An article by University World News denounces the imbalance of China’s education system, defined as “China’s glass ceiling and feet of clay”, and stresses the dangers of academic culture deterioration in East Asia
The great achievements of higher education in China mask the limits that constitute an impediment to align Chinese universities to world levels academy. Some structural problems end up being a “glass ceiling” that prevent the rise in the international rankings.
Despite the multi-billion dollars invested in a small number of universities, China has only two universities in the top 200 of the Times Higher Education world university rankings, in front of the three by Hong Kong.
Higher education in China is a feet of clay giant. China has the largest education system enrolments in the world but is strongly unbalanced, with the majority of small universities and colleges, absorbing the huge numbers of students, that are underfunded and offer poor quality. The result is an over-bureaucratic system and narrow thinking.
Strict government regulations limit the interdisciplinary pursuit, imposed permanent appointments to faculty and that academic unit must teach undergraduates. Finally, the evaluation of faculty is limited to top of the system, neglecting the measurement of research and teaching in the rest of the system. Mediocrity is the result. Beyond the China’s top 100 universities, the pressures of massification affects the institutions at the bottom of the system.
In the whole East Asia there is a risk of higher education deterioration. Rui Yang, professor and associate dean of cross-border / international at the University of Hong Kong, on International higher education (winter issue – 2016) expressed his concern about the growing malaise of higher education in East Asia. According to the lecturer is spreading in the last decade a malpractice that results in fraudulent research and misbehavior of students.
In Japan there have been some scandals related to scientific research since 2000, with the case of Haruko Obokata with its fabricated data, doctored images and plagiarism.
In China the 90 are cases of contaminated culture that involves students, teachers and managers. Universities administrative roles override other academics, even in terms of salaries, and this encourages students to focus on the future career compared to academic research.
“The toxic cultures have devastating effects on higher education development and the region’s modernization programmes, leading to distortions and inefficiency at both institutional and systemic levels”, writes Yang. “The toxic academic cultures is another expression of East Asia’s greatest challenge: universities have not yet figured out how to combine the ‘standard norms’ of Western higher education with traditional values”.