“University is about exchanging ideas with people.”
Interviewer: Leo --- L
Interviewee: Professor Phil Harris --- H
I met with Prof. Harris on Tue afternoon at Coolava, acafé bar beside school library. After a brief introduction of himself, Prof. Harris showed me clips that will go online next Feb, which feature some of the subjects in the The SAGE Handbook of International Corporate and Public Affairs.
Credit to SONG Yanhua
No doubt that China is going global and its soft power has become one of the determining factors in the whole process. Can universities be of any help, after all, they representingsuch power to some extent? The view of Professor Harris is thatbest education is about dialogue, possibly giving answer to the development of a university in China’s internationalizationprocess.
Following is the interview with Prof. Harris and his views about the university as a “responsible corporate/organization” to students, companies and the society as a whole in the Age of Innovation.
L: The 13th 5-year plan stresses the innovative role of university, so how should university interact with corporates especially an increasing number of start-ups in China today?
H:Actually I think China has already had it (interaction) going. I see many incubators or accelerating programs in China today, and universities all have areas where students can form businesses and bring in outsiders for investment.
The trend in China is that large organizations are undergoing reconstruction, so consequently there is going to be the demand for more creative and smaller or medium size business, which will give birth to entrepreneurs. Jack Ma is just the role model that set up a business and then it became, you know, sensational and went public in New York. Chinese students are quite good at digital business; I think what China has nowadays is the platform for innovation.
Small enterprises may well look into environmental issues, I met a guy 3 years ago, I remember in Beijing. He was then already working on environmental issues with government. The business was small, like an advisor for municipal penalty, marching to trees planting and recycling water materials. So I guess there is going to be a lot of opportunities foryoung people and for resolving those issues.
Innovation means bringing products into market so people could use them. Quality service, or service delivery and couple of other areas, which are in dire need will see significant growth.Innovation process of an incubator is to get businesses coming in, government coming in to meet students and thendifferent sizes of businesses can be set up. Finally, after the incubation, university can get them back to share experiences. It’s a bit like filming production or journalistic production.
I think eachuniversity or college really should have an innovation incubator site and their investors as well.
L: So can alumnibe of any help in the process?
H: Yes, they may want to invest in the future generation, maybe through a fund established or bypossibly setting up a staring committee, in which alumni can put their interests in it and give advice. Another critical thing for early entrepreneur is to have mentors, who can be chosen from their alumni as well.
L: As a former dean of University of Chester, you must have done a lot of promotion of the university into China. So what can Chinese universities learn from your experience if they want to go global?
H:I will look into universities that doing very well, and part of what I do is to go around the world to see which university is doing well and which wants to do well. Clearly, the university must have a good brand, which was built on good students, staff and range of organizations to support them. The other thing is internationalization: more international staff and a reasonable number of international students, which means you have to get the balance right where university and students can have an exchange of cultures.
I’ve been to some places in the U.S. where universities are miles away from a town or almost at the middle of a field and you’ve got to have a bus to go there. You wonder why there are universities almost in every society too far away. What I believe is that the university is about exchanging ideas with people.
Here, for instance, Beijing Foreign Studies University, you got the government and major universities close by, quite a lot of companies and great access to transport, an enviable place, I think. And you brand yourself as the premium language university in China.
Chester is a historic city; it’s one of the safest cities in Britain. Environmentally, it’s green and attractive just like Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford. Also, you have to ask whether the university is strong enough to support the community around it. In this sense, the University of Chesterplays a significant role in Chester where a major wing manufacturer for Airbus is located and many advanced agricultures develop.
Another factor is called employability, which means students can get jobs after graduation. It’s critical for a university or an organization to give back to the community and society. Or otherwise there’s a doubt. So the CSR side is not only for large corporate
I think the Chinese universities especially top 10 have quite ability to compete with universities around the world.
L: There is a new form of learning & teaching online called MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses), famous university like Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford,opened their courses online. Do you think that MOOC is a great system for university and students to exchange ideas with one another?
It depends which way you look at it. I think MOOC is a good idea because at least it allows students to see all the materials. The criticism is that as soon as you want to register for a course, it costs you money as much as a normal course. So for me, the MOOC is merely a promotion system.
I quite like “Open University” (http://www.open.ac.uk/), the largest MBA provider of the world. If you go on their website, you can pay to study around the world. And the cost of the qualification on MOOC is relatively cheaper.If you are going to get a Harvard part-time MBA from a MOOC, it only charges about a quarter of a million.
L: Is side knowledge or language skills something that will attract students?
H: Of course you can get a badge from learning a free course, including side knowledge like designing a PPT/presentation, and language skills but almost all the premium courses of a certain university are fee-based.Online informationis the thing why people especially youngsters are going crazy;for example, Short Profile Course, Currency 50 million,
Bigger courses, being able to download and share is the value of MOOC, because it extents the university and provides more people with service. On the other hand,despite all sorts of forms of study, people still find the 1-1 learning the most effective, but we forget that sometimes.
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