The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Worldwide PSE

China: The Expansion Hangover

The explosive growth of China’s higher education sector wasn’t achieved without incident.  In fact, the expansion has thrown up a number of challenges for institutions and students alike. Let’s start with the institutions.  The so-called 985 universities – that is, the research-intensive schools directly under the control of the education ministry in Beijing – have done remarkably well out of government policies since the 1990s.  Peking and Tsinghua Universities, in particular, have become genuinely global powerhouses in certain fields of research

Read More »
February 10, 2014 2 Comments

Chinese Higher Education’s Take-Off

When Deng re-opened the universities, the system somehow managed to pull together a couple of hundred thousand professors, and around 600 institutions started enrolling students.  By 1980 that meant about a million students a year in mainstream universities (plus another half-million in specialized “adult higher education institutions”), and a cozy student: faculty ratio of about 4:1.  Over the next decade, to 1990, those numbers would increase to about 2 million in universities (mostly in 4-year undergraduate programs known as Benke), another million

Read More »
February 7, 2014 3 Comments

The Crucible: Higher Education in the Mao/Deng Years

Chinese higher education wasn’t up to much during the Mao years.  After 12 years of war – with Japan from 1937 to 1945, and a civil war thereafter – there wasn’t a great deal left when the war was over.  Some universities relocated for the duration of hostilities, others closed and re-founded themselves in Taiwan after the Communists triumphed on the mainland.  Though the Communists oversaw a huge increase in basic schooling and literacy, higher education remained hampered by purges, famines,

Read More »
February 3, 2014 2 Comments

The Universities of Imperial China

Today kicks-off Chinese New Year, and so I wanted to devote some time to the subject of higher education in the People’s Republic of China.  Given the immensity of the topic, the usual one-off, “Better Know a Higher Ed System” piece seemed inadequate – hence, I’ve written a series of posts, which I’ll be publishing over the next 15 days (the duration of Lunar New Year celebrations).  Enjoy. *** China is one of the few places in the world that

Read More »
January 31, 2014 2 Comments

International Education Strategies – How Others Do It

By now, a lot of you will have read – either on our Blog or at the Globe and Mail – my rant about the new International Education Strategy, released last week by the Government  of Canada.  A number of people said they agreed with me, but wanted to know what I would have recommended in its place.  I won’t do that (that’s the stuff I charge for, folks); instead, I want to contrast emerging international education strategies elsewhere, with our own. Take

Read More »
January 23, 2014 2 Comments

One Thought to Start Your Day

One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...