Yesterday in Shanghai the 3rd Chinese-Foreign University Presidents Forum closed after seven days of speeches, panel discussions and press conferences. The event had been running since July 12 and yesterday Vice Minister of Education Zhang Xinsheng declared the forum over at the China Executive Leadership Academy in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area. Vice Education Minister Wu Qidi made the final speech at the closing ceremony.

 

Similar to the previous two forums held in 2002 and 2004 in Beijing, this third gathering was aimed at “Building Leadership Capacity, Envisioning University Futures”. Its two major topics were building the capacity to innovate in universities and the role of such establishments in social and economic development.

 

Presidents of 19 universities from around the world including Britain’s Cambridge, Yale and Stanford of the US, Japan’s Keio University, Belgium’s University of Louvain as well as China’s Peking and Tsinghua universities gave key-note speeches. During the seven-day forum over 120 Chinese university presidents exchanged views on innovation with their overseas counterparts.  

 

The forum, hosted by the Ministry of Education, provided a sound platform for Chinese university heads to exchange views and experiences in educational development with their fellow professionals. Besides joining panel discussions during the past week, more than 90 Chinese university presidents formed four research groups. These groups gave themselves four subjects to consider: the role of universities in national scientific and technological innovation; challenges to universities in reforming and fostering innovative talent; the opening up of universities and interaction between them and social & economic development and innovation in universities’ research mechanism structure.

 

At the closing ceremony, representatives of the four research groups summed up their research activities, which will become research reports by the end of the year. The reports will be submitted to the Ministry of Education.

 

The biennial forum signifies China’s strong determination to push ahead its programme of building up the nation’s innovative capacity and to improve the quality of its university education after years’ of rapid expansion of college and university enrollment. By the end of 2005 there were more than 2,300 colleges and universities in China and 23 million students working for degrees.

 

 

 

 

(China.org.cn by staff reporter Wind Gu, July 19, 2006)