The road to China has not been smooth for Duke University.
The prestigious college’s effort to open a campus here has been beset byconstruction problems, Chinese red tape, and faculty debates back home in Durham, N.C., about the value and cost of the venture. The opening of the 40-acre campus, which is located outside Shanghai, has been delayedseveral times.
But after five years, Duke finally welcomed students to the campus in October. Administrators at Duke Kunshan University, as the new institution is known, chalk up any issues to the effort’s aspiration and size.
"It is a very ambitious project," says Mary Brown Bullock, Duke-Kunshan’s executive vice chancellor. "To start a whole, new campus, there will be inevitable delays with the planning and with the construction."
She says the university "can make a difference in Chinese higher education and American education" by easing the exchange of teaching and research ideas and pioneering a new form of university governance in China.
Yet the opening comes at a difficult time politically for American educational ventures in China. China’s leadership has tightened controls on academic freedom in the country, while U.S. lawmakers are scrutinizing American universities operating here. Last month, Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, called for an examination of agreements like the one Duke signed with the Chinese government, asking whether American colleges had made "quiet compromises" in the process.
Administrators at Duke Kunshan and other branch campuses in China say that isn’t the case. However, Duke’s experience does show that working here requires an almost constant negotiation with Chinese partners and offers a window into the challenges universities face as they build bridges to this Asian nation.
Many Western universities approach China "with rose-colored glasses," says Jason E. Lane, director of educational studies at the Rockefeller Institute of Government and an associate professor at the State University of New York at Albany. "American universities go overseas and often forget they are not in America anymore. In China you don’t know what you don’t know until you are there."
Construction Woes
To be sure, doing business here is hardly easy for anyone. Multinational corporations have learned hard lessons that no matter how influential a company is, in China, it’s the Chinese way or the highway. One high-profile example was Google’s decision in 2010 to shutter its search engine in China after refusing to adhere to the country’s Internet censorship policies.
Indeed, Duke administrators say that to operate in China requires a willingness to adapt to ever-shifting circumstances, a mantra the university has repeated since its plans were announced in 2009.
Duke Kunshan U., the new 40-acre campus of the prestigious university, in a Shanghai suburb, opened in October. While on campus, the institution’s 100 students can access websites like Facebook that are blocked elsewhere in China.
The Duke campus, which was originally slated to open in the fall of 2012, ran into a variety of construction issues. The local government, which is picking up the $200-million building tab, at times chose contractors ill-equipped to build a state-of-the-art facility, says a Duke official involved with the campus, who spoke only anonymously because of the sensitivity of the project. "There was a very different level of understanding when it came to quality," the source said.
Duke Kunshan officially started courses in August, but students and professors had to live and hold classes for nearly two months in a hotel because the campus wasn’t ready. Many students said the temporary housing was not a problem, but it did draw a rebuke from at least one undergraduate, who wrote in the Duke student newspaper that "aside from academics, DKU does not meet Duke University standards."
Since the opinion article was published, students have moved onto the campus, where five of the six buildings are complete. In all, the university has enrolled 103 students, meeting Duke’s goals, and is offering master’s-degree programs in management studies, global health, and medical physics, and a one-semester undergraduate program in interdisciplinary studies.
Aside from the construction issues, dealing with government rules and Chinese politics was perhaps more challenging. The rules governing so-called Sino-foreign joint universities are extensive. Among other requirements, Western universities must have a Chinese university partner and receive approval from various levels of government, including the education ministry, to set tuition and get permission for the educational programs that will be provided.
'Wires Got Crossed'
While Duke officials say such steps went smoothly over all, there were bumps. "Just as Duke has its own constituencies, the Chinese partners also have their own constituencies," says Nora Bynum, Duke Kunshan’s vice provost. "It takes a lot of discussion and a lot of hard work to keep the project moving in one direction. There were times when wires got crossed."
Ms. Bynum says one sticking point was that China’s education ministry wanted Duke Kunshan to start with undergraduate degrees, which Duke did not want. Ultimately, Duke agreed to offer the interdisciplinary-studies program, which has enrolled 61 undergraduates, mostly from China.
Duke is considering offering an undergraduate degree in China within the next five years, but Ms. Bynum says the university has yet to commit to putting its name on the degree.
While Duke was willing to compromise on the undergraduate offering, Ms. Bynum said there were some nonnegotiable items, like the university’s role in supervising educational quality and setting conditions to ensure academic freedom. On campus, for example, students are able to access academic journals and websites like Facebookthat are typically blocked in China.
Such concessions have not decreased concerns that, over all, the environment for open academic inquiry and discussion is worsening. In recent years, the Chinese government has cracked down on dissident professors, barred some American scholars from entering the country, and banned certain topics, like freedom of the press, from being taught in Chinese university classrooms.
At Duke, Thomas Pfau, a professor of German and English who has long been critical of the China campus, says he is less concerned about "heavy-handed Chinese censorship" than self-censorship. He says the administration may limit what is taught to avoid a "public relations fallout."
Ms. Bullock counters that the government has ensured the university that professors can "teach what they want to teach" and that students can "learn what they want to learn."
Jeffrey Lehman, vice chancellor of New York University’s campus in Shanghai, which opened in 2013, says such pledges have held up. He writes in an email that "when NYU Shanghai was set up, NYU was promised complete campus academic freedom. That promise has been kept."
For example, Mr. Lehman says, NYU Shanghai faculty members organized a forum in September to discuss the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, news of which has been heavily censored in mainland China.
Ultimately, Ms. Bullock says, Duke Kunshan is a bold experiment that, despite a rocky start, will enhance higher education and academic pursuits in China.
"We are modeling new forms of governance," she says. "These are cutting-edge things that might really make a difference here. China is embarking on rather extraordinary innovation models with partners at a time when the political direction of the country is maybe less certain."
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/In-China-Duke-U-Navigates-a/151021