Ruth Hayhoe

• Ph.D
• Professor at University of Toronto

Liberal arts education is usually regarded as a legacy from the Greek and Roman classics, adapted in American universities, with little awareness of its deep roots in Confucian heritage education. In this paper, we begin with an introduction to the liberal arts in Chinese Christian universities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries where Chines...

This chapter reflects on Comparative Education and Comparative Higher Education in relation to the emergence of a Dialogue among Civilizations in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. It challenges the domination of Western-derived theories, whether those of modernization or Marxism, and reflects on the enrichment that can be found through an em...

This paper was invited as a commentary on the keynote paper for this special issue by Simon Marginson and Lili Yang. The paper begins by noting the importance of a fully balanced approach to comparison in higher education, that gives equal value and weight to Sinic and Anglo-American views by adopting a transpositional approach and also recognising...

These reflections were invited by the editors of this special issue to provide a frame for analysing the significance of this set of articles on “Higher education and the state in Greater China.” They are framed around the three elements of modernity identified by Francis Fukuyama in his book The Origins of Political Order – the modern state, the r...

Internationalization has become a new landmark of Chinese higher education, measured by indicators such as personnel mobility, number of offshore/joint programs and international publications. Chinese universities have moved from isolation to the forefront of internationalization in a short timeline and amid the dramatic expansion of Chinese higher...

The paper begins with a brief vignette of Angkor Wat in Cambodia as a great center of learning, and then highlights the traditions of Indian monastic institutions which had deeply influenced its development. It then turns the main features of the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, showing how they created a space for women’s scholarship to flourish. T...

This paper begins by reflecting on the significance of the 16th World Congress of Comparative Education Societies which was held at Beijing Normal University (BNU) in August 2016. Part I focuses on China’s experience in educational development since the late 1970s, and the support provided by organizations such as the Canadian International Develop...

This chapter begins with some reflections on philosophy and comparative education. The philosophical ideas of East Asia are taken as an “other,” from which to look comparatively at some of the fundamental values that underlie educational thought in the West. Given the history of European colonization, and the attraction European models had for mode...

Book review published in 'Frontiers of Education in China'.

Book review in 'Frontiers of Education in China'.

This chapter describes the emergence of normal schools and universities in Europe, with values distinctive from those of the dominant university model. It then considers the historical experience of Japan and China in developing normal schools and universities at different time periods under influences coming from continental Europe, the United Sta...

Canada was one of the first Western countries to sign an agreement to provide development aid to China in 1983, and the Canadian International Development Agency invited universities to cooperate in ways that would facilitate “the multiplication of contacts at the thinking level.” In Canadian Universities in China’s Transformation, leading schola...

p>This article illustrates two features of emerging joint venture universities in China, the requirement of formal partnership between a Chinese and a foreign university, and the substantial financial provision made for these new institutions by towns and cities in the Eastern Coastal region. Contrasts in curricular scope and the potential for attr...

The Chinese government has been investing hugely in elite university schemes in order to raise some universities and programs to a world-class level. This move has triggered a worldwide competition in efforts to create world-class universities, as well as some discussion over whether or not there is an emerging Chinese model of the university. In t...

In China, after the revolution of 1949, the percentage of engineering enrollments rose, and polytechnic universities have also developed. China's top polytechnic universities have unique advantages with governmental support for serving national competitiveness. The greatest disadvantage faced by polytechnic universities is their limited curricular...

This article explains how diversity has been maintained in spite of the homogenizing pressures of globalization on Chinese higher education. As a result of national policy and institutional initiative, normal universities, agricultural universities and universities focusing on minority cultures have maintained their unique identities.

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This commentary on Wu Zongjie’s article ‘Interpretation, autonomy and transformation: Chinese pedagogic discourse in a cross-cultural perspective’ begins by suggesting the usefulness of Wu’s polar opposite depiction of Confucian and modern pedagogy as ideal types for comparative exploration. It goes on to suggest that the term ‘modern pedagogy’ may...

This paper attempts to address connections between the Chinese model for development or the “Beijing Consensus” and Chinese universities. Chinese universities seem to be caught between serving governmental agendas and pursuing their own goals as an academic community. Up until recently, they had become used to following the lead of the government,...

This paper attempts to address connections between the Chinese model for development or the "Beijing Consensus" and Chinese universities. Chinese universities seem to be caught between serving governmental agendas and pursuing their own goals as an academic community. Up until recently, they had become used to following the lead of the government,...

This article looks at a series of university linkages between Canadian and Chinese universities that were supported by the Canadian International Development Agency as a result of a development agreement signed in 1983 between the two governments. It first reviews relevant theoretical literature on higher education in a global context, and discusse...

This article looks at a series of university linkages between Canadian and Chinese universities that were supported by the Canadian International Development Agency as a result of a development agreement signed in 1983 between the two governments. It first reviews relevant theoretical literature on higher education in a global context, and discusse...

This paper is a personal reflection on a lifetime experience of bridging the values and ideas of two distinctive faith traditions: the Christian and the Confucian. The author has chosen to focus on the lives and beliefs of two great teachers: St. Paul in Europe of the first century CE and Confucius in China of the 5th century BCE First the context...

Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University (NWAFU) is the only public university in our study located in the Northwest region of China, an area that has been a considerable focus of development aid and infrastructure investment from the central government in recent years. Located in Yangling, not far from the major city of Xi’An, the NWAFU has a...

East China Normal University (ECNU) is unique among our twelve case institutions as the only normal university, also the only university in the major coastal metropolis of Shanghai. This chapter thus begins with a brief historical overview as a background for understanding ECNU’s role in the move to mass higher education. From there it looks at the...

This book has been truly a collaborative effort, with four scholars in the inner circle of our efforts to understand China’s universities as they have been transformed through the massification process of the early 21st century, and many other scholars contributing in diverse ways. In the autumn of 2005 we made application to the Social Sciences an...

It is fitting that Peking University (affectionately known as Beida for short) should be first of the portraits of China’s universities in the move to mass higher education because of its unique role in modern Chinese history. In our talks with its leaders, faculty and students, we caught the sense of an institution that is constantly under observa...

This chapter presents a portrait of the Yellow River University of Science and Technology, which is located in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. In some ways it is rather surprising that the first fully fledged private university to develop in post-Deng China should have been founded in this large agricultural province, which is considered...

The Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan provides an interesting contrast to the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), which has been profiled in Chapter 9. While the USTC resisted pressures for both merger and the rapid expansion of undergraduate enrollments, HUST embraced a complex merger and more than tri...

Xiamen University (Xiada for short) is located on the Southeastern coast of China, looking out towards Taiwan to the east and the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia to the south. While this is an open coastal city, there is a sense of geographical isolation from the rest of China, due to the mountainous terrain of Fujian province. Geography has th...

This chapter is based on a keynote address given for a historic ministerial round-table conference held in Hong Kong on July 14, 2011, to celebrate the completion of an educational reform process begun in 1997, the year Hong Kong was reunited with mainland China after 155 years as a colony of Britain.1 Invited to comment on the educational reform p...

This book examines the ways in which China’s universities have changed in the dramatic move to a mass stage which has unfolded since the late 1990s. Twelve universities in different regions of the country are portrayed through the eyes of their students, faculty and leaders. The book begins with the national level policy process around the move to...

In Chapter 3 of this book, William Cummings noted the emphasis on human resources and on economic and social priorities that have characterized the development states of East Asia. He then suggested that these states are now moving beyond a century-long strategy of “catching up” with Western science and on to new possibilities of knowledge creation...

This well-rounded volume provides many important insights into issues of concern in the aftermath of China’s dramatic expansion to a mass system of higher education, between 1999 and 2006. The work of fifteen authors — eight in mainland China, five in the United Kingdom, and two in Hong Kong — its ten chapters are based on detailed and up-to-date e...

The establishment of normal colleges and universities is an important component of building a modern country, which possesses different value ethos with the universities. The emergence of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and the local normal schools has set a new model for teacher education around the world and promoted values and knowledge pa...

Wang Chengxu was born in 1912 in the small county of Jiangyin, in southern Jiangsu province, a coastal province stretching north from the city of Shanghai. He has been one of the most influential figures in comparative education in China, and it is fascinating to note that the other outstanding scholar of comparative education, Gu Mingyuan, was bor...

Gu Mingyuan was born in 1929 in the small town of Jiangyin, about halfway between Shanghai and Nanjiing in southern Jiangsu province. His father was a secondary school teacher and his grandfather was a shop assistant in a tea store. The rest of the family lived by subsistence farming, as they did not own any land. However, the location of Jiangyin...

This essay focuses on the use of ideal types within different theoretical frameworks for the comparative analysis of culture and values. It emphasizes the importance of cultural agency, and the potential for enhanced understanding and the anticipation of future developments through exploring deep‐level cultural patterns. The essay is written as a p...

Pan Maoyuan was born in 1920 in the city of Shantou, on the eastern coast of Guangdong province to a family who lived in extreme poverty. The fact that he was able to gain a basic education was remarkable, given the family’s circumstances. His love of teaching led him to apply for studies at Xiamen University on its war-time campus in Changting on...

Lu Jie was born in 1930 into the family of a professor in Shanghai, China’s most open and international city at the time. She grew up in the turbulent period of the Sino-Japanese War, and the Civil War. In 1949 she made a crucial decision, which she has never regretted – to refuse her father’s help to go the United States for higher studies and joi...

This book is being written in order to sketch out portraits of eleven influential educators in contemporary China. My purpose in writing the book is to make possible a subjective account of some of the important educational ideas and values of Chinese culture, through the lives of educators who have lived through a century of dramatic change, suffe...

Zhu Jiusi was born in 1916 in the city of Yangzhou in northern Jiangsu province, to a family of modest means. Like Wang Chengxu, he benefited from the progressive educational environment of the province in his early education, though his life choices and career were closely related to the tumultuous political developments of the time.

Wang Yongquan was born in 1929 to a father who had grown up in an impoverished rural family, similar to that of Pan Maoyuan and Wang Fengxian. His father had managed to study abroad, however, and returned to Shanghai as a professor in the mid-1920s, later moving to Beijing. Wang grew up in Beijing during the dark days of the looming Japanese invasi...

Xie Xide was born in Quanzhou, Fujian province, in 1921, into a family that prized education. Although she spent much of her youth in Beijing, and her career as a scientist and university leader in Shanghai, she did her undergraduate studies at Xiamen University, and thus was a fellow student of Pan Maoyuan, whose story has been told in chapter fiv...

The eleven portraits of influential educators and their institutions, which have been presented in this book, give us a sense of the diversity and richness of the Confucian educational tradition.

This chapter presents portraits of influential educators of two generations. Professor Liu Fonian belongs to the same generation as Professors Wang Chengxu, Li Bingde and Zhu Jiusi. He was born in 1914, and had a distinguished career before 1949, including some years in England, France and Germany in the late 1930s. He was a member of the organizin...

Wang Fengxian was born on the Changshan islands, to the northeast of the city of Dalian in 1928. His early life and history was greatly affected by the turbulent developments in this part of China over the first half of the 20th century. For Japan, Dalian was a crucial entry point for its incursions into Northeastern China, which it dominated and e...

This chapter puts Chinese higher education in the context of modernization and globalization. It identifies particularities in China’s response to these phenomena, with highly developed traditions shaping the modern institutions that emerged under the influences of Western capitalism, then of Western socialism, and finally of globalization.We begin...