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China's Universities, 1895-1995: a century of cultural conflict RUTH HAYHOE, 1999 Hong Kong, Comparative Education Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong ISBN 962 8093 81 9 pp. 299, US$32 (including sea mail; add US$5 for air mail). Available from: [email protected].
This book will be of great value to scholars of comparative education, to sinologists, and to specialists in higher education. It is the first deeply theoretical history of China's universities, and thus is a milestone in the field.
Hayhoe describes her work as a story, and frames it around three maps. These are the knowledge map, the gender map, and the geography map. Within this framework she examines diverse topics including curricular reforms, regionalisation, decentralisation, enrolment, and faculty structure. The comparative methodology is professionally applied to different eras within the century: the Nationalist period of 1911-41, the Socialist period of 1949-78 and the Reform period of 1978-90. Cross-cultural comparisons are contrasted with intra-regional comparisons in two case studies: the Central South Region and the Northwest Region.
Hayhoe tells the story of modern Chinese universities in the context of global modernisation and the development of European universities. She bases her...