Internationalisation of Higher Education and Building ...



Internationalisation of Higher Education and Building World-class universities in Mainland China: a Case of Shanghai Jiao Tong UniversityQi Wang qimwang@sjtu.Graduate School of EducationShanghai Jiao Tong UniversityA world-class university, commonly referred to research university, is regarded as a central part of any academic system and an imperative to develop a nation’s competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. A world-class university is characterised as an institution with a high concentration of talent, abundance of resources and autonomous governance. It carries out international-standard education and research in a wide range of disciplines, recognised by international community, and makes great efforts to serve both national needs and international public good. Mainland China’s higher education has been progressing immensely in the past two decades; however, it still lags behind other developed countries and will have a long road ahead in building world-class universities.One way to transform into such as institution is to employ internationalisation strategies effectively.Some theoretical points on internationalisation of higher educationInternationalisation of higher education is a contested notion. Scholars find it difficult to pin down this multi-dimensional concept. Here is a well-established characterisation by Knight (2003): ‘[internationalisation] is defined as the process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the teaching, research and service functions of the institutions.’How can internationalisation strategies contribute to building world-class universities? What specific plans and actions can be implemented? I would like to share SJTU’s experience with you here.SJTU’s strategic planningSJTU is one of the oldest universities in China. It is jointly operated by the Ministry of Education and Shanghai Municipal Government. It is one of the top five universities n China, according to recent major national rankings, and was selected as one of the top nine universities in the first phase of the ‘985 project’ which is the national initiative to build world-class universities in China. SJTU’s overarching goal is to develop into a world-class university. A three-step development mission is proposed in 1996.To become a comprehensive, research-oriented, internationalised higher education institution, laying a solid foundation for its further development into a world-class university by 2010;To appear in the top 100 list in the world university rankings by 2020; and To achieve its overall world-class status by the middle of the 21st century. Specific strategies have been planned to translate the university’s vision into a concrete process. These strategies include improving faculty quality, strengthening fundamental sciences, encouraging interdisciplinary research, and promoting internationalisation. Those four strategies are highly articulated, and all integrates the element of internationalisation. Next, I would like to show SJTU’s experience in five perspectives.SJTU’s experience of internationalisationStudents To broaden the international experience of its students, the university offers a series of programmes that encourage and support students at all levels to study in and visit foreign nations.At the undergraduate level, the university offers various study tours and facilitates elite students to study degree programmes abroad, and participate study exchange programmes, overseas internships and summer training programmes with foreign universities. Up to 2008, 19.4% undergraduate students in SJTU have participated in those study tours. According to the university strategic plans, the number is expected to increase to 25% by 2010 and to 50% by 2020. For those students with financial difficulties, the university has offered studentships to support them to study abroad since last year. At the postgraduate level, the university encourages students to visit and study at world-class universities in order to engage in cutting-edge research, to enhance their research capacity and to improve their international competitiveness. Selected students will be granted financial support. So far, 15% of its doctoral students have had such experience. Bilingual education has been advocated in SJTU since 1998. It is intended to improve students’ English language skills as well as their Chinese language skills. From 1998 to 205, about 135 bilingual courses were offered. These courses represented approximately 10% of all the disciplinary courses offered by SJTU. This proportion is expected to increase to 15% by the year 2010. In addition, the students are required to take a minimum of 16 credits of English language courses. FacultyDifferent measures have been implemented in SJTU to improve the faculty quality. Apart from raising the requirements and criteria for selecting faculty members, the university has implemented a new professorship promotion scheme, which opens up the competition to both internal and external applicants, at home and abroad. SJTU is actively engaged in attracting academic talents and experts and developing global recruitment. By 2008, among all the teaching staff, 61.5% hold PhD degrees, with 12% obtained their degrees from overseas universities. The university encouraged teaching staff to collaborate with overseas universities and to attend international conferences. In addition, the university invites more than 200 visiting scholars every year since 2004, to teach and research in SJTU. Research SJTU encourages its faculty to conduct research at an international level. The university strives to integrate research achievements with the development of key enterprises (such as Microsoft, IBM, Intel, HP, Samsung, Hitachi, etc), to work closely in the development of future industries and to aid in the construction of an innovation system in China. The university also has proposed policies and regulations to encourage and improve the quality of international publications. Those policies adopted include rewarding papers indexed in SCI, SSCI and EI, encouraging postgraduate students to publicise their work. A new reward and evaluation system has been introduced to improve the quality of the publications in 2007, which differentiates the reward for papers with high-quality papers with high impact factors. In relation to research and academic development, SJTU has hosted a wide range of international conferences, workshops and symposiums in all areas.SJTU has implemented an evaluation scheme of department/school performance. This scheme employs international benchmarking to evaluate schools/departments’ performance in a global dimension, and by a group of selected internal and external experts. It enables the unviesrity to define its current position, to have clear goals and directions for future development, and to design measures accordingly. ProgrammesSJTU is actively engaged in collaborating with internationally prestigious universities, by forming dual degree programmes and joint institutes. Exploring and utilising optimal educational resources, the university aims to learn from world-class universities’ educational concepts, to draw reference to those institutions’ governance and management, to experience their curriculum design, and to develop high-skilled workforce with international competitiveness. It is worth mentioning that SJTU’s internationalisation strategies have also extended overseas. It has set up its overseas campus in Singapore to deliver SJTu’s management degree programmes. At the same time, SJTU becomes the ninth university with which the Singaporean government would like to build up global collaboration. Overseas student educationOverseas student education has expanded since 2000. The number of overseas students has increased from 970 in 2000 to 5641 in 2007. The students are from more than 60 countries, although mainly Asian students. Among these students, 20.97% are doing degree programmes, compared with 8.87% in 2000. The students in degree programmes are mainly undergraduates. SJTU has been focusing on how to attract overseas master’s students and how to attract non-Asian students. To sum up, through the internationalisation strategies, SJTU has improved its world reputation. Specifically, teaching and research activities have been diversified; students and staff’s knowledge and skills have been further developed; the influence of research achievement has been promoted; the university-industry relations have been strengthened. What does internationalisation mean to SJTU?From the above review of the SJTU’s experience, we can argue that internationalisation means three things to the university. First of all, internationalisation means developing high skills – to enrich students’ learning experience and equip them with international competitiveness. It means developing international standards and improving quality. We can see the notions of ‘quality’ and ‘international standard’ have been emphasised in all aspects, teaching, learning and research – comparing with international standards, recruiting globally, actively engaging in international academic world. SJTU’s development has shifted its focus, from domestic to international competition. This change has also raised both the faculty’s and students’ awareness of being international and being global, as well as being internationally competitive.What next?I wrote this presentation based on the policy documents from the university. After doing the review, I find it difficult to answer one question -- how do students and teachers feel about this internationalisation strategy? I find little research done on those two groups’ voices. Also, we can find great emphasis has been put on ‘international ranking’ and ‘competition’ when talking about internationalisation. Is it all that matters? I do think there is some research gap or opportunities here to investigate what difficulties or dilemmas the university, teachers and students have confronted while implementing the internationalisation strategy. I would like to raise the concern about the connection between policy making and policy implementing. * Data is drawn reference from the SJTU’s website.** Special thanks to Dr Jie Yang, SJTU, for his valuable comments. ................
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