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

ABSTRACT

The idea of the public good of higher education is closely related to the political, social and educational cultures in which higher education is embedded. It varies across contexts. However, widely used notions of the ‘public’ aspects of higher education, including the concepts of economic public goods and private goods, conventionally assume Anglo-American state/society/university assemblages. Anglo-American (and more generally, Western) discourses and terms are dominant in scholarship on public policy and higher education. This creates obstacles and lacunae in comparative studies, and employing solely Anglo-American notions can be especially problematic in non-Anglo-American contexts. This paper attempts to move beyond the conventional approach by conducting a lexical-based comparison of the Chinese and Anglo-American approaches to the public aspects of higher education. 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.

KEYWORDS:

• The public good
• gong
• higher education
• Chinese
• Anglo-American

Acknowledgements

I would like to express gratitude to Simon Marginson for his support, encouragement, suggestions and comments of the research. I also thank Alis Oancea for her support of the research. I also thank the editor and reviewers for their valuable time and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ‘古之欲明明德于天下者, 先治其国。欲治其国者, 先齐其家。欲齐其家者, 先修其身。’ (The Book of Rites, Higher Learning, 《礼记·大学》).

2 Note that the English approximations in the brackets here are provided in order to give non-Chinese speakers a sense of the meanings of the terms. There is no intention to narrow the connotations of the Chinese concepts to the meanings presented in the brackets. Detailed interpretations are provided below.

3 ‘薄污我私, 薄澣我衣。’ (The Book of Songs, 《诗经》).

4 ‘志忍私, 然后能公’ (Xunzi, Ruxiao, 《荀子·儒效》).

5 ‘义与利, 只是个公与私。’ (Henan Chengshi’s Writings, 《河南程氏遗书》).

6 ‘己者, 人欲之私也；礼者, 天理之公也。’ (Questions and Answers on the Analects, 《论语或问》).

7 See for example ‘With clear distinction between the public and private, a narrow-minded man does not envy one of virtue’. ‘公私之分明, 则小人不疾贤。’ (The Book of Lord Shang, 《商君书·修权》).

8 ‘上天孚佑下民。’ (The Book of History, 《尚书·汤诰》).

9 ‘大道之行也, 天下为公。选贤与能, 讲信修睦; 故人不独亲其亲, 不独子其子 … 力恶其不出於身也, 不必为己 … 是谓大同。’ (The Book of Rites, 《礼记·礼运》).

10 ‘乃命羲和, 钦若昊天, 历象日月星辰, 敬授民时。’ (The Book of History,《尚书·虞书·尧典》).

11 ‘人有恒言, 皆曰“天下国家”。天下之本在国, 国之本在家。’ (Mencius, 《孟子·离娄上》).

12 See for example, ‘All land under heaven falls within the domain of the Son of Heaven [(king)]; all those on this land are his subjects’. (溥天之下, 莫非王土; 率土之滨, 莫非王臣。). (The Book of Songs,《诗经·小雅·北山》).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under award ES/T014768/1, HKU Seed Fund for Basic Research under award 202107185077, and the Project-based Research Fund, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong.