Abstract
In recent decades, trade in higher education services has become increasingly popular in Asia. Realizing the importance of higher education and the potential of the education market not only for generating additional national incomes but also for asserting soft power in the highly competitive world, the Chinese government has put serious efforts in developing transnational higher education to diversifying student learning experiences and asserting soft power of China in the highly competitive global environment. This chapter reviews major policies and developments of transnational higher education in mainland China. The chapter also critically examines student-learning experiences after enrolling in transnational higher education programmes. The chapter also critically analyzes how the Chinese government has made attempts to assert its soft power in the context of transforming the country from an economic power to a culturally strong power.
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- 1.
The enforcement of the Regulations, however, only started from September 2003 onwards.
- 2.
The Chinese Ministry of Education was called the ‘State Education Commission’ from 1985 to 1998. The authors want to thank the Research Grant Council of the Government of the HKSAR for offering funding support to the project [HKIEd 7005-PPR-6].
- 3.
Regarding the management of CFCRS degrees, the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council (國務院學位委員會) subsequently issued ‘Notice on Improving the Management of Degree-Awarding in Activities of CFCRS’ (關於加強中外合作辦學活動中學位授予管理的通知) in 22 January 1996, so as to legalize and systemize the format of degrees awarded by CFCRS institutions and programs.
- 4.
Nevertheless, compulsory education (local primary and junior secondary education) and special sub-items regarding military education, police education, political education as well as party schools’ education, are excluded from the list since no corresponding commitment was made by the Chinese government.
- 5.
CFCRS institutions could have one more option than CFCRS programmes in terms of the degree/certificate awarded. If they succeeded in acquiring approval from the State Degree Office, they could then confer their own degree. Such institutions include the China–Europe International Business School (a collaboration between Shanghai Jiaotong University and the European Foundation for Management Development) and the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (founded by the Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka Shing).
- 6.
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ugstudy/introduction/finance/international-students.php (Retrieved on 7 July 2010).
- 7.
http://www.nottingham.edu.cn/content.php?d=112 (Retrieved on 7 July 2010).
- 8.
http://www.xjtlu.edu.cn/admission/undergraduate-students/2009%20financial-issues (Retrieved on 7 July 2010). It is however worth noting that both The University of Nottingham-Ningbo and the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University charge their international students with foreign passports 1/3 more than the domestic Chinese students. Thus the tuition fee for international students of 2010 intake is RMB 80,000 per academic year for all undergraduate programs.
- 9.
http://www.cfce.cn/web/Recruit/Bachelor/200806/533.html (Retrieved on 7 July 2010).
- 10.
The Sino-British College of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (上海理工大學中英國際學院) is by itself a highly complicated product of TNHE collaborations in China. Under the legal framework of ‘Chinese-Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools’ (CFCRS, 中外合作辦學) in Mainland China, foreign partners which collaborate with the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology in this case are a total of nine British universities. This long list includes: The University of Bradford, The University of Huddersfield, The University of Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan University, Liverpool John Moores University, Manchester Metropolitan University, The University of Salford, The University of Sheffield, and Sheffield Hallam University.
- 11.
This acronym of CFCRS may alternatively be used as an equivalent to ‘transnational education’ in the following discussion. It is notable that CFCRS as a concept for TNHE development in China has become increasingly tricky over the last few years, which implies a great variety of collaborations from equal partnership to extremely unbalanced cases.
- 12.
For instance, many discussants from CFCRS institutions remarked that they were particularly impressed by the respectful gesture of overseas lecturers in treating them as peers rather than as students. A discussant from The University of Nottingham Ningbo also forthrightly noted that: ‘I like this sort of education system… Another important point is that in our university, lecturers usually request us to find answers by ourselves. In contrast, students in most Chinese universities would simply learn the contents “taught” by their lecturers’ (27 January 2011).
- 13.
Foreign language teachers tend to station in the Chinese HEIs for a much longer period than those who teach professional subjects under the various CFCRS arrangements, as students concerned would have to take English courses for the first two years of their studies.
- 14.
According to the current legal framework of CFCRS, these institutions are by no means ‘branch campuses’ of overseas HEIs concerned. For instance, The University of Nottingham Ningbo (UNN) is legally run by The University of Nottingham UK together with its Chinese partner—Zhejiang Wanli University. However, in reality, Zhejiang Wanli University as the local partner only provides logistic support to the operation of UNN, yet leaves its administrative and academic management to The University of Nottingham UK. UNN is therefore a branch campus of The University of Nottingham UK in effect.
- 15.
We were particularly impressed by the outspoken articulation and critical mindset shown by the five bachelor graduates of The University of Nottingham Ningbo (UNN) while conducting a group discussion with them on 27 January 2011. As the first and second batch of graduates of the UNN (Year 2008 and Year 2009), they admitted that they might not perform well enough in the National Higher Education Entrance Examination (gaokao) before entering UNN, yet UNN has transformed them significantly, particularly in honing their skills of critical thinking and in boosting their self-confidence. Equally intriguing were remarks made by discussants from the United International College (UIC) on 9 March 2011. UIC is a CFCRS institution collaboratively established by the Hong Kong Baptist University and Beijing Normal University in Zhuhai, Guangdong province. In fact, UIC’s campus is located just side by side with the Zhuhai Campus of Beijing Normal University, which implies that students from these institutions are actually living together in a larger community. However, according to discussants from the UIC, the milieus in these two campuses were ‘rather different’, with population in the UIC being ‘generally gentler, more considerate to others, and dare to express their different opinions’, even though Beijing Normal University did recruit students with higher scores of gaokao in the first place.
- 16.
The TNHE arrangement of 2 + 1 + 1 refers to the design of spending the initial two years in China, then another year in the collaborative overseas HEIs, and finally return to China for the very last year of the program. As for the 4 + 0 arrangement in China, students could indeed finish their entire studies domestically, yet they could merely earn the degree of the local HEI upon graduation. The only exception is programs offered by ‘branch campuses’ of overseas HEIs in China.
- 17.
This is indeed an important selling point that Chinese HEIs which offer such programs tend to highlight it in their related webpages.
- 18.
For instance, The University of Nottingham Ningbo charged its domestic Chinese students a sum of RMB 60,000 for tuition fees for its 2010 intake. In comparison, tuition fees charged by the local public HEIs are recently merely around RMB 5,000.
- 19.
CDHAW-Tongji is a CFCRS institution co-founded by Tongji University and a consortium of German universities of applied sciences in 2004. Initially, the consortium had included only 11 German universities. However, it has expanded to cover 26 universities by mid-2011.
- 20.
For instance, during the focus group discussion held in Sino-British College, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (SBC-USST) on 16 December 2010, most of the discussants (full-time undergraduates) expressed their eagerness to work and stay abroad, and by and large with a strong support from their parents.
- 21.
Professor Sun Wei was then the Director of the Department of Educational Cooperation and Exchange, Zhongyuan University of Technology.
- 22.
Professor Zhang Shensheng was then the Deputy Dean of the University of Michigan–Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute.
- 23.
The Zhongyuan University of Technology (ZUT) is currently not a prestigious HEI in China, or more specifically, not even one of the best HEIs in Henan Province where it is located. Having said that, ZUT is a rising technology-based HEI which keeps making great efforts in advancing its cooperation with overseas HEIs in various forms over the last decade. Moreover, it is sturdy enough in the field of Textile Engineering.
- 24.
In terms of CFCRS programs, by far the University has four undergraduate and three vocational CFCRS programs. The four undergraduate programs concerned are on Textile Engineering, Marketing, Accounting, and Arts and Design (紡織工程、市場行銷、會計學、藝術設計). Apart from the one on Arts and Design, these are all CFCRS programs in collaboration with The University of Manchester, UK.
- 25.
For instance, in terms of assessment, students concerned would have to deal with two papers in each examination: one prepared by the foreign lecturer in English, and the other by his/her local counterpart in Chinese. These papers are equally important in the assessment of students (50 to 50%). The rationale behind this innovative arrangement was the attempt to reduce bias of judgment caused by English language barrier as far as possible.
- 26.
This by and large highly positive judgment on CFCRS programs/institutions was in accordance with the result of our survey which examined the same theme. For instance, among the 75 respondents who enrolled in CFCRS programs/institutions, 74 of them (98.7 %) of them were either strongly agreed (31, 41.3 %) or agreed (43, 57.3 %) that ‘overall speaking, the transnational arrangement of the program has benefited my study’.
- 27.
Such occasion in Singapore was the one held in Informatics Academy, whereas in Malaysia it was the one held in Nilai University College, and in Mainland China, The University of Nottingham Ningbo. In the latter occasion, we refer to our discussion with the University’s bachelor graduates (Year 2008 and 2009).
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Appendix I: Field Interviews Conducted in Mainland China 2010–2011
Appendix I: Field Interviews Conducted in Mainland China 2010–2011
Trip to Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China | ||
16 November 2010 | Five full-time undergraduates from the Harbin University of Science and Technology (HUST) | HUST’s campus: 52 Xuefu Road, Harbin City, Heilongjiang |
17 November 2010 | Seven full-time undergraduates and one full-time master’s student from the Harbin Normal University (HRBNU) | HRBNU’s campus (松北主校區): 1 Shida South Road, Harbin City, Heilongjiang. |
Trip to Suzhou, Jiangsu Province and Shanghai, China | ||
15 December 2010 | Seven full-time undergraduates from the Sino-German College of Applied Sciences, Tongji University (CDHAW-Tongji) | CDHAW-Tongji’s campus (嘉定校區): Room 255, Cao’an Highway, Jiading District, Shanghai |
16 December 2010 | Eight full-time undergraduates from the Sino-British College, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (SBC-USST) | SBC-USST’s campus: Room 203, Admin. Building, 1195 Fuxing Road Middle, Shanghai |
16 December 2010 | Eight full-time undergraduates from the University of Michigan–Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute (UM-SJTU Joint Institute) | UM-SJTU Joint Institute’s campus: 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai |
17 December 2010 | Three full-time undergraduates and three staff members from Shanghai Normal University (SHNU) | SHNU’s campus (徐匯校區): 100 Guilin Road, Shanghai |
17 December 2010 | Five full-time master’s students, one master’s graduate, one full-time doctoral student and two staff members from the East China Normal University (ECNU) | ECNU’s campus (中山北路校區): 3663 Zhongshan North Road, Shanghai |
Trip to Zhengzhou and Luoyang, Henan Province, China | ||
6 January 2011 | Eight full-time undergraduates from the College of International Education, Zhongyuan University of Technology (ZUT) | ZUT’s main campus: 1 Huaihe Road, Xinzheng Shuanghu Economic Development Zone, Zhengzhou City, Henan |
Trip to Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China | ||
27 January 2011 | Five full-time undergraduates from The University of Nottingham Ningbo (UNN) | UNN’s campus: Administration Building, 199 Taikang East Road, Ningbo City, Zhejiang |
27 January 2011 | Five bachelor graduates (Year 2008 and Year 2009) from The University of Nottingham Ningbo (UNN) | UNN’s campus: Aroma Coffee Shop |
Trip to Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China | ||
9 March 2011 | Seven full-time undergraduates from the Beijing Normal University–Hong Kong Baptist University United International College (UIC) | UIC’s campus: Reboot Cafe, 28 Jinfeng Road, Tangjiawan, Zhuhai City, Guangdong |
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Mok, K.H., Ong, K.C. (2014). Transforming from “Economic Power” to “Soft Power”: Transnationalization and Internationalization of Higher Education in China. In: Li, Q., Gerstl-Pepin, C. (eds) Survival of the Fittest. New Frontiers of Educational Research. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39813-1_10
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