Font size: 
In an interview on Feb. 1 with the U.K. newspaper, the Guardian, current president of Yale University Richard Levin predicted that China’s elite universities could be among the world’s top 10 in 25 years, thus rivaling Oxford and Cambridge in the United Kingdom and the Ivy League institutions in the United States. This time the remarks were both positive and real, and thus were appreciated by the Chinese media.
Coincidently, the “world-class university” issue came up when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao hosted leaders and professors of Chinese universities to solicit their opinions on his government report to be delivered in March at the coming session of the National People’s Congress. Wen reportedly said that “a good university is to have its own unique soul, which is independent thinking and freedom of expression.”
There is no doubt that China’s higher education has witnessed astronomical growth in terms of physical facilities, student enrollment and research productivity in the past decade. But there also is no doubt that China’s universities do not have a “unique soul”; otherwise, Premier Wen would not have said so.
Recent criticism of China’s higher education has been aimed at the bureaucracy at universities and the lack of eminent scholars or software, although universities are at least as sophisticated as their counterparts in the West in infrastructure or hardware.
Examined at a deeper level, the problem facing higher education in China is not as simple as the software and hardware dichotomy suggests. The question of having the independent thinking and freedom of expression at universities that Premier Wen alluded to is what differentiates Chinese universities from many elsewhere in the world. In fact, not only world-class universities but every institution of higher education should encourage its faculty members and students in independent thinking.
Free inquiry and academic freedom are at the heart of modern universities, let alone world-class ones. In his recent book, “The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected,” Professor Jonathan R. Cole, who was my doctoral advisor at Columbia University and who led the university’s academic affairs for 14 years, includes these as both core values of a great university and among the factors that make for a great university.
Of course, such aspects as faculty research productivity, quality and impact; grant and contract support; faculty members with honors and awards; access to highly qualified students; excellence in teaching, physical facilities and advanced information technologies; large endowments and plentiful resources; large academic departments; location; contributions to public good and excellent leadership are all essential.
But it is the existence of free inquiry and academic freedom or the lack thereof that becomes the watershed in the greatness of a university. In retrospect, the establishment of the tenure system at U.S. universities was not merely to provide job security to tenured faculty members but primarily to protect their right to academic freedom.
Because of the imperatives of free inquiry and academic freedom, leadership at great universities cherishes this value and fiercely defends any activity that could undermine it. Unfortunately, the absence of this tradition in China, according to Cole, “has limited the pool of academic talent and stultified imagination and innovation.”
Therefore, to make its universities truly great and world-class, the Chinese state should give them a “soul,” which is not unique but universal, by nurturing free inquiry and academic freedom. Otherwise, Yale President Levin’s prediction could become another “hoax” 25 or so years later – not for its inaccuracy, but because the object of the prediction has not solved the underlying problem to attain greatness.
--
(Cong Cao is a senior research associate with the Neil D. Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce at the State University of New York. He received his PhD in sociology from Columbia University in 1997 and has worked at the University of Oregon and the National University of Singapore. Dr. Cao is interested in the social studies of science and technology with a focus on China. ©Copyright Cong Cao.)
