The Chronicle of Higher Education - February 10, 2012

ject matter and open discussion. “It’s quite
free, and I like that.”
Ms. Davis, who is head of the English de-
partment, says she and her fellow professors
have enjoyed developing courses, like the
one on American culture, that dovetail with
their own research interests. General edu-
cation “allows us to teach our own stuff,”
she says.
Indeed, sometimes the faculty response
has been overwhelming. At Hong Kong Bap-
tist University, for instance, the new director
of general education, A. Reza Höshmand, in-
herited an unmanageable 235 approved gen-
eral-education courses.
That hasn’t always been the case. Efforts to
create liberal-education programs or colleges
at China’s top institutions have not been uni-
versally supported by faculty, who worry that
the liberal-education program could siphon
resources or lead to changes, both in instruc-
tion and structure, in their own departments.
“In principle, everyone says it’s a beautiful
thing, but when you put it into practice you
meet many, many barriers,” says Cao Li of
Tsinghua. “It is something added to the cur-
riculum, like an appendage.”
Others are not convinced that under-
graduate-education reform is the way to go.
Xudong Gao, vice director for the Research
Center for Technological Innovation at Tsing-
hua, argues for new curricular models at the
graduate level. Earlier stages of study, he
says, are more suited for teaching fundamen-
tals and for knowledge transfer.
Teaching American
Nerves wake Wu Hai at 3 a.m. every Fri-
day, five hours before his weekly class on
ancient Chinese thought begins. Mr. Wu, a
young professor at Boya College, stands awk-
wardly in front a computer screen, projecting
fragments of text onto the wall behind him.
Once he gets started, however, he speaks flu-
idly, even energetically, about shifts in the
philosophical traditions between the Han,
Tang, and Song dynasties. But only occasion-
ally does he pause during the 100-minute lec-
ture to allow a student to murmur a question
or comment. While most in the class of 20 sit
alertly, in a corner, one puts her head down
and naps.
Lecturing without discussion is an anath-
ema to many American scholars of the lib-
eral arts. “What are they going to do, have
the professor tell the students how to think
critically?” says Kathryn Mohrman, only
half joking. But given the long history of
teacher-centered learning in Asia, it may
not be realistic to expect academics there
to fully embrace the seminar-style give and
take that is a hallmark of U.S. classrooms,
says Ms. Mohrman, director of the Univer-
sity Design Consortium at Arizona State
University and an author of a forthcom-
ing essay on general education in China.
“Maybe the pedagogical style doesn’t move
as far.”
It’s not just professors who have bought
into this more passive approach. “Students
think if a teacher is not lecturing, they’re not
doing their job,” says Jing Lin, a University
of Maryland professor who is working on a
project to introduce more participatory styles
of learning at Chinese universities.
It can be slow going. During a new gen-
eral-education course at Hong Kong Poly, a
lecturer asks for volunteers to enact a scene
in which they demonstrate empathy, part of
a lesson on social competence. There are no
takers. “I’ve talked quite a bit,” the lecturer,
Allen Dorcas, prods, “and even if you’re not
tired of listening, I’m tired of talking.” Fi-
nally, a pair of students are persuaded to per-
RICKY WONG FOR THE CHRONICLE

form a brief skit in which one consoles the
other after his mother’s death.
Lynn Ilon, a professor of education at
Seoul National University, says many of her
students are sharp, sophisticated thinkers; it’s
just that they have not been encouraged to
speak out. “When they’re given permission,
they’re incredibly creative,” she says.
Ivy Tang, the Boya student, says her fa-
vorite class in her three years of study is one
taught by a professor from Columbia Univer-
sity, one of several outsiders who have sup-
plemented the college’s small staff. “He had
much experience in teaching,” says Ms. Tang,
who hopes to attend graduate school in the
United States. “He taught us as if we were
in America.”
Asian studies at the University of Adelaide,
in Australia, says confusion about the re-
forms stems from a fundamental misconcep-
tion. Asians might talk about “liberal educa-
tion,” but “they’re just borrowing the brand.”
To Westerners, it means creativity, critical in-
quiry, and self-examination. But in the East,
Confucian tradition seeks to cultivate a good,
knowledgeable, thoughtful individual, one
who serves society and community.

Borrowing the Brand
This raises the question: Can a Western-
style educational approach work in a more-
closed system like China’s? Can one educate
liberally in a society that’s anything but?
Carol Geary Schneider, president of the
Association of American Colleges and Uni-
versities, expresses a fair amount of skepti-
cism that liberal education will sweep Asia.
It’s a way of thinking, not just a “patch” to
be superimposed on an existing system, she
says. “It’s not just adding the humanities and
stirring.”
For those who find Asia’s infatuation with
liberal arts misguided, this hodgepodge ap-
proach is indicative of the field’s inherent
weaknesses. Sin-Ming Shaw, a Hong Kong
investor and economist, who has been a vis-
iting scholar at a number of Western univer-
sities, including Harvard and Oxford, decries
the reform efforts as “me-too liberal educa-
tion, American style. Pretty mindless.”
“I have serious doubts about the value of
a liberal education, especially when no one
really knows how to define what it is,” he
says.
But Delia Lin, a Chinese-born lecturer in
“What are they going
to do, have the professor tell
the students how to think
critically?”
“mainly about how to meet the demands of
the society.”
“It’s shaped by its context, by the needs of
China,” Ms. Wang says.
Harkening back to ancient Mandarin roots,
many of the experiments are unapologetically
aimed at elites: The 400 students in Tunghai’s
Po-Ya School of Liberal Arts live in a sepa-
rate dormitory, have faculty mentors, and are
enrolled in special courses and cultural pro-
grams like calligraphy, music, and fine arts.
At Tsinghua, small groups of engineering and
management students, just a couple of dozen
apiece, participate in gifted-education pro-
grams that combine the humanities with their
major curriculum. The Boya College selects
30 top students a year, plucking them from
the pool of roughly 8,000 incoming freshmen
through an extensive interview process. Not
only do the liberal-arts students have to mas-
ter English, Greek, and Latin, but the archaic
Chinese texts even tripped up a native-speak-
ing translator.
To be sure, there are efforts to make sure
all students get a taste of general education—
beginning next year, all Sun Yat-sen under-
graduates will have to take a selection of in-
terdisciplinary electives—but such projects
require funds and faculty expertise, some-
thing in short supply in provincial or poorer
universities.
The result could be a two-track system,
says Kathryn Mohrman of Arizona State. At
some institutions, the reforms may be “more
form than substance,” says Ms. Mohrman,
who was director of the Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity’s Nanjing center. “A few liberal-arts
classes in college are not going to make you
blossom into a critical thinker.”
What will it take for reforms to truly take
hold? Japan, after all, has been flirting with
liberal education since just after World War
II, when it was introduced by American uni-
versities; such efforts have amounted to little.
Universities in the region have gained inter-
national prominence for research, not teach-
ing. In South Korea, educators and business
leaders talk about the need for more innova-
tive graduates, “but at this stage,” says Lee
Seongho, a professor of education at Chung-
Ang University, “it’s a gesture at best.”
The Western liberal-arts tradition can’t,
and shouldn’t be easily adopted by Asian
universities, many say. “We have to look to
the student who comes to us,” says Xu Ning-
sheng, Sun Yat-sen’s president. “If we only
copy from the U.S., I don’t think it will fit.”
In the end, the efforts to reform undergradu-
ate education, while importing what educa-
tors in the region see as the best of the West,
are likely to look unmistakably Eastern.

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