Justin Ko, a Juris Doctor graduate of Harvard Law School now working on his PhD, looks more closely at what it would take for China to become a powerhouse in educational excellence.
That this is China’s intention is in no doubt as on January 19th this year “..the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council jointly published a blueprint for the educational sector, in which it was envisioned China would aspire to become a “leading country in education” with a “strong” and “modern” education system by 2035.”
A quick recap here on currently top-ranked academic institutions may be useful. For 2024/5 here are the world’s top-20 according the Times Higher Education Supplement.
The U.S. has 13 institutions in this table, China 2. One goal then would seem clear. Get the two ranked higher up and get more names into the table. But how?
- Ranking tables like the one above heavily weight academic paper output. This will have to be increased.
- Beat the U.K., currently with 16 institutions in the top 100 (China, 8), this would be a good intermediate goal before beating the EU total.
- Establish more high level collaboration, especially in STEM subjects, with overseas institutions.
- Get more overseas students into the system. A target of 50,000 Americans has been mentioned specifically by President Xi.
The obvious problem is the areas in which China is seeking to collaborate and develop greater expertise are precisely the areas that most of the West, where nearly all the good universities are, isn’t keen on giving China a boost.
Hong Kong, tiny by comparison with China overall, has 5 universities in the top 100 (more than Japan) and so can reasonably be described as an educational superpower (relative to its size) already. So Chinese Sovereignty needn’t be a handicap. What’s Hong Kong’s secret?
- It mostly teaches in English.
- Immigration, visas and residency are all (really!) easy.
- Our internet works (China’s notoriously sucks).
- We enjoy low taxes and great connections to the rest of the world.
As things stand China has no hope of achieving its higher education goals by 2035, unless they:
- Introduce the English language as a means of instruction for whole degree courses.
- Make it easier for foreigners to enter, stay and travel into and out of China including making naturalization easier.
- Make the internet work for foreigners. The current workaround of VPLs is expensive, frustrating and maybe illegal.
- Allow overseas academic institutions to have their own facilities not the uncomfortable JVs all are presently forced into.
- Persuade local governments to provide logistical and financial support to overseas institutions who wish to set up in their locale.
The paper concludes noting that for China to achieve it’s goals it’ll have to find some way forward to work with overseas institutions whose governments are reflexively hostile to China Inc. However, a multi-pronged approach involving reform at home, collaboration with the willing and a laser focus on the issue is likely to reap rewards.
It’s unlikely China will displace the U.S. as the world’s major academic powerhouse anytime soon, but a push past the U.K. and a catch up to the EU’s current ranking by 2035 are goals that may be achievable.
You can read the work in full at the following link Project 2035: Transforming China into an Educational Superpower.
Happy Sunday.