Apart from the ‘shock and awe’ of China’s dizzying expansion of higher education, the implications for global knowledge production, productivity and innovation, economic competition as well as intellectual property and the flow of knowledge and ideas are potentially quite staggering. As this article by the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher observes, questions will be asked of course about the quality and relevance of the qualifications churned out by these new institutions, but it would be rash indeed for the rest of the world to under-estimate the Chinese achievement.
‘Success,’ Schleicher writes, ‘will go to those individuals, universities and countries that are swift to adapt, slow to complain and open to change.’
Take note, everyone.
Glen Fisher 