Soulware

The American Way in China's Higher Education

Way Kuo

• Publisher: Wiley-Scrivener
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781119509899
• eBook ISBN: 9781119509912
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

This book is a critical account of the history, evolution and challenges of higher education in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, with important reflections on other systems, notably those in the US, UK, Korea and Japan. In addition to hardware and software, it introduces the concept of "Soulware" in global higher education and analyses its importance for internationalization and the pursuit of excellence. In an age where robots and artificial intelligence are impacting our jobs and our daily lives, its critical analysis and insightful reflections provide considerable value for a range of global stakeholders interested in higher education reform to nurture talent and promote innovation to prepare students for an unpredictable future.

"Professor Kuo's perspective provides considerable value for a range of global stakeholders both in the east and the west. As American universities awake to the realization that the demand for higher education is an increasingly global phenomena, his contribution could not be more timely."
Mike Crow, PhD President, Arizona State University

"Way Kuo advances a powerful historical argument for the means to achieve excellence in Asian universities. His recipe is bold leadership, combining excellence in teaching and research, and embracing the lessons of western university successes and failures. A superb combination of history and forward thinking."
Michael Kotlikoff, VMD, PhD Provost, Cornell University

"Way's book is not just about the past or the present. Rather, it offers useful insights into the future. In an age where robots and artificial intelligence are impacting our jobs and our daily lives, he introduces the concept of "soulware" and analyzes its importance for higher education."
G. P. "Bud" Peterson, PhD President, Georgia Institute of Technology

"Differing from their Western counterparts, Chinese universities will demonstrate their own cultural characteristics. In this regard, Professor Kuo's book offers us many valuable insights."
Yong Qiu, PhD President, Tsinghua University, Beijing

"Wisdom is the ultimate goal of higher education. It is the illumination of that wisdom among audiences, English-speaking or Chinese-speaking, to which Way Kuo's book hopes to kindle a spark."
Frank H. Shu, PhD President, 2002-06, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, and University Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley and San Diego

PART I
The Internationalization of Higher Education

Internationalization is a hot topic in universities and society at large as well, among people responsible for the implementation of education policies. But what is internationalization?

We live in a rapidly changing society where the information flow is swift and convenient, and communication between people is no longer restricted to local regions or time zones. As a result, places far apart tend to follow the same global trends. But every country participates in this process of global integration in its own way.

Not too long ago, the financial turmoil in the US engulfed the world like a tsunami, illustrating how small today’s world really is and how the forces of reciprocal influence have grown exponentially. In January 2018, the US started a trade war against China, with both countries raising tariffs on goods, which is likely to impact the rest of the world for some time to come.

Looking around, we notice how in every way the cultural diversity of our global society is juxtaposed with a trend for homogenization.

Internationalization has captured our attention, more so than financial globalization. It has been a driving force for progress in education, especially higher education, which in turn has accelerated the development of internationalization by playing a leading role in promoting global communication and exchange in a comprehensive way. Higher education is closely related to internationalization, and its ramifications reach far and wide.

Internationalization Enriches World Civilization

One of the reasons that the US dominated the 20^th century lies in the fact that graduates from its universities are scattered all over the world, playing a crucial role in politics, economy, culture, education, and society.

New York may be the most important metropolis in the world today, a point-of-view widely acknowledged, but the biggest city in the world 1,000 years ago, was China’s Kaifeng, while Italy’s Florence was the most influential city in the world 500 years ago. Further back in history, Changan, today’s Xi’an, the capital city of China’s Tang dynasty in its prime, was an international metropolis, and first choice for high officials and young students from neighboring countries as a place to visit or study. Emperor Taizong of the Tang dynasty initiated the recruitment of foreign students from overseas 1,400 years ago to enrich its cultural and education enterprise.

Some 2,500 years ago, Confucius led his disciples on study tours from one feudal state to another. I believe the civilization of the 25^th century will be somewhere else just as diverse and colorful, with its own special features. Back in my childhood, I was told the 21^st century would be the century for the Chinese to contribute to the world. Whether or not China, as a latecomer, can live up to that expectation will depend on how universities across the Taiwan Strait fulfill the responsibility of nurturing the necessary talent.

The “Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area” announced February 2019 intends to build Hong Kong and Guangdong into a vibrant hub through the development of new technologies and enterprises. Within this context, higher education is an aspect worth examining. I believe the American way would play a pivotal role in order to make it meaningful.

Chapter 1
Internationalization without Soulware

Several decades ago, internationalization became highly popular in US universities. In addition to the promotion of American culture, there was unprecedented enthusiasm for the Chinese language and anything related to China.

Hong Kong may have overlooked the trend partly because it was preoccupied with the approaching 1997 sovereignty transfer from British colonial rule, or perhaps because Hong Kong already thought of itself as a cosmopolitan city. Taiwan, on the other hand, was busy pushing for localization, and the whole society was brimming with schemes for implementing four official languages—Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka Chinese, and aboriginal language(s)—that it lacked the energy to consider the rationale for internationalization. On the mainland, higher education was at a crossroads and faced a major overhaul when Russian was replaced by English, as the major foreign language. Some English grammar books became bestsellers in mainland China.

More than 20 years later, when internationalization was finally on the table for discussion, universities across the Strait lacked the confidence to parade their own culture and instead promoted English as a common consensus, believing that an ability to speak English qualified them to be modern.

International Branch Campuses around the World

Although the internationalization of higher education is considered a contemporary phenomenon, the practice of setting up branch institutions in foreign countries or sponsoring schools in the colonies was common place during the colonial era. For example, the American University of Beirut was founded in 1866. As of 2017, there are 81 countries hosting branch campuses and 33 originating countries for branch campuses. Most of these hosting countries are anxious to be westernized. Among them, Temple University, Japan campus, is the oldest and the largest foreign university in Japan.

According to the January 2017 C-BERT database, (http://cbert.org/?page_id=34), there are around 311 international branch campuses around the world, with the US being the biggest originating country for 108 branch campuses. Many of these are located in the Persian Gulf as well as, and increasingly, in Asia. The UK led the way in Europe. It set up 45 of the 128 outposts listed. The fact that both the US and the UK have led the way in setting up such campuses is due to the popular use of English as the international language of the 20^th century, and the strong influence of the US in the world.

By January 2017, there were 33 international branch campuses of Australian, European, and North American universities offering degree courses in mainland China and Hong Kong, such as The University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University, University of Michigan–Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute, the University of Wollongong Hong Kong campus, and University of Chicago Business School in Hong Kong. Lately, as an indication of its determination to enhance higher education in China, many first-class US universities like New York University, Duke University, and even Harvard Medical School have been invited to open campuses in China. They provide an opportunity for students who decide to stay home to have exposure to a diverse classroom, a global perspective, and an international teaching and research environment.

International branch campuses offer a combination of proximity and affordability to students of host countries with the same quality assurance expected from the parent universities, while universities from the originating countries can broaden their brand name and increase their prestige over the long run in international markets. With certain universities, international branch campuses can generate the necessary revenue for sustaining their internationalization efforts.

In some rare cases, students from Europe and the US can choose to study at the international branch campuses of their own country, getting a home university degree with international experience. At the same time, universities in mainland China have opened campuses abroad as well. For example, Ningbo University in China was opening a campus in Florence, Italy. In 2018, Peking University opened a campus in Oxford, England, and Tsinghua University and the University of Washington opened a master’s degree program seeded by Microsoft near Seattle. While there are calls for caution for establishing branch campuses, three UK universities have done well, including the University of Nottingham (Malaysia and China), which accounted for 90% of all UK branch campus enrollment in 2012/13.

With globalization, transnational education has become a trend. However, based on the work of Anna Kosmützky, a professor in methodology for higher education and science studies in Hannover, Germany, as reported by Elizabeth Redden in her Inside Higher Education article, titled “the Branch Campus Boom(s)” on March 16, 2015, establishing international branch campuses was considered a low priority since it only started in the late 1990s and 2000s, “when universities in Australia and the UK, as well as the US, began setting up branches in countries that had made attracting international campuses a policy priority, primarily Qatar, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates”.

However, there have been tremendous difficulties in exercising these initiatives, and therefore even if there has been an increase in branch campus activity, there have been numerous closures as well. According to Kosmützky, five of the 26 branch campus openings within Dubai International Academic City have been closed.

Establishing branch campuses is one kind of internationalization initiative. Transnational education for the hosting countries is beneficial for the following reasons:

1. It provides access for people who want a high-quality university education. Many students seek an overseas study experience because employers value the skills that the students acquire, and solutions to global problems can be achieved by working collaboratively across institutions, borders and disciplines.
2. Even students who decide to stay home will have exposure to a diverse classroom, a global perspective, and an international teaching and research environment.
3. Foreign universities can speed up the modernization of local universities through short-distance interactions. Foreign influences and modernization of the hosting countries go hand-in-hand with the hosting societies.

For universities in the originating countries, they are “not primarily concerned with revenue generation, but rather with broadening their brand footprint and increasing their prestige over the long run in international markets. Many universities would like to pursue these goals, but relatively few can afford to sustain and support such efforts to the extent required”, according to Kosmützky. The other major international initiatives, such as strategic partnerships, international research and innovation, staff exchange (outgoing and incoming) and internationalizing the curriculum, are considered more effective.

Essence of Internationalization

Internationalization is not merely a ritual involving different universities signing agreements on cooperation and exchange of scholars and students. The essence of internationalization is realized by institutions of higher learning pursuing modernized programs and advanced research studies, adopting evidence-based teaching methods, and nurturing talented people to acquire an international perspective and innovative spirit.

In addition, internationalization is a process and a mode of thinking. In promoting internationalization, universities and societies should recognize the necessity of integrating teaching and research and use it as a benchmark to evaluate the quality of education in pursuing excellence as the ultimate goal. Progressive multinational corporations and non-profit organizations provide teachers and students with internships and attachments that foster understanding and experience of the operation and success of an industry or organization from an internal perspective. These are also ways to realize internationalization.

For universities across the Strait, the essence of internationalization lies in demonstrating respect for institutional integrity, strong research and work ethics; an emphasis on quality; attention to efficiency, conservation of energy and the environment; readiness to pursue marginal benefits and commitment to evidence-based and outcome-oriented teaching and research using data science in response to societal needs.

Ideally, an internationalized university promotes diversity, emphasizes sustainability, and respects religious and cultural differences as well as differences of opinion and thought, and does not discriminate on the basis of age, language, nationality, gender, or race. As such, internationalization carries the consequence of promoting mutual understanding and interaction between different societies and different economic systems.

At the operational level, we should be considerate of others, abide by rules and promote interaction between students and teachers. We should be inclusive, tolerant, and ready to embrace dissimilar ideas.

Hardware and Software

Internationalized higher education can create an eye-opening effect, playing a leading role in advancing society. Has the higher education sector been able to fulfill its role when judged against such a standard?

To promote internationalization, sufficient funds must be provided to support education, purchase books, software and equipment, enhance faculty quality, recruit international scholars, attract high-caliber students, build collaboration and exchanges with globally advanced universities, all of which will result in cutting-edge studies. In addition, regulations and mechanisms in concert with international standards must be established for quality assurance and good governance. In fact, advanced facilities and modern technology as hardware, and possessing a clear set of personnel policies and administrative rules and procedures as software, are generally regarded as essential for the development of today’s universities. Often, these hardware and software ar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface
• Foreword by G. P. “Bud” Peterson
• Foreword by Yong Qiu
• Foreword by Frank H. Shu
• Trump vs Roosevelt: A Historical Overview
• Introduction
• PART I: The Internationalization of Higher Education
• PART II: Integration of Teaching with Research
• PART III: Quality and Evaluation
• PART IV: The Right Mindset for University Governance
• PART V: Creativity and Innovation
• Acknowledgements
• Appendices
• Epilogue
• Author’s Bio
• Index
• End User License Agreement