26 / / 27 The previous chapter described the college traditions in China and the West, both of which incorporated elements of residential accommodation for students. According to Zhang Shi’s narration of Yuelu Shuyuan, when the shuyuan was founded in 976 AD, it already had the aim of ‘welcoming scholars from all directions’. It clearly implies that its buildings must have included lodgings. Zhu Xi’s ‘Note on the Teaching Commission and Arrangements for Yuelu Academy in Tanzhou’ mentioned boarding facilities such as dormitories, desks, and beds. When it was first established in 1264, Merton College also intended to provide on-campus residence for scholars from abroad. In other words, both originally intended to function as residential colleges. Inheriting the tradition of Oxbridge colleges in England yet taking a different approach were the independent liberal arts colleges that became popular in the 17th and 18th centuries in the North American colonies. The most important of these were Harvard College, approved by the Great and General Court of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England to be established in 1636 and officially named after John Harvard three years later; Yale College, founded by an act passed by Governor and General Assembly of the Connecticut Colony in 1701 and named after Elihu Yale in 1718; and the College of New Jersey, chartered in 1746 and renamed Princeton University in 1896. In the early years, the three colleges focused on traditional liberal arts education, encompassing humanities and scientific education, therefore, they were known as liberal arts colleges. By the 19th and 20th centuries, Harvard and Yale had developed into comprehensive research universities, with the addition of graduate schools and a variety of professional schools such as the Divinity School, the Law School and the Medical School. The formerly independent liberal arts colleges were no longer independent and became an academic management unit for undergraduate studies under the university. Nowadays, undergraduate students at both universities are still registered with Harvard College and Yale College, which oversees undergraduate education, but they attend classes in the universities’ Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The latter co-ordinates concentrations or major programmes within and across departments, promotes research, and also provides education for postgraduate students, who are not part of the liberal arts college. The liberal arts and humanities tradition of the two universities applies only to undergraduate students and is embodied by the compulsory General Education programme and distribution requirements. Princeton University has had a particularly strong emphasis on traditional liberal arts education at the undergraduate level ; whi le the universi ty focuses on high-end fundamental research, it does not have large graduate schools like Harvard and Yale nor professional schools in practical areas such as law and medicine. These three top universities in the US represent the two main categories of undergraduate educational institutions in that country today. Within the first category of comprehens ive univers i t ies , whi le undergraduate education provides training in the major subject areas of expertise, there is also a strong emphasis on general education, which often takes up a significant proportion of the curriculum, in keeping with the humanistic tradition of liberal arts education. The other category comprises independent liberal arts colleges which focus mainly on undergraduate studies and are characterised by small-sized classes oriented towards liberal arts education. The former category makes up the mainstream, with such universities numbering in the thousands, while the latter category numbers in the hundreds. It is widely recognised that there are more than 300 national universities and 200 national liberal arts colleges in the US. While Harvard and Yale are undoubtedly in the former category, Princeton, though not considered a liberal arts college, resembles one in its undergraduate education. Since the rise of liberal arts university education in the West, including the Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge and the liberal arts colleges in the United States, the mission was always to nurture well-educated, morally upright clergymen, public servants, scholars and other well-rounded community leaders, with many students coming from elite backgrounds. Under modernising influences for over a century, this tradition began to face various challenges. Firstly, in 1810 the University of Berlin was founded with the pioneering mission to advance scientific research, causing academic research to gradually become an aspirational vision for universities everywhere. The original intention of the University of Berlin was to integrate research and education; however, this was not easy to achieve. The famous Yale Report of 1828 reflected the fact that whether to retain classical humanities including Greek and Latin as the core curriculum for liberal arts education had by that time become a debatable educational issue. Secondly, since the middle of the 19th century, Social Darwinism, positivism, scientism, realism, value-neutral social sciences, marketism, post-modernism and other trends successively became the dominant schools of thought in university campuses. This in turn gave rise to widespread moral relativism. Academic knowledge and moral character were no longer coherent educational outcomes and this line of thinking became incompatible with the moral philosophy of liberal arts education. Furthermore, the gradually increasing access to a university education for the wider populace of society since the beginning of the 20th century resulted in pressure on the student population vis-à-vis finding employment. As a result, liberal arts institutions for elite students, which were originally centred around small class sizes and not career-oriented, had to take into account pressures from the new zeitgeist. Since the mid-20th century, scientific research has gradually detached itself from education, and has often replaced the latter as a priority for universities. All of these are incompatible with the mission of liberal arts education. Nevertheless, from the latter part of the 20th century, higher education sector worldwide became increasingly concerned about students’ moral education. This reversal was caused by various factors including the stigma attached to outrageous misconducts or crimes committed by alumni, which could leave a stain on their alma mater, irrespective of how outstanding they might be in research or in politics and economic endeavours. Another possible factor was the popularity of quality assurance and accountability in higher education in the late 20th century; student’s character quality often constitutes an important education outcome. Or perhaps, despite university courses becoming increasingly career-oriented, they could not help but take into account the character requirements of prospective employers, who often value character traits over knowledge learned at university. At the same time, like other profit-making or non-profit-making enterprises, public and private alike, universities also had to assume greater social responsibility. Therefore, it was only logical that nurturing the character of students became a moral obligation for universities. They could not focus only on scientific research and knowledge transmission but neglect the cultivation of students’ moral competency. All the above developments mean that the traditional ideal of liberal arts education must confront with the harsh reality of modern university education, resulting in a high degree of tension, and prompting some universities to explore how to strike a balance between the two. Among the various solutions, the residential college system is undoubtedly a long-established and attractive option. While models of residential colleges in the UK and the US diverge, they are fundamentally different from the conventional dormitories that function only as living quarters for students. The crucial difference here is that residential colleges generally simultaneously play an institutional role in university education to various degrees. This role is primarily focused on character development but can also include academic learning. In addition, residential colleges emphasise the importance of communal dining and accommodation and the edifying role of the college community. While this educational philosophy and system is derived from the Oxbridge tradition, residential colleges elsewhere do not normally play the same role in terms of academic and professional education as at Oxbridge; they are not the latter’s replica because many such colleges are units within the university and are not independent legal entities like Oxbridge Colleges. Over the past 20 years, residential colleges have proliferated around the world in line with the globalisation of higher education, and have gained increasing popularity, with enthusiasts calling it the ‘residential college movement’. Their origins can be traced back to Harvard and Yale of the 1930s. In the early 20th century, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, President of Harvard University, advocated the creation of new student housing units on campus. The intent was to create conditions for students from different social backgrounds to mingle and interact with each other and break the growing separation between rich and poor in students’ living environs. It was intended as a means to allow students and professors with a diverse background of knowledge and interests to Development of Modern Chinese and Western Residential Colleges Chapter 2 ╚锟⛿㶇䑑剹ꯗ侷芎溸⯽┿♂气 College Education in China and the West in Historical Perspective 睙┞ꌄ | PART I
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