Progressive Internationalization: Nanjing University’s Theory and Practice
October 9, 2007 at 5:48 pm 3 comments
WANG Yunlai & DAI Zhehua
This paper can be downloaded from http://www.wun.ac.uk/theglobaluniversity/workshop.html
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Ian Wei | October 23, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Thank you very much for a splendid paper. It’s an inspiring account of Nanjing’s international history and contemporary strategies. I would like to ask a bit more about what foreign academics could and should learn from Chinese universities, that’s to say what is distinctive about Chinese academic traditions. In particular I would like to ask about traditions of scholarship that date from before the foundation of Nanjing University when Japanese and American influence came into play. Are any such traditions embedded in contemporary Chinese universities? In particular, do any such longstanding traditions of scholarship shape contemporary teaching methods and the status of academics in society?
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Adam Nelson | October 29, 2007 at 2:39 pm
This paper offers an impressive account of current internationalization efforts at Nanjing University. I’m hoping the authors can tell us even more about the partnerships Nanjing is pursuing. In particular, I wonder if Nanjing’s partnerships with universities differ in important ways from the partnerships with corporations (e.g., NJU-IBM , NJU-Fujitsu, etc.). Some—including Ka Ho Mok in his paper for this conference—express concern about “privatization” in higher education in an era of neo-liberal reform. How is Nanjing structuring or managing corporate partnerships to prevent the ill-effects of privatization, protect academic freedom, preserve the autonomy of the research enterprise, and promote non-commercialized research and teaching?
With respect to university partnerships, I’m interested in the new Nanjing-Johns Hopkins joint degree program at the Center for Chinese and American Studies. If the Center offers students “a study garden without going abroad,” might students lose the potential benefits of actually studying overseas? How can global universities balance their desire to “bring the world to campus” with a desire to send students to live and learn in other places (e.g., my own institution, the University of Wisconsin, is working hard to send more students abroad)? How might the issue of study abroad interact with concerns about “brain drain” in China and/or other rapidly developing states; do states fearing “brain drain”—but also seeking “development”—generally encourage of discourage study abroad? (Many states in Africa, for example, struggle with the tensions between encouraging study abroad and suffering the effects of brain drain.)
This question is related to one that arises in Anthony Welch and Zhang Zheng’s paper: how can global universities balance their twin interests in (a) sending students/scholars abroad and (b) urging them to return to—or stay in—their “homelands”?
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Joanna Al-Youssef | November 7, 2007 at 6:02 pm
This paper is a fascinating read! There is obviously a high level of international activity at Nanjing University. I would be interested to know more about what happens on the ground in such a context, particularly how/whether Nanjing’s international activities are contributing to the international mindedness of the students and staff involved, and how issues such as integration between individuals of different cultural backgrounds are being approached in such a diverse context. I would also be interested to know where Nanjing University is located in relation to other universities in China; whether it is seen as an example to follow as far as internationalisation is concerned.