Liberal Arts Education in China: Transitioning Students and Faculties to Duke Kunshan University’s Liberal Arts Curriculum

Problem Statement

In eight months, DKU will welcome its inaugural class of the undergraduate program. With 60 percent of the students coming from Chinese high schools and academic backgrounds rooted in Gao Kao preparation, DKU’s orientation program bears the challenging responsibility to transition Chinese students to understand and embrace DKU’s liberal arts curriculum.

Addressing the gap between Chinese students’ high school education experiences and the undergraduate program at DKU is crucial to actualizing DKU’s liberal arts education.

1. Inertia from Gao Kao style education deters students’ transitions into liberal arts curriculum

The central mission of Chinese high school education is to prepare students for Gao Kao, the National Higher Education Entrance Examination that serves as the only metric in college admission. Under such a system, education focuses on exam preparation, memorization, repetition, and ultimately getting the “correct” standardized answer. DKU’s undergraduate program is a fundamental shift from what students are accustomed to. Without a “correct” answer, the DKU curriculum encourages students to think critically and work creatively. As a result, the disparity between students’ high school education and the curriculum at DKU is not only mechanical (e.g. courses, assignments) but also ideological. The DKU liberal arts curriculum will not be actualized without students’ mental transition away the obsession with grades and the test-heavy environment. Given that students’ experiences at DKU determine the success of the institution, transitioning students to understand and adapt to DKU’s learning environment will benefit both the student body and the university itself.

2. Current designs of orientation and transitional programs are largely imitative and contradicts DKU’s founding principle

The current design of the undergraduate orientation program is largely imitative of the model from Global Learning Semester (GLS). With around 95% Chinese students who are upperclassmen in colleges, the GLS demographic is not representative of the incoming undergraduate class. Therefore, while the GLS orientation program is informative, the design of undergraduate transitional programs cannot rely on past programs and need to consider differences in age group and academic experience.

Additionally, one of the current highlights in GLS orientation is a group trip to Nanjing.

The logic of the Nanjing trip lies in DKU’s lack of confidence in Kunshan’s attractiveness. As a county-level town, Kunshan is not a first-tier metropolitan city where many incoming students grew up in and the Nanjing trip is considered a bonding experience in a more “modern” city. This design, however, is directly contradictory to the principle of “rooted globalism”, the key concept behind the DKU’s curriculum. The concept of “rooted globalism” applies not only to individual student’s grounding in one’s national identity, but also to DKU as an institution. If DKU as an institution is embarrassed by the city of Kunshan as early as orientation programs, DKU and its students are likely to form a “DKU bubble” that separates itself from the city.

3. Student orientation and transitional programs are separated from those of faculties

Transitional programs are critical not only to students but also to the newly hired faculty members. The transitional stages for both stakeholders are interconnected but the current orientation programs for students are largely isolated from faculties. Faculty-student relationship is a critical component of a liberal arts education and the absence of faculty involvement in the early stages of students’ is ineffective.