Abstract
Internationalization has become a new landmark of Chinese higher education, measured by indicators such as personnel mobility, number of offshore/joint programs, and international publications. Chinese universities have moved from isolation to the forefront of internationalization in a short timeline and amid the dramatic expansion of Chinese higher education to a mass system since the late 1990s. This has set the context of the internationalization discourse. At the same time, Chinese upper- and middle-class families increasingly choose not to send their offspring to Chinese universities, but rather to study abroad. These developments add up to a puzzle as to how internationalization has helped lift the standards of Chinese higher education. Drawing on the glonacal agency heuristic, resource dependency theory, and the Ethical Internationalism in Higher Education (EIHE) perspective, this paper utilizes the case study of two Chinese universities to address such two research questions: (1) How have Chinese universities managed to rise so dramatically in terms of internationalization? and (2) Why do they embrace internationalization so enthusiastically and how does this benefit them?
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Notes
Withdrawal refers to the fact that the actor in increasing dependency may withdraw from the exchange relationship, thereby reducing its level of dependency. Network extension points to establishing another exchange relationship with a new member, which will make the dependency become more diffused in the network. Coalition formation is an effective way of enhancing bargaining power. Finally, status enhancement means finding ways to increase importance or distinctiveness relative to other actors in the environment.
This criterion has to do with regional disparities in China, which comprises three major zones in terms of economic development level that in turn condition, to a certain extent, the university’s internationalization effort and outcome: the Eastern Developed Zone, the Central Medium Developed Zone, and the Western Underdeveloped Zone. Arguably, those universities in the Eastern Developed Zone and the Central Medium Developed Zone possess a better capacity in general than their peers in the Western Underdeveloped Zone. Thus, we focus our case selections in those two regions, while endeavoring—to some degree—to achieve a geographic location representativeness.
This refers to the University Rankings by Internationalization, conducted by the University Internationalization Assessment Research Center in Southwest Jiaotong University since 2014. It measures university internationalization performance on seven major indicators, including those about students, faculty, teaching, research, cultural exchange, international visibility, and resource conditions. The 2016 ranking outcomes are available at http://phb.swjtu.edu.cn/EnglishRanking/1.html/year=2016/page=1.
So far, the only exception is Tsinghua University’s Global Competency Education Program, launched by its Schwarzman College. This scenario stands in contrast with the West, where a big proportion of university staff (45%) believe internationalization is supposed to prepare students for a global world, according to the outcome of a survey conducted by the European Association for International Education.
In 2016, an approximate total of 450,000 international students came to study in Chinese universities, among whom nearly half enrolled in degree programs at all levels.
As such, Chinese universities are so keen to recruit international students—especially those enrolling in degree programs—that overseas Chinese now see it as an opportunity for access to top universities in China. International students are not only preferred but also waived of the highly competitive entrance examination.
This finding was confirmed by the same MoE official, who affirmed that government now evaluates institutions by the number of international students, which in turn becomes a reason to motivate them. He further added that local governments now also invest a lot to attract international students and use international students to showcase their profile.
As such, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Academician LU Dadao (2018) recently argues that such SCI-driven publications have gradually dictated research orientations and resource flow in China’s research circles, which in turn drains the country’s authentic creativity and innovation, as the researchers now are almost obsessed with research areas, issues, and pathways introduced from the West, rather than those indigenous to China. In this sense, he maintains that the current “internationalization” is essentially “succumbing to internationalization.”
The pillar score is drawn from the “international outlook” pillar of the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2016–2017, which covers international students, international staff, international co-authors, and so on, while a measure of universities’ international reputations is derived from THE’s annual Academic Reputation Survey.
This perspective is empirically supported by a study that compares development of 15 key abilities to academic and personal development (e.g., analytical and critical skills, quantitative skills, qualitative skills, communication skills, ability to appreciate cultural and global diversity, etc.) between the American and Chinese students in top-notch universities in the two countries. It discloses that Chinese students lag behind their American peers on almost all indicators, and even worse the gap has widened along with university education on both sides. (Chang 2018) An analysis of the outcome of Chinese Higher Education Satisfaction Survey (CHESS) reveals that undergraduate students are least satisfied with quality of their university education, even though their universities are increasingly better resourced (Huang 2017).
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Zha, Q., Wu, H. & Hayhoe, R. Why Chinese universities embrace internationalization: an exploration with two case studies. High Educ 78, 669–686 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00364-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00364-w