UK schools lead international bid, but challenges remain

Professor Nigel Weatherill (right), vice-chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University, and Professor Ian Gow (left), principal of the Sino-British College, with Zhou Xinqiao, who completed his bachelor's degree at SBC last year and recently earned a master's degree with distinction at Imperial College London. Provided to China Daily

With Chinese legislation permitting Sino-foreign joint ventures in education almost a decade old, British universities now have the largest share of the market.

Three pioneering Sino-foreign joint ventures by UK schools - the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University at Suzhou and the Sino-British College in Shanghai - now have more than 10,000 students.

"They were and still are in the frontline of helping to internationalize Chinese students studying in English in China in line with the spirit and letter of the 2003 law," said Professor Ian Gow, principal of SBC and founding provost of UNNC in Ningbo.

SBC, with its consortium combining nine member universities of Northern Consortium UK and a Chinese host school, is different from the other two bilateral alliances because it is not a standalone independent joint venture but embedded within its host school, the University of Shanghai for Science & Technology.

"One area where SBC has prioritized and developed rapidly, as have the others, is recruiting international students," Gow said.

He said internationalizing the student body on campus in China clearly needs more than an international syllabus and staff. There also needs to be a sufficient presence of UK universities and international students.

The student body should be a mix of those studying abroad from UK campuses, seconded students from Chinese host universities and full-time students in the school itself, he added.

"But recruiting and integrating international students on a Chinese campus has some problems," Gow said. "In recruiting terms, the joint ventures are now in head-to-head competition with Chinese universities also offering degrees taught in English."

International students have been on UK campuses for over 100 years. They arrived over that time for political, economic and cultural reasons.

Mature internationalized UK campuses have built-in advantages such as mixed accommodations, English as the language for all students, a staff from 60 to 100 countries and students from more than 100 countries.

In contrast, Gow said Sino-foreign joint ventures and Chinese universities are now dealing with increased enrollment targets and increasing numbers on campus over a dramatically shorter period of time.

"Lessons from the UK may not be easily transferable," the principal said.

There are also some areas where Chinese universities need to come up with new ideas to manage and take advantage of the international student presence on campuses for the benefit of local students and even the staff, he added,

"We have set and achieved targets for international students, especially long-term full-time students," Principal Gow said. "In only five years, nearly 10 percent of our students are international from 42 countries, but we are far from satisfied that we are maximizing the use of those students to internationalize Chinese students and make them culturally sensitive and aware."

He explained that the same can be said in reverse - schools need to give international students a basic understanding of contemporary Chinese culture and it needs to be done early on.

"Simply putting numbers on campus is not enough and may be ineffective or even counterproductive if the process is not managed properly," he said.

He said Chinese students who choose to study for a UK degree taught entirely in English should obviously see the presence of British and international students as a big plus and an opportunity to learn about another culture.

But only a small minority takes the opportunity, he said. Whether it is shyness, fear, diffidence, workload, or even envy when international students get special treatment - especially with better access to the Internet - most Chinese students even at SBC do not reach out to bond.

"There is the saying 'you can take a horse to the water but you can't make it drink,'" he said.

"Moreover, if not handled sensitively and early on, there can be negative responses to throwing students together like this in terms of cultural misunderstandings."

He stressed the process on a joint venture campus has to be institutionally led and managed so that the positive advantages of an international presence on campus is maximized for Chinese students.

Classroom-based teaching, including the syllabus and international staff, may help a little but it is outside the class that real cross-cultural awareness progresses best, he added.

This is where the management of the process has to start. Staff and student unions need to take an active role in integrating students by mixing them in events, projects and clubs to engender more cross-cultural sensitivity.

Embedded joint ventures can also help their Chinese host university student populations integrate, but many Chinese universities lack that advantage, he said. They house and treat international students separately, often teach them separately and do little in the way of institutional guidance and managing the integration process.

"This makes international students easier to manage but much more difficult to integrate," Gow said.

He said the new wave to China is not coming from the slow but steady increase in students studying Chinese. It is those who see knowledge of China as economically advantageous for their future as the country's economic and technological power grows at incredible speed.

Chinese universities, on the other hand, with large enrolment targets for international students, need to invest even more than the joint ventures. It is also hard for the joint ventures. They must also invest but the students there at least profess to want to become international.

Chinese universities have two major groupings of students - the mobile who want to learn and study abroad and those staying at home who can't afford or are not interested in integrating and learning.

"But both groups need to be internationalized surely. This is where the joint ventures can help a little although SBC's job may be somewhat easier than for a Chinese university," Gow said.

What is clear from the SBC experience is that international students can be a major asset in internationalizing Chinese students, but that has to be managed and significant resources are needed. That is even more true for Chinese universities, he said.

"Culturally mixed accommodation and training of staff in cross-cultural management so that they can lead the integration are vitally important," said the principal.

He said cultural awareness training needs to start very early for both Chinese and international students and especially Chinese students whose families cannot afford overseas study.

"The international student resource is so valuable that we must see resource allocation in this area not as a cost but as an investment," he said.

"There is no doubt that successfully integrating Chinese and international students studying in China can help China understand the world better and those same students can help the world better understand China," Gow said.