During a recent visit to Guangzhou, Professor Yang Fujia, former president of the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai and current Chancellor of the University of Nottingham in the UK, spoke out against the glaring problems of China's higher education system in an interview with Yangcheng Evening News, published on January 9, in which he highlighted the major issues affecting the country's beleaguered system.

Frenzied campus expansions

Commenting on the recent frenzy of campus expansions, college mergers and upgrading, Prof. Yang said, "A first-class university is not about how many new buildings you have. If you can ensure a people-first agenda, then you are not far away from being first class"

One of China's more esteemed scholars in international academia, Prof. Yang is no stranger to university campuses, having visited many of the world's top universities including Harvard, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge, many of which preserve old buildings on campus.

According to Prof. Yang, of all the various indices used to rate universities and colleges around the world, there is no one index that imposes a requirement based on campus or building land area. Neither is there any requirement that a university should be "big and all-sided" in terms of curriculum, nor a consideration of the ratio of undergraduates against postgraduates.

"Taking Princeton University and the California Institute of Technology as examples, the former has topped the rankings of universities in US for seven consecutive years, it has less than 6,700 students, and it boasts 25 Nobel Prize winners in its history. The latter is also among the top five, with 2,100 students and 32 Nobel Prize winners. However, neither of them is big or all-sided. They are distinguished by their strong academic characteristics"

The state of the higher education system in China is a matter of importance to Prof. Yang. In 2005, he published an article that highlighted his concerns about higher education development in the country. The article was widely received by educators, fellow academics and the media. But two years on, little seems to have changed.

Universities with "the biggest campus gate" or "highest teaching building" continue to hog newspaper headlines.

"When there are still so many poor students who cannot afford to pay for their tuition, what reason do we have to expand campuses or build luxurious landmark buildings?" Prof. Yang asked, incredulous.

Postgraduate education lacks quality control

Prof. Yang acknowledged that the quality of postgraduates is closely related to the building up of a first-class university. However, he pointed out that it is ridiculous to use the ratio of the number of postgraduates and undergraduates as a measure of that development. He added that he is opposed to the ongoing policy of inflating postgraduate enrollment in China.

He highlighted that although there are typically only 1,900 postgraduates among the 6,670 students at Princeton University, this has not stopped it from maintaining its position as one of the world's premiere institutes. The same applies to Oxford and Cambridge in the UK.

"Looking at our postgraduates, state subsidies are low, which puts added pressure on them to continue working to eke out a living. But by the same token, their instructors don't challenge them with difficult subjects and just want to guarantee that they can all graduate after three years. China churns out the most number of postgraduates, but their quality is not effectively guaranteed"

Another issue that baffles Prof. Yang is the quest for the almighty doctorate. He believes that certain professions and areas of practice such as enterprise management require practical working experience more than paper qualifications. However, the reality is that many first-class experts in their field believe that they would not be able to survive in their sector without a doctorate.

"In UK hospitals, practitioners with doctorates account for only 10 percent of hires, and most of them are engaged in academic research"

China's parochial concept of talent

"I recently got to know an American college student who had an SAT (college admission test) score high enough to get him into Harvard, but instead he chose to enroll at a cooking institute. And it would seem that 10 percent of the best chefs in Europe and America are from that particular institute."

"In China, almost every high school student has ambitions of going to Peking, Tsinghua or Fudan universities. They seldom put vocational, technical schools as their top choice. The example of the student who could go to Harvard but chose to go to cooking school indicates that such people have broader concepts of talent. In such societies, the modes of training are also diversified"

Prof. Yang added, "I think that only when half of excellent Chinese high school students don't want to go to Tsinghua or Peking universities would it mean that our education reform has made a breakthrough, which would then be more conducive to China's economic development"

Just a title

Another problem that Prof. Yang feels China's higher education system must address is the blind conferring of titles. Prof. Yang recently declined to be re-elected as a member of the standing committee of the Mathematics and Physics Department at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. When he found out that several academics were putting his name forward for re-election, he wrote a letter to the department asking them not to do so citing heavy work and travel commitments.

In any case, he added, "There are too many false titles in China. I recall a meeting I attended, which included dinner. By the time we were only halfway through dinner, at least half of us had been granted honorary professorships! And we weren't given advance notice. It's very embarrassing if you refuse the certificate, so you have to accept it because it's really only a piece of paper."

"By comparison, when I accepted the University of Hong Kong's invitation to be their special consultant, they sent me a formal document, which clearly described my duties and rights in detail. When other commitments prevented me from giving these duties adequate attention, I handed in a formal resignation. But mainland universities are not like this; I don't have to quit because my duties are only in name"

Profile of Prof. Yang Fujia

Prof. Yang Fujia was born in Shanghai. An alumnus of Fudan University, he graduated in 1958 with a degree in physics. In 1963, he left for Copenhagen, Denmark, to further his education at the Niels Bohr Institute. He was appointed director of the Shanghai Institute of Nuclear Research in 1987, and became an academician with the China Academy of Sciences in 1991. His career took him back to his alma mater as lecturer and professor of physics, and subsequently Fudan University President from 1993 to 1999. He was appointed Chancellor of the University of Nottingham in 2001, the first Chinese person to be given such an appointment in a renowned UK university. Prof. Yang is also currently the vice chairman of the China Association of Science and Technology.

(China.org.cn by Wang Qian January 14, 2007)