As the UK’s University of Nottingham’s campus in Ningbo, China celebrates its 10th anniversary, its Provost and CEO, Nick Miles, speaks to The PIE News about the history of the campus, education reform and where to go from here.
The PIE: How are you celebrating your 10th anniversary?
NM: We kicked off this year of celebrating recently with a show from our students with some partners and their guests, showcasing what our students and graduates are doing – they were so enthusiastic! During the following week we had a reception at the British Embassy in Beijing, we invited quite a lot of our good supporters and we heard some kind words from the Ambassador. Absolutely fantastic. And then we finished that week on an alumni event in Shanghai, and that was excellent as well.
“When we first started we were on the outskirts of the city, but over the last 10 years the city has come up and surrounded us”
We’re kicking off a public lecture series soon with a number of big research conferences throughout the year. We’re going to end the year of celebration next April with a student-led summit, with students from our campus here, from our Malaysia and UK campuses, students from other universities and Universities 21 reps.
The PIE: So tell me a bit about the history of the campus.
NM: Ten years ago we started as a business school, and since then we’ve grown at a steady rate year on year. Nottingham is a comprehensive university in the UK – we’ve got arts and humanities, social sciences, engineering, a medical school… so we’re trying to mirror some of that in China and Malaysia.
So it’s been about building capacity. We’re what’s termed in China a ‘public-private university’. There’s eight such universities in China. They’re very different from any other type of operation. We therefore can charge – we do charge – substantially more than any public university in China.
We don’t get core government support – we do get support for specific things, but not like in the UK. So we have to charge to get the resources to pay for the staff. Our staff are recruited in a similar manner as we do in the UK, and on similar salaries, so we’re looking for the best. You have to run it as a bit of a business in the sense that you’ve got to bring the resource in.
“You have to run it as a bit of a business in the sense that you’ve got to bring the resource in”
The PIE: How many students do you have?
NM: We started here with 256 students, and now we’re at around about 6,300 and about 680 staff, of which about 250 are academics from over 60 different countries.
The PIE: Will that number keep growing?
NM: We see ‘full’ being 8,000 students. We’re looking at about 2020 for that. We don’t want to keep building – we want to protect the environment. When we first started we were on the outskirts of the city, but over the last 10 years the city has come up and surrounded us and we’ve protected the green space on our campus. We want a research capacity filling out our academic communities so they’re strong and coherent and then the ‘full’ sign is on the door.
The PIE: It was only after a change in the law 2003 that you were able to set up a campus, is that right?
NM: Yes. There’s a really interesting challenge in China – it looks at universities and asks ‘what are you going to do for the population’? There’s been a fairly – and I’m generalising here – high unemployment rate of graduates coming out of the university sector.
“If you have a high unemployment rate it’s basically saying industry and business don’t recognise the quality of the graduates, and there’s something wrong here”
Some of the smartest people I’ve met work for the government in China and guess where they’ve been educated? You can imagine – the UK, US. But something needs to change. It’s quite difficult. Universities have got quite a high involvement in government in different ways, so it’s a long process; the government’s looking at about reforming its university sector.
So in 2003, they recognised they needed to mix it up a bit. So we are, in a sense, an experiment in this space.
The PIE: How can graduates and industry be better aligned?
There’s still a long way to go, and frankly at the end of the day if you have a high unemployment rate it’s basically saying industry and business don’t recognise the quality of the graduates, and there’s something wrong here. It’s interesting, and [at UNNC] we don’t have a high unemployment rate, we get 100% employability.
“Our graduates are highly sought after because of the language and the skill set we’ve given them”
Our graduates are highly sought after because of the language and the skill set we’ve given them. The UK university sector’s very much about student-centred learning and developing their transferable skills around communication and critical analysis and thinking. And it’s kind of playing out here, and the evidence is employability. So with the Chinese government it’s fascinating, they’ve kind of shown us off to Chinese universities and said, look, it is possible to change.
The PIE: Do you think studying at an international branch campus in China will become a preferred alternative to studying abroad?
NM: It’s a cost thing. For a Chinese student going to, say, Nottingham University in the UK for four years against studying here at Ningbo, it’s about a third cheaper. The cost of living’s cheaper in China and our fees are not as high as the UK fee structure. So there’s a cost differential, that’s one thing. And also some parents want them to be closer to them. So I think the kind of things that we’re running will become part of the mix.
“There’s a cost differential, that’s one thing. I think the kind of things that we’re running will become part of the mix”
What you’ve got to realise as well is that this year, about 700 of our students are on study abroad programmes at about 15 addresses around the world for either a semester or a year abroad. We also run what are called ‘2+2’ programmes – two years at Ningbo, and the following two in the UK or our Malaysia campus. So there’s a number of pathways there, and I think that’s appropriate, that there are different options for different people. And different affordability as well.
The PIE: In terms of student recruitment, do you use agents?
NM: For domestic students we go into the gaokao [entrance exam] system, like any other Chinese university.
For international students we do use some agents, but increasingly we’re starting to use social networks and online stuff. We’re using our current cohort of international students, and we’re finding that’s really interesting way of communicating: using people here through social media communicating back to those countries, and being more targeted. And that’s quite intriguing, we’ve had a fantastic uptick on last year, just by concentrating on one or two things. So we use less agents, and I think we might even use less in the future.
