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September 23, 2016

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Home » City specials » Ningbo

UNNC elevates students, local education

NOW in its 12th year, The University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC), China’s first Sino-foreign cooperative university, has built an outstanding reputation for the strength of its education through the quality of its graduates.

Wang Weimin, deputy director of Ningbo Education Bureau, said UNNC graduates are highly sought after by world’s leading companies.

“Students from UNNC are proficient in English and have an active attitude to deal with things effectively and efficiently, which makes them outstanding among their peers,” Wang said.

“I believe that UNNC has undergone a significant profile shift over the past 12 years. The first students enrolled, I believe, because UNNC would provide them with a springboard to further study in the UK. Now I believe that the majority of students enroll with us because they have heard that UNNC offers a great student experience, first-class education and a bright future,” said Chris Rudd, the provost of UNNC.

UNNC, according to Wang, is the first Sino-foreign cooperative university in China to operate as an independent legal entity approved by the Ministry of Education. Established in 2004, UNNC is run by The University of Nottingham in cooperation with Zhejiang Wanli Education Group, a local private education group dedicated to education reform.

The independent legal status indicates that the university itself can set and manage education content in line with its own educational standards.

“Different from other Sino-foreign cooperative education projects, UNNC has more autonomy with its education, resulting in more flexibility for foreign educators in China,” Wang added.

“We aim to bring a UK-style education model to China. This means putting students at the center and engaging them in an interactive, challenging classroom environment where there is an equal ‘learning partnership’ between students and teacher. Students are encouraged to participate in classroom discussions, to question and challenge the teacher,” said Rudd.

In addition to running the school’s day-to-day operations, Rudd is also a professor of engineering who teaches undergraduate courses and supervises PhD students in material engineering.

International stage

Xu Yafeng, chairman of Wanli Education Group, said the delegation of real power to foreign educators distinguishes UNNC from other similar cooperative universities on the mainland.

“The executive headmaster from The University of Nottingham United Kingdom is the real boss in UNNC ... We, Wanli Education Group, on the Chinese side, play the role of committed helper to ensure that they can teach here,” Xu said.

“We hope foreign educators can pay full attention to fostering our students here and that’s why we’ve brought in their education model. We try to help them by removing obstacles in Ningbo, including problems with living, housing and the necessary communication with local authorities when two different culture gradually converge through negotiation,” Xu added.

Xue Zhixing is a graduate of UNNC as well as marketing manager and cofounder of Yikun Sports, a disc sports company in Ningbo. Xue became acquainted with disc sports at UNNC and joined the school’s disc sports association. He spoke fondly of his four years there and attributes his success to his ability to think independently and communicate across cultures — two qualities cultivated in his university days.

Bringing British-style education to China has proven successful both through the quality of the UNNC’s students as well as the confirmation in 2012 from the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education that the student experience at UNNC was equivalent to that at its home university.

“The most remarkable thing about UNNC is that I believe we have created a new market in China,” said Rudd. “Where UNNC has led, many others have followed and continue to follow. We have shown that it is possible to introduce a different education model, to make it work in a local context and to recruit and retain talented teachers and students who can make a great contribution to China’s economic and social development. Let’s not forget also that we have provided around 10,000 students from China’s mainland with British-style education and a Nottingham degree. Those university places simply would not have existed were it not for the creation of UNNC.”

The Sino-foreign cooperative education model which supports schools like UNNC was born in the context of efforts to elevate China’s domestic education standards, with the ultimate goal of making Chinese education competitive globally.

“We’re positioning our education in the international stage, accept the gap between world-leading universities and ours, learn from and apply their effective pedagogical models, but still stick to our Chinese ideology,” Wang explained.

“Education is a market where parents and students themselves will choose good schools for better development. We hope UNNC can be an embodiment of effective pedagogical methods brought by a world-leading university for our domestic universities to learn from and then accelerate their own improvement,” Wang said.

According to Chinese Education Ministry, the number of Chinese students studying abroad in 2015 increased 13.9 percent to 63,900. In Zhejiang Province, there are 307,400 students registered for the college entrance examination this year, of which quite a number of students are likely to study abroad or enroll to Sino-foreign cooperative universities.

Xu Zhe is a head teacher at Fenghua High School, a key high school in Zhejiang Province. Xu said most of his students are still trying to enter high-ranking local universities through the college entrance examination system.

Xu Ting, a third-year student at the school, said: “I want to study business and can study abroad as an exchange student through Sino-foreign cooperative programs in traditional universities.”




 

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