Date: June 15, 2021

Source: Outlook Weekly

Author: Zheng Tianhong

JNU President Song Xianzhong has given an exclusive interview on June 15 to the Xinhua News Agency's Outlook Weekly on How to Develop a 'Double First-Class' University With a Higher Level of 'Opening-Up Education.'

Outlook Weekly: What's your opinion toward JNU's opening-up education?

Song: We must make overall plans for our foreign educational programs in a more comprehensive way with a pragmatic attitude; carry out educational exchanges and cooperation based on the realities of different countries and regions; and innovate in methods, approaches, measures and country choices. We also need to build a new pattern. Besides insisting on no social discrimination in teaching, we also need to focus more on personnel training. For example, it is important to cultivate high-quality talents of all kinds for Hong Kong and Macao, and to attract more outstanding overseas talents to study at Jinan University.

Outlook Weekly: What are the advantages of JNU's opening-up education?

Song: There are bright prospects. On the one hand, the students at our school are from more than 100 countries and regions in the world. Students from five continents gather at Jinan University, creating a good platform for students’ international exchange. On the other hand, students have certain demands for international communication and study. The JNU Academic Affairs Office and the Development Office once conducted a return-visit survey to the students who had graduated five  and ten years before to ask how they feel toward our school after graduation. Among them, 68% said the international exchange and overseas study experience had the biggest impact on their personal development. Therefore, our school’s educational exchanges and cooperation programs have done a great job in personnel training. We should let our students communicate more with overseas students so that more students can have a broader international perspective.

Outlook Weekly: As a school for overseas Chinese, internationalization is a major feature of Jinan University. Then how can JNU present this feature better in the developing process of the double first-class initiative?

Song: International exchange and cooperation are one of the key points in the performance evaluation of double first-class, and it is also important in various aspects such as personnel training, faculty training, scientific research, social services, cultural inheritance and innovation. As a university for overseas Chinese, it is Jinan University's honor to spread Chinese traditional culture to all corners of the world. It is important for foreign friends to understand, have the willingness to know and accept our culture. In addition, schools should consider how to play a better role in serving national initiatives and major strategic arrangements. The competition between big countries in the future is actually a competition between science and technology and human resources. How to introduce more overseas talents and make Chinese schools a reservoir for the overseas talents? All these problems are worth thinking about. They are new questions for international exchanges and cooperation in the next step.

Outlook Weekly: In your opinion, how can we build a standard university in China during the process of internationalizing education?

Song: I have three points: First, universities should have both Chinese characteristics and world standards. Second, universities should learn from others’ experiences but never copy their models. Third, universities should not only be open to the world but also preserve their precious culture.

Outlook Weekly: How can universities combine academic research with addressing China's practical problems while maintaining open education?

Song: Scientific research workers relentlessly pursue fulfilling this purpose and apply scientific and technological achievements to the great cause of modernization.

And scientific research work should be geared to the forefront of world science and technology, to the main battlefield of economy, to the major needs of the country, and to people’s lives and health.

Therefore we scientific researchers must reach out to society to investigate, study and understand China's reality as a way to combine it with our academic research. It is our duty to introduce China's advanced experience and solutions to practical problems to the world, offering Chinese wisdom.

Outlook Weekly: Nowadays, it is proposed that the university should break Five-Only, which means only educational background, only academic qualifications, only educational titles, only papers and only projects. In your opinion, what measures can universities take?

Song: To break Five-Only, we should learn from the experience of world's top universities. Universities should have persistence, patience and uniqueness rather than evaluate scientific research on short-term results.