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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Opinion -> 
Shenzhen cries for local universities
    2018-07-16  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

Wu Guangqiang

jw368@163.com

AS a rising star, Shenzhen has created an unprecedented economic miracle since its birth as a special economic zone in 1980. Despite its epic growth in industry, commerce and technology, however, Shenzhen has its own shortcomings, one of which is higher education.

A count of universities and colleges in China’s major cities will reveal the striking gap between Shenzhen and others. Currently, Beijing has 92 universities and colleges, including the country’s best ones like Tsinghua University and Peking University. Shanghai has 59, including prominent ones like Fudan University and Tongji University. Shenzhen’s neighbor, Guangzhou, boasts 83.

By contrast, Shenzhen’s universities are merely beyond the single digits: 12, which is hugely disproportionate with the sizes of its population and economy. Even Wuhan, a second-tier city in Central China with a similar population to Shenzhen, has 80 higher education institutes.

Kang Yufei, dean of the Graduate School of Tsinghua University Shenzhen, suggests that Shenzhen should have at least 50 universities and colleges to accommodate its future development. The view was echoed by Li Yue, associate dean of Shenzhen Polytechnic, who proposed that 35 to 40 vocational colleges should be in the blueprint of Shenzhen’s higher education development.

Given the fact that Shenzhen has grown from scratch, its weakness in higher education is understandable, as the construction of educational infrastructure and cultivation and training of educational talents take time.

For quite a long time until recent years, Shenzhen University (SZU) had been the city’s only institute of higher education. Established in 1983 and dubbed the “father of Shenzhen universities,” SZU has encapsulated the history of the birth, growth and thriving of a university, into a flash of 30 years. It is regarded as the fastest-developing university in China. Its most famous alumnus is Ma Huateng (Pony Mar), the founder and CEO of Tencent.

SZU’s achievements in academic teaching and scientific research are impressive. In 2017, it received a total of 970 million yuan (US$145 million) in research funding, a historic high. So far, it has been assigned 279 items under the Science Foundation Programs, ranking 2nd among the universities in Guangdong Province and 23rd nationwide. In 2017 it had 2,126 research reports cited by the Science Citation Index (SCI) and 198 by the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). A total of 2,160 scientific research results were awarded with various rewards and 306 patent applications were granted.

To catch up with other educational leaders in the number of institutes of higher education, Shenzhen has quickened its pace in creating new universities with the aim at building a number of universities meeting international standards. Over the past few years, Shenzhen has ushered in several new universities, including the Southern University of Science and Technology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shenzhen MSU-BIT University, and Shenzhen Technology University.

Shenzhen’s ambition to hop from a latecomer in higher education to a leader is commendable, but caution and practicality are necessary.

Shenzhen authorities must be careful not to make heavily invested institutes “image projects” or “achievement projects.” It will be in Shenzhen’s best interests to develop Shenzhen’s higher education on the principles of “meeting the local demands, combining high-level research and teaching with application of practical knowledge and skills.”

An obvious flaw with the existing blueprint of Shenzhen’s higher education development is its disconnection from the city’s primary and urgent needs. Among others, all the existing institutes and the planned ones are for national enrollment, with none chiefly admitting local students who are not qualified for any of the prestigious universities in other cities. This not only deprives local students of options of receiving higher education locally, but also is divorced from the actual needs of Shenzhen’s economic and social development.

In addition, excessive emphasis has been placed on building first-class institutes with world-level scientific research while the importance of such basic education as technical and vocational education and teacher training has been ignored. Building a castle without a solid foundation is pointless.

Shenzhen needs to nurture Nobel Prize laureates, but what it needs more are qualified teachers, doctors and nurses, and skilled technicians and craftsmen. As a city whose population is about to exceed 20 million, Shenzhen is faced with a serious shortage of those professionals.

(The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)

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