Educator calls for rationality amid frenzy for overseas study
- By Ni Tao
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, November 9, 2015
As one can imagine, "the doctorate graduates of these 'institutions' are even less capable than master degree-holders from Chinese schools," Woo said, with a belly laugh.
This is why he's been telling local students in earnest to select schools with greater scrutiny. And unlike Chinese, who tend to obsess over global rankings of universities, Woo explained that Americans are less swayed by these changeable and not-always-objective rankings in their choice of schools.
Eyeing the huge market potential, many foreign schools have fallen over each other to launch joint MBA and EMBA programs with their Chinese counterparts in recent years.
Joining the 'gold rush'
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, which Woo helped to found in the 1980s and once headed as president, also joined this "gold rush" by entering into partnerships with mainland universities like Tsinghua and Fudan.
A product of "mixed" education himself, Woo doesn't dismiss global educational collaboration outright, but has strong doubts about whether it should displace domestic education. "Criticisms directed against domestic education aren't always fair. If it really is that bad, why would so many foreign institutions take the trouble to come here and scour Chinese colleges for talent?" Woo asked.
His defense of domestic education is clearly demonstrated in his support of gaokao, or college entrance exam. Contrary to critics, who argue that gaokao is an excessively grueling experience, full of rigidity, Woo maintains that the test is still the fairest way to enroll students based on true academic merit in China.
Reforms are welcome, but doing away with the test would deprive millions of students from humble backgrounds access to tertiary education and thus any chance of upward social mobility.
Like many Shanghainese of his generation, Woo departed for Hong Kong, then a British colony, with his parents in the tumultuous years of the late 1940s. While the Shanghai of his boyhood exists only in memory, he is never far away from it, in the sense that he is eager for news about educational developments on the mainland.
'College town'
Nonetheless, his admiration for the rapidly globalizing outlook of many domestic universities is tinged with misgivings about the haste of this process. As an advisor to Shanghai educational authorities, he was intimately involved in the creation of the college town in Yangpu District, home to several leading schools including Fudan and Tongji University. However, he is adamantly opposed to the phrase "college town" that he himself helped to create.
"My preferred word of choice would be 'knowledge community,' one that can retain talent in good times and bad."
Woo recalled his previous experience as a guide in California, where he used to take Chinese delegations — mostly of educators — on pilgrimages to Silicon Valley.
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