【China Science Daily】Zoom in on Sino-Foreign cooperative education mode: Interview with WKU’s Chancellor Dr. WANG Li

Recently, Chancellor Dr. WANG Li was interviewed by China Science Daily, expressing his views on the Sino-foreign cooperative education mode.

Dr. WANG Li has served as the Chancellor of Wenzhou-Kean University (WKU) since 2019. WKU is a Chinese-American jointly-established higher education institution, striving for building an excellent international university with world-class education.

In the interview, WANG talked about the Sino-foreign cooperative education mode as an administrator and a coordinator.

As a university administrator, WANG gave his perspective on the personnel management. WANG said that Chinese and American universities were quite different in this regard. He once witnessed that it took only a few hours for Kean USA to dismiss an incompetent employee. While for domestic universities, they may consider more on the dismissal.

As a coordinator, the Chinese counterpart should resolve the contradictions between two sides in running schools. Currently, the Sino-foreign education institutions adopt such a government structure where the Chancellor shall act as the executive officer, and serve for the Board of Directors. Take WKU for example, Kean USA is responsible for academic and teaching affairs, while WKU is responsible for handling the relationship with the local government and managing domestic student affairs. “In the position setting, the situations of two sides are quite different. Some common positions in domestic universities, such as counselors, are not recognized by the United States.” said WANG. He solves this problem by setting up new positions in the name of growth consultant and dormitory tutor, which function similar to counselor, avoiding conflicts between two parties.

As for handling the relationship with the local government, WANG said that the Sino-foreign cooperative universities differed from domestic universities in terms of institutional arrangements and governance structures. However, they follow the same policies and regulations currently, which is not suitable. He hoped that the local government would make policy adjustments for Sino-foreign cooperative universities to ensure their long-term development.

Together with Dr. WANG Li, XI Youmin, President of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, LIU Wenhua, Acting Chancellor of Guangdong Technion Israel Institute of Technology, and BIE Dunrong, Dean of Institute of Education, Xiamen University, etc. were also interviewed.

Writer: CHEN Yue