HONG KONG -- "China now is a very significant source of students in the University of Oxford," Andrew Hamilton, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford told Xinhua, citing China is the third largest source of students after the United Kingdom and the United States.

He said there are about 750 Chinese students at Oxford currently, accounting for about 4 percent of Oxford's 20,000 students in total.

In order to attract more Chinese students to Oxford, the university has established many cooperation programs with the colleges and universities in Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, including "The Li & Fung Scholarships" program just announced on Saturday, aiming to help fund more Chinese students to study at Oxford.

Hamilton will also fly to Beijing on the coming Friday to celebrate the continuing collaboration between Tsinghua University and Oxford, as well as attending the centenary celebration of Tsinghua.

He said it's a very important thing in this globalized economy that students are exposed to different languages and cultures during their education, because they will encounter many different ways of thinking in their career life. Therefore, to be educated in a different country is a very strong foundation for a brain that has the flexibility to manage not just different cultures and languages but new ideas.

When talking about the career path of the Oxford graduates, Hamilton said that 95 percent of them are employed within six months of graduating. He attributed the high employment rate not only to the great strength and degree programs that Oxford has offered, but more importantly to its very personal form of education known as the tutorial system.

"It is very intense, personal and demanding. It is a form of education where the student has nowhere to hide, so they must be very well-prepared." However, it is just the one-to-one or one-to- two tutorial system that produces the academic intellectual self- confidence in Oxford graduates, Hamilton said. "That very often leads to success in whatever career an Oxford graduate chooses."

The 59-year-old education veteran specially mentioned that the Chinese students at Oxford are "very smart and very capable" of succeeding in their educational system (the intense personal education). With rich experience in teaching at many world-class universities for three decades, Hamilton said he found the overseas Chinese students are very differential from those studying in China, citing the latter are unwilling to challenge their professors whereas Oxford encourages their students to take the challenge.

He took one of the Oxford's lessons called "Free & Open Debate" as an example, saying he has seen over the time that the Chinese students as well as all the other students gain in confidence, challenge their professors and even suggest very respectfully that they might be wrong in a particular interpretation or scientific principle.
"That is a very important part of education, because at the front tiers of higher education, knowledge is uncertain," Hamilton said. "It is mostly important that students at a world- class university recognize the changing boundaries of knowledge and challenge those perceived understandings."

He also shared his views on China's current education environment, which he said has seen massive improvement and strengthening of universities throughout China. "We see very excellent research in science and technology being carried out at those universities, but I think there's still some distance to go in the humanities and the social sciences."

Hamilton expects a number of Chinese universities to be represented at the upper rank of universities throughout the world in a very short period of time. "It is a very exciting time for higher education globally nowadays," he said, citing the number of students wishing to go to university is increasing year by year, and the growing economies of China, India and many other countries around the world mean there are now many more students who are interested in exploring the subjects through higher education.

"That is providing an opportunity for universities to play a very important role in the development of the society," he said.

Founded in 1167, Oxford is the oldest university in the English- speaking world. It has educated 26 British Prime Ministers, 47 Nobel Prize winners and at least 30 international leaders, according to the university's website.
Hamilton took office as the vice-chancellor of Oxford in October 2009. Prior to that, he has served as the provost of Yale University for four years. He has also worked for the chemistry departments of University of Pittsburgh and Princeton University since 1981.