Why China wants ‘Western-style’ liberal arts education.docx

Why China wants ‘Western-style’ liberal arts educationAs Duke University in the United States prepares to set up an undergraduate liberal arts degree at its campus in Kunshan,?China, and with other proposals for liberal arts degrees by foreign universities keen to tap another area of student demand making their way through?Chinas gargantuan approvals system,?China’s motivations for setting up ‘experimental’ liberal arts degrees are coming under scrutiny.?Chinese governments have been “both patrons and censors” of liberal education, in its broadest sense, notes William Kirby, professor of?China?studies and business administration at Harvard University.With current government policy emphasising Chinese learning and a?restatement of Marxist ideology, together with?criticism of Western values?in universities, Kirby questions in a recent paper on “Liberal Education in?China?Past and Present” published by the Boston College Center for International Higher Education, “can liberal education exist in a politically illiberal system?”?“Perhaps,” he believes. “But only with a significant degree of autonomy”, which will be a challenge for the future of liberal arts and sciences in?China.?Taught in English, the four-year Duke Kunshan University liberal arts and science degree will be offered from August 2018. Others, such as the UK’s University of Nottingham Ningbo?China?expect to begin teaching an undergraduate liberal arts degree from the 2019 academic year.?Though based on its own liberal arts model, and with input from many of its professors and others internationally who will fly in to the Chinese campus, Duke Kunshan University stresses that the new programme will be an innovative version, specially designed to educate and challenge students in this unique global setting, Duke Universitys former president Richard Brodhead said earlier this year.?China?already has a number of home-grown liberal arts programmes at prestigious national universities, notably at Yuanpei College