A new private university in China aspiring to be among the world’s best within 15 years, is seen by experts as a huge step in the nation’s higher education development, if it is allowed greater autonomy than state institutions. Westlake University in Hangzhou, which has just been given approval by the Chinese ministry of education, will “prioritise research areas in natural science, medical science, and advanced technology”, reports state news agency Xinhua.

The project, led by biophysicist Shi Yigong, a former Princeton University professor and Tsinghua University vice president, was first proposed in 2015. Although it admitted its first batch of 19 students in autumn 2017, it was classified as a research institute — under the name Westlake Institute of Advanced Study — until being approved as a university by the ministry in March. This non-profit institution, initially for doctoral students only, is expected to grow to 5,000 students once undergraduates are admitted. It is said to have held “global recruitment drives” to attract academics.

Prof. Shi, expected to be the university’s first president, was quoted by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) as having said in a December speech that within 15 years, “every indicator of our university will be on a par with that of Caltech”. The institution “will be regarded as one of the best universities not just in Asia but around the world,” he added.

Ka Ho Mok, vice president of Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, says that Westlake’s success depends not only on funding support and the backing of local and national government, but also on “how the university is governed and managed”. Prof. Mok adds that, if Westlake is permitted to follow “the governance model of private universities in the West, given more institutional autonomy in running its programmes and (if) the governance structure is different from state universities, it will become more autonomous and flexible in university governance”. While the Chinese government might be “piloting a new form of governance through this project”, its success will be based on “how this university is governed in future”, he says.

The Hangzhou government injected Rmb400 million (Rs.418 crore) into the proposed university last year, according to SCMP. The university also has significant backing from Chinese entrepreneurs, with the founders of technology giant Tencent and the chairman of property developer and cinema chain Wanda Group, among donors of the institution.

Philip Altbach, founding director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, highlights the “amazingly optimistic” timescale for Westlake’s ambitions. According to him, it is “somewhat hard to believe that the Chinese government, particularly in the current environment, will permit real autonomy”, he says.  

“It is certainly the case that a science and technology institution won’t have quite the same issues about academic freedom and free access to resources that comprehensive universities would have. However, it should be noted that the best science and technology universities worldwide — such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and many others — also have pretty strong social science and humanities faculties,” says Altbach.