Now, as a president of a research-type university, I will talk about my opinion and understanding on university internationalization.
Firstly, university internationalization is a must for universities to become a modern “WCU”.
After researching the history of relationship between universities and the society, we can find that in the long-term development process, there seems to have been a kind of contractual partnership between universities and the society; they rely on each other, are responsible for each other, act on each other and supplement each other.
On the one hand, universities are individually established and exist in the entire society and play their irreplaceable role by serving the whole society to manifest their value of existence; on the other, the ceaseless reform of the society creates and provides a favorable environment for the existence and development of universities; and meanwhile, it also promotes the constant reforms and changes to the society by constantly relying on and placing pressure on universities, and thus realizes the common development of both of them.
Historically speaking, the earliest “Medieval University” dating back to Bologna, Casarano of Italy and Paris of France at the beginning of the 12th century and “Classic University” or "Traditional University" in the 16th/17th century basically defined their mission as to pass on disciplinary knowledge about theology, medicine, law and literature.
It was not until the early 19th century when Humboldt University was established in Berlin, that the mission of university was changed to “discovering knowledge” and “producing knowledge”, fundamentally changing the social responsibility of universities.
By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, with the formation of “serving the society” concept by Wisconsin University in the U.S., modern universities began directly undertaking the responsibility to provide service for social politics and economics more or less. The society also began regarding universities as a combination of “interest”, "respect" and “mistrust”.
The middle and later period of the 20th century was the “golden age” of the world’s higher education development, when ordinary people in major developed countries could generally receive higher education, and higher education has also become internationalized. The status of university is gradually rising to the center of society from the edge of society.
In the 1990s and the early 2000s, with the common confusion and concern faced by the humans --- global warming, exhaustion of renewable resources, as well as the challenges and opportunities brought by globalization --- people began to realize that economic society imposes new and higher requirement for the professional quality and characters of modern people. The individuals living in the globalization age are required to have not only “at least Bachelor degree”, but also the “international view, cooperation spirit and tolerance”. Their new qualities shall include:
(1) International view and overall recognition of an open world; (2) Good international communication skill (language); (3) Understanding of diversified culture and plentiful life experience; (4) Knowledge and expertise.
These changes and new requirements lead to the re-definition of university mission once again. For example, Learning: Treasury in It published by UNESCO in 1996 puts forward an important idea --- “taking university international exchange and cooperation as a new expansion of modern university functions”; in addition, the book Challenge of Establishing World Class Universities published by the World Bank in 2006 also regards university internationalization as an important dimension of "WCU" indicators. Obviously, top universities must have a higher degree of internationalization. In other words, university internationalization is a must of world class universities.
Secondly, university internationalization is the inevitable course for Chinese universities to walk toward the world, shape their images and realize “global participation”.
In the last three decades, China’s economy has made remarkable achievements, which shall be attributed to the reform and open up policy. Although China has become the world’s second largest economy, and is the fastest developing emerging economy in the world, the world’s understanding of China and its role in international affairs are very limited.
Take the higher education sector, for example. China’s higher education system cultivates the largest number of students in the world, but Chinese universities are still far from top universities in developed industrial countries. Due to the insufficiency of WCU in China, there are a lot of Chinese students going abroad for study; China is currently the biggest origin country of international student market. Clearly, Chinese universities fail to fully meet the increasing demand for receiving high-quality higher education.
In 2010, the National Plan and Outline for the Reform and Education of Mid- and Long-term Education (2010-2020), formulated by the Ministry of Education of the PRC puts forward to further develop higher education, strengthen the foreign exchange and cooperation by not only continuously implementing “the plan of sending students from high-level universities to study abroad”, but also attracting more foreign students to study in China.
The purpose of implementing these China-foreign exchange plans is to improve the internationalization degree of Chinese universities, as well as to promote the mutual understanding and culture exchange between students from different countries. However, during the process of China-foreign exchange, the number of foreign students studying in China is much less than that of Chinese students studying abroad, which means that the academic influence of Chinese universities is not sufficient and the global engagement of Chinese universities is still very limited.
The reasons might be related to economics, politics, language and the education system. It is possible to solve these problems; therefore there is plentiful room for the cooperation and exchange between Chinese universities and foreign universities.
Thirdly, university internationalization is the necessary choice for Chinese universities to serve the national development strategy and promote world peace.
Universities serve the role of “social axis” in global knowledge-based economy age and this role is irreplaceable. Serving society is the third function of universities and embodied in the interactive relationship of university and society.
In my opinion, in the globalization age, international exchange and cooperation has become a very important way for university internationalization. Through this way, a university shall not only serve to meet the needs of national economic and social development, but also take more and more important international responsibility.
First, from the perspective of the state, China hopes that it can achieve the goal of making education innovation, knowledge innovation and service innovation by building a batch of WCUs so as to prepare for attaining the national development strategic goal —— “innovation oriented state.” For example, while celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of Peking University in 1998, the Chinese government initiated the 985 Project (similar to COE and G30 in Japan and KB21 in South Korea) with the aim of constructing a batch of world top universities.
Second, Chinese universities begin playing more and more important roles in international stage. For example, the annual "Beijing Forum" jointly held by KFAS, Beijing municipal government and Peking University is a grand international meeting for the purpose of promoting “common civilization, harmony and prosperity.” The forum widely invites international public figures, government officers, renowned scholars and young students. This event has been successively held for nine years and has become an important platform to promote the exchange, understanding and dialogue of different cultures and civilizations, as well as the role model of university education promoting world peace and culture exchange.
Editor’s note: Prof Zhou Qifeng, President of Peking University, visited the major universities in Australia and New Zealand in late November and early December. During his visit, he attended the Australia-China University Leaders, Forum and delivered a speech. Above is an excerpt from his speech “Reshaping the role of RU at the ages of globalist knowledge economy: from idea to action.”
Edited by: Shi Dingli
