College revolution is not just academic
Mainland universities mostly see grades as the sole measure of a good education, but pressure is now growing for a more rounded approach
Gong Ke, president of Nankai University, is launching an ambitious reform of education at the alma mater of China's first premier, Zhou Enlai, in a bid to shift the school's focus from chasing academic results to developing students' potential and sense of responsibility.
"We want to cultivate talent which cares about society and is able to serve society," Gong told The South China Morning Post. "We want to return to the core spirit of education that's been long missed."
But Gong, a 57-year-old veteran educator who moved to head Nankai in January 2011 after running neighbouring Tianjin University for more than four years, is finding the task a challenge.
It took him about a year to persuade his staff to endorse a proposal to shift the focus of education, including cutting the time students spend in the classroom in order to allow them to undertake social activities and perform community services, he said.
The way Gong thinks about education may not sound earth-shattering to Westerners, but very few mainland universities have made serious plans such as his to overhaul the system. Higher education was resumed on the mainland only in the late 1970s after the decade-long Cultural Revolution threw the nation into turmoil and forced schools to close nationwide.
Since then, mainland universities have boomed. A number of them, such as Peking University and Tsinghua University, where Gong served as vice-president from 1999 to 2006, have made it into the rankings of Asia's best tertiary institutions.