Kuo Ting-yee Memorial Lecture: The World of Universities in the 21st Century(Lecture 1)

Date(s)： 2017/10/17

Time： 10:00~12:00

Venue： Archives 2nd Conference Hall

Speaker：Prof. William C. Kirby(Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University)

Organizer： IMH

The World of Universities in the 21^st Century
German universities established the foundations of modern universities everywhere in the 19^th century. American universities had enormous international influence by the end of the 20^th century.  What then are the prospects for Chinese universities to set global standards in the 21^st century?  This lecture series will be based on eight case studies of universities on three continents.  These lectures will investigate the past and present as well as the future prospects of leading universities in Germany, the United States, and Greater China. It will explore the role of faculty, finances, and governance in what makes for a great university.  It will examine and assess three systems of higher education that have defined, or promise to define, excellence in higher education.
 
Lecture 1 (10am, October 17, 2017)
From Berlin to Berkeley:  The Making and Unmaking of the Modern Research University
 
The University of Berlin, established in 1810, redefined what a university could be in two enduring and interlocking ways. The first was the concept of a university devoted to scientific research at the highest level; the second was a commitment to foster a Humboldtian culture of liberal education that stresses Bildung (the education of the whole person) as distinct from Übung (more practical training). In Chinese this might be phrased as a broad education (教育) as distinct from narrow training (訓練).  In this combination, this idealized “German model” would remake American higher education from the second half of the 19^th century to the present; and today it is this model (now often viewed as “American”) that is being exported globally.  We will explore the mother of all modern universities (Berlin, now the Humboldt University); its American-supported counterpoint, the Free University of Berlin; and three American universities that have defined both excellence and challenge:  Harvard, Duke, and the University of California, Berkeley.
 

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