2 million students to a staggering seven million Nottingham's vice-chancellor, Professor Sir Colin Campbell, is bullish about the project's prospects. The campus will take 600 students initially to study for Nottingham degrees in computer science and business studies, and the project as a whole is being undertaken in partnership with the Wanli Education Group, reputed to be the most innovative and successful education company in the People's Republic.This is the first time a British university has opened up shop in China, although for Nottingham it is its second campus abroad. Numbers increased from 3.2 million students to a staggering seven million. (The government target is 15 million.)Ironically, given China's status as a Communist country, many of the new universities that are being set up to deal with this demand are private. There are 1,300 private institutions now in operation, and alliances between Chinese and foreign organisations are burgeoning.The British university that is blazing the brightest trail in China is Nottingham, and the plans for setting up its first Chinese campus - in Ningbo, Shejiang Province - are well advanced. But there are millions of people in China now who aspire to, and receive, a university education and would leap at the chance to get a degree from the UK. In the three years between 1997 and 2000, there was remarkable growth in student numbers within China, according to the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education. For example, they tested and compared river pollution in their respective countries, and Chinese students were pleased to discover that the Yangtse was less polluted than they thought."The school links is an excellent scheme that brings children together and encourages a better understanding of one another's culture," said David Green, director of the British Council, on a whistle-stop tour of China earlier this month. "There has been a strengthening of links between the United Kingdom and China in so many ways, and it was very good to see how this is happening in practice."l.hodges independent.co.uk. A successful Chinese industrialist was boasting proudly that his son was at a British educational institution, one of the best in the country.
After racking his brains, he decided to call his wife on the mobile phone. But his wife couldn't recall the name of the elite establishment either. In desperation, the entrepreneur had only one choice: he fast-dialled his son in the United Kingdom to ask where the boy was being educated. This is a true story, illustrating not only the Chinese affection for mobile telephones, but also their enthusiasm for a foreign education. In China, to receive your schooling or your degree at an institution in Britain, or Australia, or the United States automatically puts you into the top league. The name of the university or school is not as important as the fact that you have tasted learning outside the People's Republic. No wonder universities from the United Kingdom are falling over one another to meet this huge demand.Last year, the number of Chinese students in the UK reached a new record - 25,000. Out of the original 36 sixth-formers who visited China in 2000, three switched and decided to read Mandarin. The first group of Chinese teachers arrived in Britain this year to teach Chinese culture and language.In addition, the British Council is organising joint curriculum projects whereby schools arrange activities that students in both countries can take part in. But a glance at the local Chinese papers suggests that some of those have already arrived.WHEN TWO CULTURES MEET, THE ENTHUSIASM IS MUTUAL Funded by the Department for Education and Skills and HSBC, the new partnership in education between China and Britain is building up gradually The effects have been noticeable. Head-teacher visits have proved popular, and immersion courses in Mandarin for sixth-formers have led to young people changing their minds about the subject that they want to study at university. The British and Chinese schools were worried about different things, the former about where the money would come from for the exchanges, the latter about the bureaucracy that they would encounter in navigating tortuous immigration controls.The big question for the Chinese is how to import British ideas about teaching and learning without the unsavoury aspects of Western culture - pupil disaffection, drug addiction and street crime, for example. This way, the schools will be able to support one another in their own countries as well as in the links that they form abroad.The conference was not all plain sailing. The British can learn from the Chinese about using technology (some classrooms in China had fantastic ICT kit for the teachers' use), and the Chinese can learn from the British about new ways of teaching and learning.But Vanda Tillotson, head of Cavendish School in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, thinks that the people who will benefit most are the students The exchanges will help to raise their aspirations. |
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