Linda Yeung of the South China Morning Post reports on a formerly cash-strapped private college in Shanghai that has reinvented itself to become the first liberal arts college in mainland China, with the goal of nurturing graduates who can think out of the box. Here's what she tells us about the "Yale of Shanghai": more ›

Starting in 2013, New York University in Shanghai (NYU Shanghai) will begin enrolling students on its Lujiazui campus. According to Xinhua, it will be the first university jointly operated between China and the United States. more ›

Dow Jones Newswires reporter Michelle Korn on the growing tide of Chinese students applying for enrollment at American graduate schools. more ›

Investigators from the Chinese Embassy in the United States have been dispatched to Dickinson State University in North Dakota, which has recently gained a reputation for being a diploma mill for foreign (mostly Chinese) students. Dramatic details of the case according to the Shanghai Daily: more ›

A popular American English teacher has been helped out with her medical bills by her students and former colleauges at Xiamen University, after she made notice her struggle with Parkinson was financially and mentally engraving on her too heavily. more ›

Foreign universities may all be flocking to China but Chinese universities are also taking the first tentative steps overseas. Shanghai Jiaotong University is setting up a new research centre with the National University of Singapore to work on Energy and Environmental Sustainability Solutions for Megacities. more ›

Duke University's Academic Council has voted 44-8 to approve a master's of management studies degree to be offered by the university's Fuqua School of Business in Kunshan, a city just a stone's throw away from Shanghai. The university described the program thus in a statement on its website: more ›

UC Berkeley's College of Engineering has announced a new partnership with the Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park to develop what it describes as a "a platform for expanding industrial and academic research collaborations in Asia and fostering global learning opportunities for Berkeley students." more ›

Students from China at U.S. colleges and universities surged 23 percent this year to 157,558, accounting for more than a fifth of all international scholars in the country. more ›

Bo po mo fo! Shanghai's universities will be offering preparatory courses for incoming foreign students soon, with 'one or two' universities taking part in a pilot program this September. Currently only offered at Tongji University, the prep courses mostly focus on acclimating students to Chinese language and 'culture' (which most likely means making dumplings, fumbling through calligraphy and the odd chengyu here and there). Special 'academic shortfall' makeup courses in math, physics and chemistry will also be available for quantitatively disinclined Western humanistic education products. Not that we could quantify it or anything, but we'd argue that the square root of certain countries' national debt problems might be a widespread cultural aversion to mathematic thinking. But then again, there's something to be said for de-emphasizing cold numbers in favor of artsy-fartsiness, no? Any sensitive poet would be within their rights to poo-poo the People's Square metro for not 'singing' enough. more ›

The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Asian University Rankings for 2011 are out, and the top ten positions have all been filled by universities from Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korea. more ›

This could be a scene right out of a mass wedding conducted by the Moonies, but it is actually part of the centennial celebrations of Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University. Over 400 couples, among them the faculty members and graduates of the university, took part in the two-day mass wedding that began on Friday. more ›

"FUDAN University has teamed up with Harvard University and the University of Tokyo to launch open online lecture classes. This is seen as another step forward by local universities developing web resources. The Sandel Classroom will be held six to eight times a year, focusing on a wide range of topics, including how people should survive disasters. Michael Sandel, an American political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University, delivered a lecture to students from the three universities for the first time over the weekend. "It's great to attend the class and talk with students across the globe," said Kuang Shenda, a student at Fudan's School of International Relations and Public Affairs. Previously, Fudan launched lectures on NetEase Open Course. Other universities have open courses on iTunes U and other public platforms." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Sir James Dyson, inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner, has warned that Chinese students are spying on British universities to steal technological secrets, and have even planted software bugs that continue relaying the information to China long after they have graduated. more ›

Leave it to New York University, the second-largest property holder in New York, to be one of the first American institutions to try and design a building here just for them. According to the student paper, Washington Square News, NYU is coming to Shanghai in full force. more ›

China has worked hard to overcome its brain drain problem. In the past 30 years it has fought to improve the prestige of its educational institutions, uphold the promise of economic growth and prosperity, and provide a prosperous and comfortable environment for its educated elite. But in spite of the country's efforts, a good portion of educated Chinese still seek opportunities for a one-way ticket abroad. According to a Gallup survey conducted in November 2008, one in five college-educated Chinese wants to emigrate permanently to a foreign country. more ›

The State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs has issued new guidelines on salary levels for foreign instructors at China's many higher education institutions. more ›

A human rights protestor, described as a Western-looking man with dark hair and in his early twenties, has been detained by UK police after he threw his shoe at Prime Minister Wen Jiabao while he was delivering a speech at Cambridge University. According to The Times, the young man blew a whistle as Premier Wen was about to wrap up his speech, shouting:

“How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator? How can you listen to these lies?”

“Stand up and protest, you're not challenging him.”

The Shanghai Daily reports yesterday that a senior at the Shanghai University of Engineering Science who was accused by his teacher of cheating in an English proficiency test was so distraught he jumped from the fifth floor of his school building. As a result:

The student, Zhang Meng, is now lying in an intensive care unit at No. 1 People's Hospital in Songjiang District, the news Website, eastday.com, reported today. more ›

While searching the web for Tianma Shan, we stumbled upon this helpful site by Robin Zhang, "the software designer of JetPhoto." Clicking around a bit, we found this neat panorama of the University of Shanghai (沪江大学) in the 1920s. We also found these current photos of the old University of Shanghai buildings, which are now part of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology [official site | map] in Yangpu District on the Huangpu River. We found this all kind of interesting — we had never heard of the University of Shanghai, which was founded in 1906. We probably should have, since we have a friend who recently graduated from USST. Here's what she said: more ›

Sad news from the Shanghai Daily:

FOUR college students died after falling off the balcony of their six-story dormitory at Shanghai Business School while trying to escape a fire early this morning in Xuhui District, police said. more ›

• Those of you who want to buy a cheap DVD of the Olympic opening ceremony had better hurry up as the Shanghai Culture Inspection Team is planning a crackdown on pirated versions of this show. No worries though, the official DVD of the ceremony will still be available RMB 55.
• Just as school is about to start Shanghai has been listed as the most expensive city for university and college students in mainland China. According to the China News Agency's, a university student in Shanghai needs to spend about RMB1000 on food and housing each month. In the cheapest city for students, Chongqing, just RMB500 would suffice each month!
• As anyone living here will have noticed, a storm with heavy thunder and rain — the worst in 100 years — hit Shanghai on Monday the 25th. No casualties have been reported, but over 60 of the city's streets were flooded.

Interesting piece by France24 on Shanghai student, Qiu Gonghao, who appears to be having the time of his life studying at the Ecole Polytechnic in Paris, one of the top engineering schools in France. Will this chap ever choose to come back to Shanghai, we wonder? more ›

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A BBC report (proxy needed) talks about the Confucian schools that are now thriving across China. And why are parents sending their kids to such schools?:

"Traditional culture has many advantages that cannot be learned by modern education," says Yu Fang, the mother of a three-year-old pupil. "It emphasises virtues like kindness and self-discipline. It is very good for my son and very good for Chinese society as well." Another mother, Wang Ching, agrees: "This is a material world, people want a higher standard of living and they are focused on material things, not spiritual ones." Modern China, with its headlong rush for growth, needs more balance and more of the social order and courtesy extolled by Confucius, she says. Confucianism and Communism have never been happy bedfellows... [read more]