Search

This article examines the intents and effects of China's national policies to promote a synergistic approach to university-industry collaborative education. These policies set out to reduce the academia-industry disconnection for engineering education. Based on document analysis and interviews with various types of stakeholders, the study reveals that China has strived for a synergistic approach to education by strengthening the main-actor role of enterprises, framing a policy support system, incorporating external stakeholders in universities' governance structures, and building a coordinated framework for a synergistic approach to education. These policies have enhanced enterprises' motivation to participate in university education, deepened enterprises' engagement with engineering education at course level, and created an educational innovation ecosystem. Some challenges remain such as the mismatch between course update and technological development, the mismatch between costs and return for faculty members, and difficulty in assessment of outcomes. Overwhelmingly, China has tried exploring a model conducive to the improvement of higher education quality, and the overlapping triple helix model, compared with the statist or laissez-faire patterns, has a more robust effect in galvanizing stakeholders towards their collective goal in the Chinese context.

This paper examines the "imaginaries" taking place in New Engineering Education (NEE). The NEE is the most recent reform of the engineering education sector in China and is used to interrogate the more encompassing backdrop of the country's national imaginary, the "Chinese Dream." Further, this paper analyzes three important policy documents that constitute the blueprint of the NEE. Drawing on Charles Taylor's concept of the "social imaginary" and using critical discourse analysis, a close analysis of the discursive construction of the technological and national elements in the policy texts is carried out. This combinatory theoretical and analytical framework is used to examine how a normative vision and ideology of the development of engineering education is constructed as taking a "new" direction. In undertaking this policy analysis, this paper demonstrates how a rising power is revolutionizing its engineering education as a resource, coupled with the ideological "social (national) imagination" of the Chinese Dream, to extend its power and geopolitical positioning in a competitive and globalized economy.

Against the backdrop of prevalent student attrition in engineering education, this study draws upon Margaret Archer's social realistic theory and offers a close-up analysis of how structural and cultural factors interplay to affect Chinese university engineering faculty members' perceptions of and agency in practicing 'scholarly teaching'. Incorporating Chinese socio-cultural contexts and the distinctive requirements of engineering education, this study investigates how structural and cultural facilitating factors are overwhelmed by more powerful inhibiting factors in shaping Chinese engineering faculty members' implementation of scholarly teaching. This article argues that such predominance of inhibiting factors results from the stronger role of communicative reflexivity in influencing faculty members' agency than autonomous reflexivity and meta-reflexivity.

Several major reform areas attempted by 'New Engineering Education' (NEE), China's most recent engineering education reform initiative at university level, are examined for their direct and indirect impact on Chinese STEM-major students' satisfaction with their programs in this study. With data collected from a sample of 619 Chinese undergraduate students, the measurement and structural models both display good model fits. The structural results indicate that "course satisfaction" fully mediates the impact of "classroom instruction method" on "program satisfaction," while partially mediates the impact of "support from faculty members" and "alternative assessment methods" on "program satisfaction." The impact of "resource and service" on "program satisfaction," however, is direct without any mediating effect in between. Multigroup analyses show that the impact of "alternative assessment methods" on "course satisfaction" is significantly stronger for first-tier university students than for non-first-tier university students. Furthermore, there is stronger impact of "resource and service" on "program satisfaction" for junior and senior students than for freshmen and sophomores. Practical implications are discussed.

Since becoming a formal signatory of the Washington Accord in 2016, China has outlined an initiative 'New Engineering Education' (NEE) to reform its engineering education at university level. This paper elaborates upon the NEE initiative by presenting analysis of its domestic and international context, the goals of the initiative, how the initiative draws upon international standards, major actions under the initiative, and the challenges remaining for NEE to achieve its goals. The paper argues that China views international practices and standards of engineering education in developed nations as highlands to imitate and surpass, and the NEE goals embody an ambitious systematic rather than partial reform of the sector. China has pushed forward the NEE reform with measures such as formulating National Standards for dozens of categories of engineering programs, commissioning 600+ research projects on NEE development, establishing new engineering programs and interdisciplinary courses, strengthening university-partnership, updating accreditation for engineering programs, and improving both external and internal quality assurance mechanism. The sector, however, still faces challenges in achieving systematic quality upgrade due to hindering factors like enlarged uneven resource allocation, downplayed teaching activities and the difficulties in reforming the curricula system. Expected changes are also discussed.

Alumni can offer authentic perceptions of how university education is relevant to career requirements with direct educational experiences and frontline work experiences. This study captures the experiences of alumni in the engineering field to illuminate the multi-faceted distinctions between the higher education and employment systems. Based on semi-structured interviews and artefact collection, the findings reveal that the university system focuses more on fragmented and theoretical knowledge in course goals, using classical textbooks as the main means of instruction, while the workplace system emphasises the whole picture and application competence, using cutting-edge instruments and project-based approaches to enhance employees' abilities. Students at universities are less incentivised to work hard and collaborate with each other than employees at companies due to different incentive rules and different community milieu. The workplace system also has a better division of labour than universities in cultivating talents. Practical implications are discussed regarding aspects of higher education reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]