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The Strategic Disciplinary Boundaries of China’s Key Agricultural & Forestry Universities

LIU ZHIMIN PHD

Professor & Director of Higher Education Institute, Nanjing Agricultural University, P. R. CHINA

JUNE 29,2011

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1. A Brief Introduction to China’s Higher Education

Martin Trow’s theory on the development stages of higher education,

Gross enrollment ratios (GER) <15% : Elite education; GER=15-50% :

Mass education; GER>50%,Universal education.

China’s(2011) GER: 26.5%, ushered in the era of Mass Education

The number of students : 31.05 million

By 2020, Chinese government pledges 40% in GER and 35.5 million

in student enrollment.

Among the baskets of student-enrollments, agro-forestry universities a

ccount for 4.08% in bachelor degree study, 3.27% in master degree and

5.06% in that of Ph.D.

The Strategic Disciplinary Boundaries of China’s Key Agricultural & Forestry Universities

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39

98

5p

roject

CHINA’S Higher Education Structure & Some Projects Taken

72 56

Gra

du

ate

sch

ool

113

211project

366D

octo

r

796

Maste

r

1079

Bach

el

or

ResearchUniversity

Oth

ers

1184+400

Fig 2. A Composition Framework of Universities’ Layer Structures in China

High

er Vocation

al Sch

ool+ ad

ult

C9

Un

ivers

ity

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2. The Status of China’s Key Agro-&Forestry Higher Institutions

Table 1. Spreadsheet of General Information about China’s Key Agro-forestry Universities

Items University Name

with“Project

985”

With Graduate School

with“Project

211”

WRWU Ranking

QS Ranking

China Agricultural University(CAU) √ √ √ 1341 149

Beijing Forestry University(BJFU) - √ √1926

-

Northeast Forestry University(NEFU) - - √ - -Nanjing AgriculturalUniversity(NJAU) - √ √ 1908 161

Huazhong Agricultural University(HZAU) - - √ 2162 -Northwest Agricultural and Forestry Univers

ity(NAFU)√ √ √ - -* WRWU Ranking: Webometrics Rankings of World Universities, web clicks of the universities front page will be referenced to rank the

top 2000 universities all over the world; QS Ranking: refers to the university rankings in Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) “Asian University rankings- top 200

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3. Disciplinary Structuring in China’s Key Agricultural & Forestry Universities

1 ) Disciplinary Structuring Form: Agricultural Studies Branched into Other Studies in Universities of Comprehensive Disciplinary Setups

Table 2 .Generals of China’s Key Agricultural Universities

University Name

Number of Sub-

disciplines

Faculty Number

Fulltime Student

Enrollment

Fund for Research(Hundreds of Millio

ns)

National Awards for Excellent Ph.D di

ssertation

Grand Total of Published

Papers

Among which: Papers

published in overseas journals

CAU 24 2792 20416 7.96 16 4842 1341

BJFU 9 1613 16463 1.19 4 1335 214

NEFU 12 2768 21895 0.72 5 1515 186

NJAU 13 2702 22742 3.92 6 2967 690

HZAU 8 2589 23163 3.89 9 2644 665

NAFU 7 4582 27679 2.90 4 3070 340

Cited from: Official Front Page of the above six universities at July 30, 2010, refer to details at http://www.cau.edu.cn;http://www.bjfu.edu.cn;http://www.nefu.edu.cn;http://www.njau.edu.cn;http://www.hzau.edu.cn;http://www.nwsuaf.edu.cn.

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2)Dominant Disciplines: Agricultural Science, Science, Engineering, Management.

NationalRanking

University

Discipl ine

Table 3 MOE Directly Administered Agro-forestry Universities in 2008 First-Level Discipline Appraisal

Crop S

cience

Plant P

rotection

Horticulture

Agricultural R

esource Exploitation

Anim

al Husbandry

Veterinary M

edicine

Agricultural E

ngineering

Agriculture and F

orestry Econom

ic M

anagement

Food S

cience and Engineering

Forestry

Forest E

ngineering

Aquaculture

Science and C

ivilization in China

CAU 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 3 2

BJFU 1 3

NEFU 3 1

NJAU 2 3 4 3* 5* 2 - 1* 5 3

HZAU 3 2 5 3 3 - 4* 3

NAFU 5 5 3* 3 4 4

Cited from: Liu Zhimin. Probe into Agro-Forestry Institute’s Disciplinary Development via National First Level Discipline Appraisal, China Agricultural Education〔 J〕 ,2009(2):7-10.

3. Disciplinary Structuring in China’s Key Agricultural & Forestry Universities

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Ranking University NameNumber of Top 5Ranked Disciplines

Ranking University NameNumber of Top 5Ranked Disciplines

1 Beijing University 31

14Harbin Institute of Technology

Huazhong University of Science and Technology

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2 Tsinghua University 26

3 Zhejiang University 22

4Fudan University

Nanjing University16

6 Shanghai Jiao Tong University 13

16

Xi’an Jiaotong UniversityNankai UniversityTianjin UniversityTongji University

Huazhong Agro-University

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7 Renmin University of China 11

8University of Science and Tech

nology of ChinaWuhan University

10

21

Sun Yat-Sen UniversityBeihang University

National University of Defense Technology

China University of Geo-scienceNorthwest Agro-Forestry U

niversity

6

10

Beijing Normal UniversitySichuan University

China Agro-UniversityNanjing Agro-University

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Table 4. Top 45 University Discipline Ranking among the Number of Top 5 Ranked Discipline

3. Disciplinary Structuring in China’s Key Agricultural & Forestry Universities

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3)Development Orientation: multi-disciplinary / comprehensive university.

University Development Orientation

CAUResort the strengthens built up in agricultural science and life science to develop science,

engineering, arts, law, economics, management and other disciplines

BJFUContinue to sharpen the edges of forestry, biology, forestry engineering while try to bring

up coordinated developments in agricultural science, science, engineering, management, economics, arts, law and philosophy.

NEFUResort to the strengths of forestry discipline to sharpen the edges in forestry biology and

bring up coordinated developments in agricultural science, science, engineering, economics, management, arts, law and medicine

NJAUContinue to sharpen the edges of agricultural science and life science， while try to br

ing up coordinated developments in agricultural science, science, economics, management, engineering, arts and law

HZAUResort to the strengths of agricultural science to sharpen the edges in life science and

bring up coordinated developments in agricultural science, science, engineering, arts, law, economics and management

NAFUResort to the strengths of agricultural science, forestry and aquaculture to bring up

coordinated developments in agricultural science, science, engineering, economics, management and law

Table 5. Development Orientations of the Top 6 Agro-forestry Universities

3. Disciplinary Structuring in China’s Key Agricultural & Forestry Universities

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4. Essential Attributes and Growth Pattern of University Disciplines

1) University Discipline Setup Needs to Respect the Law of Knowledge System while Observe Demand from the Society.

2) University disciplines are stable in categorization, rotationally symmetric in layout and systematically unstable if the symmetric elements are absent.

3) Observing Gresham's Law in Disciplinary Development to Prevent “Bad money drives out the good one”.

4) Cost differentiation in disciplinary construction requires ambitions made within allowance.

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5. Modern Agriculture on Disciplinary Development of Agro-forestry Institutes

1) Modern Agriculture Necessitates Comprehensive Disciplinary Configuration in Agro-forestry Universities.

2) Modern Agriculture Requests Agro-forestry Universities to Consolidate Their Flagship Discipline Clusters.

5.3 Modern Agriculture Requests Supporting Disciplinary Clusters in Agro-forestry Universities.

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Engineering

Agro-forestry Economic Management

Food Science & Engineering

Traditional Chinese Medicine

Biology

Forestry Engineering

Philosophy of Science/Rural Sociology/Foreign Studies/Law of Environmental and Resource Protection

MPA/MBA/Management Science and Engineering /Knowledge Management and Archive Management

Architecture/ hydra engineering /transportation engineering/light industrial tech & engineering/computer science & technology/mechanics engineering

Science &Civilization, General Science i.e. Geography, Chemistry, Mathematics)

Applied Economics

Ocean Science/Geology

Environmental Science and Engineering

Agricultural Engineering

（ land management）

Agriculture(Agronomy)

S

cience

Medicine

M

an

agem

ent

Law/Philosophy/Literature

Econom

ics

Core Discipline

Boundaries of Discipline

Fig 2. “Center Radiation” of Disciplinary Derivation and Development in Agro-forestry Universities

6. Foreseeable Boundaries of Disciplinary Expansion in Key Agro-forestry Universities

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