Editor’s Note

While on a 12-hour flight back to Beijing recently after a visit to University of California at Berkeley, I read Hu Shi’s Diary (胡适留学日记). As I read, I realized that when Mr. Hu Shi returned to China after his study in the United States about a hundred years ago, it took him a month ( June 9-July 10, 1917) to cross the Pacific. 1 As the meaning of distance has changed, our contemporary age of globalization has become one of “overcoming space.” 2 Modern communication has made the world smaller in the sense first described by Marshall McLuhan with his concept of “global village.” Like it or not, this has made much contemporary scholarship in education carry the message: think globally while acting locally.

Until social science can predict the future, our world will present us with a steady stream of unanticipated challenges. Yet, this requires us to have a global vision and a mentality that reaches across regions and nation states. It is particularly important for a country like China, a late comer to the developed world partly due to a long history of isolation, to stay focused on the road to modernization. Xi Jinping, the new general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, has astutely pointed out that the world has become an international community in which everyone shares a same fate, and no country can prosper without others. Moreover, it is in the interest of all countries to make a concerted effort to address the current complex social and cultural trends of economic globalization. Thus, China has become more active as both advocator and activist for win-win cooperation in the world community, the idea of a common world destiny through pragmatic international cooperation has brought a new meaning to the study of education. 3

As the world becomes more and more a community of common destiny, education becomes more and more of a means to strengthen the interconnection and interdependence among countries. In short, education is expected to deepen its function of promoting mutual understanding in dealing with unanticipated global challenges. That is why the often used thematic concepts of globalization and internationalization still capture essential features in the study of education for the 21st century. Their relevance is particularly acute for higher education. In the words of Richard Levin, president of Yale University, “As never before in their long history, universities have become instruments of national competition, as well as instrument of peace.” 4

Academic study has helped us to clearly differentiate the dual processes of globalization and internationalization. While globalization can refer to economic, political, and societal forces pushing higher education toward greater international involvement, internationalization can include policies and practices undertaken by academic systems and institutions—and even individuals—to cope with the global academic environment. 5 When the board members of the International Journal of Chinese Education (IJCE) discussed the theme of the second issue, we considered “globalization of education”, “globalization and education”, “globalization and internationalization of education,” but finally settled on “globalization and education” as the thematic focus for several reasons.

Firstly, this theme emphasizes that globalization is a background and external force pushing governments and social agents including educational institutions to responses in effective ways.

It is through internationalization that colleges and universities become part of an active movement of initiatives that add vision to the mentality of internationalization.

Secondly, the theme of this issue of IJCE focusses on higher education as an autonomous domain, as well as an indivisible sector of civil society. The linkage between higher education and its globalized surroundings reflect deeper “ambivalent relations” as Philip G. Altbach has depicted: “both involved and withdrawn, both servicing and criticizing, both needing and being needed”. 6

Thirdly, this issue of IJCE establishes a framework for the analysis of the multidimensional functions of globalization as they affect contemporary higher education. The risks inherent in globalization driving higher education to become a world-wide business are evident in the increasing role of private investment, the steady incorporation of educational services based on international trade agreements, and the massive expansion of knowledge delivery through diverse forms of information technologies.

In sum, risky trends driven by globalization are paralleled by initiatives of internationalization. Together these form a new framework which can be used at both institutional and system levels. The institutional level is composed of “multiple activities, programs and services that fall within international studies, international educational exchange and technical cooperation.” 7 The system level comprises systematic efforts of governments to make higher education responsive to the requirements and challenges related to the globalization of societies, economies, and labor markets.

In an effort to explore these multidimensional characteristics of globalization and its complicated relationship with higher education, this issue of IJCE comprises the work of scholars from different parts of the world, with diverse cultural and academic backgrounds. The first article written by the widely noted American scholar Joel Spring provides a thorough and highly detailed critique of human capital theory in its newest guise. His paper exams how human capital ideology encompasses consumerism working as driving forces in global economics and what role international organizations, such as OECD, the World Bank, and a host of global education businesses play in dominating educational policies around the world. The article provides a sharp and penetrating attack on new products designed to test and assess students, among which PISA is the major target that has drawn participation of nations and regional partners that represent 90 percent of the world economy. These new products not only create global standards, stimulate cross-national uniformity in school curricula for the knowledge required to function in everyday life of a globalized economy, but also promote the international sharing of educational ideas that support marketization, privatization, and systems of accountability. As an alternative, the article proposes a new paradigm for global school systems: education for a long and happy life, more fully demonstrated in Spring’s A New Paradigm for Global School Systems: Education for a Long Life and Happiness. 8 As a Chinese scholar, I think Joel Spring’s critique in IJCE is quite enlightening for my colleagues in the Chinese mainland where the past 30 years of economic reforms and opening to the outside world have brought rapid economic growth with a very heavy dose of human capital theory from the West. Spring’s critique of human capital ideology, consumerism, and the global testing products provide us with a fresh angle for university scholars in China to view globalization. Furthermore, his espousal of education for human happiness rather than for GNP represents an alternative vision about how to value education from both measurable functions and invisible essence. Finally, the article offers timely suggestions and constructive policy design for education practices in emerging countries like China.

The second article by Anthony B. L. Cheung, former president of the Hong Kong Institute of Education, offers an analysis from the perspective of Asian scholars. He argues that Asian values and scholarship serve as a counter-force to the European route to modernity and an alternate to the Western-centric globalization of higher learning. He vividly depicts Asia as an emergent hub of higher education. At the same time, he expresses concern over a general loss of purpose in universities worldwide. As the West dominates the process of globalization as it sweeps across higher education systems around the world, Asian traditions are threatened by Western knowledge norms. To address this problem he advocates the renaissance of Asian traditions and scholarship. Asian systems can take advantage of globalization and develop an alternative model. Asia’s contribution to global higher education can add vitality to the pursuit of knowledge and the meaning of life. To accomplish this, there needs to be a greater recognition of Asian scholarship and knowledge. This includes developing a language of Asian scholarship and research for a more internationalized setting.

The third article by a couple of Portugal’s most innovative thinkers on public policies for higher education systems focus on higher education systems in transition economics and developing regions. While using a human capital perspective to speak to policy makers, Manuel Heitor and Hugo Horta call for more innovation, experimentation, renovation, diversification, specialization, and a legal status for universities in developing countries that promoted autonomy and responsiveness to society. The role of the university is as an autonomous and independent knowledge infrastructure able to create knowledge and promote creativity. Their research shows that international academic and scientific cooperation shapes development at an unprecedented level a major goal for emerging economies is to develop an “inclusive way” to foster attractive and competitive research and learning environments for training young scientists. For them, the creation of international partnerships can improve governance of teaching and research.

Other articles contributed to this issue of IJCE by scholars from South Korean and Mainland China discuss the issue of bilateral cooperation between countries and with international organizations, as representing an important practice of internationalization. Jisun Jung’s article examines international research collaboration, particular co-publication among Chinese and Korean academics. Using the online Science Citation Index database from Web of Knowledge and other quantitative data, Jung analyzes the growth of cross-border partnerships among individual academics and reveals a change in the patterns of scholarly cooperation from 1975 to 2010 in China and South Korea.

The Chinese mainland and South Korea are the two Asian systems with the most rapid growth rates in research productivity worldwide. Both share similar progress and patterns in terms of government-driven higher education policies. This echoes Anthony B. L. Cheung’s notion of Asia’s rise as a hub for international higher education. It also resonates with “glocalization” as a concept, which emerged first in Japan as a business strategy, was later adopted by American sociologists, and has become a part of the social scientific discourse. Habibul Khondker renders glocalization as a “simultaneous globalization of the local and the localization of globality . . . expressed as the twin processes of macro-localization and micro-globalization.” 9

Finally, each issue of IJCE also aims to publish important policy reports that are of global interest. In this case, there are two reports: “EU and China: Race for Talent—Relevance and Responsiveness of Education and Training”, and “EU-China Student and Academic Staff Mobility: Present Situation and Future Developments.” These reports emerged out of the policy dialogue between the European Commission and the Chinese Ministry of Education. Their joint research project was carried out in 2009. The first report examines the ‘race for talent’ from the perspective of relevance and responsiveness. The report represents the strong desire for education and training to help the China move away from “made in China” and toward “designed in China.” The second report focusses on student and academia mobility between the European Union and China. It highlights obstacles that need to be removed to improve the transnational mobility for the acquisition of new skills. This trend is unmistakable. In 2011, over 339,700 Chinese students went abroad for study in more than 100 countries with US, Australia, Japan, UK and Canada as the top five destination. 10 In the other direction, there were over 290,000 foreign students studying at 660 universities and higher learning institutions in China. 11 Yet, there is an imbalance in proportion of student mobility between Europe and China of 1:5. Most of Chinese students in EU countries pursue full degree studies, while 90% of EU students in China are in short-term training programmes. 12 From one perspective, this represents China’s weakness in “soft power” and reminds the country of the necessity to prioritize all-round social development.

As members of the world community, scholars are more aware than most that higher education has become a decisive factor to enhance the country’s economic development and international competitiveness. Many believed that their few places have become “more subject to the process of internationalization and globalization than university”, 13 and “internationalization opens up more desirable opportunities than it produces dangers” for the higher learning institutions too. 14 As the debate on the concepts and ideologies of globalization continue, IJCE takes this opportunity to engage scholars inside and outside of China in a common dialogue that is central to the future of educational research and development in China.

As a final remark, I express my appreciation to the authors and editors who are helping to build bridges between China and the world by their scholarly contributions to this and future issues of IJCE.