China gains SPbU’s experience in higher education internationalization
China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE) has visited St Petersburg University to gain our experience in higher education internationalization. The negotiation were held with the SPbU’s Deputy Rector for International Affairs Sergei Andrushin, Head of the Office for International Educational Collaboration Anna Porodina, and Deputy Head of the Office of Educational Programmes Irina Grigorieva.
Collaboration with the Russian companies is the Association’s overarching priority, says CEAIE’s Deputy Director Zu Yuanyuan. “Russia is the largest partner of the China’s international One Belt, One Road initiative, and we collaborate on the highest level. We particularly focus on exchanging our experience between China’s universities and our foreign partners, and quality assessment of international education in China”, — said Ms Zu.
Our Chinese colleagues asked us to tell about the University’s policy in education internationalization and our plans in expanding cooperation with the Chinese universities. SPbU’s Deputy Rector Sergei Andrushin said that our priority is increasing the number of international students and professors, variety of educational programmes in foreign languages, and international joint publications. Now the University and China’s universities are implementing a number of research projects and negotiating joint degree programmes. Moreover, with the support of the Ministry of Education of China, the University is planning to open its representative office in the Harbin Institute of Technology and developing a project on opening a joint university of SPbU and HIT. For the last 15 years China has opened about 9 joint universities. “It is an incredibly massive and complex project”, — said an official from the Ministry of Education of China Huo Dengke.
They also discussed education of Chinese students in SPbU. Head of the Office of International Education Anna Porodina told that the Chinese students were particularly interested in Journalism, International Relations, Economics, Management, Earth Sciences, and Biology. At SPbU, there are about 1.3 thousand students from China. The main difficulty Chinese students encounter when visiting Russia is a language barrier, that is why students from China are recommended to have Russian courses.
China continues to spur interest in our students. Each year, SPbU is increasing the number of the educational programme with a focus on China. Deputy Head of the Office of Educational Programmes Irina Grigorieva said that ten of the educational programmes, especially Law with a focus on Chinese language, were the most popular with the Russian students.
At the end of the meeting, our Chinese colleagues said that they were immensely interested in our collaboration and invited Sergei Andrushin to work as an expert at the China Annual Conference for International Education which was to be held in Beijing in autumn in 2017.
For reference:
China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE) is a national non-commercial organization in China with a specific focus on international exchange in education. Founded in 1981 in Beijing, CEAIE encourages close collaboration between the Chinese and international universities, carries out research in higher education internationalization and provides quality assessment in international education in China. CEAIE comprises 616 universities in China.