Yenching Academy

The Yenching Academy (sometimes abbreviated as YCA; Chinese: 燕京学堂, pinyin: Yānjīng Xuétáng) is an elite postgraduate college of Peking University (PKU), located in Beijing, China. It hosts the Yenching Program, a fully funded global fellowship program, designed "to cultivate leaders who will advocate for global progress and cultural understanding." The Academy offers Yenching Scholars, selected annually from around the world, with full scholarships for one year of study leading to a master's degree from Peking University, China's "most prestigious" and "first modern" university. At its launch, then Peking University President Wang Enge described it as the "most ambitious academic initiative PKU has launched since the turn of the new century."^[1][2][3][4]

Inspired by the classical Chinese academies (known as Shūyuàn) and the Rhodes Scholarship, Yenching Academy at Peking University will compete with Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in China and similar global scholarship programs around the world. It is the first such program to launch in Asia.^[5][6]

Yenching Program

The Yenching Program is a one-year fully-funded global leadership program designed to provide outstanding young scholars with a broad interdisciplinary postgraduate education that reflects global perspectives. During their studies, Yenching Scholars will live in Yenching Academy, a residential college of Peking University, built specifically for the program and modeled on those at Harvard and MIT in the US and Oxford and Cambridge in the UK.

Yenching Scholarship

The Yenching Scholarship will provide students at Yenching Academy with full funding for their studies including tuition fees, accommodation, transportation, travel, and a living stipend. Annually, 200 Yenching Scholars will be chosen through a competitive selection process that seeks future global leaders. Yenching Scholars will be "a diverse group of talented young leaders who demonstrate academic excellence, leadership, innovative thought, and a commitment to the betterment of society." Successful applicants will be elite students who have an excellent academic record and demonstrate outstanding leadership potential. Approximately 65% of the 100 inaugural scholars will be international students while the remaining 35% will be from mainland China.^[1] The Academy expects its "first cohort of Yenching Scholars to be from 47 universities, with the most numerous coming from Oxford, Harvard, Princeton, Cape Town, Cambridge, Stanford, Chicago, Leiden and Yale." Scholars "will represent 36 countries and regions, from Armenia and Australia to Vietnam and Zimbabwe."^[7][8]

Yenching Campus

Grounds

Yenching Academy's campus is located in the core of Peking University, specifically in Jing Yuan, an ancient Imperial Garden considered to the university's "historic and symbolic heart." It features six above-ground heritage buildings and a new ground-level complex which will stretch down multiple stories with access points and skylights throughout the garden.

Buildings

With feedback from the university community, the campus was designed by Gerald Szeto, a Beijing-based architect at Mo Atelier Szeto, who also designed the recently completed Stanford Center at Peking University. Previously at I. M. Pei & Associates, Szeto has 20 years of experience and is known for iconic structures such as the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, the Bank of China Head Office Building in Beijing, the Suzhou Museum and the Chancery Building for the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China to the United States in Washington, DC, US.^{[4][9][10][10]}

History

Announcement

Yenching Academy was announced in 2014 and established in 2015 by Peking University. It is expected the program will eventually grow from 100 students in the inaugural year to 200 students.

Significance

Yenching Academy is named after Yenching University, an elite private university, which was merged into Peking University after the founding of the People's Republic of China and whose campus Peking moved to at that time. During its existence during the first half of the 20th century, Yenching University had close relationships with Harvard University (the two universities established the Harvard-Yenching Institute (HYI)), Yale University (Yale-China Association, previously named "Yale-in-China" (YiC)), and Princeton University (Yenching University was part of Princeton in Asia (PiA), originally known as "Princeton-in-Peking" (PiP) and then the "Princeton-Yenching Foundation" (PYF), and Princeton University also supported the founding of Yenching University Princeton School of Public Affairs).^{[11][12][13][14][15]}

Competition

Scholarships

Yenching (Yanjing) Scholars at Peking University was announced in 2014, a year after chief rival university, Tsinghua University, revealed its own plans for a "Rhodes-style" program, Schwarzman Scholars. Yenching will launch in 2015 while Schwarzman will begin a year later. Located right next to each other in Haidan district of the capital Beijing, both universities are the leading members of the C9 League, a grouping of top universities in China. Peking University has been consistently regarded by both domestic and international university rankings as, alongside Tsinghua University, the top higher learning institution in mainland China.^{[16][17][18][19][20]} Internationally, Peking has been called the "Harvard of China" given its strength in pure sciences and humanities, while Tsinghua has been called the "MIT of China" given its strength in applied fields such engineering and management. However, such historical differences only existed after the Communists came to power, as both universities were previously more traditional in their broad range of programs. Moreover, such analogies are increasingly outdated as the two universities now are competing in all academic fields, from medicine and engineering to humanities and law, as the Chinese government has recently reformed the higher education system to increase competition in a global race to the top. As a result, an Oxbridge analogy, made by some, is increasingly more relevant.

Funds

While Tsinghua Schwarzman expects to raise about 350 million USD (originally 300 million) from mostly foreign donors for its endowment, it is understood that the Peking Yenching endowment is even better funded through significant donations from Chinese philanthropists and special grants from the Chinese Central Government. For comparison, the Oxford Rhodes endowment is currently raising funds to increase its endowment from about 150 million USD to at least 375 million, as it expands to be more geographically inclusive (the other leadership programs covered the whole world from their inceptions). Meanwhile, the Cambridge Gates endowment currently stands at about 210 million USD, its original starting point. As a result of the increased competition among full-scholarship leadership programs, there has been marked growth in fundraising, with the endowments moving towards a half billion USD each.^{[21][19][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]}

Programs

One major difference between the Yenching and Schwarzman scholarships and the Rhodes and Gates scholarships is that in the former two programs, scholars will be studying in an interdisciplinary residential community created for the program, whereas the latter two programs merely offer a scholarship to study in a regular program with other students at that university.

Controversy

Many of the Yenching program's features have generated controversy in China. The continued introduction of English courses, which in other colleges at Peking already make up a significant proportion of the courses offered, has drawn criticism for not being inclusive of Chinese culture and language. Additionally, the usage of the central Jing Yuan raised protests from students who were against the development of green spaces on campus. Graduate students at Peking have also found the shorter duration of the Yenching master's degrees to be unfair and expressed concern that Yenching degrees may eclipse their own in prestige. Students also found it unfair that the leadership program would allow interdisciplinary studies, which is still a rarity in China. Likewise, professors have been vocal about the inequity that Yenching professors will introduce to the professoriate.

The reaction among students and professors at Peking to the Yenching announcement is rather illustrative of the politically engaged open-minded nature of the university, where students historically played a major part in the New Culture Movement, May Fourth Movement, Tiananmen Square protest of 1989 and other significant events. In comparison, the reaction at Tsinghua to the Schzwarman program was rather muted, exemplifying its historical character as a politically correct technocratic school.^{[4][32][33][34][35]}

Launch

The scholarship program was developed with the strong support of leaders from top universities worldwide, including the present and past presidents of Stanford University, Cambridge University, Brown University, National University of Singapore (NUS), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), the Harvard-Yenching Institute, and Peking University itself. The program was announced on 2014 May 5 at the Yingjie Overseas Exchange Center at Peking University with representatives — including 30 university presidents and 45 university vice presidents — from about 50 leading universities worldwide, such as Stanford University, the University of Chicago, the London School of Economics (LSE), Heidelberg University, Melbourne University, National University of Singapore (NUS), Tokyo University, Waseda University, Seoul National University (SNU), Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), Hong Kong University (HKU), Renmin University, Fudan University, and Zhejiang University, attending the ceremony. At the ceremony, Yenching Academy was inaugurated by Zhu Shanlu, Chair of the University Council, and Wang Enge, President of the University, along with prominent alumni and donors.^{[1][2][36][37][38]}

Yenching Academy has received endorsements from United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, and United States First Lady Michelle Obama, among others.^{[1][39][40][41]}

Motivation

International presence

The Yenching and Schwarzman Scholarship programs were designed to increase the global profile of Peking and Tsinghua, the two leading Chinese universities, "as the country seeks more influence in global education and greater international prestige befitting its economic rise." As China has become the world's largest country not only by population but also by production (GDP), it wants to develop an academic system equal to that stature.^{[42][43][44][45][46]} To do so, the programs will allow both universities to offer more courses bilingually (Chinese and English), while supporting their efforts to attract top students from around the world. Additionally, the interdisciplinary nature of the programs will allow the universities to further innovate their curriculums to be broader and more adaptive. Based on the colleges' endowments, class sizes, and exceptionally low student-to-professor ratios (about 2:1), it is expected that pay for professors will compete with those at top institutions worldwide, such as the Ivy League, on a nominal exchange basis, while top Chinese universities currently pay on par on a purchasing power basis. This will enable the universities to attract top academics from around the world, as the universities continue with reforms to compete with academic institutions worldwide.

National presence

The programs are also designed to stem what the official Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper People's Daily described as "the world's worst brain drain", by raising the profile of top Chinese academic institutions globally. China is also looking to become a hub for international students in order to increase the renown of its academic institutions and also to shape the next generation by using 'soft power' as other major countries, such as the US, already do.^{[21][27][47][48]}

Leadership and governance

Peking University Yenching Academy has assembled an advisory council of leading academics and university administrators to lead and support the Academy and its Scholars. The Academy's executive administration is mostly drawn from other colleges and departments of Peking University.^[1]

Executive administration

• Dean Wei Liu, Executive Vice-President & Professor of Economics, Peking University (Ph.D. Peking University)
• Associate Dean Bo Wang, Head, Department of Philosophy & Professor of Philosophy, Peking University (Ph.D. Peking University)
• Associate Dean Hongbin Cai, Dean, Guanghua School of Management & Professor of Economics, Peking University (Ph.D. Stanford University)
• Associate Dean John Holden, Past President, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations; former Chairman, Cargill China (M.A. Stanford University)
• Director of Operation Guohua Jiang, Associate Dean, Graduate School & Professor of Accounting, Peking University (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley)

International academic advisory council

• Gerhard Casper, President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus, and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University
• Elizabeth Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government at Harvard University and Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute
• Alison Richard, Senior Research Scientist & Professor Emerita, Yale University and Vice-Chancellor Emerita, Cambridge University
• Ruth Simmons, Professor and President Emerita, Brown University
• Shih Choon Fong, University Professor and President Emeritus, National University of Singapore (NUS) and President Emeritus, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
• Michael Spence, Professor, New York University Stern School of Business; Senior Fellow, Stanford University Hoover Institution; Dean Emeritus, Stanford University Business School; Nobel Laureate in Economics; and Oxford Rhodes Scholar
• Henry Yang, Chancellor, University of California Santa Barbara
• Zhang Xudong, Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of East Asian Studies, New York University; Cheung Kong Chair Professor of Chinese Literature, Peking University

See also

• Yenching Scholars at Yenching Academy of Peking University
• Schwarzman Scholars at Schwarzman College of Tsinghua University
• Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University
• Gates Scholarship at Cambridge University

References

External links

• Yenching Academy