It has been a Chinese tradition to send children away to another
area or overseas to get a better education. Now the tradition is
becoming a fashion which an increasing number of Chinese parents
and students find difficult to avoid.
A
survey by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization shows that at the end of 2000, there were 1.6 million
overseas students studying in 108 countries throughout the world.
Of these, 380,000 students, in 103 countries are from China. The
largest number from any one country.
It
is clear that the globalization of higher education is sweeping
China. Since its accession into the World Trade Organization, China
has had to meet increasing demands for highly skilled professionals
and talented people in many fields.
Meanwhile, China's fast economic development is attracting many
foreign educational institutions wanting to try their luck in the
country's huge education market.
Richard Riley, a former United States minister of education said
during his recent tour to Shanghai that the globalization of higher
education will bring many opportunities to China.
At
present, ten percent of overseas students studying in the United
States are from China and the development of online and remote
education as well as educational exchanges are making China's
higher education increasingly global.
More private capital can now be used in China's education sector
and foreign education programs will be cooperating more with their
Chinese counterparts in coming years, said Riley, now a board
member of Sylvan International Universities, which is the world
largest private educational institution and has launched high
quality English training courses in Beijing and Shanghai.
Professors and experts from China and foreign countries are now
venturing into educational fields in which their predecessors
rarely dared try.
Amb Julia Chang Bloch, a Chinese-American and former United States
Ambassador to Nepal, is now lecturing at universities in Beijing
and Shanghai, while the distinguished Chinese scholar Yang Fujia is
now Chancellor of Nottingham University in the Great Britain.
Yang has urged Chinese universities to learn from foreign
educational administrative practices and to become more
innovative.
Wu
Qidi, president of the Shanghai-based Tongji
University, said at a recent seminar on the Globalization of
Higher Education being held in Shanghai that universities in the
21st century should pay more attention to cross-cultural
communications and enhance understanding between different
cultures.
Chinese universities should strive to educate talented people
familiar with both international practices and Chinese customs and
make Chinese qualifications good enough to be accepted worldwide in
the 21st century, according to Wu.
( June 8, 2002)