The public good of higher education: A lexical-based comparison of the Chinese and Anglo-American approaches

• In Event: Networks, platforms and stakeholders: advancing higher education through the lens of "international" and "comparative"

Proposal

Higher education plays a public role and produces public goods. However, there is a lack of clarity about what this means (Marginson & Yang, 2022). As the idea of public good derives historically from the formation of nation-states and political theories about the state’s responsibilities and obligations (Neubauer, 2008), connotations of the public good of higher education are closely related to political and educational cultures, including assumptions of governments’ responsibilities, state-university relations, and the relations between individualism and the collective good (Calhoun, 2006; Cheng & Yang, 2015).

However, the mainstream of the existing discussions of the public good of higher education primarily assumes the Anglo-American state/society/university assemblages (Marginson, 2018; Marginson & Yang, 2022). A distinctive example is the influential economic formula raised by Samuelson (1954) of public/private goods, which is based on the imaginary of capitalist societies. However, problems may arise when societies attempt to employ the Anglo-American based interpretations of the public good in higher education, particularly in contexts marked by alternative social imaginaries. For example, Samuelson’s formula assumes a minimal state that only steps in when the market fails. This assumption is at odds with the state/society/market relations as configured in, say, Nordic social democracies or Chinese socialist society (Marginson & Yang, 2022).

Therefore, it is essential to draw on the specific cultures in which higher education is embedded in unpacking the public good of higher education. This is no easy task. Societies may use different languages and ideas to understand and interpret the ‘public good’. Not all languages have the equivalence of the English term of ‘public good’. The concept of ‘public’ is not a universal notion and non-English language parallels to that term are often merely approximations to the English meaning (Marginson & Yang, 2022). This results in difficulties in understanding relevant higher education phenomena in non-Anglo-American contexts and in conducting comparative analyses.

In part, the misuse of the Anglo-American concepts regarding the public good of higher education in non-Anglo-American contexts reflects the dominance of Anglo-American discourses in higher education worldwide. In part, the use of different languages and ideas reflects fundamental language challenges in exploring and comparing the varied approaches to the public good of higher education across contexts. Tackling the Anglo-American dominance of discourses and language challenges becomes the key to unpacking and comparing understandings of the public good of higher education across contexts.

As such, this paper proposes to employ a lexical-based comparison of the Chinese and Anglo-American approaches to the public good of higher education. The lexical-based comparison can help tackle language problems in exploring and comparing the public good of higher education across contexts. It takes into account and engages with the contextual and cultural settings of the languages in order to develop concepts and expressions based on their own knowledges and cultures, and then to establish bridges that connect these contextual-specific concepts and expressions with each other, and with global audiences for mutual dialogue and understanding. This lexical-based comparison can further reveal cultural nuances through language and help to reverse the under-privilege of non-Anglo-American knowledges in discussing the public good of higher education. Specifically, it identifies and explores key concepts of the public good of higher education in both the Chinese and English languages, establishing similarities and differences. The comparison contributes to a more balanced understanding of the public roles of higher education, illuminates new aspects of ‘public’, and may facilitate mutual understanding between scholars and between the Chinese and Anglo-American higher education systems.

References

Calhoun, C. (2006). The university and the public good. Thesis Eleven, 84 (1), 7-43.

Cheng, K., & Yang, R. (2015). A cultural value in crisis: Education as public good in China. In O. Filippakou, & G. Williams (Eds.), Higher Education as a Public Good: Critical Perspectives on Theory, Policy and Practice (127-139). New York: Peter Lang Publisher.

Marginson, S. (2018). Public/private in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 42 (2), 322-37.

Marginson, S., & Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: a comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20(1), 1-31.

Neubauer, D. (2008). The historical transformation of public good. Journal of Asian Public Policy, 1 (2), 127-38.

Samuelson, P. (1954). The pure theory of public expenditure. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 36 (4), 387-9.

Author

• Lili Yang, The University of Hong Kong