To press ahead the comprehensive reform in higher education, promote theoretical studies on Sino-foreign cooperative education, and draw experience from Sino-foreign cooperative institutions, the Department of Comprehensive Reforms of China’s Ministry of Education (MOE) has recently entrusted Duke Kunshan University to carry out a research project titled ‘Opportunities, Challenges and Countermeasures in the Field of Sino-foreign Cooperative Education’. The project will be led by Dr. Xiaolin Chang, vice chancellor for government affairs at Duke Kunshan, with a research grant of RMB 100,000. Duke Kunshan University will collaborate with the School of Education of Wuhan University to carry out this research project.
Since the establishment of Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center, the first Sino-foreign joint venture program set up in 1986, Sino-foreign cooperative education has gone through 30 years’ of development. As of today, China has approved 2,470 Sino-foreign cooperative institutions and programs. They include 1,212 institutions and programs at the undergraduate level or above, 71 non-independent legal entities, and 10 independent legal entities. Together they enroll around 560,000 students at the moment.
Sino-foreign cooperative higher education in China has completed preliminary exploration and entered a new period of development. As it continues to prosper, however, many problems have surfaced, including China’s lack of a sound legal system aimed specifically at Sino-foreign cooperative education; the ambiguous legal status of independent-legal-entity universities; lack of appropriate supervision on Sino-foreign cooperative institutions and programs; and lack of knowledge transfer mechanism between Chinese university partners and Sino-foreign cooperative institutions.
Therefore, this project intends to clarify the strengths and characteristics of both Chinese and foreign education systems, summarize practical experiences gained from joint-venture institutions and programs, and analyze the spillover effect Sino-foreign cooperative institutions have on Chinese universities. And it also aims to recap the history of Sino-foreign cooperative higher education and identify the challenges in this area. The research outcome will inform the reform of Chinese universities, and encourage innovation and internationalization in higher education.
The interim report of the one-year research project is expected to be submitted by the end of May, 2017. Research team members from Duke Kunshan University are working with colleagues from Wuhan University on the design of implementation plan, which will be carried out in the near future.
