Some weeks ago PhD student Mr. Yi Wei, also Vice Chairman of the Association of Chinese Scholars and Students in the Netherlands, wrote an open Letter to the Editor of the UT Nieuws, the weekly newspaper for the University of Twente. He showed serious concerns about the reputation of the UT abroad, especially in China.
The high percentage of Chinese students in TSM's and TO's international course groups would prevent enough opportunities to them for taking real advantage of being in an international study environment. Next to this he worried about the admission policy of the UT of giving admittance to Hogeschool graduates. In the second case he referred to public information sources in China. Since the TO master programmes are mentioned in this letter, I would like to react to this letter.
First of all I would like to stress that bringing this kind of "inside-information-from-abroad" to the public is very important. Although we in TO have already a nearly ten years' experience with approving, teaching and accommodating groups of foreign students, critical judgments and information from those who are far more familiar with the cultural characteristics and higher education background and context in their own countries, is essential. This applies particularly to countries as China, whose young undergraduates recently showed a booming interest in going abroad for further academic studies, also to the Netherlands and to the UT. A meeting with Mr. Yi Wei revealed a lot, mainly about how in China all kinds of information about overseas studies are made public rather easy and often not carefully checked by editorial boards.
We can only accept this as a reality that we cannot change, but it urges us to take measures to know what is published in China journals and Internet. We are happy that Mr. Yi Wei showed his willingness to help us in this respect. Regarding his concern that in China it is told that in TO-masters also Hogeschool bachelors are admitted, I want to state that we (like other universities) in exceptional cases have done so. In these few cases the intake we did and the references we could collect convinced us of the more than required entrance quality of these candidates. However, there are far more we did not approve for one of our three master programmes, like a lot of undergraduates from Chinese universities. But again, it is difficult to fight rumours far away from here.
With respect to the high percentage of Chinese students, we completely agree with Mr. Yi Wei's concern. From our experience we would accept a maximum of 30% in a student year group coming from the same foreign country. With these numbers it proves to be possible for the course management and for the teachers to make enough mixing arrangements in class work and in outside class assignments and practicals. In our HRD programme we are surpassing this percentage a little this year, with regard to the number of Chinese students. In our two other master's programmes (ETSD and TAET) we do not.
It seems to be very relevant to ourselves and to other (future) UT study programmes to make up one's mind about what to do if the number of admissible Chinese students will grow in the near future. Our Faculty is exploring the opportunities for co-operation with two Chinese universities in order to develop academic and teaching capacities in these institutions to be able to deliver one or more of our master's programmes in China. This alternative goes without the big flavour of being abroad in an internationallearning environment, but yet could be a suitable study opportunity for qualified Chinese undergraduates who are not able or do not want to go overseas, to do a postgraduate study programme on newest themes in education and training, in their own country, but connected to a Faculty and to students in the Netherlands and the UT. Although the common and official judgment in China about distance education now is negative, because of regarding it to be of low quality, in the future this mode of teaching-learning interactions, making use of the newest technologies, will create new ways for students to have some international experiences without travelling abroad. Again, we should look for new modalities to accommodate a growing number of very motivated and hard-working Chinese students who selected UT master programmes to continue their academic development.
Cees van Vilsteren
Director International Education
Faculty of Behavioural Sciences
University of Twente
