System Mural: High-end Access to University Issues

Author: Edited by Xiong Bingqi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-12-01
Features: Mr. Xiong Bingqi's book, along with his previous monograph Problems in University Education, has given our higher education a clear but confusing account. It is clear because it compiles and lists almost every aspect of current university problems, almost like an encyclopedia. It provides detailed accounts and analyses of the various shortcomings, evils, ugly behaviors, and strange phenomena familiar to university faculty and students. The "University Interest Structure Chart" at the beginning of the book is particularly valuable as a precious resource for contemporary educational research. It is confusing, however, because while the commentators present symptoms and prescriptions for university education, the most crucial questions remain unsolvable and suspended—Who caused all this? Who is willing to defend it? Who takes responsibility? And ultimately, who can change the situation? Yet the problems may truly be unsolvable, only suspended: within the education "system" that the commentators constantly mention, there is indeed no "human being." Even when the content nearly targets specific "human beings," the focus automatically blurs and shifts away, returning to the panoramic education "system." System of Walls—High-Level Interviews on University Problems is divided into five chapters, adopting a narrative commentary, dialogue records, and supplementary materials approach to analyze the severe systemic and institutional flaws in university operations: Supremacy of Power, a Bureaucratic Educational Mechanism; Administrative Orientation, a Hierarchical Academic Environment; Profit Motive, an Integrity Crisis Challenging Moral Bottom Lines; Supremacy of Scores, a Way of Destroying Education at All Levels; Formalism, a Pathological Reform of "Loving Dragons but Not Owning Them." Industry insiders believe that together with Problems in University Education, System of Walls and Problems in University Education can be considered the "Encyclopedia of University Problems in China."