高等教育における国際連携

上海交通大学・ミシガン大学の事例

抄録

This paper presents an empirical study of international collaborative education offered at an Institute which was jointly established by two leading universities of China and the US—namely Shanghai Jiaotong University and the University of Michigan. The Institute was formed in Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2006 under the regulatory scheme “Chinese–Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools”; it offers undergraduate, masters, doctoral, and international collaborative programs in the field of engineering. Adopting a case study approach, this work aimed to explore the prospects and challenges generated through international collaboration in higher education. Qualitative data were acquired by document analysis and semi-structured interviews with key informants. The author first examined the motivation of each parent university to pursue the establishment of the Institute, explored the outcomes of the collaboration, and finally discussed the remaining issues. The findings generated from the case analysis were as follows.
The US parent university intended to create an educational/research hub for their students and faculty in China to provide opportunities of collaborating with Chinese students and researchers at the Chinese partner university. It also expected to gain access to high-achieving Chinese students for recruitment to graduate programs in the US parent university. Another intention was to enhance its reputation in China through the collaboration with the Chinese parent university, which is a leading higher education institution in China. Meanwhile, the Chinese parent university particularly aimed to gain know-how in academic–industrial partnership, enhance international competitiveness through joint research, and improve the quality of their education by importing advanced educational resources and curriculum through the collaboration.
While the data of this case analysis reveal that most of the objectives of both parent universities were achieved satisfactorily, complexity was also observed. As depicted above, one of the objectives was to strengthen the research collaboration between the existent departments, the Institute, and the US parent university. The research collaboration however remains limited; there is an emerging competition between the existent departments and the Institute in terms of student recruitment. This is attributed to the duplication of the programs offered by the existent departments and the Institute. Furthermore, a so-called “brain drain” has emerged as a complex issue. A large portion of the graduates of the Institute have pursued advanced degrees at graduate schools mostly in the US, and most of the graduates have been admitted to graduate programs at the US parent university. For the US side, this initiative can certainly be recognized as a successful outcome. By contrast, for the Chinese side, it presents a complex issue in terms of retention of highly skilled human resources. Another remaining challenge is the inequality of access to the programs offered at the Institute. Although the Institute is considered an academic department of the Chinese parent university, its tuition fee is much higher than those of the existent departments. Consequently, access to the programs at the Institute is limited to students from affluent families.