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From Carp to Dragon the Shanghai List and the Neoliberal Pursuit of Modernization in Chinese Higher Education

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From Carp to Dragon the Shanghai List and the Neoliberal Pursuit of Modernization in Chinese Higher Education From Carp to Dragon The Shanghai List and the Neoliberal Pursuit of Modernization in Chinese Higher Education Jeremy Cohen School of International Service: B.A. International Studies College of Arts and Sciences: B.S. Economics University Honors Advisor: Dr. James H. Mittelman School of International Service Spring 2012 2 FROM CARP TO DRAGON: THE SHANGHAI LIST AND THE NEOLIBERAL PURSUIT OF MODERNIZATION IN CHINESE HIGHER EDUCATION Do global university rankings reflect an assimilation of widely held transnational views about education or are these rankings the product of historically and culturally contingent national experience? This study examines how the emergence of the first global ranking—the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)—reflects the intermingling of dominant global discourses about higher education with Chinese realities and asks what role ARWU has played in the restructuring of power and knowledge in Chinese higher education under conditions of globalization. A number of methods are employed—including the historical contextualization of ARWU, a critical review of its methodology, and interviews with Chinese students and scholars. The analysis demonstrates that ARWU is both a product and an instrument of neoliberalism in the Chinese context. Allied to a specific discourse of excellence and quality in higher education, it reproduces the national narrative of modernization that is the hallmark of Chinese neoliberalism. ARWU also builds legitimacy for policies that restructure higher education in China and institute neoliberal techniques of governance including the introduction of contract relationships and forms of self-evaluation. 3 Contents I. INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................1 Understanding the Globalization of Higher Education ...............................................................1 Global Rankings and the Restructuring of Higher Education .....................................................3 Neoliberalism...............................................................................................................................6 Neoliberalism in the Chinese Context .......................................................................................10 II. HISTORICAL LINEAGES OF PRESENT-DAY CHINESE HIGHER EDUCATION..........13 Establishing the Modern University: 1860-1949.......................................................................14 Universities under Mao: 1949-1978 ..........................................................................................19 Chinese Universities and the Era of Neoliberal Reform: 1978-2003........................................23 ARWU .......................................................................................................................................28 III. ARWU METHODOLOGY: A CRITICAL AND COMPARATIVE REVIEW ....................30 Rankings and the Creation of Reality........................................................................................31 The Methodological Basis of ARWU........................................................................................34 ARWU in Comparative Perspective..........................................................................................40 IV. ARWU AND THE GOVERNANCE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: EXCELLENCE, QUALITY, NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, AND THE STUDENT-CONSUMER ..................43 Legitimizing “World-Class” Discourse: ARWU and Project 985 ............................................44 Changes in Governance and Knowledge...................................................................................48 Changes in the Role of Students: Incomplete Consumerization?..............................................53 V. CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................................57 Changing Modernity..................................................................................................................57 Which Interests? Which Knowledge? .......................................................................................58 Implications ...............................................................................................................................62 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................65 1 I. INTRODUCTION Globalizing processes are fundamentally changing the field of higher education. Over the past three decades, what it means to be a university, a professor, or a student has been redefined not only in the specific roles that each of these institutions or actors plays in society (whether local, national, or global), but also in the host of changing expectations, pressures, and needs of other forces—notably markets and the state—acting on them. One of the symptoms of the globalization of higher education has been the rise, since 2003, of global university rankings. The rankings, which began with the publication of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) by the Institute for Higher Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, seek to create comparisons of the relative strengths of universities worldwide and, as such, can be seen as the product of the larger forces contributing to the globalization of contemporary higher education. Since 2003, the number of global rankings has exploded, with new rankings coming from the private, public and academic sectors in Europe, North America, and other sites in Asia. Understanding the Globalization of Higher Education There are numerous ways to look at the globalization of higher education. Simon Marginson, who has written extensively on what he calls the “glonacal” (global, national, and local) nature of higher education, holds that action in the global sphere of higher education plays out on three levels: economic competition, status competition, and networks of open source knowledge.1 Marginson’s analysis is useful on a number of levels. First, it helps to understand the ways in which higher education actors perceive the field in which they operate. It accounts for both competition and cooperation in the field of higher education and it acknowledges a 1 Simon Marginson, "Imagining the Global," in Handbook on Globalization and Higher Education, ed. Simon Marginson, Rajani Naidoo, and Roger King (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2011), 13. 2 multiplicity of motivations for action within the field. However, the heuristic is limited by its insistence that we look at each of these levels of the global field as somehow separate. Rather, it is clear that all of these forces interact with each other. Thus, while it is undoubtedly true that economic and status competition exist in the global sphere, the two phenomena are linked by the logic of neoliberal globalization. For instance, neoliberalism, and the neoclassical economic theory on which it is based, conceives of higher education as a market good and students as investors in human capital.2 In turn, human capital growth and innovation have become the cornerstones of new economic growth theory.3 Neoliberal approaches proceed from the assumption of individuals as rational economic actors and seek to explain social phenomena in market terms. As national policymakers feel the pressures of neoliberal globalization, they must continue to provide the market with what it needs—highly skilled labor that can promote growth. The presence of status competition, partly related to the question of who will be considered skilled and qualified—thus cannot be delinked from economic competition. Similarly, status is likely to influence which institutions will receive funding and survive in the effort to “rationalize” higher education in accordance with the logic of economic efficiency. The existence of networks and open-source knowledge are seen as the cooperative side of the globalization of higher education in Marginson’s heuristic. But these, too, may be related to efforts to raise status (for instance, partnering with high-profile universities abroad) or to issues of economic logic (university-industry partnerships). We also must be careful—and here I think that Marginson is successful—in not viewing these levels of the global field as essential aspects of higher education. Much of the restructuring 2 See, for instance, Gary S. Becker, "Investment in Human Capital: A Theoretical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy 70, no. 5 (October 1962). 3 See Paul M. Romer, "Increasing Returns and Long-Run Growth," Journal of Political Economy 94, no. 5 (October 1986). 3 of higher education is the result of forces of globalization that cut across different fields of social relations. One such force is the role of ideas, in particular the dominant position of neoliberal ideas in the world today and in the field of higher education in particular. In turning to the question of ideas, it is also necessary to address the issue of power. The question of power arises because it is quite clear that knowledge and power, as Michel Foucault reminds us, are not separable, but: [R]ather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.4
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