Fudan Leads the Way in Higher Education Reforms

By staff reporter ZHANG XUEYING

Fudan students and faculties at a lecture given by Nobel laureate Tsung-Dao Lee in October 2005.	Students at Fudan University release a balloon in celebration of its 100th anniversary.	Fudan No. 1 robot welcomes Fudan alumni.

Fudan University in Shanghai, China’s equivalent of Harvard, is taking tentative steps towards educational reform. Its aim is to make Fudan a world standard comprehensive university that nurtures and trains Chinese people of creative talent so as to make them fit to compete within the global market.

“Reforms advance daily. Distinguished academics have come to our campus from around the world as visiting professors and we are in the process of appraising Harvard teaching materials and methods. We are also considering changes to our system of student enrolment and offering completely new courses,” says Cai Dafeng, vice president of Fudan University and an NPC deputy. China’s rapidly booming economy exerts pressure on its long standing and established system of education to adapt to the new situation. Transnational companies eager to do business in China complain of the difficulty they experience in finding personnel whose educational background qualifies them for the work at hand. Chinese graduates, meanwhile, are hard put to apply what they have studied to the demands of the current employment market.

“Why is it that Harvard graduates, no matter what their major, have the pick of the jobs, yet when our students go to job fairs they are asked about their major before even being told a job title?” president Cai asks. He adamant that: “A university of high repute is duty bound to create opportunities for its students by encouraging them to discover and develop their innate talents.”

Enrolment Reform Key to Progress

The Chinese system of higher education is based on that of the Soviet Union of the 1950s which although effective in its way, does not meet today’s criteria. Fudan University has been conducting research into all aspects of American pedagogy with the intention of nurturing creative talent through a more diverse approach. A major innovation has been applied to Fudan’s method of recruitment. As from 2006, high school graduates no longer rely solely on their performance in the notoriously difficult College Entrance Exam to enter Fudan. The university has instituted a system similar to that of Harvard and Yale, whereby students sit a written test that the university itself has compiled, and attend an interview.

Many Chinese scholars and educators agree that the high score demanded for college entrance prevents many young people of great potential from entering higher education. The purpose of reforms at Fudan is to provide development opportunities for everyone, not just those that perform well at examinations.

It was in 1993 that the Chinese Ministry of Education formally proposed shifting the traditional education policy’s accent on high scores to a more rounded approach. Yet, 14 years later, test scores are still the main criterion for assessing standards of academic achievement and teaching and, more critically, determining the future of young Chinese people.

“Enrollment reform might seem a small step, but it is nonetheless decisive,” says Qu Jun, vice chairman of the Education Committee of Shanghai Municipality and NPC deputy. Fudan is the first university in China to experiment in student enrollment reform. If it is successful, other universities will follow suit.

Broader Horizons for College Students

Chinese senior high school students are divided into liberal arts and science classes. This means that liberal arts students stop attending natural science classes, and science students get no more grounding in standard works of literature and drama. In 2005, Fudan University set up a Foundation School where students in their freshmen year have the chance to study the subjects unrelated to their major that they missed out on at high school. The 4,200 foundation courses offered give students the chance to discover what their interests outside of study are. “Many students choose their university major either on the strength of advice from teachers and parents, or social trends,” says Mr. Cai. He goes on, “This is probably the reason why Chinese college students are criticized for their lack of initiative and passivity. Our foundation courses broaden their outlook, encourage analytical and independent thinking and enable today’s young intelligentsia to meet the social demands of tomorrow.”

Changing the study habits formed over the 12 years of the exam centric system from primary to high school, however, is no easy task. In the normal course of events, study pressure and huge amounts of homework deprive high school students of the time to read anything unrelated to their schoolwork. As a rule, when they get into university they expect to continue listening to teachers and taking notes from textbooks. They consequently lack the scope of knowledge, as well as confidence and initiative, to do independent study and research and form opinions based on analysis of information from more than one source.

Government education departments acknowledge this problem and are taking measures to improve matters. Shanghai Municipality is undertaking educational reforms that will broaden primary and middle school students’ scope of study and encourage them to seek out knowledge from various sources. Yet, as Vice Chairman Qu Jun says, “The intention may be good, but the idea has yet to produce any satisfying results.”

More International Cooperation

“We have been working towards increased international cooperation projects with world famous schools as a means of improving our teaching standards,” explains vice president Cai, going on, “In 1999, just 40 of our students went to study at the world’s top schools, whereas we now send out about 700 students each year. Student exchanges are common practice at colleges and universities throughout the world.”

Fudan University has joined hands with Universita Commerciale Luigi Bocconi of Italy and the Ecole Superieure Des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales of Paris in offering courses on luxury products and fashion industry management. It has also established a strategic partnership with Yale University, which offers distance education courses to students at Fudan through the Internet. It is a method through which students and teachers at Yale and Fudan may interact. The two universities also plan joint applications to American and Chinese foundations for and to recruit researchers with the aim of setting up a top world standard science research institution.

To date, Fudan has established cooperative relations with more than 200 universities and research institutions in 30 countries and regions. “We encourage our students to experience different teaching methods within a new culture. It benefits their future growth and helps them to distinguish their study objectives,” says Vice President Cai, going on, “Chinese students rarely get the opportunity to study abroad. Internet communication is good, but is no substitute for hands-on experience of a foreign culture. Our school has sought all means possible to create opportunities for its students to study abroad.” The financial capacity of Fudan, however, is limited, but Shanghai’s finest university is confident that sufficient social support and funding will enable it to increase its current international exchanges.

Fudan’s reforms are a source of controversy. Some dispute the university’s role as education reform prototype, in view of its advantages as regards available educational resources. Others argue that Fudan is too influenced by the American system. “We are still at an exploratory stage of our reforms. Chinese colleges and universities have their own characteristics; and our educational environment, student requirements and job markets differ from those overseas. When taking into account China’s huge population and limited education resources it is impossible to ape indiscriminately the Western education mode,” Cai asserts, concluding: “The current Chinese education system also has its attributes which, combined with Western methods, will enable us to provide a more rounded education.” Cai predicts that Fudan’s educational reforms will bear fruit in 8 to 10 years.