{"id":46943,"date":"2009-11-02T21:08:37","date_gmt":"2009-11-03T04:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=46943"},"modified":"2009-11-02T21:08:37","modified_gmt":"2009-11-03T04:08:37","slug":"the-long-march-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2009\/11\/the-long-march-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long March"},"content":{"rendered":"
With corruption in the Chinese education system in the news following the dismissal of the Minister of Education<\/a>, Times Higher Education last week published<\/strong><\/a> a prescient article about the state of Chinese universities:<\/p>\n \nFrom a near-standing start in 1978, China is now the world’s biggest provider of higher education and the second-biggest producer of academic research papers. Before long, it is expected to become the world’s biggest economy.<\/p>\n But higher education is at something of a crossroads. While grappling with the effects of explosive growth in quality and access, the Government has also prioritised a drive – which some describe as an “obsession” – to ensure that an elite cadre of universities joins the ranks of the world’s best.<\/p>\n Analysts in and outside China warn that its exceptional progress to date could be stymied – and its goal to create a truly world-class system thwarted – without deep cultural reform. “One of China’s great challenges is to strengthen the academic profession,” says Philip Altbach, director of the Centre for International Higher Education at Boston College. “For a start, nationally only 9 per cent of China’s university staff hold doctorates. Traditions of academic freedom and meritocratic norms for promotions are slow to develop. Plagiarism and other forms of corruption are frequently reported.<\/p>\n “For China to develop a really world-class higher education system, it will need to ensure that the human and the philosophical ‘software’ is as well developed as the ‘hardware’ of buildings and laboratories,” Altbach says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With corruption in the Chinese education system in the news following the dismissal of the Minister of Education, Times Higher Education last week published a prescient article about the state of Chinese universities: From a near-standing start in 1978, China is now the world’s biggest provider of higher education and the second-biggest producer of academic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[100,5],"tags":[227,2248,3634,2646,2671],"class_list":["post-46943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-society","tag-education","tag-education-corruption","tag-education-reform","tag-plagiarism","tag-universities","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n