Fwd: Relocate HUST to Shenzhen?!

cai 发表于 2000/02/02 08:32 华中科技大学校友论坛 (www.hust.org)

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>Subject: Relocating HUST to Shenzhen?!

>Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 21:10:17 +0800 (HKT)

>From: fzhong @ ctimail . com

Dear All,

Re: Relocating HUST to Shenzhen?!

With recent drastic changes of every facet of Chinese society to

converge into international community, the reshuffling of Chinese

higher educational system is inevitable and actually is well under its

way. The future of the HUST is very much a concern to every HUST alumni

including myself. Here I offer some of my views on the issue with the

aim to initialize the discussions and hopefully produce genuine and

concrete recommendations/suggestions for HUST to consider. I believe

that strong leadership with strategic thinking/planning is absolutely a

must for HUST to survive this critical time of changes, and prosper in

the future.

In many people's perspective including those promoter of university

mergers, HUST is just a product of the planned economy which belongs to

the past. HUST's mission, to train engineers for industry (mostly heavy

industry and automotive) construction in central China regions (all

according to central planners' blue print), has been well served.

Restructuring higher education system is only part of the central

government's efforts in getting rid of burdens of the old planned

economy to adapt to the new market economy. Owing to the constrained

financial resources, governments simply can not afford to support every

university, but a few selected. Furthermore, China is a highly

rank-conscious and seniority-oriented country. As a new kid on the

block, HUST is naturally disadvantaged in this exercise of selection of

elite's club, no matter how its past performance compared with the old

guys. Specifically speaking, Wuhan U. is a vice-ministry level entity

which is senior to HUST even in Wuhan. Under the official guidance of

"One province, one university", it might not be surprised at all that

the Hubei provincial government choose Wuhan U. to embrace rather than

HUST, regardless of the qualities of teaching and research.

It is the cold reality and dire challenge that HUST is currently

facing. HUST really has to reposition itself, formulate and execute

future development strategies which should be jumping out of the

constraints of its geographic location as well as the thinkings of old

planned economy type. I believe it may be just a waste of time to act

like a crying baby to beg the governments for kind considerations. If

HUST has already lost favors from the central government and the local

provincial government, then we have to opt the other way out--the

market. It is exactly the same situation as faced by all university

graduates. University graduates used to be assigned a job after

graduation, then government said that they can no longer be guaranteed

a job and have to hunt their jobs in the market by themselves. That's

fine, most of them have become far better off and realized their values

in the market. With its economic development lagging behind other more

developed provinces/cities, Hubei/Wuhan can not afford to support two

key universities and then make HUST redundant. HUST has to find its new

home where its value can be mostly appreciated and acknowledged. And

Shenzhen is such a place that HUST should seriously consider as its new

home.

As a venture capitalist myself, I can sense the desperate need for the

Shenzhen government to have a good university in order to enhance its

competitiveness in China's new economy which is characterized being

technology-intensive and knowledge-based. The firm I am working with

initially chose Shenzhen as our prime location for investments in

hi-tech & high-growth companies, and then switched to Zhongguanchun of

Beijing and Shanghai as our new focus largely because of the very

existence of Tsinghua, BeiDa in Beijing, and JiaoDa, Fudan in Shanghai.

Lack of a good university and thus quality hi-tech talents become a

vital weakness for Shenzhen in the rally of becoming China's Silicon

Valley. Without Stanford, there would be no Silicon Valley at all.

However, Shenzhen has strength that other major cities do not have,

i.e., financial strength, frontier of China's economic reforms, solid

foundation of hi-tech industries, openness and dynamics, all sorts of

things that HUST as a new-type research university mostly sought after.

What HUST can offer to Shenzhen then? Some of HUST's credentials can be

quoted as follows: top-rated (continuously ranked within top 10), 10

members of Chinese Academies of Sciences and Engineering; strength in

R&D in applied science and engineering subjects, as well as the fact

that over 4000-strong HUST alumni who have contributed significantly to

Shenzhen's economy, etc. I believe those credentials would be

definitely appealing to Shenzhen government. As a matter of fact, my

suggestion to re-locate HUST to Shenzhen is not purely out of

imagination. According to Shenzhen alumni association, one senior

official of Shenzhen government has offered HUST to acquire Shenzhen

Polytechnic to set up a HUST branch. I can not understand why not

pursue!

The essence of market economy is about re-allocation of resources in

order for supplies to meet demands. The geographic distribution of good

universities in China has far from being truly reflected the reality of

economic development and market supply/demand situation, because of the

historical reasons and old central-planned economic system. USTC

(University of Science & Technology of China) is another typical case.

Feeling to be ignored in the backyard of Hefei city (USTC actually

being included in the list of top 9 national universities), USTC alumni

have been also aggressively seeking opportunities to relocate its

campus (I happened to know that they are also considering to move to

Shenzhen). Therefore HUST should have the sense of urgency to act

quickly otherwise others will take the opportunity. I understand it is

by no means a simple matter and therefore we need a strong leadership

to orchestrate HUST's next move toward the new millennium. I urge

either Shenzhen alumni association, leaders of the university, or

prominent HUST alumni to take the initiative to make the plan come into

reality.

Let's leave the heavily-polluted industry backyard (who also abandoned

HUST) behind, and heading for the blue sky and the hot land in the

south --- Shenzhen!!!

Your comment are welcome. And happy Chinese New year!

Zhong Xiaolin

An alumnus in Hong Kong

At Sun, 21 Nov 1999 11:21:57 +0800 (HKT), you wrote

>

>

>Dear All,

>

>RE: Merger with Wuhan University --- case re-visited

>

>The degrading of HUST into the third tier school is more than

>disappointed for many of HUST alumni as well as faculties. I was told

>that the President of Southeast University (formerly Nanjing

Institute

>of Technology) was crying after hearing the news(Southeast U. has the

>same fate as HUST for refusing to be merged with Nanjing U.). I don't

>know if any HUST faculties were so emotional, but it must be

>frustrating and agonying experience for many HUST faculties who

strive

>to make HUST great for the past decades. I can feel their pain.

>

>The ranking of schools seems to be irrelevant for many of alumni who

>left HUST long long time ago, in particular for those who are no

>longer in academic circle. However, where you graduated from still

>consistues an important part of our curriculum vitas, and sometimes

is

>critical for certain jobs in the marketplace, although it carries less

>weightfor those who have owned their advanced degrees from US or UK

>universities. The fate of our alma mater does concern most of alumni.

>

>It seems that it is the determined national policy to form larger

>universities through merging the smaller ones and to re-allocate the

>limited national resources for education (todays' CCTV news about

>Tsinghua taking over the Central College of Arts has confirmed this).

>I feel that HUST's "let me alone" attitude in this wave of higher

>education reform is somehow childish (lack of calculation),

>short-sighted and deems to be a losser.

>

>Althogh HUST has achieved a great deal in recent years, its

>achievements should never be exaggerated and its reputation is far

from

>being established. Looking at the ranking statistics of Chinese

>universities conducted by the Sina net this year will tell you all.

In

>general HUST was ranked the 15th, but the ranking of reputation

>trailed the 30th(if I recall correctly), and the ranking of student

>selectivity (in terms of the average college entry exam scores) was

the

>33rd! This fact speaks louder than any other figures about the quality

>of HUST. Should you know that someone who ranked the 33rd in your

high

>school could be admitted to HUST, I seriously doubt that you would

have

>chosen HUST in the first place. As far as I know, many of HUST

students

>before were top-ranked in thier high schools and deserved much better

>schools by current admission standards. Many of US might have chosen

>HUST by accident rather than by its reputation due to the fact that

we

>were badly ill-informed. Given the current severe blow HUST suffers

and

>much better-informed applicants nowadays, you should not expect that

>the brightest(and even the second best) would choose HUST.

>

>You may also have the same personal experience as myself that when

you

>told people that you finished your college in Wuhan, people(in

>particular those from Taiwan or overseas) would assume that you

>studied at Wuhan U. It is no denial that Wuhan U. is a brandname and

>enjoys much better reputation than HUST. Facing the cold reality,

HUST

>should review its overall strategy and return to negotiation table to

>create a win-win situation for each party. As indicated by Prof. Li

Zhu

>(a prominent figure in instrumentation and measurement field in China)

>in the last years' alumni gathering in Hong Kong, we might be much

>better off by merging with Wuhan U. since the merger exercise could

add

>great value to each party. Given the current situation, I definitely

>agree that we would lose nothing by dropping the name of HUST if

>certain merging conditions are met. Those conditions include but not

>limit to the following: (1). Include the new Wuhan U. in the top 10

>national university list; (2). Replaing all graduation and degree

>certificates issued by HUST with the equivalent of the Wuhan U.; (3).

>Management control of the new university by HUST.

>

>You might defend the not-merging decision by quoting the Harvard-MIT

>case in the past. Yes, it is highly admirable and respectful for MIT

to

>unamously turn down very attractive acquisition offers from Harvard at

>the most difficult times in MIT's histroy, and MIT has survived the

>crisis and prosper nowadays. However, we should bear in mind that

China

>is not the the US and HUST might be anything but the Chinese version

of

>MIT. You can see the vast difference between MIT and HUST just by

>looking at the student selectivities of these two schools. Both

Harvard

>and MIT are private schools and they can prosper with their own merits

>in the reasonably fair competition environment of US. In China and in

>Asia in general, private universities do not enjoy high status in the

>society. And HUST in no doubt is and will be a public university in

>China. Without sufficient public funding and government endorsement,

>HUST will not have the resources (financial strength, qualities of

>faculties and students, etc.) to be a good university.

>

>For the sake of the future of our university and the benefits of tens

>of thousands HUST alumni, I urge the top management of HUST seriously

>consider this merge suggestion and take action immediately. Otherwise

>we can do nothing but let the HUST sinking and our hard-owned degrees

>become worthless.

>

>Your comments and suggestion are welcome.

>

>A HUST Alumnus

>

>Dr. Zhong Xiaolin, Investment Manager

>Transpac Capital Ltd., Hong Kong

>

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