The Importance of Fiction

This week on Sinica, Harvard’s eminent sinologist William Kirby joins Kaiser to talk about his book Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China, and to share his views on the state of higher education in China and the U.S，

03:12 – Wissenschaft and the German contribution to the creation of the modern research university

06:30 – The decreasing number of Chinese students willing to study in the U.S. and the defunding of American public universities

12:17 – What is the current state of higher education in China?

18:19 – Continuities between the old imperial civil service examination system and the current higher education system in China

23:08 – The state of Chinese universities before the Cultural Revolution

29:23 – How China revived higher education on the model of American universities in the early years of Reform and Opening

33:00 – Why does China maintain the gaokao examination despite its great unpopularity?

41:38 – Differences between the two leading universities in China: Peking University and Tsinghua University

44:00 – Institutional entrepreneurship at Tsinghua University

50:01 – The origins of Nanjing University and how it evolved over the years

57:21 – The importance of governance and management in the example of the University of Hong Kong

1:05:23 – What is the future of the joint programs between American and Chinese universities? 

A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Bill:

Made in Hong Kong: Transpacific Networks and a New History of Globalization by Peter E. Hamilton

The Dean of Shandong: The Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University by Daniel A. Bell

The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be by Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner

9,000 Years of Wine: A World History by Rod Phillips

Red Mandarin Dress: An Inspector Chen Novel by Qiu Xiaolong

Kaiser: Adventures of Horatio Hornblower by Entertainment Radio

Mentioned: Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China by William C. Kirby

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