Higher Education in China: The Next Super Power is Coming of Age

Susan Porter Robinson is Vice President of ACE's Center for Lifelong Learning.

As highlighted in Centerpoint's spring issue, I recently visited the University of Hong Kong’s School of Continuing and Professional Education (HKU Space) as an advisor. In the process, I learned more about Mainland China than during previous visits, through numerous conversations in Hong Kong, Macau, and the southeast corner of China--and through a valuable book, titled Asian Universities: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Challenges (Altbach and Umakoshi, 2004). The latter in particular provides an excellent overview of Chinese higher education—from 1100 B.C. to current times—reading that truly is more fascinating than it sounds!  What emerged from all these sources is a snapshot of higher education in China that has significant implications for U.S. higher education.  Here are a few observations.

China’s “Checkered” Past

As many CenterPoint readers know, Confucius has shaped the overall Chinese mindset for the past 2500 years. Yet, higher education in China has experienced other powerful influences. Before the Opium War in 1840, China had been very isolated.  But later, with the arrival of gunboats in the war, Chinese intellectuals discovered the numerous western advances in science and technology. They learned from these advances, and the Chinese higher education system began to make strides.

But disaster struck in the form of Soviet influence when the People’s Republic of China was formed.  In the early 1950s, all higher education was brought under government leadership and research was separated from teaching. Deplorably, and anathema to our American principles of academic freedom, the government also introduced a central plan that nationally unified instruction plans, syllabi, and textbooks. Even in 2005, as Chinese higher education continues its struggle with excessive departmentalization, segmentation, and overspecialization in particular, the Soviet impact is still felt.

From 1967 to 1976, China’s Cultural Revolution took another toll on higher education, which was devastated more than any other sector.  As a key example, the numbers of postsecondary students dropped precipitously from 674,400 to 47,800.  Fortunately, from the 1980s on, Chinese higher education has undergone a series of reforms that have slowly effected improvement.

Chinese Higher Education Today

In recent years, 10 universities have been targeted by the Chinese government to become “world-class”--including Peking and Tsinghua Universities. Universities are once again required to be centers of teaching and research, and internationally oriented programs constitute an increasing proportion of curriculum. Still, a national oversight body accredits only a disturbing 5 percent of the Chinese equivalents of our community and technical colleges.  So, contradictions persist.

Also just as troubling to our Western understanding of quality, because there was no academic degree system in China until the 1980s, only 30 percent of faculty there holds postgraduate degrees. Recently, internationally trained scholars have entered the faculty with the goals of both improving quality and strengthening global ties.  But more home-grown professors are needed.

In terms of actual size, today there are some 4,000 Chinese institutions; student enrollments are at 15 million, with rapid growth that is expected to peak in 2008.  Even so, the Chinese higher education system is still not meeting the needs of 85 percent of the college-age cohort.  In a country of 1.3 billion people, such numbers are astronomical.

Challenges for Chinese Higher Education

As evident here, China exhibits a great need for better regulation as well as more academic qualifications, teaching experience, and understanding of social changes and technology. To this end, top universities now function as centers of excellence that drive the entire higher education system to a higher level. One helpful model includes twinning projects where leading universities “twin” with poorer ones to provide equipment, curricula, and faculty development.

Implications for U.S. Higher Education

Obviously, China's demand for postsecondary education is considerable, and the country currently cannot keep pace with this compelling need.  Thus, U.S. universities can and perhaps should play a more significant role by increased partnering with Chinese universities; more aggressively recruiting Chinese students to study in the U.S.; boosting the exchange of scholars; and adding to the number of U.S. universities already in China. Australia, Hong Kong, and other Asian countries are tapping this vast market.  So now is the time, as China becomes an emerging super power, for the U.S. to benefit from this country’s demand for a more highly educated workforce.  We need a broader national vision that propels us to collaborate with this emerging super power, which certainly is benefiting from our own multi-billion dollar business investments. 

We can’t expect our government or other national bodies to do it all—nor will they.  Rather, in the short term, this essential partnering must occur one student, one scholar, one institution at a time.