Category Archives: Academics

Higher Education, MOOCs, and Illiberal Governance

Posted on by

In the same way that debates are presently taking place regarding the organization and administration of systems of higher education, discussion as to the organization of states themselves and their relationship with each other is likewise occurring. In those nations where governmental power is derived through the ballot box, much attention has been paid to whether there is a correlation between a person’s education level and their support for policies that promote cultural openness and liberalism. Analysis of voter preferences in several recent polls seem to indicate that individuals who have completed higher education tend to be more positively disposed toward policies which promote openness and inclusion than those who have not. At the same time, recent elections have given rise to leaders that threaten the liberal order, as in the Philippines, and elsewhere, once-democratic leaders have tended towards illiberalism in countries like Hungary, Turkey, and the Ukraine.

Recently, these two debates came to a head in Hungary, where illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orban used a parliamentary majority to pass a law targeting academic freedoms. One university, in particular, has been the target of Orban’s ire for several years. Central European University in Budapest, was founded in 1991 by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations to reintroduce liberal thought in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. Orban, meanwhile, most often makes headlines for his government’s staunch opposition to EU migration policy and for closing Hungary’s borders to refugees. Technically, the university is accredited to award graduate and doctoral degrees in both the U.S. and Hungary, however, the sole physical campus is in Budapest. Orban’s new law forbids this practice: now foreign universities must have a campus in their country of origin to operate a satellite campus in Hungary.

Orban’s persecution of CEU has inspired outrage throughout the academic community. Michael Ignatieff, former professor at Harvard and Oxford, leader of the Canadian Liberal party, and current President of CEU, has been an outspoken critic of Orban at the global level. Outside of CEU staff, Cas Mudde, noted scholar on European populism, used an editorial in The Guardian to call upon the EU to intervene on behalf of liberal freedoms. After 70,000 people protested the move in Budapest last month, the EU presented Orban with an official notice this week, calling on his government to explain the ‘breach of EU law.’ This is considered the first step in bringing a legal penalty against Orban, however, it is largely contingent upon Hungary’s cooperation in the process. As a result, CEU’s fate remains unclear.

Orban’s effort, while posing a threat to democracy and intellectual freedom, could well be undermined by today’s unprecedented individual mobility and global technological integration. Orban can shut down an American university, but he cannot stop the flow of ideas from America and other countries to Hungary. Just take China as an example. While the Chinese government banned Facebook, Twitter and popular Western social media sites, people in China found ways to access these sites and spread their know-hows on the Internet. Meanwhile Turkey, where some 5,000 academics have been fired or arrested in response to the failed July coup, is an ongoing case study in whether the global knowledge sharing economy can actively overcome illiberal domestic policies.

In today’s technological landscape of high-speed internet and free social media sites, ideas can spread cheaply and almost instantaneously. Governments can shut down the physical form of a university, but the function of the university – a democratic hub for idea exchange and intellectual development – has been shared by the Internet, even before the rise of MOOCs. The most effective way to stop the exchange of global ideas, perhaps, is by completely shutting down the Internet, which is not something that China, Turkey, or Hungary would seriously attempt.

Characterizing the Globalized African University

Posted on by

This week I found an article which analyzes the station of higher education in Africa. We haven’t yet dealt with African cases in class, so I figured that this might be a topic of interest. The article “The African University as ‘Global’ University” was written by Isaac Kamola, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College.

Kamola argues that, despite a low matriculation rate of 3% in sub-Saharan Africa, it is intellectually valuable to analyze African universities as global universities. The main thrust is that the ‘globe’ has had an indelible effect on the development of the African university- whether by colonization or the international finance regime- and that the objective for policymakers today is to distinguish between what is African about the university system and what is not.

Perhaps the most interesting point Kamola raises, concerns the role of the World Bank in impeding the development of African higher education. In the years following decolonization, many African states faced financial crises, which they sought to solve with loans from the World Bank. As a condition of the loan, the World Bank mandated austerity measures targeting, among other things, higher education spending. The cuts inspired street protests by university students who were met with violent crackdowns by military and police forces. Today however, the World Bank prioritizes higher education as an essential pathway in economic development. All this provides an interesting backdrop for Kamola’s thesis: that despite it’s low domestic enrollment, lack of research, and lack of international students, African universities are wary of anymore globalization.

For me the piece raises interesting questions about the proper course of higher education policy in developing countries. Should states prioritize creating national universities, which may be directed towards addressing domestic policy problems and fostering locally-sourced solutions, or prioritize university globalization? Is it even possible to make that decision as a developing country when the Western model and its emphasis on internationalization is so dominant globally? How else do you foster a culturally-specific intellectual tradition?

With these questions, I’m reminded of the discussions we had early on this semester regarding the significance of a university’s ‘legacy’ when making admissions decisions. At the time, we were concerned with how a recently established, campus-less university would attract students compared to a similarly ranked conventional university. From Kamola’s perspective, similar questions apply to universities with a colonial legacy, and also to more recently established institutions that continue to be patterned on the Western model. While, he is less concerned with admissions decisions than with cultural cohesion, his answer is that establishing an African university is more important to the continent’s long-term development than simply establishing universities in Africa.

The Cost of Eliminating Academic Freedom

Posted on by

If any area of the globe seems well positioned to serve as the site of top quality institutions of higher education, it would be Hong Kong. As one of the world’s largest and most economically developed cities, Hong Kong possesses both the human capital and other amenities that allow such universities to flourish. One characteristic of Hong Kong however has been of concern to some with regard to the development of its system of higher education, that being a tendency on the part of the government to more tightly regulate the goings on at those universities which now exist than might be the case in nations with a more open and democratic form of government.

Governmental pressure over the universities of Hong Kong is a relatively new development. While originally constituted as a British colony, the higher education system of Hong Kong seems to historically have been fairly loosely controlled by the state. This all began to change however when Hong Kong’s status as a British territory ended in 1997, and it was returned to China. The Chinese government did not take direct control of Hong Kong following the territory’s return to Chinese control, with a system of government put in place that afforded the city’s residents a measure of representation. According to Michael H. Lee however, this did not prevent actions from being taken that were designed to fundamentally curtail the free exchange of ideas on the city’s university campuses.

In an article entitled “Hong Kong Higher Education in the 21st Century,” Lee documented several incidents of governmental interference in the operation of institutions of higher education in Hong Kong in the years following the city’s reunification with the People’s Republic of China in 1997. [i] One notable incident involved pressure being exerted upon Hong Kong University by an aid to the city’s Chief Executive, Tung Chee-Hwa after one of its researchers conducted an opinion poll that showed not all within the city had a favorable opinion of the government. [ii] The message the chief executive’s aid conveyed, that the government wished to gain the promise of the university to conduct no further polling that could show less than favorable opinions of the new government, clearly illustrated an attempt to infringe upon the principle of academic freedom as it is generally understood in liberal democracies, that being the ability of a university to conduct research free from ideological interference.

This incident in Hong Kong is hardly the only incident in which a university in one or another part of the world has experienced pressure to take or reframe from taking action that displeases one or another powerful constituencies, especially a sitting government. Given the increasingly global nature of higher education however, the question ought to be asked whether concerted action should be taken to defend academic freedom in the face of such examples of governmental interference in university operations, in order to forcefully make the point that such governmental interference is unacceptable. Lee notes that as the twenty-first century progresses, Hong Kong is attempting to capitalize upon its geographic and economic position to both expand the public and private higher educational offerings which are present in the city, while at the same time it seeks to attract branch campuses of foreign educational institutions. [iii] While it is impossible for foreign educational institutions to directly impact the actions of the government of Hong Kong or the government of any state for that matter, such institutions could withdraw branch campuses or other sources of funding from states which choose not to respect the principles of academic freedom. Such actions would clearly illustrate that academic freedom was a concept which is respected above all others by established institutions of higher education, and one which must be respected by governments, regardless of their ideology. Whether action such as that proposed here could actually be taken however would depend on whether institutions of higher education collectively were prepared to join together to take such a stand, and absorb any criticism directed their way as a result of doing so.

[i] Lee, Michael H. Hong Kong Higher Education in the 21st Century, Department of History, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, http://edb.org.hk/HKTC/download/journal/j13/A02.pdf

[ii] Ibd

[iii] Ibd

Re-framing the Affordability Debate in U.S. Higher Ed

Posted on by

In March, the Institute for Higher Education Policy published a study on college affordability in the United States. The report, titled Limited Means, Limited Options: College Remains Unaffordable for Many Americans highlights the growing upfront cost of attending university in the United States.

Their key finding after analyzing price data for 2000 colleges was that federal aid policies aren’t doing enough to ensure anything approaching equal access. The current mixture of grants, federally subsidized loans, and loan forgiveness programs are not sufficiently funded to close the opportunity gap between low income and high income students. One reason the study suggest this may be, is that there is a basic lack of understanding with regards to how widely each student’s sense of affordability varies.

The study attempted to show this by assessing what colleges were accessible to what students, accounting for differences in wealth, family background, status as a dependent. The researchers measured cost of attendance by net price (cost of attendance minus grant aid) and compared these using Lumina Foundation’s Affordability Benchmark based on discretionary income. To account for the options each student faces, the researchers created student profiles which were representative of the income levels and dependency status of the college applicant population in the U.S. 

The researchers determined that the cost of attendance is increasing, while it is becoming harder to cover costs using student loans. In fact, the researchers determine that even with subsidized student loans, low income students rarely gain much flexibility in their choice of college and now face loan payments. In that way, affordability still entirely depends on one’s starting place.

As we’ve seen in class, the rising cost of higher education in Asia is associated with privatization in the sector. Perhaps the most telling finding of this U.S. study then, is that if all publically funded universities moved to free tuition, low-income students would face the same options of affordable colleges.

The study warns that the issue of affordability in U.S. education is being improperly framed as a question of value. The logic is that if a degree promises sufficient future returns, the cost is bearable, particularly if paid in small installments as is typical of a student loan. For many however, the study shows that the initial cost of attendance is too high a barrier to entry to even consider the long-term value of the credential.

What’s the side effect? Applying the medical model to education

Posted on by

To complement our class discussion on the effect of standardized testing as evident in the NYC public high school entrance exam, I’d like to present a recent argument by Yong Zhao, a Chinese-born professor of education at the University of Oregon. Basically, Zhao’s argument is as follow:

  1. There is a systematic negligence from policy makers in considering the side effect (negative effect) of any educational policy. Policy makers usually only look for evidence that supports the positive, intended effect. Even when side effects are discovered, they are “not considered an inherent quality of the product” but rather “unintended or unanticipated consequences or results of poor implementation”. Not all side effects can be forecasted, but that does not mean that policy makers should completely ignore side effect as they are doing now.
  2. This negligence has lead to the US’ uncritical adoption of the “one size fits all” curriculum ( their “Common Core”) from Asian countries that score high on international standardized tests. Zhao argues that Asian systems (e.g. China, South Korea, Singapore), while producing high PISA scores, somehow also produced low confidence in students as a side effect – 70% students in East Asian countries, despite their high PISA scores, worry that they “will get low grades in math”.
  3. Zhao’s solution is to adopt a medical model of considering both intended and side effect in designing or implementing any policy. In medicine, a new drug is always introduced with both intended and side effect, as required by law. We should also have laws in education that requires explaining both intended and side effects of new policies, especially to “consumers” (teachers, parents, students and the general public). For example, Zhao cites research showing that a curriculum focusing on test score can come at the expense of curiosity and long-term growth. Teachers should know this information to balance their classroom activities, and parents should know this information to decide whether to enroll their children in alternative systems that do not assess by standardized tests.

Personally, I think Zhao’s argument, while solid, is nothing new under the sun. It is just a different way to ask for a cost-benefit analysis, in a more structured, legal-binding way by making it into a law like in medicine. By likening education to medicine, I think Zhao wants to raise the stake – perhaps people are not taking side effects seriously in education because it is not a matter of imminent “life-and-death” like in medicine, but perhaps it is. Education matters to the psychological and emotional well-being of a person, which I would argue that is as important as physical well-being, and psychological distress can result in physical distress.

His other point about the US emulating Asian education is more interesting given our reading this week on Chinese education, which used to emulate the US system and now is trying to forge its own path. We have touched upon “best practice” in class and that it doesn’t seem to work because each country is different, yet it seems like the countries we covered are all trying to adopt something from models they consider “successful”. What do you think about this “best practice” approach? What is the alternative? Is it inevitable to “learn” from other countries while making your own policy? If so, how do you critically integrate “best practice” to fit your own context?

 

Source:

“What works may hurt: Side effects in education”, Yong Zhao, Journal of Educational, Volume 18, Issue 1, February 2017. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10833-016-9294-4

 

 

 

 

The relationship between two countries and its higher education mobility: the recent case of China and South Korea.

Posted on by

This Friday, while passing through China coming back from the Japan trip, I ran into an interesting article on the Global Times about how Chinese students in South Korea where being affected after the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system was deployed. As you may know the US designed an anti-missile system to protect South Korea and Japan from possible attacks from North Korea, which China has seen as a threat to its own military operations. This of course is starting to have implications in the relationship between China and South Korea, but probably no one thought about the effect this would have on Chinese students taking high-education studies at South Korea.

The university students interviewed for the Global Times’ article mentioned they are – for the first time – not feeling welcome in their neighbor country, and even worried about their personal safety. They feel rejected when South Korean people spot they are from China and they have experienced some disrespectful manners from random people in the last weeks. Students are afraid South Korean teachers with a strong opinion about the THAAD will also take a position against them affecting their performance and study in school. This is a situation that was not happening a year or even some months ago.

Currently, around 60% of overseas students in South Korea come from China, but will this situation play against this numbers? As stated in the paper ‘Political and Economic Impacts on Chinese students’ return’, China has been experiencing a brain drain in the last years as having many Chinese students that decide to stay in the country where they are studying instead of returning to their home country. The paper analyzes the possible factors that contribute to students deciding not to go back, and one of the most important ones where the economic situation of the country they are studying (mainly focused in the US, but applicable to other countries as well), and the stimulating policy held by China to return home. Taking into account these factors, it cannot be totally predictable what will happen with Chinese students in South Korea, as this situation may or may not have a strong effect on student mobility.  

Moreover, what is also interesting from the Global Times article, is that the students interviewed mention how Chinese people is starting to perceive them negatively as students living in South Korea. Since the THAAD situation they are labeled by many Chinese people as ‘unpatriotic’, almost as if they were playing as part of ‘the enemy’. So it is not only they are feeling unwelcome in their study country, but they are also feeling outsiders in their own country. In line with this perspective, the paper by Wu & Shao, discuss the difficulty Chinese students that have studied abroad have when going back to China. It is mentioned as one of the most painful experiences as trying to adapt again to a country that has probably changed in the years the young Chinese has been living abroad. China is a country that is constantly changing and developing, and many factors become uncertain for young people trying to reinsert in the Chinese society and market. Also, considering the China – South Korea relation, getting a degree from a country like South Korea might be seen as negative and have an impact on the students’ future career and job hunting when graduated. It might be only the image from having studied in the country, but also if the relationship continues to take a negative path, South Korean companies might start to exit the Chinese market reducing the possibilities of these students to be hired by a South Korean company in their home country, affecting their future employment.

Nevertheless, a consultant at the Weilan South Korea study agency mentions that so far, ‘they haven’t seen a decline in students applying for South Korean universities’, and compares it to that even though the relationship between the US and China is not the greatest one, still Chinese students choose to study in the US. But even if the numbers currently are not telling much, the fact is the feeling of Chinese students is still there, they have now started to worry about politics like never before because they are being directly impacted.

Should this be a factor worth considering for South Korean universities in the following years? Maybe it becomes better for China as to avoid brain drain from Chinese students going abroad? How can the relationship between two countries really affect the higher education mobility between them? There are in fact some important social consequences from the countries’ relationship that are starting to get noticed. This does not pretend to be a statement, but more to stir the discussion about other aspects that sometimes are not considered in the higher education mobility equation.

 

Sources:

  1. The Global Times (English version). Volume 8. No.2249. Friday, March 24, 2017
  2. Wu, Harry & Shao, Bin. ‘Political and Economic Impacts on Chinese students’ return’. Journal of International Business and Cultural Studies. Volume 9. December 2014. http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/141963.pdf

How do international students experience university differently?

Posted on by

When we are discussing issues of internationalization in class we usually stop at the institutional level. Otherwise, we may discuss people in terms of student population movements between countries. This week, I tried to find something recently published that looked deeper than that. In the most recent Journal of International Students, researchers from Azusa Pacific University evaluated the way college experiences for international students diverge from their that of their domestic peers. They explain that their research fills an important hole in the literature which often ignores student satisfaction outcomes for international students. Using data from the 2010 University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES), they came to some interesting conclusions.

The article shows that international students report lower levels of satisfaction with their college experience, with a particular weight placed on the quality of the classroom experience. Moreover, the researchers found that low levels of satisfaction correlated with lower levels of cognitive improvement. The researchers conclude that their findings should influence universities to craft more effective support systems for international students and ensure that international students’ satisfaction level equals that of their domestic peers. They suggest that knowingly selling an inferior product to an unwitting buyer is tantamount to exploitation on the part of the university.

Overall, I think the article makes a good moral argument about the risks of the profit model which is driving internationalization. That said, I don’t think the strength of their research design can quite back up the strength of their claim. For instance, the UCUES, from which the data for the study was pulled is a one-time survey of outgoing college seniors which relies extensively on retrospective self-reporting.  The study also suffers from a lack of longitudinal data. To be fair, the researchers do acknowledge these limitations in the concluding paragraphs.

Still, I think the article raises an important question about parity between students at research universities that may be uniquely relevant to SIPA given the size of its international student community.

The mentally-troubled student: How should universities get involved?

Posted on by

Hi everyone, as I introduced myself in our first class, my name is Dai and my goal is to become a psychologist working in Asia (I’m enrolled in the psychology program at the regular Columbia, across the street from SIPA). Thus, I’d like to use this post as an opportunity to discuss mental health, which I believe is essential for academic excellence but is not adequately reflected in social and educational policies.

In 2015, Newsweek reported a striking study by Japan’s Cabinet Office that examined child suicide. The study was striking because it found that the time of high suicide corresponded with the timing of the school year: more suicides were committed in early September when school starts and in mid-April when school resumes after spring break. The study is statistically persuasive, as their data were large: they looked at 18,000 records of child suicides from 1972–2013 (41 years). For those of us who are thinking that school stress can play a role, this thought partially supported by records of child suicide notes in 2006, which cited school stress as the cause of their decisions. Research done by Hokkaido University Professor Kenzo Denda, cited in the same Newsweek article, found that in Japan, 1 in 12 elementary school-aged children, and 1 in 4 junior high school students suffer from depression. Another study showed that suicide was the leading cause of death for Japanese children age 10-19 in 2014. Taken all of these findings into account, we can see that suicide and mental health present a concern for universities because the later part of the child spectrum (age 17-19) are university age, which means a considerable amount of university students may experience mental health problems and suicidal thoughts, some of whom since a very, very early age, as Professor Denda showed that depression was presented in elementary school.

While the above findings were specific to Japan, I think it is also reasonable to assume (we will have to assume because of the lack of quality data in Asia, something Professor Lefebure mentioned in class) that other Asian countries also face the same problem. In fact, here is a summary of mental health index in Asia Pacific in 2016 reported by The Economist (however, please note that this report is commissioned by a company called Janssen Asia Pacific, which is part of the healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson so there may be private interest in methodology and findings of the report):

The criteria for ranking were comprised of four categories:

 

  • Environment for people with mental illness to have a normal life
  • Access to medical services
  • Opportunities, specifically job-related for people with mental illness
  • Government policies including programs to reduce stigma against mental illness

 

We could see that the ranking relatively corresponds with the economic development status of a country – more developed countries ranked higher than less-resourced countries. However, this does not mean that resource-strapped countries, those countries at the bottom of the list cannot do anything about their population with mental health. The real question is, how can they maximize their result given their limited funding? Or simply put, how can they do more with less?

With respect to higher education, what role should universities play in supporting their at-risk students and the community at large? I think education plays a key role in solving many aspects of the mental health problem. For example, universities can reduce stress by changing their curricula and non-academic initiatives. Universities can solve the lack of expert resources by training future mental health professionals. University personnel is also in a position to influence policy and public opinion.

What are your thoughts?

 

 

 

Sources:

Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/why-do-so-many-japanese-schoolchildren-kill-themselves-391648

Janssen/The Economist Report: http://www.janssen.com/apac/news-center/health-policy-and-advocacy/mentalhealthandintegration

Is intercultural education possible in today’s university with the model of higher education as it exists?

Posted on by

In the past weeks we have been talking about the current trends in higher education such as (1) globalization where now the world becomes the horizon and the actual market, (2) the need for internationalization in Asia, and the perception than a more internationalized university is better (3) integration in Europe, that started with the Bologna process, (4) and a common objective of placing education at the center, because of the knowledge economy.

But there is also an important aspect to discuss about universities; in times when most universities are moving towards internationalization, the aspect of interculturality cannot be left behind the discussion. Interculturality has been defined as the interaction of people from different cultural backgrounds using authentic language appropriately that demonstrates knowledge and understanding of the cultures. As Pedota mentions, currently there is a lack of universities that consider indigenous people to enable them to participate in governmental, economic and social structures, neither universities that teach indigenous knowledge as an integral part of the curriculum.

Pedota presents some interesting initiatives that have emerged in Latin America, either as newly created higher education institutions rooted inside indigenous regions, or as conventional universities starting to ‘interculturalize’ its student population, teaching staff, and curricular contents and methods. The idea of diversifying the students profiles and the curricular contents goes in hand with the trend of higher education institutions becoming more efficient, locally adapted, and outcome oriented. The Indigenous Intercultural Universities in Latin America started in the early 90’s with the aim to generate knowledge that is relevant for the communities in which they are located, but also Pedota emphasizes,with the aim to generate a ‘dialogue of knowledges’ among social actors from different cultures. In Intercultural Universities modernity and tradition mix up to take the best part of each. One example is the Indigenous Intercultural University that seeks to respond to the sociocultural, political, economic and educational proposals and expectations of the Indigenous People, without overlooking the academic standards typical of Higher Education. Other examples are the PROEIB Andes in Bolivia, and Intercultural University in Veracruz (IUV) in Mexico.

But is it really possible to achieve interculturality? As stated by Williamson, it will be possible only if the state establishes an obligatory standard for the whole system based on universally applicable laws, and if there is a profound change in the current higher education system and in the communities where social players actually live.

What do you think? Can we still have intercultural universities these days?

Sources:

PEDOTA, Luciano. “Indigenous Intercultural Universities in Latin America: Interpreting Interculturalism in Mexico and Bolivia”. Loyola, University of Chicago. 2011

http://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1515&context=luc_theses




WILLIAMSON, Guillermo. “Is the interculturalization of Chile’s universities a real possibility?”. SAGE Journals - Arts & Humanities in Higher Education. Vol 16, Issue 1, 2017.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1474022215600924




GUILHERME, Manuela. “Winds of the South: Intercultural university models in the 21st century”. SAGE Journals - Arts & Humanities in Higher Education. Vol 16, Issue 1, 2017.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1474022216680599

 

Does a Decreased Supply Mean Decreased Demand? (by Brody Hale)

Posted on by

Much has been made of the impact falling birth rates will have on many nations in East Asia in recent years. While many of these discussions center around the impact a decrease in the number of young people will have on economic growth and the ability of nations to care for their elderly populations, it is also the case that these demographic changes are having a major impact on university systems throughout the region.

As far back as 2007, the New York Times reported that up to a third of seats in some Japanese Universities were going unfilled on account of the reduced number of students of college age residing within the nation. Similarly, a recent article in University World News noted that Chinese universities are similarly beginning to face decreased demand for their services on account of a shrinking university age population. Conventional wisdom has pointed toward the closure of some of the universities in those nations most acutely affected by population contraction. Might it make more sense however to rethink this strategy, and instead do something quite different? For some time now, the world has seen the U.S. and some other parts of the world such as parts of Europe and Australia as education destinations. A considerable number of students in universities in these parts of the world come from foreign localities.

What if East Asia and China made a concerted effort to style themselves as academic destination nations, and what if they targeted a market of students which has not yet fully been tapped? China has sought to increase its impact in the developing world, especially through the completion of development projects in sub-Saharan Africa. What if, either as part of foreign aid efforts or through some other means, China and other nations in East Asia undertook a vigorous campaign to attract students from parts of the developing world in which access to a university education was not guaranteed, to the empty seats at their nation’s universities? It is certainly the case that the funding mechanism for such a program would have to be developed, but if such a plan as has been outlined here were enacted, the problem of unused university space could be solved, and China along with other nations in East Asia could fundamentally improve access to university education in the developing world.

Sources,

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120106163701271

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/world/asia/22universities.html