NEWS
THES cites Prof. Shujie Yao in cover story about China's higher education transformation
Submitted by School of Contemporary Chinese StudiesDisplayed from 03-nov-2009 - 03-jan-2010
3/11/2009
The Times Higher Education Supplement cited Prof. Shujie Yao, Head of the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, in its cover story ("The Long March") about the transformation of China's higher education system on 29 October 2009.
Below is an opening extract from the original report:
Shujie Yao was one of the "very, very lucky guys". In 1978, as China's universities reopened after a dark decade during the Cultural Revolution, he was one of the tiny proportion of school-leavers who secured a place in higher education.
"Half of my university teachers had been brought back from the countryside, where they had been working as farmers," he says. "They had been out of academic life for ten years and had forgotten all the things they had studied. The textbooks were still being written. Conditions were rudimentary and teaching, by today's standards, was very poor."
But in the three decades since he left the South China University of Tropical Agriculture, Yao says, the higher education transformation that has occurred has become "one of the most spectacular success stories in the world".
Now head of the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham, Yao has the perfect vantage point to reflect on China's higher education revolution.
"In the past 30 years, tremendous change has taken place, and it has been powerful and positive," he says. From a near-standing start in 1978, China is now the world's biggest provider of higher education and the second- biggest producer of academic research papers. Before long, it is expected to become the world's biggest economy.
Link to the original report: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=408794&c=2
~ENDS~
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