Exploring a New Kind of Higher Education with Chinese Characteristics

• Author: Meijun Fan,Li Yang,Hengfu Wen,Jing He
• Date: 01 May 2017
• Published date: 01 May 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12192

Exploring a New Kind of Higher Education

with Chinese Characteristics

By MEIJUN FAN*, HENGFU WEN†,LIYANG‡, and JING HE§

ABSTRACT. The future of China’s system of higher education will

depend on which aspects of its past are most highly valued. This article

explores the history of higher education in China from its ancient

academies to the modern Western-influenced university. Although the

May Fourth Movement of1919 recommended the complete elimination

of traditional elements in Chinese culture, the past century has revealed

problems with the wholesale embrace of Western institutions. Modern

higher education, based first on European models and later on

American colleges and universities, has been a major part of the

transformation of China in the past century. But cracks have appeared

in the fac¸ade. The balance between tradition and innovation has been

lost, students are being produced by universities like products of a

factory assembly line, and college graduates often remain unemployed

or underemployed for years after completing a degree. To remedy this

condition, a number of reformers in China are looking to the past for

answers. The article discusses both official and private experiments

with “organic” educational programs that aim at creating well-rounded

persons, not merely students crammed with facts. A number of these

new programs combine physical work with academic study as a

reminder that life is a balance between mental and physical factors.

More generally, the reform of modern education reclaims elements of

the Chinese tradition that have been neglected, elements that recognize

that education should ultimately aim at cultivating wisdom and not

merely at accumulating knowledge.

*Meijun FAN is Professor of Philosophy at the Center for Constructive Postmodern

Studies at Harbin Institute of Technology in China, as well as the Program Director of

the Institute for Postmodern Development of China.

†Hengfu WEN is Professor and dean of the School of Education Science at Harbin

Normal University. Email:wenhengfu@126.com

‡Li YANG is Professor in the School of Education Science at Harbin Normal University

§Jing HE is Vice President of Harbin Normal University.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 76, No. 3 (May, 2017).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12192

V

C2017 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

Introduction

Chinese modern higher education has been deemed a “triumph of the

European University” (Hayhoe 1996: 15). There is some truth in this

statement, considering the thorough incorporation into Chinese univer-

sities of Western textbooks, pedagogy, and methodology. One might

also point to the dominance of scientism as an ideology, according to

which mechanistic and materialist views of nature have permeated Chi-

nese academic thought. However,the outward appearance of complete

intellectual capitulation to Western thought is deceiving. It ignores Chi-

na’s unremitting critical reflection upon and resistance to the modern

Western model of the university.

Even within the United States and Europe, critics have begun to ques-

tion the superiority of modern Western higher education. Its more nega-

tive consequences have been exposed. Ferrara (2015: 1) lists a number

of signs of degeneration of higher education in the United States:

[The signs of decline include] state and federal defunding, administrative

bloat, unsustainable tuition growth, an unconscionable reliance on part-

time faculty, growing student loan debt, the adoption of corporate gover-

nance models, the rise of an audit culture that props up a new manageri-

alism, increasing standardization and vocationalization in the curriculum,

the diminution of the humanities, and the forfeiture of the ideal of higher

education as a public good.

Modern universities in China have also been experiencing what

ZHANG Qiqun (2015) calls a series of “disastrous consequences.” [Edi-

tor’s note: Chinese family names are capitalized throughout.] Combin-

ing the internal problems of Chinese universities with the mass

unemployment of college graduates, more and more Chinese have

begun to challenge the modern Western model of higher education

and ask whether other models might be preferable. They believe China

may have been reckless in abandoning its traditional education model,

which could be an invaluable resource for rectifying the drawbacks of

the modern university.

This article first analyzes the shift in China from blind worship of the

Western university to a posture of critical reflection upon it. We then

proceed to explore a new kind of higher education with Chinese

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology732

characteristics, which features an organic education with roots and

wings. This article is divided into following sevenparts:

1. Higher education in Chinese tradition

2. The initial appearance of modern higher education in China

3. The achievements of modern higher education

4. The negative consequences of modern higher education

5. Exploring a new kind of higher education with Chinese

characteristics

6. Toward an organic education with roots and wings

7. Conclusion

Higher Education in Chinese Tradition

The University in Ancient China

A great number of scholars, both Western and Chinese, have denied

that China had universities in the distant past. Hayhoe (1996: 9), a

renowned Canadianexpert on China’s higher education, argues: “There

was no institution in Ch inese tradition that cou ld accurately be called a

university.” YANG Rui (2014: 118), Director of the Comparative Educa-

tion Research Centre (CERC) at the University of Hong Kong, claimed

that “there was no institution in Chinese tradition that could be called a

university.” Philip G. Altbach (2016: 82), founder and director of the

Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, shared the

same train of thought:

All of the universities in the world today ... stem from the same histori-

cal roots, the medieval European university and, especially, the faculty-

dominated University of Paris.

We are convinced that these scholars would correct their statements

if they carefully traced the history of Chinese education. Far away from

the University of Paris, China has the longest continuous civilization in

the world. Its five millennia of intellectual development provide the his-

torical basis for a lengthy formation of higher education, which dates as

far as back as the Five Emperors period (2852–2205 BCE). According to

New Kind of Higher Education with Chinese Characteristics 733