter at 3am, Washington time, by his science adviser, who was visiting China at the time, because Deng wanted quick approval to send several hundred Chinese to study at American universities. Since then, diplomatic relations between the US and China have steadily improved, through not without regular periodic strains over economic, political and military issues. Nevertheless, economic interdependence and finely tuned statecraft ensured that cool heads prevailed in times of stress, and economic progress for both countries continued...

Release students from ‘cages’ to improve education, say Redefining Hong Kong panellists Instead of being spoon-fed or overfed, students should be free to explore different interests and possibilities, said all four speakers during South China Morning Post’s forum   The panel offer their views at the Redefining Hong Kong debate series at the JW Marriott Hotel in Admiralty. Photo: K. Y. Cheng   If schools are zoos, and students are animals confined in cages, when disasters strike, should zoo administrators move the cages elsewhere? Should they teach the animals how to protect themselves, or should they improve the zoo’s defensive system? “No, open all the cages!” was the answer from Professor Cheng Kai-ming, one of the speakers at a forum on education policy ­organised by the Post. Instead of being spoon-fed or overfed, students should be free to explore different interests and possibilities, agreed all the four speakers during the forum yesterday. They said the system under which everybody focused on passing exams, where there was only...

How China's cities bar the door to a better education for migrant students   China is increasingly a nation of university graduates, and that is no mean feat. The country admits more students to post-secondary schools than any other nation, meaning the average student's likelihood of achieving collegiate education is on the rise. Reforms since 2000 have increased collegiate admittance on a historic scale: The number of Chinese enrolled in university grew from 1 million in 1998 to 34 million in 2011, by one account, with that number expected to reach 35.5 million by 2020. Yet where other areas see China's positive developments magnified by its size, here the figures fail to capture the correspondingly huge gap between those who will benefit most from this growth and those who are likely be left behind—one that has seldom been wider or harder to bridge. "The market reforms in China have created a more stratified society in rural China," said Xie Ailei, a post-doctoral fellow at the...

Gerard A. Postiglione https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/05/asian-universities-are-rising-in-the-ranks-but-opposition-to-foreign-scholars-could-hold-some-back/ Asian universities continue to stun the academic world. In just one year, four more have joined the ranks of the world’s top 200 universities. Now, almost one-eighth of the world’s top 200 universities, ranked in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014-15, are Asian. At this pace, a quarter of the world’s best universities could be Asian by 2040, excluding Australian universities – which some consider as being within the Asian block. Of the 24 Asian universities in the top 200, the University of Tokyo retained its crown as the highest-ranked at No. 23 in the world, with the National University of Singapore (25th) and the University of Hong Kong (43rd) in the second and third slots yet again. The surprise this year is Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, which jumped 15 places to 61st. Also included in the list as part of the Asian continent is Turkey, which had four universities, topped by the Middle East Technical University, and...

William Tierney and Gerard Postiglione http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1832071/vital-role-academic-freedom-creating-world-class-university The international race to have a "world-class university" in Hong Kong has been in full swing for more than a decade. Whether you use the QS ranking, Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities, or the UK's Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the vast majority of the top 100 are in the US and Europe, with the former having the lion's share of the top 25. Not surprisingly, other countries are trying to ape what they think of as the "American model". Many observers think fiscal and organisational structures enable universities to be world class. Some of the best universities - Harvard, Stanford, the University of Southern California - are private and do not rely on government largesse. Even so-called state universities in the US get little funding from government any more. The implication for other countries is that their universities should be more entrepreneurial. Universities in many countries have begun to sing the...

Gerard A Postiglione and Philip G Altbach http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130917161309755 Universities continue to position their professoriates for internationalisation. As the heartbeat of the university, the professoriate clearly has a special role in helping to drive knowledge economies. This is particularly true in developing countries with aspirations for closer integration into the global system. However, internationalisation is a double-edged sword for many countries. A university can hardly become world class without it. Yet it wildly skews the balance of ‘brain power’ in the direction of those few countries with world-class universities. In order to get the best out of globalisation, the professoriate in all countries would need to increase their profiles and attitudes geared towards internationalisation. At present, the willingness of the academic profession everywhere to deepen international engagement appears stalled. It would seem obvious that those who teach at a university – the academic staff – are key to any academic institution’s internationalisation strategy. After all, it is the professors who teach classes at branch campuses,...

Gerard Postiglione and Xiaoyu Chen http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20160614185825616 As China finds itself inching closer to becoming the world’s innovative largest economy, it looks to its universities to sustain the pace of economic growth. More than a few scholars question whether this is possible with the limited autonomy accorded by the state to China’s universities. China already has the largest system of higher education and more research funding and scientific publications than any other nation except the United States. Top universities can recruit from Shanghai secondary schools, where students outperform their counterparts in 60 OECD – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – countries in mathematics and science achievement. Over the past 20 years, universities have made major changes. The 'iron rice bowl' of the planned economy is gone. After years of studying for free, students now pay tuition fees. Small universities have been merged to create economies of scale. Teaching is more regularly assessed. Faculty research productivity determines promotion. Experimentation is occurring within the curriculum to...