The Christian Science Monitor has a fascinating story about the mind-boggling rate of growth in the Chinese higher education system. Although, as an academic, I've been aware of this trend, I was truly amazed by some of the numbers in the Monitor's story, including
1,300 new private universities started in recent years
College enrollment has tripled since 1998
Chinese officials expect at least 20 percent of high school grads to be enrolled in some form of higher education by 2010 - rising to 50 percent by 2050.
The number of science and engineering Ph.D.s nearly doubled between 1996 and 2001
These numbers are truly impressive, and represent an immense challenge for the United States. The number of American high school graduates pursuing science and engineering degrees (never mind Ph.D.s) is certainly not growing in a similar way. At the same time, the level of scientific and technical knowledge desirable for the workforce of the 21st Century is continuing to increase. Significant advances are coming daily in fields like computing, nanotechnology, biomedical science, robotics, engineering and pharmaceutical research, to name but a handful. Much of this progress is being made through university research programs, sometimes using federal funds. Major progress is also being made in the private sector, through companies who are desperate for technologically and scientifically trained employees. These aren't your average jobs either - pay in the private sector in technical jobs is pretty good by almost any standard. Anyone in high school today who pursues a technical career path is basically guaranteed to lead a comfortable life. The potential for an economic boom, centered on science and technology, and kept sharp through healthy competition with countries like China and India, seems to be waiting to be exploited. However, unless we can convince more high schoolers to follow this path, the U.S. is going to be competing from quite a way behind the pack. Just look at the scope of the changes in the Chinese system
At Tsinghua, this year's seniors have been among the first to feel the impact of attending one of the seven institutions tapped to compete with the Harvards and Sorbonnes of the West. The school has boosted exchanges with foreign scholars and recruited them to teach, and is offering some classes in both Chinese and English. Known for several decades as the MIT of China, it is requiring more general education and allowing undergraduates to enroll in a dozen schools, from management to architecture. Most faculty have studied abroad. Extracurriculars are popular, from the venerable chorus to a recently added crew team. Virtually all students are familiar with English, and many speak it with an almost easy familiarity.
As William Kirby, dean of faculty at Harvard, and a China scholar, remarks in the article
"It's stunning the degree to which China has reemerged as one of the leaders in the developing world, and a leader in the global development of technical talent, ..."
"China has an enormous market of well-educated people who are primed to go to college," says Kirby. Now, he says, it is making an enormous investment in that talent." In a couple of weeks I'm headed to China. For the first week there, I'll be lecturing at a summer school on cosmology at Zhejiang University, in Hangzhou, near Shanghai. The Christian Science Monitor article describes this university as "newly reorganized" and reports that "for example, has grown from about 10,000 students in the mid-1990s to about 45,000, in part through consolidation with other universities." In the second week I will be in Beijing, speaking at a Symposium on Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. This symposium is another example of China's explosive growth in science. As my invitation letter put it
The symposium, hosted by the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will be held in Beijing August 22-26, 2005. It is a part of an explorative effort for the Chinese scientific community to enter the exciting field of cosmology in both theory and observation/experiment.
More informally, one of the people who invited me told me "China wants to get into cosmology and so is inviting some people to tell them about it." Of course, there is already some cosmology going on in China, but this is a bold step, and it will be interesting to see the scale of China's planned involvement in the field and how rapidly it occurs. I'll certainly be reporting here about my China trip, hopefully while I'm there, but certainly when I return. I'm very excited about it, since although I've traveled to Asia a couple of times before, I have never been to China. It's going to be a busy trip (I'm giving two or three long lectures at the summer school and a presentation at the symposium), but I'm hoping to get something of a feel for the country outside of my hotels and the universities. Our hosts are even taking us to the Beijing Opera!
