There's more to life than textbooks

Updated: 2011-11-18 10:55

By Bin Wu and W. John Morgan (China Daily Euroepan Weekly)

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Debate - and action - needed on making universities more relevant beyond the halls of learning

There's more to life than textbooks

The number of Chinese students going abroad for higher education continues to grow at a rapid rate.

In six years, as the government continues to widen student access to higher education, Chinese graduates have quadrupled to 3 million a year. In 2010, the total number of Chinese students and scholars attending foreign universities or research institutes rose 20 percent to 284,700.

While growth by numbers is impressive, the fact that many Chinese students depart academia with limited understanding and experience of wider society is inescapable. Independent and critical thinking is unfamiliar territory for most Chinese students, hindering their ability to gain a thorough understanding of the country's economic, social and political challenges.

Chinese students tend to take a very narrow view of university education, pursuing their own interests and career objectives. Generally, they aim at a few in-vogue subjects such as engineering, business and banking, but this prevents them from developing multicultural communication and understanding.

It is vital that Chinese students develop a clear understanding of the concepts of citizenship, civil society and social responsibility - crucial elements for social development in China over the next decade.

The onus is on China's own education system to prepare the next generation of Chinese for life after learning but universities in Western societies must play their part in meeting the needs of Chinese overseas students who face intense competition for employment once they return home.

At present, these needs are largely ignored. Universities in Western societies must pay more attention to providing the Chinese students they recruit opportunities to play active roles in an unfamiliar society and gain valuable work experience.

This cannot be achieved unless the links between the universities and community are enhanced so that students have more opportunities for voluntary work, for employment and for internships during the period of their academic study abroad.

An emphasis on work experience and internship opportunities has become a prominent issue in the minds of Chinese students in some major higher education destination countries. In the United Kingdom for instance, the new government policy to introduce an international immigration cap will lead to the abolition of the Post-Study Work (PSW) visa, which had permitted international graduates from British universities to remain in the UK for a year after graduation.

In the past, a PSW visa-holder was entitled to seek work experience in the UK before returning to their home country. There was also a further visa category such as the Tier 1 General Skilled or Work Permit which allowed students to remain in the UK longer.

This new policy is set to come into force in April next year. It threatens to have a negative impact on Chinese student immigration to the UK, reducing the country's appeal to Chinese students by offering fewer opportunities to develop work experience in UK companies and in society generally after their graduation.

In our experience, Chinese students are increasingly valuing opportunities for work experience. Out of the 23 Chinese students registered for a master's degree in social sciences at the University of Nottingham in the summer of 2011, 78 percent of them opted to take an internship in the UK or in China rather than complete a dissertation for their master's degree.

According to the University's Community Partnerships office Chinese students are one of the most active international student groups in applying for volunteering work in the community. This is an indication of the strong demand from Chinese students to develop their social and work experience during their university study overseas.

This suggests that any debate about the nature of public engagement within contemporary universities should have an international dimension. There has been a long-standing and profound argument about the nature and function of a university within society.

In Europe and North America, we associate this traditionally with John Henry Newman and with Wilhelm von Humboldt, who argued that the idea or purpose of a university was the social reproduction of elites who were assumed to serve the public good.

However, in our contemporary world higher education is no longer limited to a small proportion of people in society. It has entered a new era of the so-called "massification" of higher education. This is true of China, as of other countries, which have seen greatly increased opportunities for young people from remote rural areas and poor families to gain access to a university education.

Wider access to higher education translates into greater knowledge transfer and skill development for the public good. The development and internationalization of higher education has entered a new era, in which more attention is paid to the quality of higher education and its contribution to the welfare of society generally.

This again raises the question of the idea or the purpose of a university and its contribution to the public good. There are conflicting answers to this question. However, for us, a university education should not be seen simply as a private investment good with a market return, or even knowledge transfer and skills acquisition.

It should also be seen as making a contribution to cultural and social cohesion, to community values and to national and international stability. The potential of such contributions can be seen to have local, national and global dimensions as different types of universities are rooted in different historical, social, political and cultural environments.

However, despite such differences, a question remains for international higher education: how to enhance the educational experience of their students and, in so doing, contribute not only to their potential employability but also their potential contribution as citizens?

This modern idea of a university is of international significance. As far as Chinese students specifically are concerned, it cannot be achieved unless there are significant improvements in social volunteering, work experience, internships and other service education opportunities offered to them either in China or abroad.

This requires cooperation between universities and other stakeholders, such as transnational corporations, global supply chain companies, local medium-sized and small firms, civil society and NGOs, as well as with local and national governments.

Alongside the efforts made by the universities themselves, equally important is government encouragement and policy inducements to stimulate measures leading to collaborations or partnerships between universities and society.

A good example is University of Nottingham, which has established a campus at Ningbo, Zhejiang province, at which both staff and students can learn from and participate in relevant social projects in China directly.

Such experience benefits both the individual and society and contributes to reshaping the idea of a university to meet the needs of modern conditions, nationally and internationally.

Bin Wu and W. John Morgan are both based at the University of Nottingham in the UK. The former is a senior research fellow at the China Policy Institute, School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, and the latter is a senior fellow of the China Policy Institute, UNESCO Chair of Political Economy and Education, School of Education. The opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.