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Is there a Chinese Idea of a University? Simon Marginson - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Peking University Graduate School of Education Lecture 3 on 13 June 2019 Is there a Chinese Idea of a University? Simon Marginson Department of Education, University of Oxford ESRC/HEFCE Centre for Global Higher Education Higher School

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Peking University Graduate School of Education Lecture 3 on 13 June 2019

Is there a Chinese ‘Idea of a University’?

Simon Marginson Department of Education, University of Oxford ESRC/HEFCE Centre for Global Higher Education Higher School of Economics, Moscow

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The PKU lectures

Date Title Dimension of HE

11 June

  • 1. Higher education as student self-formation

student

12 June

  • 2. Higher education and common goods

society

13 June

  • 3. Is there a Chinese ‘Idea of a University’?

university

17 June

  • 4. Dynamics of the global research system

knowledge

knowledge

society university student

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Is there a Chinese ‘Idea of a University’?

  • ‘Ideas of a European-American University’: JH Newman,

Kant/von Humboldt, Clark Kerr, Triple Helix, etc

  • China’s traditions in governance and higher education
  • China’s dynamic achievement in the last 25 years: does

this signify a new ‘Idea’?

  • Reforms and changes in governance and funding
  • Deng Xiaoping reforms
  • Decentralisation and autonomy
  • Dual governance system in universities
  • University culture
  • Knowledge
  • Academic life
  • Conclusions: Yes and no
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Ideas of a European-American University

  • JH Newman: The Idea of a University (1852)
  • Wilhelm von Humboldt and the University of Berlin (1809)
  • Clark Kerr: The Uses of the University (1963)
  • Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff (1995)
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John Henry Newman

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Wilhelm von Humboldt

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Clark Kerr

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Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff

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China’s traditions in governance and higher education

East West State Centralising, comprehensive, stronger than other elements Episodically centralising but more contested, and more limited role Other social elements Subordinated to the state, which intervened at will From time to time church, nobles, towns had independent authority State strategies Managed decentralisation, training of own officials Manage the aristocracy, negotiate within division of powers Knowledge Partial truths. Practical. From time to time, synthesising Universalising, specialist. High status theory often separate from practice Higher education State sponsored training of

  • fficials in academies

Incorporated universities partially independent of church and state

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Gross Enrolment Ratio (%): 1970-2017

0.1 0.5 1.1 2.4 3.0 4.5 7.6 18.9 24.1 45.4 51.0

10 20 30 40 50 60

China world

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R&D as proportion (%) of GDP, 1991-2017:

USA, UK, Germany, China, Japan, South Korea

USA 2.79% UK 1.66% Germany 3.02% China 2.13% Korea 4.55%

0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00

United States United Kingdom Germany China South Korea Japan

Japan 3.20%

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National investment in R&D, 2016

OECD data, $s billion, constant 2010 USD PPP

464.3 410.2 149.5 104.1 75.9 55.8 42.9 37.2 32.5 26.1 24.7 18.0 17.3 16.0

50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500

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Annual number of published papers

United States, China, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea: 2003-2016

50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000 300,000 350,000 400,000 450,000 500,000 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 United States China United Kingdom Germany South Korea Japan

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Growth of China-associated science papers

Proportion (%) of worldwide papers in Scopus: 2000-2016

12.4 13.8 14.0 15.1 18.7 21.9 23.0 23.0 23.4 23.2 24.5 25.8 24.3 26.8 32.3 32.2 34.6 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Additional papers with Chinese names, all countries (unweighted) Papers solely authored in China Total = proportion of all papers in Scopus with Chinese names

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Top universities in STEM research

(1) physical sciences and engineering, and (2) mathematics and complex computing, Papers in top 5 per cent of their field by citation rate, World: 2014-2017

University System Physical sciences & engineering University System Maths & computing

Tsinghua U

CHINA

776 Tsinghua U

CHINA

236 MIT

USA

691 Harbin IT

CHINA

182 Stanford U

USA

598 Zhejiang U

CHINA

155 UC, Berkeley

USA

580 Huazhong U S&T

CHINA

153 Harvard U

USA

552 U Electronic S&T

CHINA

143 Zhejiang U

CHINA

509 Xidian U

CHINA

142 Nanyang TU

SINGAPORE

503 Beihang U

CHINA

141 U Science & T.

CHINA

452 MIT

USA

138 U Cambridge

UK

449 Nanyang TU

SINGAPORE

137 Shanghai JTU

CHINA

398 NU Singapore

SINGAPORE

137 ETH Zurich

SWITZERLAND

394 Shanghai JTU

CHINA

130 Peking U

CHINA

389 City U HK

HK SAR

124 Imperial CL

UK

388 South East U

CHINA

123 NU Singapore

SINGAPORE

384 Stanford U

USA

119

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Top universities in Biomedical and Life/Earth

University System Top 5% papers in Biomedical and Health Sciences University System Top 5% papers in Life and Earth Sciences

Harvard U

USA

2935 Harvard U

USA

261 Johns Hopkins U

USA

1085 Wageningen U

NETHERLANDS

253 U Toronto

CANADA

1071 U Washington Se.

USA

231 UC San Francisco

USA

967 ETH Zurich

SWITZERLAND

227 Stanford U

USA

915 UC Davis

USA

227 U College London

UK

850 UC Berkeley

USA

223 U Pennsylvania

USA

782 Cornell U

USA

206 U Michigan

USA

766 U Oxford

UK

200 U Washington Se.

USA

719 U Queensland

AUSTRALIA

187 U Oxford

UK

718 Stanford U

USA

187 Columbia U

USA

689 U Wisconsin-Madd.

USA

180 U Texas HSC Hou.

USA

667 U British Columbia

CANADA

170 Yale U

USA

661 MIT

USA

162 UC San Diego

USA

635 Ghent U

BELGIUM

161 UC Los Angeles

USA

602 Zhejiang U

CHINA

160 Duke U

USA

584 U Minnesota - TC

USA

159 U Pittsburg

USA

583 U Cambridge

UK

158

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Deng Xiaoping reforms from 1978 onwards

  • Why: Deng “considered science to be the most crucial of the four

modernizations, the one that would drive the other three (industry, agriculture and national defense).” (Vogel, 2011, p. 197)

  • Depoliticisation: “Deng said that science had no class character; it

could be used by all classes and all countries despite their different political and economic systems” (Vogel, 2011, p. 201). It was enough that scientists were loyal to country and party (p. 202)

  • China needed original and basic science: Deng saw

internationalization not as a source of borrowed science but a guide to building China’s own capacity.

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Centrally controlled depoliticisation

and the dual authority system in science

“Deng also responded to the continuing complaints of scientists that their professional work should be directed by someone familiar with the content. He directed that scientific institutes be reorganized with three top leaders at each institute. The party leader would manage overall policy, but the basic work of the institute would be under the direction of a leader trained in

  • science. A third leader would be in charge of ‘rear services’, with

responsibility for improving the living conditions and for ensuring that the scientists had adequate supplies to carry on their work. Aware that intellectuals were upset that they had to spend so much time engaged in physical labor and political education, Deng established a new rule that at least five-sixths of the scientists’ work week was to be spent on basic research.”

  • Vogel, E. (2011). Deng Xiaoping and the transformation of China. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press (p. 208).
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Decentralisation and autonomy

  • Since the 1990s, shift from from state leadership and

control, to state facilitation and supervision

  • Autonomy of university leaders has increased over time
  • Universities remain firmly nested in government policies

and strategies

  • Increasingly, devolved autonomy has taken corporate

neoliberal forms, being associated with increased competition and private fund-raising. This has potential to shape the contents of knowledge and academic work

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Dual governance system in universities

  • Roles of president and party secretary overlap closely, and

can vary. Not all party secretaries act solely as agents of the party-state

  • Integration is obtained through the formal accountability
  • f the president to the party committee
  • Secures a close working relationship between party-state

and university, facilitating state drivers of performance

  • Recently the role of the party in universities was

strengthened, with the president becoming vice party secretary.

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Knowledge

  • The map of disciplines is the Western map, but it is

incomplete (sciences are lop-sided, social science and humanities under-valued)

  • Project of uniting Eastern and Western epistemologies is

discussed but not much is happening

  • Output driven by internationalisation strategies and

rankings tends to be less engaged with real life problems and innovations in China itself – undermining traditional commitments to applied knowledge and serving society

  • Difficult for a Leninist party-state to embrace a plurality of

new concepts and critical ideas in social science

  • Humanities could be a fecund source of new national

narratives but again state enthusiasm is limited

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Academic life

  • Faculty have agency, as in most countries, and in China can

draw on the deep well of scholarly tradition

  • That tradition emphasises the effective freedom (positive

freedom) of the faculty, their sense of responsibility and their power to contribute

  • Control freedom (negative freedom) lacks the sharp

resonances it has the West

  • The relentless demands of the performance economy, and

the pathologies associated with it (faked research, publish

  • r perish etc) are a larger problem than state repression
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Conclusions 1

  • Arguably, the Chinese university is still pursuing its foundational

project of the late Imperial and early Republican periods, that of a force for modernisation that is largely external to China

  • The orthodox Western disciplines frame university knowledge,

synergies with Chinese tradition are under-developed

  • However, where China has developed a unique ‘Idea’ is in the

governance of higher education—where a focused state is combined with autonomous disciplinary science in corporate universities, and regulated by dual university/state authority. Despite inner tensions this approach has proven highly functional

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Conclusions 2

  • State regulation and corporate universities in the neoliberal

era may have weakened essential elements of China’s educational tradition, e.g. global disciplinary research not indigenous knowledge and synthesis, weaker orientation to practical knowledge, unbalanced bias in favour of STEM

  • China’s higher education combines: (1) Leninist party-state,

(2) corporate university, (3) engagement in disciplinary

  • research. In China’s highly centralised polity there is always

potential for the balance to tip too far towards item (1)

  • To develop an ‘Idea of the University’ with a distinctive

content it would be necessary to add (4) knowledge, teaching and research strongly grounded in China’s scholarly tradition as well as - where appropriate - international best practices. The humanities and social sciences have a vital role