Reviews of RIAC report "Internationalization of Russian Universities: the Chinese Vector"
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In January 2014 RIAC prepared a report "Internationalization of Russian Universities: the Chinese Vector". Basing on the experience acquired by several major universities of Russia, the authors of the report elaborated a list of practical recommendations aimed at consolidating Russia's positions on the Chinese educational market and in the Asia Pacific region in general. Four scholars from leading research and educational centers of China sent their reviews of the RIAC report.
In January 2014 RIAC prepared a report "Internationalization of Russian Universities: the Chinese Vector".
Basing on the experience acquired by several major universities of Russia, the authors of the report elaborated a list of practical recommendations aimed at consolidating Russia's positions on the Chinese educational market and in the Asia Pacific region in general.
Four scholars from leading research and educational centers of China sent their reviews of the RIAC report.
Huang Shizeng: Cooperation between China and Russia in higher education has great potential and room for development
Larisa Smirnova: Chinese Students Are Not Looking for the Soft Option
Xu Wenhong: Innovations, modernization, transformation of the economic development model – all this is important in deciding where to go to study
Chinese Academy of Social Science
Dr. of Science, Research Fellow from the Institute of Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Science, Visiting Scholar at Stanford University
Economic globalization and the internationalization of educational services are objective trends in the world economy and education. Increasingly, educational resources are being redistributed throughout the world. Those who want to be leaders on the global education market should first study the quality proposals of educational services.
The Russian education system occupies a unique position on the global education market. Although China has extensive experience in this sphere, it lags behind in terms of modern science. This prompts close cooperation between the education systems of the two countries. As you are aware, China prepared its first generations of scientists and specialists with the help of the USSR. In the process of strengthening friendship and mutual understanding between the two countries, particular attention is paid to a new reading of the theme of cooperation in the education field with due account of the historical legacy.
The RIAC report Internationalization of Russian Universities: the Chinese Vector provides a detailed and comprehensive analysis based on the latest data on the development of education services in China and Russia, while at the same time presenting an extensive overview of the global education market. It contains answers to practically all the relevant issues in this sphere. Let us look at the main features of the report.
First, cooperation in the education sphere is driven by economic globalization, the modernization of science and technology, polarization of international politics and the development of modern IT. The development of links in education helps to strengthen the foundations of policy, economy, science and culture and determines the main conditions of long-term partnership between Russia and China. In my opinion, the authors have chosen a very good ‘sally port’ to address the main topic of the internationalization of Russian higher education. The report has a coherent and rational structure and raises relevant and interesting problems. In short, the report can be seen as a great success effort of the team of authors.
The education sphere has immense potential for further development of Russian–Chinese interaction (Chapter 2.2). But to translate this potential into real cooperation, it is necessary to study the demand for education services in both countries.
Second, the report contains examples and the latest ratings of Chinese universities (Appendix 1). It reveals new trends in Chinese education connected with the pursuit of status and ratings (Chapter 2.3). Obviously, the authors are thoroughly conversant with the real situation in education in China and Russia.
Third, the authors convincingly describe the differences between the systems and educational practices in the two countries, which can be seen as a potential for future cooperation in this field. The report gives due credit to the positive aspects of the Chinese education system (Chapters 2.1–2.2 and 3.3–3.5) as well as noting its drawbacks (Chapters 2.3 and 4.2).
Fourth, the authors provide a rigorously logical and thorough comparative analysis.
On the whole the professional background of the authors equips them to cope with any task.
I share the conclusion of the authors that the education sphere has immense potential for further development of Russian–Chinese interaction (Chapter 2.2). But to translate this potential into real cooperation, it is necessary to study the demand for education services in both countries. The report stresses that education is already seen by the two governments as a priority in the Russian–Chinese action plan for cooperation in the humanitarian sphere until 2020. Nevertheless, some problems remain.
For young Chinese people, the United States is still the most attractive country as a source of capital, innovative development, advanced managerial practices, and as a lifestyle model, etc. European countries (notably the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy) are also attractive, although they are still struggling to overcome the consequences of the world economic crisis.
The rankings of Russian higher education institutions can be improved above all by universally recognized scientific achievements. These can be accomplished by organizing joint bilateral and multilateral research projects, fostering exchange programmes for educators and researches and producing joint research publications – in other words, projects at a level not below that of masters and doctoral studies.
What can be done to attract Chinese youth to Russia and Russian youth to China? The report (Chapters 1.2 and 4.1) pays considerable attention to this issue, but fails to come up with an answer. The authors can hardly take the blame for this because there is a dilemma in defining and elaborating the concept of ‘soft power’: What can attract young people born in the internet era? The worldwide spread and influence on young people of the Harry Potter books and Hollywood films provides a good example. This is a problem that both Russia and China face.
Young Russians are attracted, among other things, to China’s warm climate, its rich historical heritage, the exotic way of life, Shaolin Kung Fu and Chinese food.
By contrast, Russia has in recent years become less attractive for Chinese people compared with Western countries.
In the era of the information explosion, young people dream of knowing and seeing something new. Innovations, modernization, transformation of the economic development model – all this is important in deciding where to go to study.
The Russian and Chinese governments are aware of these trends and are taking relevant measures. The activities carried out as part of the Russia Year in China and China Year in Russia (2006–2007) and the reciprocal tourism years (2012–2013) are evidence of this. These are undoubtedly very useful and practical measures. I hope that the efforts exerted by both sides will contribute to deeper mutual understanding and cooperation. The RIAC report has undoubtedly contributed to that process by adding yet another ‘brick’ to building a great bridge between the two peoples.
Another problem in developing cooperation between our countries in education is employment. As a rule, graduates of Western universities can find good jobs thanks to close economic cooperation and the existence of transnational companies. China and Russia, however, do not yet have a large number of major joint enterprises that could employ graduates.
Are graduates the driving force of economic cooperation? Or is it the case that economic cooperation boosts demand for foreign graduates? Perhaps this is a ‘chicken and egg’ question. In 2013, trade between China and Russia reached $87 billion, which will undoubtedly strengthen cooperation. Obviously, close economic ties tend to increase the number of students that want to be educated abroad. What can be done to further deepen and expand cooperation between the two neighbours and attract foreign students? In my opinion, our two great nations have enough resources to solve these issues.
Beijing University
Guan Gui Hai: Cooperation between universities in the two countries should be oriented more towards quality and originality than the number of students involved in exchange programmes
Ph.D. in Political Science, Director, Russia Studies Centre, Beijing University, Chinese advisor to the Sino-Russian Subcommission on Education
Review of the report Internationalization of Russian Universities: the Chinese Vector
The report by the team of authors headed by N.E. Borevskaya is a very valuable work not only for Russia, but also for the People’s Republic of China.
The authors rightly describe Chinese-Russian relations as promising and important for both sides. Obviously, our countries need each other as partners prepared for a constructive dialogue.
Russia and China have many common problems and points of contact in the field of education. It is necessary to sum up the accumulated positive and negative experiences of cooperation between the two countries in education and to provide it with a new impetus.
The report touches upon some key questions. How is cooperation between Russia and China developing in the field of education? What are Russia’s interests in China’s education market? What prevents these interests from being fully met? What specifically can Russia do to solve the existing problems?
The report suggests that the rapid development of the education market in China, even though it has not yet taken final shape and there are many vacant niches in it, including those for foreign participation, provides a powerful stimulus for the internationalization of Russian higher education in the direction of China. In 2011, a total of 92.5 per cent of Chinese citizens who went to study abroad did so at their own cost (p. 12). Their decision was prompted by the geographical proximity of the two countries, the considerable educational and scientific potential in a number of areas, and similarities in the areas of modernization of the education systems in Russia and China.
Russia is not yet the key player on the global education market. In terms of annual revenues from the export of educational services it lags far behind the leading countries (0.5 per cent of the world market in education services). One reason for that is that close to half (about 43 per cent) of foreign students at Russian universities are CIS citizens.
Among other causes of Russia’s relatively small share of the global education market identified in the report are the challenges of studying the Russian language, the harsh climate, the comparatively poor quality of the social infrastructure at higher education institutions as well as race-related and ethnic crime.
If a Russian educational website seeks to attract a Chinese audience, it must enlist the support of Chinese partners.
Because of the above-mentioned factors, there is little interest among Chinese students in studying in Russia: in a poll of 1000 Chinese school students in years 10–12, only 90 respondents (0.9 per cent) said they would like to study in Russia. Most of these are students at schools in China’s North-Eastern provinces coming from low-income families. They are attracted by the territorial closeness of Russia, the relatively low cost of education and the ease of obtaining a visa. Some of those who wish to study in Russia failed to pass admission tests to prestigious Chinese higher education institutions.
Experts predict that demand for Russian education services will grow in the Chinese border provinces, while remaining at a very low level and even diminishing still further in the rest of the country.
The report pays special attention to the successful experiment of a joint educational institution, the Sino¬–Russian Institute. Novosibirsk State University (NSU) and Heilongjiang University are implementing the project, which has no analogues in the practice of cooperation between the two countries, at a Heilongjiang University college. Financial support comes from the Ministry of Education of the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the government of Heilongjiang Province. Most of the teachers there come from NSU and they teach in Russian, while teaching at NSU is financed by Chinese scholarships.
Russia apparently dominates in the cooperation of universities of the Russian Far East, the Amur Region, Siberia and Heilongjiang Province. At the same time, there is still not a single joint Russian–Chinese educational institution in the cities under central jurisdiction (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin), and the prosperous south-eastern and economically less developed provinces.
In general, the report presents a fairly complete picture of cooperation between the two countries in education. The analysis and conclusions are objective.
Finally, I would like to share my proposals that could make interaction more fruitful:
- Cooperation between universities in the two countries should be oriented more towards quality and originality than the number of students involved in exchange programmes, because it will never reach the level of cooperation between China and the United States.
- Russian Language centres in China should be given the functions of preparatory departments so as to attract more Chinese young people to the study of Russian and stimulate them to go on to study in Russia.
- A special fund should be created to support people who have an interest in Russia. The fund could organize for them to visit Russia and increase their interest in the country.
- We should work together to compile lists of universities with bilateral programmes, higher education institutions that teach in Russian, and cooperation projects in the provinces.
- A target programme should be developed to help Chinese graduates find employment after they finish their studies at Russian higher education institutions. This will serve to make education in Russia more attractive.
Tsinghua University
Huang Shizeng: Cooperation between China and Russia in higher education has great potential and room for development
Professor of Russian language at Department of Foreign Languages,Tsinghua University
The report Internationalization of Russian Universities: The Chinese Vector is very interesting and significant. It looks at the modern state of higher education in Russia and China and proposes specific measures to develop the Russian–Chinese cooperation in this sphere.
Internationalization of higher education is a common global trend in the development of education and science in all countries, including China and Russia. The peoples of China and Russia are good neighbours and reliable partners linked by traditional relations of friendship. In recent years, as strategic partnership between our countries has been established, bilateral humanitarian ties, including in the field of higher education, have received new impetus. Relations between China and Russia today are poised for new development.
Language is a means of communication and the vehicle of culture. As an important part of humanitarian contacts, learning languages and cultural activities represent a link and are an important driving force in expanding and deepening cooperation between China and Russia in the education, science and culture. In this respect, the government organizations and higher education institutions of the two countries should pay more attention to the spread of the respective languages and their teaching. Language teachers should be aware of the importance of their work, improve the quality of language teaching and do all they can to contribute to Russian–Chinese socioeconomic development and to the strengthening of humanitarian ties.
In my opinion, cooperation between China and Russia in higher education has great potential and room for development. It has a very bright future indeed.
Xiamen University
Larisa Smirnova: Chinese Students Are Not Looking for the Soft Option
M.P.A., Lecturer / Foreign Expert at Xiamen University
The RIAC report Internationalization of Russian Universities: The Chinese Vector confirms that Chinese students are not looking for the soft option. They prefer to get their degrees by going to English-speaking countries where education is expensive and admission requirements are tough. Australia is a popular destination for obtaining a bachelor’s degree, the United Kingdom and the United States the preferred locations for master’s degree students, and the United States is the country of choice for doctoral studies (pp. 12–13). The less rigid admission requirements at Russian universities, the low cost of higher education and comparative ease of obtaining a visa attract “graduates with below-average certifications and children from low-income families” (p. 41).
Thus, judging from the responses we have been getting from China, it would seem that the Russian education system is far from being the most popular in the world. The implications of this, considering the Asian way of thinking, are very significant. As Confucius said, an emperor must be an emperor, a minister must be a minister, a father must be a father and a son must be a son. To use language closer to home: render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s. Or, to put it another way: to each his own. In other words, if a university is not at the top of the ratings, there is no point studying there. Or there is, but only in those areas where your universities are stronger than ours and where, for various reasons, we have no opportunity to learn from the leaders.
Even so, the situation can be improved, as witnessed by the RIAC report. Proceeding from the report, and drawing on my personal experience of working at a Chinese university, I would like to express some thoughts on the strategy of internationalization of Russian higher education institutions in China.
First, the internationalization of Russian universities should not focus on undergraduate students – it should target students and specialists of a higher level.
Second, we cannot rely on the Russian language in the internationalization of higher education and will increasingly have to switch to English.
Third, Chinese partners can contribute the most to attracting Chinese students to Russia.
Fourth, we should take a lesson from oriental wisdom and begin our work by supporting those individuals and projects that are already favourably disposed to cooperation with Russia, and not by attracting new people.
Each of these propositions will be discussed in more detail below.
It would be practicable to begin with gathering a quality body of data about all the Chinese and Russian projects that really work. This information should not merely state the fact that the partnerships exist; they should also provide their specific content, talk about the interests of the parties and describe the difficulties they face.
Why internationalization of Russian universities should not be focused on Undergraduate Students
At the present time, the majority of Chinese students in Russia are working towards bachelor’s degrees. According to the report, the total number of undergraduate students and students on pre-bachelor preparatory programmes represents 65.5 per cent of the total number of students from China. For comparison, 3 per cent of Chinese students in Russia are enrolled in graduate programmes and 0.01 per cent are working towards a doctoral degree (p. 46).
It is the conventional wisdom in the academic world that when you are applying for a bachelor’s degree, you are choosing a university; when you are applying for a master’s degree, you are choosing a faculty; and when you are applying for a postgraduate degree, you are choosing a specific tutor. In other words, potential undergraduates make their choice based on general university ratings, in which the Chinese universities have overtaken the Russian ones, as a recent QS University Rankings survey shows.
We should not jump to conclusions, however. Perhaps the reason is that Chinese universities have fully adopted the rules of the rating game of the English-speaking countries, while Russia is still looking for its own path. Still, the fact remains that Russian universities are making a poor showing in international ratings. It is unlikely, therefore, that we will be able to attract a great number of undergraduate students. They would not help us in the rankings in any case.
The rankings of Russian higher education institutions can be improved above all by universally recognized scientific achievements. These can be accomplished by organizing joint bilateral and multilateral research projects, fostering exchange programmes for educators and researches and producing joint research publications – in other words, projects at a level not below that of masters and doctoral studies. Priority should be given to the development of this kind of cooperation. This will lead to Russian universities placing higher in the world university rankings and Russian researchers featuring more prominently in international citation indexes, which will help to bring more undergraduate students into the country
Why we cannot rely solely on the Russian language
The RIAC report puts the number of pupils studying Russian at schools in North-Eastern China at 80,000. The number of students studying Russian as a foreign language at university level throughout the country is 30,000–40,000. By comparison, 300 million people in China are studying English (p. 43). Furthermore, Chinese speakers find it more difficult to learn Russian than English. This is due to the enormous difference in languages, because Chinese practically does not distinguish our key grammatical categories, be it gender, singular or plural, case, tense or aspect.
Furthermore, English has an edge on Russian in terms of the amount of modern educational and scientific literature published in that language. As a consequence, there is a growing conviction in the world that to be competitive you have to master English.
In China, all foreign languages that are not English are called ‘small’ languages (xiaoyuzhong). That applies equally to Russian, French, German and Japanese.
I have taken part in negotiations on cooperation between Xiamen University, where I currently work, and a number of Russian universities. I can say from my personal experience that Chinese people take it for granted that they should communicate with foreigners in English and they are surprised that they have to conduct negotiations and correspondence – even with the leading Russian universities – in Russian.
Of course, as the report rightly points out, the teaching of Russian in China should be supported. But investing in the teaching of the Russian language would bring dividends only in the long term by fostering sympathy for Russia, a sense of kinship with Russian culture, rather than attracting researchers and students to Russian higher education institutions in the short and medium term.
How our Chinese Partners can help attract students to Russia
The average Chinese student or researcher, with the exception of a narrow circle of experts and interested persons, has only vague idea about the Russian education system and is not in a position to objectively evaluate Russian universities. Living in China, it is often difficult to understand whether a foreign educational website is official and is to be trusted.
For fear of being cheated, Chinese people prefer to turn to middlemen who send people to study abroad. Higher level Chinese experts – master’s and doctoral students, postdocs and visiting scholars – also seek to establish links with Russian universities indirectly through their ministry of education, a foundation, the international department of their own university and simply through colleagues or acquaintances.
As a result, if a Russian educational website seeks to attract a Chinese audience, it must enlist the support of Chinese partners. When looking for partners, we should above all turn to Chinese graduates of Russian universities who, according to the report, were instrumental in attracting 49 per cent of all Chinese applicants to Russian universities. Another still grossly underestimated resource is Russian educators working in China, who have attracted 5.6 per cent of Chinese students now studying in Russia. By way of comparison: university websites attract 12 per cent; advertising 3.2 per cent; the Russian Embassy 1.4 per cent; and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation 0.5 per cent (p. 48).
The necessity of launching new projects and supporting existing ones
In recent decades, relations between Russia and China have been marked initially by a cooling, followed by a period of simply not paying enough attention to each other. But it is important to note that, throughout these years, Russian–Chinese links – Russian sinologists and Chinese scholars of Russian – have continued to exist.
Another example from my personal experience. As far as I know, Xiamen University is the only top-rate national university on the wealthy southern coast of China that is involved in the prestigious Chinese higher education projects mentioned in the RIAC report (p. 24), and that still has BA and MA courses in the Russian language. Our university also has what the authors of the report call ‘partners’ in several humanitarian specialities with a number of Russian universities (Moscow State University, Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, Tver State University).
My senior Chinese colleagues have often shared with me the difficulties they encounter by remaining committed to Russian studies: underfunding, the low accorded to the department and the cold attitude on the part of Russian bureaucrats. Of course, Russian sinologists also face considerable problems.
Many specialists have quit because they see no future.
Thus it would be practicable to begin with gathering a quality body of data about all the Chinese and Russian projects that really work. This information should not merely state the fact that the partnerships exist; they should also provide their specific content, talk about the interests of the parties and describe the difficulties they face. In the process of selecting data, experts already engaged in projects could suggest the most promising areas of joint research and exchanges. Proceeding from the information gathered, projects can be launched that require financial resources: Research and Development tenders, competition for internships and scholarly exchanges.
To be sure, it is also important to attract new people to Russian–Chinese educational cooperation. But we should bear in mind that focusing on investments in new projects without paying proper attention to ongoing projects may lead to justified ‘grudges’ among other colleagues and create a general sense that Russian policy lacks consistency. Such a conclusion in turn would make Russia still less attractive as a country with which our Chinese colleagues would link their career plans.
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