Dr. Liu's message on HUST situation

I repost Dr. LIU Liming's message here. Hope he doesn't mind.

Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 09:06:23 +0800 (HKT)

I would like to add a bit more on this, partially to clarify a few points.

Yes, HUST could not make to the top 9. According to my conversation with

some key people at HUST and others, there is nothing anyone can do about

this. On the other hand, the so called top 21 is more symbolic. There is

no direct financial implication. The presidents of the 21 universities

will be given the rank of vice provincial governor, that is all.

The ministry of education is really on HUST's side. Partially under their

insistence, Hubei agreed to joint with MOE to support Wuhan U and HUST

as key universities (at much lower intensity than those of the top 9,

MOE will give 300m and the local goverment match this amount. The top

9 get at least twice this amount).

The current round of changes in higher education is very much driven by

Li Nanqin personnelly. Unless one can change his idea or find someone

more powerful than him as a strong supporter, there is little that we

can lobby about.

On the bright side, HUST was rank second in the latest round of science

and technology progress awards at MOE (Tsinghua is 1st, but HUST gets 6

1st prizes while Tsinghua gets 3). HUST's weakness is in academic quality.

If every one of us (working in acamedics abroad) can jointly publish one

paper on a international journal with a HUST faculty, say in the next 3 years,

we will do HUST a big service.

Best,

Liming

HK U of Sci. and Tech.