Shanghai Diary

In 1872, thirty Chinese schoolboys sailed to the United States to commence university education.

This first organized foray into international education on the part of China was the fulfilment of a long and hard-fought dream on the part of Yung Wing, a southern Chinese official who had been educated at Yale through the support of an American missionary teacher. Yung's motives were more or less "liberal"; a convert to Christianity as well as to other aspects of western culture, Yung saw the prospect of a more open and modern China depending on the experience and knowledge that such a group might gain in the USA.

Others who supported or acquiesced to the mission were more suspicious or at least circumspect, hoping that the boys would acquire knowledge that might help guard China against the West. Their concerns were not unreasonable; this was in the immediate aftermath of the Opium Wars, when western engagement was an obviously malign force in China, not unreasonably feared and rejected.

The experiment was relatively short-lived, and the mission that had sent these "China Boys" (as they were known among their associates in Connecticut) was recalled in 1881, after it was perceived that its participants were adopting western customs and losing their Chinese identity and loyalty.

This piece of history has a variety of sequels, as successive groups of Chinese students have travelled to the West. In each period there has been an inevitable relationship between the policies and hopes on the part of the state that have allowed, impeded or driven students, and the realities of China's relationships with the rest of the world.

There have been other instances of withdrawal, such as the Cultural Revolution, when those who has studied overseas, or otherwise participated in higher education, were stigmatized and often severely punished.

There have also been other instances of state-driven engagement, as at present. Today many students from China are traveling abroad - including to Melbourne, in increasing numbers - carrying ambitions fostered by recent decades of liberalization and economic development. Such projects are again viewed with hope, but also imbued with a new confidence, given China's emergence as an unquestioned world power.

Engaging Students

Based on extracts from the Morpeth Lecture 2008, given at Christ Church Cathedral Newcastle for the Anglican Diocese and the University of Newcastle, April 17 2008

Australian higher education is undergoing what has been described as a “revolution”. Its precise form is so far unknown, but the Federal Government is undertaking a fundamental review whose consequences might be far-reaching.

Not all the challenges the universities face have been fully or publicly recognized. There is a wide recognition that under-resourced campuses and crowded lecture rooms do not always really match the qualities and aspirations of the students and staff who inhabit them. Yet there is a related challenge that goes deeper than facilities, to the heart of the educational process and its aims.

There is an emerging national conversation about issues labelled "student experience" or "engagement". The results of a survey released by the Australian Council for Educational Research just last week make an important contribution to that discourse. The Australasian Survey of Student Engagement examines "what students are actually doing, highlights the most critical aspects of learning and development, provides a ‘learner-centred, whole-of-institution’ perspective, and gives an index of students’ involvement in study".[1]

Principal author of the report was Dr Hamish Coates, a former resident tutor and President of our Senior Common Room at Trinity College. The report, Attracting, Engaging, Retaining, contains some very positive data about how students experience Australian university education. It also suggests that there are areas, such as significant interaction between teachers and students, and enrichment of the educational experience through broadening activities outside the classroom, where measures of Australian students’ engagement with the university experience lags significantly behind their American peers’.

This is a particularly interesting and significant area to reflect on from the Collegiate perspective. Having begun life as a residential College community, Trinity has sought to maintain a sense of community where teachers and students are ultimately colleagues, "members" of the College as our constitution puts it. And since our purpose has always been broader than the provision of curriculum, activities beyond the classroom have always been crucial to the learning experience.

While we should be encouraged by the emergence of a serious discourse in Australia about student experience. it is less encouraging to see it being presented under a title “Attracting, Engaging and Retaining” students, indicating perhaps that many leaders and policy makers do not yet see engagement and experience as the heart of education, but adjunct to it, or even just as a means to maintain enrolments. In fact an educational vision that is unashamedly and primarily focussed on quality of student experience is ultimately more likely to succeed at attracting and retaining, as well as engaging.

Yet this is a challenge for us at Trinity too. There is no doubt that what we are able to offer students in the Collegiate environment is exceptional. Perhaps the challenge we face, together with the University and other Colleges, is how to make this kind of educational experience more widely available, and less the preserve of an exceptional and privileged few.

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[1] Attracting, Engaging and Retaining: New Conversations About Learning (Camberwell, Vic: ACER, 2008)