Professor Postiglione presented a paper entitled: Challenges and Possibilities for China’s Universities: Effects of Excellence Initiatives on PKU-Stanford Joint Forum: “Building World-Class Universities: An Institutional Perspective”

Photo: Professor Min Weifang and Professor Gerard Postiglione
Photo: Professor Gerard Postiglione and Professor Min Weifang

Building World-Class Universities (WCU) has ranked high on the agenda of developed and developing countries alike since the early 19th century. Much hope has been placed on WCUs to produce cutting-edge research, drive national innovation, and cultivate the next generation of leaders. Yet little is understood about how the emergence and operation of WCUs has been shaped by institutional contexts, including economic, political, cultural and legal systems. What has been the impact of government regulatory frameworks and widely held social norms, values and belief systems? Why do leading research universities in Europe and the United States display fundamental differences in governance, structure, and operation? What models will best serve the needs of the 21st century? To help us answer these questions, the Joint PKU-Stanford Forum on “Building World-Class Universities: An Institutional Perspective,” was held in Beijing on November 4 and 5, 2016 at the Stanford Center at Peking University. The Forum was organized around four sub-themes: 1) Differentiation and Emergence in Different Institutional Contexts; 2) Institutional Contexts and Organizational Structure; 3) Institutional Contexts and Managerial Characteristics; and 4) WCUs and Social Development.