Book
International Status Anxiety and Higher Education: The Soviet Legacy in China & Russia
This volume provides a critical perspective on the Soviet legacy of superpower competition in the higher education systems of China and Russia. The book examines the tensions among multi-level forces that strive to advance progressive university policies and practices on the one hand, and on the other hand work to restore old-style hyper-centralization and indoctrination. It tracks the de-Sovietization of higher education, which aimed to integrate Chinese and Russian universities into global higher education but resulted in inducing status anxiety in the global hierarchies of knowledge development.
This chapter begins with explanations of the historical transformations and peculiarities of the Soviet higher education system. It describes the Soviet government’s interpretations of university competitiveness, which have influenced the current state of the Russian higher education system. Then the chapter discusses the post-Soviet path of Russian universities in their search for balance between the de-Sovietization and Westernization of higher education. The discussion proceeds to outlining the new environment of global competition among universities, shaped by world university rankings and the rapid expansion of governmental policies in higher education. Finally, the chapter describes how the Russian government is reacting to the changing environment and the policies used to enhance higher education competitiveness. We consider, as a case study, the Russian excellence initiative in higher education – Project 5-100 – whose basic idea is that at least five Russian universities will be ranked among the world’s top 100 universities by 2020. Some lessons for future policies and questions for future research are formulated in the concluding part.
The chapter examines how the Russian federal government has been driving international student recruitment with attempts to force the modernization of higher education (HE) and promote soft power interests. We provide an overview of Soviet policies related to international student mobility, scrutinize the cyclic and multi-rational educational transformation that has been taking place since the 1990s, and reflect on the implications for the future. We explain the rationale of HE internationalization in contemporary Russia and show that the government’s reforms have focused on the political rationale inherited from Soviet times, combined with the heavy-handed modernization policy to fit in the context of global competition. This curious combination encourages higher education institutions to fixate on meeting government-led performance indicators, preserving the current structure of student mobility concentrated in a few institutions, and creating constraints for the development of academic excellence in Russian HE.
The article dwells on the organization and activities of the Soviet advisors group, which assisted to the South China government of Sun Yatsen, its participation in financing Kuomintang political and military projects. The author pointed out that the main aim of the advisors group efforts was to form new Kuomintang power institutions and to bring its policy and army under control, for all that the tactics of implementation of strategy aim were constantly changing.
The present paper summarizes a review of the best practices and models of academic development in foreign universities. It is argued that academic development as a domain of professional activity is developed as a response to the three interrelated processes: emergence of the new forms of public management, dissemination of 'entrepreneurial university' conception and life-long learning programs. Possible goals, professionalization problems and organizational models of academic development are elaborated in order to present heterogeneity of this phenomenon. We conclude by highlighting the most promising types of academic development programs which is possible to implement in Russian universities.
The article gives an overview of influence of stock market discrimination on market value of companies in China. There are two types of shares on Chinese stock market: class A shares, which are available for domestic investors, and class B shares, which are available for foreign investors. Such market structure is not a unique Chinese market's feature. It is also used in such countries as Finland, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, etc. What differs Chinese market from markets with similar structure is the fact that class B shares are traded with substantial discount to class A shares. Such a situation is explained by such factors informational asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors; different liquidity of different classes of shares; diversification effect, connected with investment in Chinese stock market; size of companies; ratio of amounts of shares of different classes; stock exchange where company's shares are traded.
Modern capitalism favors values that undermine our face-to-face bonds with friends and family members. Focusing on the post-communist world, and comparing it to more 'developed' societies, this book reveals the mixed effects of capitalist culture on interpersonal relationships. While most observers blame the egoism and asocial behavior found in new free-market societies on their communist pasts, this work shows how relationships are also threatened by the profit orientations and personal ambition unleashed by economic development. Successful people in societies as diverse as China, Russia, and Eastern Germany adjust to the market economy at a social cost, relaxing their morals in order to obtain success and succumbing to increased material temptations to exploit relationships for their own financial and professional gain. The capitalist personality is internally troubled as a result of this "sellout," but these qualms subside as it devalues intimate qualitative bonds with others. This book also shows that post-communists are similarly individualized as people living in Western societies. Capitalism may indeed favor values of independence, creativity, and self-expressiveness, but it also rewards self-centeredness, consumerism, and the stripping down of morality. As is the case in the West, capitalist culture fosters an internally conflicted and self-centered personality in post-communist societies.
Institutions affect investment decisions, including investments in human capital. Hence institutions are relevant for the allocation of talent. Good market-supporting institutions attract talent to productive value-creating activities, whereas poor ones raise the appeal of rent-seeking. We propose a theoretical model that predicts that more talented individuals are particularly sensitive in their career choices to the quality of institutions, and test these predictions on a sample of around 95 countries of the world. We find a strong positive association between the quality of institutions and graduation of college and university students in science, and an even stronger negative correlation with graduation in law. Our findings are robust to various specifications of empirical models, including smaller samples of former colonies and transition countries. The quality of human capital makes the distinction between educational choices under strong and weak institutions particularly sharp. We show that the allocation of talent is an important link between institutions and growth.