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In 2006, the Chinese Ministry of Education sent presidents and party secretaries from its top-ranked universities to the University of Michigan (UM) to learn more about the leadership of research universities. Both the ministry and UM worked hard to make the visit productive, and both parties gained from it. A year later, with the support of the Ford Foundation, we conducted interviews with the Chinese participants to evaluate what they learned from their visit and how they used the knowledge to improve their universities. In the process, we developed new insights about Chinese higher education. We saw how quickly the Chinese absorb and adapt new ideas, and we found that the reforms they chose to adapt—for example, student-centered management—were not exactly what we had anticipated.
With a population of 1.3 billion and an annual economic growth rate of almost 10 percent, the People’s Republic of China has become the world’s second-largest economy. Since the 1980s, Chinese higher education has provided the country with scientific and technological expertise, a path to individual advancement, and an engine to stimulate the market economy. Accordingly, the Chinese government views higher education as the key to the country’s future economic growth. Professional development, especially study abroad, is a prime strategy that the Chinese government uses to improve its higher-education system.
For more than two decades, Chinese educators have been visiting other countries, and China’s formal admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001 accelerated the growth of such exchange programs. Many Chinese visits to the United States are the result of bilateral agreements between individual universities or between an individual U.S. university and one of the Chinese provincial governments. The Ministry of Education, which oversees the top 72 Chinese universities, is especially active in promoting international professional development for their leaders. It sends about 100 of them abroad each year, so most major university presidents have studied in other countries. And since China’s top universities are striving to reach world-class status, they visit foreign universities with the best reputations and resources. While institutions in the U.S. are the most popular destinations, many Chinese administrators also travel to the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and Korea.
Constance Ewing Cook is associate vice provost for academic affairs at the University of Michigan and clinical professor in the School of Education. She wishes to acknowledge the guidance of Dr. Erping Zhu, her colleague at the UM Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, throughout the forum and the subsequent evaluation interviews.
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