The running theme of the currently popular "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century," by Thomas L. Friedman, is that we live in a fast-growing technology-enabled world that is empowering individuals and small groups to more easily collaborate on global business opportunities. These collaborations are occurring on a flourishing playing field that is level (flat).

Friedman sets the stage for describing his world-is-flat mentality in the first chapter, calling this new era "Globalization 3.0" and then posting the following question: "Where do I fit into the global competition and opportunities of the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally?"

Fort Hays State University (FHSU) found an answer to the "where" part of Friedman’s question in China. The answer to the "how" part of the question is described in this article and throughout this issue of Educational Pathways.

FHSU is a perfect example of how the world really is, indeed, flat. FHSU is located in Hays, Kansas, in the almost-flatlands western part of the state, where three counties have death rates higher than birth rates; plus, it lives in an environment of reduced state education budgets. For these two reasons alone, back in the early 1990s, FHSU started to take a more serious, proactive look into how it could expand its distance education programs both domestically and globally ("Connecting the Dots").

Today, through a series of fortuitous events, and its overall ability to combine flexibility and innovation at the institutional level, FHSU is providing several thousand students living in China, and growing, with an American-conferred bachelor of general studies (BGS) degree, with five concentrations, that is part face-to-face and part distance learning. FHSU, which offers the BGS degree through its Virtual College, is currently managing this program in partnership with four Chinese institutions: SIAS International University in Xinzheng City, Henan; the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing; Shenyang Normal University in Shenyang, Liaoning; and Tak Ming College in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Canada. The addition of the American degree creates a dual degree opportunity, with the FHSU BGS complementing the Chinese degree that these students earn.

The first Chinese-FHSU partnership, which became the catalyzing program for future partnerships, was with SIAS International University, which is the first solely American-owned university in China, launched in 1998 by Chinese-American entrepreneur Shawn Chen (see interview with Chen on page 8).

Around the same time as the SIAS launch, Cindy Elliott was hired as Dean of the FHSU Virtual College to help internationalize its newly established programs. Today the Virtual College offers more than 300 courses, 600 sections and 12 fully virtual programs. Elliott’s work with the Chinese universities and other partnerships, such as FHSU’s admittance into the U.S. Navy College Program Distance Learning Partnership, has helped her move on to Assistant Provost for Strategic Partnerships and Dean of Distance Learning. In addition, she has been instrumental in the establishment of a new university Office of Strategic Partnerships.

Through mutual friend Peter Vander Haeghen, a now-retired educator with a background in international higher education partnerships and distance-learning instructional design, Chen was introduced to Elliott. Chen was looking for a four-year, regionally accredited American institution that could offer affordable technology-enhanced courses for credit internationally. Elliott agreed that FHSU could fit the bill, in principle, over a phone call, as Chen was heading to China out of the Los Angeles airport. The short of this story is that Chen, through his strong business relationships with the Chinese government, submitted the FHSU name to the Ministry of Education, and, under further consultation with Elliott and the FHSU president and provost, FHSU was ultimately approved as the first American institution to be granted approval to offer a bachelor’s degree in mainland China. The FHSU BGS Virtual College program was launched at SIAS in the fall of 2000, at that time with one concentration in business management.

SIAS is Chen’s dream to westernize Chinese education. Chen was born and raised in Chongquing, Sichuan, China, immigrated to the U.S. in 1982, and is a graduate of UCLA. During the 80s, Chen started a joint venture called the Chongquing Olive Cosmetic Co., which became one of the largest cosmetic factories in China, ranked second largest in 1996 behind Proctor and Gamble Co. He also has a joint venture called Maxim Steel Door Co., which is one of the largest steel door manufacturers in China.

Chen started to explore the possibility of building SIAS in 1996. He says the time was ripe because the Chinese government’s closed-door polices - residual from Tiananmen Square in 1989 - were quickly fading away in favor of the further development of Chinese-foreign education partnerships and collaborations. Education opportunities were also emerging in the provinces of China faster than in the major urban areas. The Communist Party seemed to be allowing more educational innovation away from the country’s center of power. In simple terms, the Chinese government’s evolving change of heart, combined with China’s rapid economic growth over the past decade, has resulted in a very strong demand for more educated professionals in China.

"The purpose of opening a foreign-owned university in China," says Chen, "was to introduce advanced American education management principles, to teach courses utilizing an American education model, to use updated textbooks and more highly qualified faculty, and to conduct the business of the university using American business practices."

Chen has achieved what he set out to do. When SIAS first opened its doors in 1998, it started with 260 students. Today there are 13,000 SIAS students attending classes at this American-owned university with a physical campus that was designed by Peter Weiss, associate professor in Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction. Chen says he built SIAS in Xinzheng City, Henan because the Henan province has the highest population in China, with 100 million people. The Henan capital city of Zhengzhou, which is about 23 miles north of Xinzheng City, has a population of 7 million people, more than half of which are rural residents. In addition, Henan province is centrally located within 800 miles of about half the population of all of China, and within one to two-hour air travel to major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Coincidentally, Henan is also the sister Chinese province to the state of Kansas.

The SIAS campus currently has 40 buildings, with six more under construction. The main administration building, called Washington Hall, has an East-meets-West architectural design, with one side of the building resembling the Gate of the Forbidden City of Tiananmen Square and the other side of the building resembling the U.S. Capitol. Other areas of the campus have European-style motifs. There is even a replica of an entire European street, with buildings and ambiance representative of France, Germany, Spain and Italy, where students live in apartments on the upper floors and can work with businesses on the ground floors. "SIAS is a symbol of globalization," says Chen, adding that the people of Henan province have very little, if any, experience related to what the Western world is really like. "We are building the campus environment to also educate people. If we don’t build a cultural environment, they will not gain the experience of international customs."

FHSU fits well into the East-meets-West theme in more ways than one. In addition to offering its degree program to Chinese students, FHSU is also teaching SIAS how to administer its campus the American way on an institutional level.

The FHSU BGS program at SIAS started with 40 students in the fall of 2000 and reached 1,200 students by the spring 2005 semester. Currently, more than 200 students have graduated from the FHSU-SIAS program.

In China, students are either "planned" or "unplanned" students. Planned students are those who pass the Chinese national entrance exam (an average of 30 to 40 percent of prospective college entrants pass) that ultimately allows them to enroll in a Chinese public or private higher education program and earn a Chinese-government-sanctioned degree. Unplanned students are the unfortunate ones who did not pass the national entrance exam and, if they want to earn a four-year degree, are typically left with three educational options: physically attend an institution in a foreign country, try to get accepted into a private institution in China where they can earn a certificate of completion, or attend a Chinese vocational post-secondary institution. The FHSU program is basically an alternative option for earning a four-year degree, whereby the best of both worlds are offered to both planned and unplanned students. Both earn a highly valued regionally accredited degree from FHSU, with the planned students also earning a Chinese-sanctioned degree, and the unplanned students also earning a Chinese certificate of completion. Both planned and unplanned students study the same curriculum at SIAS. About 50 percent of the students enrolled in the FHSU program are planned students.

Chen says that "many families beg to come to our school; they kneel down and cry," because the ratio of planned students is so small relative to the number of young students who want higher education. Plus the Chinese higher education infrastructure is already stretched to its limits, with not nearly enough facilities and manpower to educate its population.

In order to get a degree from SIAS, students must earn 170 credits. In order to get a degree from FHSU, students must earn 124 credits, 94 transferred in from SIAS courses, and 30 that must be from FHSU courses. The delivery model for the FHSU courses combines face-to-face and technology-enhanced instruction and studies with collaborations between FHSU faculty and cooperating faculty in China.

For the BGS degree, students must complete a minimum of 10 courses, modeled after FHSU Virtual College courses, during their sophomore, junior and senior years. Two courses are taught face-to-face (English Comp 1 and English Comp 2) by American FHSU adjuncts who move to China. The other eight courses are FHSU pre-produced or locally-developed telecourses delivered with lectures burned onto DVDs or recorded onto videotapes. Additional course content is provided through the FHSU Blackboard course management system (CMS). Each course is assigned a cooperating teacher who is typically an American or American-educated faculty instructor hired by SIAS. The cooperating teacher helps facilitate and manage the course face-to-face on the SIAS campus. The cooperating teacher works with a lead teacher at FHSU, who communicates with SIAS students - put into teams - via the CMS, posting assignments, exams, and discussion board questions, and basically conducting the course in both asynchronous, and sometimes synchronous, modes of delivery.

Many of the students don’t have personal computers, so they do a great deal of their coursework on campus in mediated classrooms that have large video screens, overhead projectors and computers with Internet access.

An interesting side note is that, next month, FHSU is installing a Blackboard server in China. "Our numbers have grown to the point where it will be more efficient to have the course content on a server in China," says Elliott. "I am told we are the first American institution to ship a Blackboard server to China."

FHSU courses in the BGS degree with a concentration in business management are taken in the following sequence:

Sophomore year:
Principles of Culture
Listening to Music
American Cinema
Marketing Principles*

Junior year:
English Comp 1
Management Principles*
English Comp 2
Business Law*

Senior year:
Managerial Finance*
Survey of Art

* Courses in the "business management" BGS concentration. Courses without an asterisk are taken to complete the general education requirement of the degree program. The 21-hour concentration also consists of the following courses offered by SIAS: Accounting, Microeconomics and Macroecnomics.

Chinese students can concentrate in four other BGS areas of studies: International Finance, Business English or English as a Second Language, Information Networking, or Legal Studies. (The Legal Studies concentration is available only at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.) All these concentrations can be achieved in a variety of ways, depending on the courses students decide to enroll in at FHSU and the Chinese partner institutions. For example, SIAS has an extensive computer science department that offers information technology courses that can articulate into an information networking concentration.

"The BGS degree is perceived differently than a degree earned completely and solely at a Chinese institution," says Elliott. "Students now have a bachelor’s degree from an American institution, and they are graduating with improved skills in English, improved computer skills, and with knowledge of American business practices."

All of the 210 graduates of the program thus far have either gone on to graduate school or found rewarding careers with government agencies, multi-national corporations or as entrepreneurs. According to the National Bureau of Statistics in China, in 2004 there were almost 1.9 million college graduates. As noted in a January 2005 article in the People’s Daily Online, about one quarter of these graduates will be unable to find work.

Along with its successful graduates, the reputation and value of the SIAS-FHSU degree continues to increase. When the program first started, tuition was $75 per credit hour (not including fees), which was well below the $100 threshold commonly held by public Chinese institutions. This fall 2005, the program will command $130 per credit hour (not including fees). While this is considered to be on the high-end of tuition and fees in China, the reputation and value of the program is incentive enough for Chinese students and their families to make the necessary financial sacrifices to attend. "Financially it is a struggle for them (just like for many in the U.S.), but we are attracting students that have the English capabilities and the finances," says Elliott. "In China, the entire family - the two parents and the four grandparents - support the child’s education. We have some students that come from very poor families, and we have some from more affluent families."

On the administrative side, as an institution, SIAS, as well as the three other Chinese institutions now partnering with FHSU (the aforementioned University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, Shenyang Normal University, and Tak Ming College), are learning how to incorporate American grade point averages, academic probation and suspension policies, exam procedures, drop-add procedures, transcription recording procedures, and more into their higher education environments. "We have brought a lot of curriculum and policy innovation to these Chinese schools, and that is what they requested," says Elliott. "In addition to providing them with an opportunity for new student recruitment, they have seen this as an opportunity to reform their curriculum and practices." In effect, FHSU has brought a toolkit of higher education practices to China through its strategic partnership arrangements.

Elliott says that the faculty who have been teaching in this face-to-face/distance education teaching and learning environment have to be congratulated for evolving a successful educational model that combines the best of both worlds. FHSU Provost Larry Gould explains that, overall, the multi-faceted operations that keep these partnerships moving forward are also driven and maintained by a dedicated FHSU staff that must communicate regularly with Chinese administrators. "I can’t even begin to name or reward all the people in our registrar’s office, the people in student fiscal affairs, the people in academic advising, and all of our classified people who make these strategic partnerships work," Gould says. "When it comes to working with transcripts, Assistant Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies, Lou Caplan, is almost essential to making the entire program work. The Chinese are learning a great deal about the administration of higher education from a capable and dedicated FHSU staff."

For example, American-style transcripts and recording processes are not the same as Chinese transcripts and recording processes, making the analysis of the 94 Chinese credits that are accepted into the FHSU degree program a challenging and sometimes tedious task. Gould adds, however, that advances in communication technologies and connectivity between FHSU and its Chinese partners have made the process of moving transcript-related information back and forth much smoother. Nonetheless, "we are about to send a member of our registrar staff along with Cindy Elliott over to China this fall to teach the Chinese administrators how we do transcripts over here. Operations and execution of policy can be carried out at even greater levels of efficiency if we actually send our people over there."

Taking all four Chinese-FHSU partnerships, as a whole, has brought up the total number of enrollments to 2,000 Chinese students earning FHSU BGS degrees, with an anticipated increase of 400 Chinese students by fall 2005.

The University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing is a Chinese national institution with about 10,000 students. UIBE has a separate school called the Zhuoyue School (excellency school) where the FHSU BGS program is being offered exactly as it is offered by SIAS. Started in 2003, the program enrolls about 800 students.

Shenyang Normal University (SNU), located adjacent to North Korea in the Liaoning province, is a well-established teacher’s college with about 37,000 students. It has a College of International Business that FHSU has partnered with to provide the BGS degree. Elliott recently visited SNU (she has been to China eight times in the last four years) for the ground breaking of a new state-of-the-art building, with ample connectivity and educational technologies that will house the FHSU-SNU program. The program started with 200 in the fall of 2004 and will be adding another 200 students in fall 2005.

Tak Ming College is the smallest partnership with about 60 students enrolled in an FHSU BGS program at its Taiwan campuses. Tak Ming, however, continues to send increasing numbers of its most qualified students (e.g. in music) to take face-to-face courses at FHSU in Hays, Kansas, adding to overall efforts to internationalize the campus and curriculum.

In addition to these Chinese partnerships for the BGS degree program offering, FHSU is in the process of entering into similar agreements with a university in Turkey and one in Cyprus. The ultimate effect of this international strategic partnering is that almost half of the approximately 5,000 students currently registered in FHSU’s Virtual College are Chinese students living in China - a true exemplar of how the world has flattened.

SIAS International University
http://www.siasuniversity.com/

FHSU Virtual College
http://www.fhsu.edu/virtualcollege

Wikipedia: WikiProject Chinese Provinces
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chinese_provinces

"The China Connection: Auburn University’s Initiatives in China," Auburn University Office of Communications and Marketing, November 2004. "Chinese university graduates squeezed by job, love as commencement nears," People’s Daily Online, January 21, 2005.

Feng Jianhua, "Student Loans Ease the Burden: Government gives banks reason to provide student loads, with new repayment criteria," Beijing Review, September 23, 2004.

For more information, contact Cindy Elliott
email: celliott@fhsu.edu
tel: 785.628.5834