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As of 2010, there are over 2,000 uni- versities in China, and the gross enrollment rate reaches 26.5 per-cent. China needs to carefully dealwith a series of problems existing in highereducation before the country reaches targetsset more than a dozen years ago to build anumber of world-class universities and pro-grams. China Today got an excIusive interviewwith Zhu Yongxin, member of the StandingCommittee of the National People's Congress,vice-chairman of the China Association forPromoting Democracy, and vice-president ofthe Chinese Society of Education.
China Today:What's the status quoof China's higher education?
Zhu:China has made great progressoverall with respect to higher education.It has transformed its system from aprovision for the elite to a widely acces-sible process for human resource devel-opment. Generally speaking, if the grossenrollment rate reaches 15 percent, itindicates that a country has entered anera of popularized education. In 2010,the rate reached 26.5 percent in China.In the last 30 years, China's highereducation made a big leap forward innumbers and in scientific research; thequality of academic experience andteaching management have also steadilyimproved. But there are indeed sev-eral problems remaining:bureaucracyprevails in universities, and they alladopted similar development strategieswhich cost each of them their uniquecharacteristics. The teaching level alsoneeds to be improved.
China Today:The college entranceexamination that has been practiced forover 30 years is widely criticized now.What is your appraisal of the studentselection system?
Zhu:As a student selection system,the eollege entrance examination has beenplaying an important role in developinghigher education and advancing excel-lent young people. If the system had notbeen reinstated in 1977, it would be hardto imagine how China could achieve suchrapid economic and social development.
But criticism is heard, and I think itis reasonable. First of all, the system, tosome extent, nurtured an examination-oriented education. As a relatively simpleapproach to talent selection, the systemneglects the differences between areas,and overlooks speeial talents as well. Stu-dents expert in specific areas find it hardto pass the one-size-for-all examination,because they usually are quite creative.In other words, the system affected thecountry's innovation capability to someextent.
Under this system, the whole educa-tion system, especially the primary andmiddle schools, plaeed too much impor-tance on tests. As the college entranceexamination is the only "open door," allstudents had to foens on improving testskills in order to pass the examination.To a certain degree, the system also em-boldened a pseudo proposition - "Donot lose at the starting line." If you wantto be enrolled in a good university, youshould go to a good middle and primary school; if you want to be enrolled in agood primary school, you should go to agood kindergarten.
Besides these problems, the system isunfavorable for students living in ruraland remote areas where the fundamentaleducation offered is relatively weak. Arelated study has shown that the rate ofstudents at Tsinghua University that arefrom rural areas has decreased from 30percent before the 1980s to around 10percent. People recognize the justnessof the college entrance examination, buthave doubts about its fairness. So I thinkthe system needs transformation, eventhough it has contributed greatly to thecountry.
China Today:The independent en-rollment systtem has been introduced ina number of uniuersities. Will it becomemainstream in a short time?
Zhu:The independent enrollmentprocess is a "small window" in the cur-rent system, but has not become anotherdoor. Nicknamed the "second collegeentrance examination," it is still an inef-fective approach to selecting creativetalent, and has a low tolerance to thosepreferring certain specific subjects. QianZhongshu and Wu Han, both great writ-ers in modern China, were recruited byTsinghua University around 1930 fortheir excellent talent in literature, thoughtheir mathematics scores weren't worthmentioning. It is hard to imagine howthese kinds of students would find theirway into college nowadays.
The independent enrollment system issupposed to let middle school headmas-ters recommend students with creativeability, but in fact the nominees are usu-ally the best academic performers. Thisis the safest sort of nomination a head-master can make, but not the goal systemsupposed it was pursuing.
China Today:China's higher edu-cation started market-oriented reformsin the 1980s. Since then, colleges havecharged tuition fees, and graduates haveto seek jobs themselves. How do youevaluate the impact of this reform?
Zhu:Marketization is the direction ofdevelopment. As a developing country,China needs to give priority to funda-mental and compulsory education, in-stead of paying for all education. Charg-ing for higher education is a commonpractice around the world, but now wehave two problems.
First, whether the tuition fee is rea-sonable. This problem relates to the costand efficiency of higher education. Wehave so many spare teaching resources,and we didn't keep a strict account of thecost, so tuition fee standards should becarefully reviewed. But we have a goodsolution for helping students from poorfamilies. According to related regula-tions, 15 percent of the tuition feescollected should go to scholarships orstudent grants. The only problem is thispolicy has been under-promoted and notenough students know of it.
Second, it is right to let graduatesseek jobs themselves, but the reality ofChinese society should be considered.Chinese society has always worshippedsocial and family connections, so those with strong backgrounds will enjoy asmoother path than those from disad-vantaged families. A series of policiesshould be designed to help disadvan-taged graduates seek opportunities. Postsin the civil service and official ranks invillages should be open to these studentsfirst.
China Today:The private college isa product of the market. China's privateuniversities are dwarfed by their foreigncounterparts with regard to teachingquality. What's the problem?
Zhu:I think, first of all, our publiceducation system is so strong, leavinglittle room or opportunity for privateschools. China's private capital didn'tenter the field of education, and the pri-vate colleges were originally establishedby public universities. Therefore privatecolleges are miles behind public collegesand will likely never be as strong.
I once put forward two propositions.First, China in principle should not es-tablish public colleges, leaving the fieldto private ones; second, the countryshould promulgate preferential policiesto encourage private capital to enter thehigher education sector, establish newcolleges or purchase the old ones. Wecan use international experience for ourreference. For example, if private capitalis invested, say RMB 100 million to aproject, the country will allocate another100 million; a tax-exemption would alsobe attractive. I have always held thatChina's higher education will not go farwithout excellent private colleges.
Another complicating factor is thatgovernment allocations are not balancedacross public universities. Key universi-ties obtain the biggest share normally,and are therefore ensured full and fastdevelopment. Abroad, the best universi-ties are usually private ones, while inChina the best are public universities,and that is no different for middle or pri-mary schools, or kindergartens.
China Today:In recent years manyexperts and scholars have called for "de-bureaucratization." What kind of role doyou think the government should play inthe universities?
Zhu:The "de-bureaucratization"should take place on two fronts. The firsttarget is the school environment. Rightnow China's universities can't run theirschool themselves, a direct result of thefact, a diploma is technically issued bythe Ministry of Education, and academicdegrees are approved by the ministry aswell. So many people have leveled thecriticism:"There is only one universityin China, that is, the University of theMinistry of Education." Universities arebusy implementing policies issued by thegovernment, and have no right to run aschool independently. That's why I callfor "liberating headmasters." Second isthat college bureaucracies themselves arevery powerful and have a big say in thenature and use of academic resources.So we should wrestle control of academicresources from management personnel.Headmasters, directors, aud manage-ment personnel should support the teaching and research activities insteadof controlling how they are distributed.Headmasters and deans should nurtureacademic strength instead of obtainingprojects themselves. Currently profes-sors are struggling to fulfill their roles insecuring projects and allocations, and ex-ercise their right to distribute resources.So it is a big problem, as these professorscannot focus on academic studies.
China Today:In your opinion,should college education focus on re-search or on application?
Zhu:I think colleges should be clas-sified into divisions that are research-oriented, teaching-oriented and tech-nology-oriented. Peking University andTsinghua University definitely belong tothe first category, which focus on innova-tion in key subjects and compete with thebest universities in the world. But somelocal ones, like Soochow University that Iused to work with, should focus on appli-cation, so as to serve local economic andsocial development. For technological'universities, training senior techniciansis the primary goal. So I think differentuniversities should define themselves indifferent ways.
The biggest problem is that, becausethey were measured using the same stan-dards, our universities all followed thesame pattern. There should have beendifferent options for the development ofuniversities, but now almost all offeredthe same courses and curricula. Second,universities pursued an unlimited expan-sion. Bigger doesn't actually mean better.Universities should make themselvesstand out because of special subjects andcharacteristics, not the number of ma-jors. Sometimes small is beautiful.
China Today:Currently there areseveral university rating systems. Thestandards are different for each. Whatare common standards for world-classuniversities?
Zhu:Generally speaking, world-class universities are research-oriented.So the most important standard is theinnovation ability in theoretical or tech-nological pursuits, or the quality of e0n-tributions made to a subject or a theory.The second standard is the students,products of university - their quality,employment rate and social influence.Third is the university's influence on acountry's policy-making and economy.A good university is able to influence acountry's scientific, economic and socialpolicies. Comparatively speaking, localuniversities will be measured by theircontribution to local economic growthand social development.
Besides that, there are internal stan-dards for a university, including thenumber of professors and whether theyhave a world-class reputation.
China Today:According to yourevaluation standards, do we haveworld-class universities?
Zhu:I am afraid we don't have so-called top ten universities, but a gener-ous appraisal would put some between20 and 30 in rank; and if not generous,we can't find a Chinese university untilwe look below 50. So I think we still have a long way to go.
China Today:Where are the gapsor discrepancies?
Zhu:First there is talent, includingteachers and students. Can we attractthe best teachers to our university? If wehave good teachers, we will have goodcourses, and naturally strengthen our in-novation ability.
Good students are also important. Nomatter whether it's Harvard, Oxford orCambridge, their success is partly owedto having the best students in the world.But in China, we can't even recruit thebest students in our own country. Nowmany good students go to study in HongKong and the U.S. Some of them even goabroad for high school.
China Today:How will we estab-lish a world-class university?
Zhu:We should start with our com-petitive subjects that have a good foun-dation and great potential to grow. Thestate should give the strongest support.We should attract private capital andgive universities more rights to developthese programs and subjects. For ex-ample, we should allow successful publiccompanies to establish or purchase col-leges, which might become good enoughto rival Peking or Tsinghua University.Competition between universities isimportant. Today prestigious universi-ties like Peking and Tsinghua enjoy anadvantage in resources, and no one canchallenge them. A sense of crisis willprompt them to develop faster.
In fact, high performance in only afew subjects can establish the reputa-tion of a university. We used to evaluateschools, but in foreign countries theyfocus on the quality of a program or field,its forte. If a college becomes well knownnationwide or worldwide for one or twosubjects, it is a great success.
China Today:What's the status quoof China's higher education?
Zhu:China has made great progressoverall with respect to higher education.It has transformed its system from aprovision for the elite to a widely acces-sible process for human resource devel-opment. Generally speaking, if the grossenrollment rate reaches 15 percent, itindicates that a country has entered anera of popularized education. In 2010,the rate reached 26.5 percent in China.In the last 30 years, China's highereducation made a big leap forward innumbers and in scientific research; thequality of academic experience andteaching management have also steadilyimproved. But there are indeed sev-eral problems remaining:bureaucracyprevails in universities, and they alladopted similar development strategieswhich cost each of them their uniquecharacteristics. The teaching level alsoneeds to be improved.
China Today:The college entranceexamination that has been practiced forover 30 years is widely criticized now.What is your appraisal of the studentselection system?
Zhu:As a student selection system,the eollege entrance examination has beenplaying an important role in developinghigher education and advancing excel-lent young people. If the system had notbeen reinstated in 1977, it would be hardto imagine how China could achieve suchrapid economic and social development.
But criticism is heard, and I think itis reasonable. First of all, the system, tosome extent, nurtured an examination-oriented education. As a relatively simpleapproach to talent selection, the systemneglects the differences between areas,and overlooks speeial talents as well. Stu-dents expert in specific areas find it hardto pass the one-size-for-all examination,because they usually are quite creative.In other words, the system affected thecountry's innovation capability to someextent.
Under this system, the whole educa-tion system, especially the primary andmiddle schools, plaeed too much impor-tance on tests. As the college entranceexamination is the only "open door," allstudents had to foens on improving testskills in order to pass the examination.To a certain degree, the system also em-boldened a pseudo proposition - "Donot lose at the starting line." If you wantto be enrolled in a good university, youshould go to a good middle and primary school; if you want to be enrolled in agood primary school, you should go to agood kindergarten.
Besides these problems, the system isunfavorable for students living in ruraland remote areas where the fundamentaleducation offered is relatively weak. Arelated study has shown that the rate ofstudents at Tsinghua University that arefrom rural areas has decreased from 30percent before the 1980s to around 10percent. People recognize the justnessof the college entrance examination, buthave doubts about its fairness. So I thinkthe system needs transformation, eventhough it has contributed greatly to thecountry.
China Today:The independent en-rollment systtem has been introduced ina number of uniuersities. Will it becomemainstream in a short time?
Zhu:The independent enrollmentprocess is a "small window" in the cur-rent system, but has not become anotherdoor. Nicknamed the "second collegeentrance examination," it is still an inef-fective approach to selecting creativetalent, and has a low tolerance to thosepreferring certain specific subjects. QianZhongshu and Wu Han, both great writ-ers in modern China, were recruited byTsinghua University around 1930 fortheir excellent talent in literature, thoughtheir mathematics scores weren't worthmentioning. It is hard to imagine howthese kinds of students would find theirway into college nowadays.
The independent enrollment system issupposed to let middle school headmas-ters recommend students with creativeability, but in fact the nominees are usu-ally the best academic performers. Thisis the safest sort of nomination a head-master can make, but not the goal systemsupposed it was pursuing.
China Today:China's higher edu-cation started market-oriented reformsin the 1980s. Since then, colleges havecharged tuition fees, and graduates haveto seek jobs themselves. How do youevaluate the impact of this reform?
Zhu:Marketization is the direction ofdevelopment. As a developing country,China needs to give priority to funda-mental and compulsory education, in-stead of paying for all education. Charg-ing for higher education is a commonpractice around the world, but now wehave two problems.
First, whether the tuition fee is rea-sonable. This problem relates to the costand efficiency of higher education. Wehave so many spare teaching resources,and we didn't keep a strict account of thecost, so tuition fee standards should becarefully reviewed. But we have a goodsolution for helping students from poorfamilies. According to related regula-tions, 15 percent of the tuition feescollected should go to scholarships orstudent grants. The only problem is thispolicy has been under-promoted and notenough students know of it.
Second, it is right to let graduatesseek jobs themselves, but the reality ofChinese society should be considered.Chinese society has always worshippedsocial and family connections, so those with strong backgrounds will enjoy asmoother path than those from disad-vantaged families. A series of policiesshould be designed to help disadvan-taged graduates seek opportunities. Postsin the civil service and official ranks invillages should be open to these studentsfirst.
China Today:The private college isa product of the market. China's privateuniversities are dwarfed by their foreigncounterparts with regard to teachingquality. What's the problem?
Zhu:I think, first of all, our publiceducation system is so strong, leavinglittle room or opportunity for privateschools. China's private capital didn'tenter the field of education, and the pri-vate colleges were originally establishedby public universities. Therefore privatecolleges are miles behind public collegesand will likely never be as strong.
I once put forward two propositions.First, China in principle should not es-tablish public colleges, leaving the fieldto private ones; second, the countryshould promulgate preferential policiesto encourage private capital to enter thehigher education sector, establish newcolleges or purchase the old ones. Wecan use international experience for ourreference. For example, if private capitalis invested, say RMB 100 million to aproject, the country will allocate another100 million; a tax-exemption would alsobe attractive. I have always held thatChina's higher education will not go farwithout excellent private colleges.
Another complicating factor is thatgovernment allocations are not balancedacross public universities. Key universi-ties obtain the biggest share normally,and are therefore ensured full and fastdevelopment. Abroad, the best universi-ties are usually private ones, while inChina the best are public universities,and that is no different for middle or pri-mary schools, or kindergartens.
China Today:In recent years manyexperts and scholars have called for "de-bureaucratization." What kind of role doyou think the government should play inthe universities?
Zhu:The "de-bureaucratization"should take place on two fronts. The firsttarget is the school environment. Rightnow China's universities can't run theirschool themselves, a direct result of thefact, a diploma is technically issued bythe Ministry of Education, and academicdegrees are approved by the ministry aswell. So many people have leveled thecriticism:"There is only one universityin China, that is, the University of theMinistry of Education." Universities arebusy implementing policies issued by thegovernment, and have no right to run aschool independently. That's why I callfor "liberating headmasters." Second isthat college bureaucracies themselves arevery powerful and have a big say in thenature and use of academic resources.So we should wrestle control of academicresources from management personnel.Headmasters, directors, aud manage-ment personnel should support the teaching and research activities insteadof controlling how they are distributed.Headmasters and deans should nurtureacademic strength instead of obtainingprojects themselves. Currently profes-sors are struggling to fulfill their roles insecuring projects and allocations, and ex-ercise their right to distribute resources.So it is a big problem, as these professorscannot focus on academic studies.
China Today:In your opinion,should college education focus on re-search or on application?
Zhu:I think colleges should be clas-sified into divisions that are research-oriented, teaching-oriented and tech-nology-oriented. Peking University andTsinghua University definitely belong tothe first category, which focus on innova-tion in key subjects and compete with thebest universities in the world. But somelocal ones, like Soochow University that Iused to work with, should focus on appli-cation, so as to serve local economic andsocial development. For technological'universities, training senior techniciansis the primary goal. So I think differentuniversities should define themselves indifferent ways.
The biggest problem is that, becausethey were measured using the same stan-dards, our universities all followed thesame pattern. There should have beendifferent options for the development ofuniversities, but now almost all offeredthe same courses and curricula. Second,universities pursued an unlimited expan-sion. Bigger doesn't actually mean better.Universities should make themselvesstand out because of special subjects andcharacteristics, not the number of ma-jors. Sometimes small is beautiful.
China Today:Currently there areseveral university rating systems. Thestandards are different for each. Whatare common standards for world-classuniversities?
Zhu:Generally speaking, world-class universities are research-oriented.So the most important standard is theinnovation ability in theoretical or tech-nological pursuits, or the quality of e0n-tributions made to a subject or a theory.The second standard is the students,products of university - their quality,employment rate and social influence.Third is the university's influence on acountry's policy-making and economy.A good university is able to influence acountry's scientific, economic and socialpolicies. Comparatively speaking, localuniversities will be measured by theircontribution to local economic growthand social development.
Besides that, there are internal stan-dards for a university, including thenumber of professors and whether theyhave a world-class reputation.
China Today:According to yourevaluation standards, do we haveworld-class universities?
Zhu:I am afraid we don't have so-called top ten universities, but a gener-ous appraisal would put some between20 and 30 in rank; and if not generous,we can't find a Chinese university untilwe look below 50. So I think we still have a long way to go.
China Today:Where are the gapsor discrepancies?
Zhu:First there is talent, includingteachers and students. Can we attractthe best teachers to our university? If wehave good teachers, we will have goodcourses, and naturally strengthen our in-novation ability.
Good students are also important. Nomatter whether it's Harvard, Oxford orCambridge, their success is partly owedto having the best students in the world.But in China, we can't even recruit thebest students in our own country. Nowmany good students go to study in HongKong and the U.S. Some of them even goabroad for high school.
China Today:How will we estab-lish a world-class university?
Zhu:We should start with our com-petitive subjects that have a good foun-dation and great potential to grow. Thestate should give the strongest support.We should attract private capital andgive universities more rights to developthese programs and subjects. For ex-ample, we should allow successful publiccompanies to establish or purchase col-leges, which might become good enoughto rival Peking or Tsinghua University.Competition between universities isimportant. Today prestigious universi-ties like Peking and Tsinghua enjoy anadvantage in resources, and no one canchallenge them. A sense of crisis willprompt them to develop faster.
In fact, high performance in only afew subjects can establish the reputa-tion of a university. We used to evaluateschools, but in foreign countries theyfocus on the quality of a program or field,its forte. If a college becomes well knownnationwide or worldwide for one or twosubjects, it is a great success.