Event
Building a New JV University from Scratch in China: The Case of Duke Kunshan University
Denis Simon, Professor of China Business and Technology, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
Joint venture universities in China are part of a larger on-going effort to internationalize Chinese higher education and to absorb some of the “best practices” from Western universities. Launching and operating these joint venture projects offers many opportunities for increasing cross cultural understanding and raising global awareness among students, staff and faculty. That said, they also present many challenges and difficulties due to vast differences in curriculum formulation and student recruiting and enrollment as well as the high costs associated with ensuring a high quality academic experience for both Chinese and international students. This talk reviews the overall operating experiences of the ten Sino-foreign joint venture universities, with special focus on the experience of Duke Kunshan University (DKU). The author, who served as Executive Vice-Chancellor at DKU between 2015-2020, indicates that despite the numerous complex issues continuously facing these jointly managed campuses, their value in terms of curricular innovation, building greater cross-cultural sensitivity, and promoting a global perspective outweighs any of the immediate political hurdles and academic challenges.
This event will be held on-site in the CSCC conference room, but with a Zoom option.
To attend in person, please use this link to RSVP for this event:
You must be a Penn Card holder. Please indicate in the RSVP link that you plan to attend in person. Under the university’s current COVID-19 protocols, we must limit on-site attendance at our events to Penn card holders and, to comply with contact-tracing requirements, we must have a record of who attends our in-person events. Therefore, we are asking that you RSVP is you plan to attend in person. If you do not RSVP and still wish to attend, you are still welcome to show up, but will need to sign in on arrival. Although social distancing is not required under current university rules, we will be limiting the number of people in our conference room to somewhat less than our past highest turnout events.
To participate by Zoom, please register to receive a Zoom link:
https://upenn.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEpdO2qrD0jGdSnYT0vv3s3hJ6z5loVcY5F