View this article in RussianUnder the trend of economic globalization, the internationalization of higher education has become inevitable. The beneficial experience of foreign higher education has constantly been introduced to China. The international exchange of students and teachers is more frequent, and cooperation in teaching and scientific research is being gradually deepened. In the bilateral cooperation of Northeast Asia, China and Russia is each other’s biggest neighbor. Both have a long history and splendid culture and have stable political partners. Economy, science and technology, and other fields are highly complementary to each other. Russia is a recognized technology and education powerhouse. Chinese is a developing country but with the fastest-growing science and technology and education. In recent years, an increasing number of Chinese students go abroad to study. China has become one of the top five countries of the most number of study abroad students. In the increasingly fierce competition of international education, China and Russia should mutually introduce and make full use of their respective quality education resources to enhance the competitiveness of the country’s education. Chinese and Russian governments have attached great importance to promoting higher education cooperation and exchanges and have provided good conditions for development.
With the rising enthusiasm of Chinese study-abroad students, Russian higher education is increasingly being recognized by the Chinese people and becomes one of the key target countries for the working-class children. At present, Russia is the fifth largest study-abroad country that the Chinese students favor, narrowly after the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan and Australia. Chinese foreign exchange education has been gradually turned from “one-way demand” to “two-way demand”, forming a multilateral and interactive new situation. So far, China has established educational cooperation and exchange relations with 189 countries and regions, and has signed agreements of mutually recognized degrees and diplomas with 34 countries and regions. According to the latest statistics, Russian students have also considered China as their target country for studying abroad.
Due to geographical advantages, Heilongjiang Province cooperated with the Russian Higher Education earlier than other Chinese regions. As a border province in northeastern China, Heilongjiang Province and Russia has a border line of more than 3000 kilometers bordering on Russian Primorye, Khabarovsk Krai, Amur, Chita and the Jewish Autonomous Region. Years of Sino-Russian border trade promotes economic development, and at the same time contributes to the cultural and educational exchanges. Especially with the signing of Sino-Russian agreement of mutually recognized degrees, it lays a solid foundation for the university cooperation in education, science and technology.
In the higher education cooperation between China and Russia, cooperative programs among colleges and universities are the main form. In the 27 undergraduate universities in Heilongjiang Province, 24 universities have started cooperative programs with Russian counterparts. In the 154 Sino-foreign cooperative projects of Heilongjiang Province approved by the Ministry of Education, the number of inter-university programs with Russia is 74, accounting for nearly half of the province’s foreign cooperative education programs.
Northeast Agricultural University (NAU) is the first Chinese university to carry out cooperative programs with Russian universities. It started its cooperative program Khabarovsk Izhevsk State Technical University (ie, Pacific National University) in 1995. In 1999, NAU cooperated with the Russian Far Eastern State Technical Fisheries University. So far, only through China-Russia cooperative programs, NAU has sent more than 1200 students to Russia, and more than 800 have graduated; NAU has reveived more than 400 Russian students, and 300 have graduated. For 15 years, NAU has explored a road of China-Russia cooperation programs with its own characteristics. It has trained a number of urgently-needed talents and has made due contribution to the communication and cooperation. In 2005, under the strategic background of strengthening cultural and educational cooperation, NAU Russian Training Center undertook the joint training of undergraduate “1+4”project of Ministry of Education. This project has sent more than 200 students to Russia. In 2000, NAU and the Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange co-built a training base. It plans to enroll 100 Chinese students annually. After one year of Russian language training, the students will continue their college study in Russia. Through there varied cooperative projects, NAU achieves a planned, orderly and scaled transportation to Russian higher institutions. Practice shows that these programs enable students to take full advantage of high-quality education resources of Russia, and they can better understand Russian history and culture.
In recent years, studying in Russia has shown two distinct characteristics. One is the rapid increase of the number of students to Russia. With political stability of China and Russia, the number of studying in both countries increases every year, especially the growing number of students to Russia. Dramatic increase in the number to Russia is due to the following main reasons: (1) Relatively low cost of study. In Russia, the total annual cost of studying abroad is about $ 7,000, which is equal to the cost of 1/5 of that of the United States and Japan, 1 / 3 of the UK and Australia and 1 /2 of New Zealand. Recently, Russia has made some adjustments and tuition increase, but overall charges remain much lower than that of Europe and US. For working-class families, the low cost of Russia is one of the important reasons for children to study there. (2) High quality education and extensive coverage of education. The quality of Russian higher education is recognized all over the world. Russia has many world-renowned universities. Its scientific research ranks the first in such fields as aerospace, biotechnology, energy, medicine, art, machinery, etc. Russia’s coverage of higher education is one of the largest in the world, second only to the United States. At present, Russia has more than 600 state-owned higher institutions and more than 600 private higher institutions, far above the level of higher education popularization. (3) Sound state policy support. Contrary to the strict visa policy of the U.S., Russian government encourages Chinese students to study in Russia. Russia’s Ministry of Education has made it clear that the relative parties are preparing to increase the number of Chinese students to 100,000.
Another significant feature is the degree-level study in Russia gradually increases. Data shows that in 2002, undergraduate students accounted for 65%, graduate students 30% and doctoral students 5%; in 2005, undergraduates accounted for 46%, graduates 48%, doctoral students 7% [1]. According to the recent statistics, the proportion of undergraduates declines, the proportion of graduates increases and the proportion of doctoral students is relatively stable. This is also in line with current China’s overall level of students studying abroad. It can be expected that the degree-level still has room to ascend.
The history of Sino-Russian cooperation in running schools is relatively short. The laws and regulations of cooperation are not perfect. Conflicts occur in cooperative education. With the expansion of the bilateral cooperation, some contradictions will appear continuously. For example, the tuition fee in China once approved by the price department remains unchanged throughout the four years of university. However, some Russian universities adjust annually according to price change, which has an negative impact to the students and freshmen enrollment.
Security of studying abroad has always been an issue concerned by students, parents, universities and society. Due to the different cultural backgrounds of China and Russia and the students’ lack of life experience, conflicts frequently arise when they encounter problems. Language incompetence causes a lot of misunderstanding and misjudgment. They often encounter security problems in health care, transportation, natural disasters, and other aspects of emergency evacuation. If problems are not handled properly, they will directly affect their studies and may even lead to greater regret.
From the feedback of national cooperation in running schools, there exist a low level of cooperation, unequal partners and low-level repetitive phenomenon. Take Heilongjiang Province as an example. Among 74 cooperative projects of 24 colleges and universities, only Heilongjiang University and the Russian Far Eastern National University have graduate training projects. The rest are all undergraduate students concentrated in liberal arts and economy and management. It is clear that monotonous and repeated cooperation is quite grave.
Accordance to the requirements of the general education law, the first foreign language of study abroad students of China and Russia should be Russian or Chinese. However, it is not the case in reality. Due to the large environmental impact caused by shrinking Russian language in Chinese education, few students now studying in Russia could understand Russian before they left China.
In Northeast Agricultural University, 80% of the students to Russia in 1996 are Russian majors. In the past few years, this proportion declines dramatically with the ration of less than 10% [2]. The rest are all English-speaking students. Since there is no required language foundation for admission, most students need to learn Russia while struggling for their major studies, which adds to the difficulty of completing their major studies. The same is true to the Chinese language of the Russian students. Language training occupies a large proportion of the teaching program, so it reduces the overall level of personnel training.
Chinese students in Russia and Russian students in China are too concentrated in a few regions. They lack of language communication environment. Therefore, a series of problems arise such as a slow language improvement, no motivation and so on. For example, in a certain department of Moscow State University, 80% of students are Chinese students [3]. Chinese students in Russia are crowded in the Russian Far East. Some students have difficulty in finding jobs after returning to China. An important reason is their language level. A high level of foreign language should have become students’ advantage in employment, but some students have problem even in basic foreign language communication, which is closely related with the concentrated distribution. Russian students in China encounter the same problems.
Chinese students to Russia confine themselves to a narrow choice. They favor liberal arts, but ignore technology. In Russia, the science and technology department are filled with high-quality educational resources, and its quality is of excellence in the world. But now, most Chinese students to Russia choose to study language, arts, management, economics and other liberal arts. Few study science and engineering. Of course, Russian dancing, painting, music and other art majors are very famous in the world. It is worth learning. But the quality of its science and engineering should also cause the concern of the Chinese students.
In view of the current status and problems in Sino-foreign cooperation in running schools, the Chinese government has issued a series of documents in 2003, 2004 and 2006, including “Sino-foreign Cooperation in Running Schools of People’s Republic of China”, “Implementation Measures of Sino-foreign Cooperation in Running Schools of People’s Republic of China”, ” Opinions of Ministry of Education on Current Issues of Cooperative Education “and others [4]. The introduction of these documents creates a favorable legal environment for the further development of Sino-Russian cooperation in Higher Education and standardization. However, international cooperation involves the relation and interest of the related countries. Once a country’s systems and policies have conflicts with the laws and regulations of the relevant country, the problem could not be solved with the laws and regulations of any one country. Therefore, both countries should establish sound and complete laws and regulations of higher education cooperation with a full view of internationalization of higher education. It is also necessary to establish notification memo system, communication system, negotiation mechanism and standard management.
For the existing security risks of students studying abroad, the teachers in charge should strengthen the management and service for international students. The teachers should have a strong sense of responsibility, a high level of foreign language and flexible organizational capacity. They should grasp the basic skills to deal with unexpected safety events. Teachers also should conduct preventive safety education to the students’ daily life. On the other hand, international students ought to buy health insurance and personal accident insurance to reduce the risk or compensate for the loss.
Facing the phenomenon of liberal arts favored and science and technology ignored and the relatively concentrated distribution of the Students, the education authorities of China and Russia should timely guide students for professional selection. They can take the form of government scholarships to encourage students to flow to the majors that are urgently needed by national construction demand and that are less chosen. This will not only facilitate students to study abroad, but also enable them to equitable distribution. While safeguarding the maximizing interest of students’ learning, it is beneficial to further expand areas of cooperation. In addition to cultivating students, it should also strengthen cooperation in the field of scientific research, undertaking joint declaration and research of international projects. There should start a gradual transition from undergraduate to graduate education so as to improve the educational level of cooperation.
While increasing the support of studying Russian and Chinese languages in secondary schools, both countries should take advantage of the construction of the Confucius Institute and the Russian Center to train students with better language competence. Both should raise admission standards and improve the overall talents cultivation level. Meanwhile, on the basis of the cooperative education, the study abroad time should be increased as much as possible. The programs such as “1+4”model should be encouraged, i.e. a year of domestic Russian intensive training plus four years of major learning in Russia. In this way, it will help ensure the time and the quality of students’ overseas courses. Step by step, global talents with good foreign language, expert major knowledge, masterful international rules and international exchanges will be cultivated.
References
- Liu, Fen. 2010. An Empirical Study of the Novice Interpreters’ Role as “Intercultural Mediator”. Journal of Xinzhou Teachers University, Vol. 6.
- Mei, Deming. 2000. An Advanced Course of Interpretation. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
- Zhang Songling. Problems and countermeasures in Russia Cooperation with Heilongjiang Province. Theory, 2008, (16).
- Dong Hongmei. Issues in Sino-Russian. Chinese school education, 2009, (11).