Posts tagged as “Confucius Institute”

The in-depth Washington Monthly article is here:

Colleges mostly see this as a win-win situation, solving budget woes and adding to the value of the school’s education at the same time. But with the impact of the boom still reverberating, pockets of dissent are emerging. In states like Washington and California, there are growing complaints that the influx of foreign students is crowding local students out of their own state schools. Meanwhile, at least some Chinese students are complaining that American universities exploit them by charging extra fees. It’s difficult to argue against the valuable opportunities for cultural exchange and public diplomacy that international education provides. But at the current scale, Chinese students have become so concentrated on some campuses that in many ways it’s as if they were attending separate schools within schools.

International students bring a lot of money into the United States, contributing roughly $22 billion to the U.S. economy in 2012, according to one estimate. Francisco Sánchez, the undersecretary for international trade at the Commerce Department, has said the U.S. has “no better export” than higher education, and Larry Summers, former secretary of the treasury and former Harvard president, lists “exporting higher education”—bringing more international students to American institutions—as a key part of his recommendations for economic growth.

I wonder where UO’s exports of undergraduate degrees would put us, on a ranking of Oregon’s most successful foreign trade industries?

And former UO professor Arif Dirlik sends this warning about the influence of Chinese money on academic studies of China, with regard to the Tianamen square demonstrations and the Chinese government sposored Confucius Institutes:

Tiananmen commemorations, June 4,1989—June 4, 2013

The Tiananmen Tragedy of June 1989 is significant not just for humanitarian but also for historical and political reasons. It is a humane obligation to recall those who lost their lives and those who continue to suffer under its shadow. Analysis of the forces that brought it about, and the forces that issued from it, requires confrontation of questions of crucial importance to understanding the PRC’s development over the last three decades–as well as of outsiders’ reaction to and entanglement with that development. A broad group of China scholars and other specialists involved in the study of the PRC is urging centers for China Studies (including the so-called Confucius Institutes) to use this occasion to discuss issues of democracy, human rights and social justice with reference to the PRC. These issues are pertinent to the contemporary world in general. They include especially issues of complicity in the perpetuation of human rights abuses of outsiders involved with oppressive regimes in some capacity or other that have been dramatized by the recent American Studies Association decision to boycott universities in Israel. Attached here are the statement, “We Will Not Forget June 4th,” with a list of signatories, and a draft copy of the letter being circulated to Confucius Institutes by Dr. Stephen Levine on their behalf. Further information may be found on the website, http://www.june4commemoration.org

Arif Dirlik, Independent scholar, Eugene, OR (Knight Professor of Social Science, UO, 2001-2006)