Zhejiang University’s Focused Strategy for Campus Globalization

With 7,000 on-campus international students, Zhejiang University has quickly become a symbol of China’s rapid globalization. Their “East meets West” philosophy shows how the alumni’s pride in their historic university has lead to successful growth.

Moving fast toward internationalization

Located near West Lake, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the headquarters of Alibaba; one of the 10 largest companies in the world, Zhejiang University (ZJU)’s main campus in Hangzhou City represents an innovative mix of tradition and modern technology. The university shifted gears toward aggressive internationalization in 2016 when the city held the first-ever G20 summit in China.

“Over the past couple of years, most of the top universities in China started focusing on internationalization, but I would say ZJU has been a fast-mover,” Lianzhen remarks. “We have created a new strategy ‘Global ZJU – CREATE to Impact’. As part of this strategy, we aim to make an impact on the global society through a wide range of initiatives that are not limited to within China. Internationalization is the key to achieve this vision.”

In 2018, the number of international students in ZJU reached 7,000, twice the number of students in Tsinghua university which is ranked as Asia’s Top University by Times Higher Education (THE), and 1.6 times more than the number of students in University of Tokyo. They set a challenging target of sending all the Chinese students in the university to study overseas. In 2018 they achieved 74% of this target. Their position in THE’s World University Ranking jumped from 301-350 to 101 in the last six years.

We believe this achievement can be attributed to their specialized ranking workforce, but according to Lianzhen, it was organic: “We do value ranking from the perspective that it mirrors the quality of our education and research, but we do not assign anyone to focus on ranking. We believe it’s a natural process – when we perform well in education and research, the ranking should go up. Consequently, our leadership prefers to focus on achieving a long-term vision, which hopefully, in turn, improves our ranking. We have created a vision for 2050 and are on track toward achieving the milestones.”

The success of an international campus

“Going all out” seems to be ZJU’s approach to achieving internationalization. They’ve implemented every possible idea: hiring international faculty members, providing English training and incentives for international collaboration, inviting international students to their joint programs, and sending Chinese faculty members and students to study abroad and passionately promote the University’s brand.

One of their best-known initiatives is the new International Campus that started since 2016. The campus consists of two advanced, joint institutes with an English-proficient faculty. ZJU-UoE is a life sciences institute in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, and ZJU-UIUC is an engineering institute in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. ZJU calls this the One + Many Model. “Our approach is to create research synergy between the East and the West,” said Lianzhen. “Bringing the best of ZJU and other universities together, we aim to achieve not only the best education but also cutting-edge international research collaboration, as well as maximize the impact of technology transfer created with such collaboration.”

ZJU-UoE started a “3+1” model in 2012, where students are at ZJU for the first three years and then move to Edinburgh or for the last year. They can get an undergraduate degree from ZJU and a master’s degree from Edinburgh in four years. Building upon that, a joint institute was established in 2015; students in the institute can earn a dual degree from the two universities. Such in-depth collaboration can’t be achieved overnight, says Lianzhen. This unusual model is an indication of their effort towards achieving the best competitive benefits the university can provide for their students.

A report of the program review conducted in 2017 by experts from the US mentioned ‘The quality of education is extremely high and the material covered is at or above the level of the UIUC campus.’ – “You can’t imagine how exciting it was to see this comment!” Lianzhen smiles. International students currently comprise 30% of the student population on the International Campus, but ZJU aims to increase it by establishing more joint institutes. Lianzhen says, “Our goal is far beyond that. We’ve started the Center for Applied Data Science with Imperial College London, and are soon going to start an optical engineering research institute with a university in the United States using the same framework. This is possible because the senior management puts a lot of emphasis on internationalization and because we are determined to implement the strategy.”

People matter – Picking the driving force

Lianzhen specialized in Applied Linguistics and this demonstrates that the university is putting the right people in the right roles. She oversees the Office of Global Engagement, which has over 20 members. “The team is relatively small, but we are very, very selective of the talent. Whenever we put out a job posting, there are always over 100 applicants.”

The recruitment of faculty members is even more rigorous. ZJU looks for talent irrespective of nationality. 51% of ZJU-UIUC faculty members are non-Chinese, and this percentage is increasing over time. When they opened up 30 positions for this newly developed institute 1,300 applications came from outside China. To assess the candidates’ teaching and research level and to gauge their culture fit they were put through interviews with over 10 professors from both ZJU and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

Support system outside the university – It’s not an isolated entity

The workforce striving to achieve ZJU’s internationalization isn’t just within the University. There are three supporting players—companies, the local government, and the alumni network. Alibaba Group, the world’s 9th biggest corporation, is one of ZJU’s collaborators. While Alibaba is known for technology, the two entities signed a strategic cooperation agreement in a wide range of areas on frontier technology like AI, medical care, big data, and social sciences. In 2017, the company donated $81 million to the First Affiliated Hospital of ZJU for training and R&D. They provide financial support for students and faculties to study abroad. “Many of Alibaba Group members are ZJU graduates. It is natural for them to work together with the experts on their home ground,” said Lianzhen.

Outside Hangzhou, ZJU has a global alumni network of 600,000 members, which constitutes a large portion of the university’s support network. For example, in Silicon Valley alone, they have more than 6,000 alumni members who bring the university closer to the best IT companies and technologists in the world. ZJU alumni associations are present in most of the major cities in the world and they contribute by making donations using their networks for cross-national industry collaboration, talent acquisition, and building the university’s reputation. ZJU is also the pride of the local government in Zhejiang Province; the government, the university, and private companies closely collaborate and jointly invest in building a strong brand for the University. For instance, the land on which the International Campus stands was donated by the government of Haining City.

Collaboration and mobility

We asked Lianzhen to pick one strategy that pushed ZJU’s internationalization process forward. “It’s the collaboration. At all levels. At the individual level, professors in ZJU started collaborating a lot with other researchers within and outside ZJU since we incentivize international research collaboration through funding. Building upon this, we’ve been pushing institution-level collaboration immensely, such as strategic partnerships and MoUs. The key is mobility; the system we’ve been building motivates students and researchers to traverse geographical borders and collaborate with other people.”

ZJU’s story reminds us that internationalization is about opening up. Opening up doesn’t just mean opening the campus, it also entails expanding our horizons, breaking the norms, and building a place for connection and collaboration. The case also illustrates that pushing a university’s brand forward is the responsibility of not just those working for the university but anyone who’s attached to the place, like the alumni. Building a community within the university’s network is a long-term but immensely effective strategy.

HE LIANZHEN

HE Lianzhen is a professor and Vice President of Internationalization at Zhejiang University. After serving as the dean of the School of International Studies and director of the Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, Prof. HE Lianzhen took on the role of Vice President of Internationalization of Zhejiang University and also the dean of ZJU’s International Campus. She is specialized in Applied Linguistics, especially in language teaching and assessment. She is also the director of the National Advisory Board for College Foreign Language Teaching of the Chinese Ministry of Education.

This article is part of ScienceTalks Magazine issue Riding the Big Wave of China’s Academic Internationalization.