送交者: insight 于 2005-10-28, 02:20:06:
Liverpool to establish Chinese university
Polly Curtis, education correspondent
Thursday October 27, 2005
The University of Liverpool is setting up a new university in China, it has announced.
Liverpool's vice-chancellor, Drummond Bone, claims it is the first of its kind: unlike the University of Nottingham, which operates a Chinese campus, Liverpool's venture is being described as a brand-new, separate Chinese university.
It will be jointly run with Xi'an Jiaotong University, which is consistently in the top 10 Chinese universities for teaching and research, and is provisionally being called the Liverpool/Xi'an Jiaotong University.
The university will initially teach electronics and electrical engineering and associated subjects, and later, business studies and life sciences. A third of academics will come from Liverpool, a third from Xi'an Jiaotong University and a further third will be recruited from around the world. The university plans to take its first students in September next year.
Prof Bone told EducationGuardian.co.uk: "We believe that the one-way flow in the educational flow between China and the UK can't last forever we want to get ourselves into part of that enormous market. The site of the university is already home to top companies - further down the line there are possibilities for collaborations. It's a good place to be."
The new university will be located at Suzhou industrial park, one of Asia's most successful business parks and a hub for foreign investors. It boasts 2,100 international organisations, including 53 Fortune 500 companies.
The collaboration follows two years of intense negotiations with the site, the Chinese ministry for education and other government officials.
Asked whether the university had any qualms negotiating with the Chinese government, given its poor record on human rights, Prof Bone said: "We want to be careful. We want to behave responsibly but we've had no difficulties in terms of putting together the curriculum; there's been no suggestion that things would be done differently from in the UK.
"We're collaborating with the university rather than the government. Many businesses are doing business in China. I think that having an educational presence in China is a good thing."
Plans to set up a Warwick University campus in Singapore are reported to have been hampered by academics' oppositions to the Singaporean government's record on human rights and academic freedom.
A deal has been struck with Laureate Educational Limited, which will be the financial backers of the deal. The private company already works with Liverpool on its online courses which are offered around the world. "It's key that we have a partner in this who is helping us financially - I'm not diverting resources away from Liverpool. The financial risk is minimal, but the reputational risk will spur us on to get this right."
Many universities operate similar online ventures in China, and others teach within Chinese institutions but Liverpool's is believed to be only the second campus to be set up in China after Nottingham and the first jointly with a Chinese university.