Welcoming a New Sibling in Liberal Arts Education to China

NYU Shanghai Chancellor Yu Lizhong and Vice Chancellor Jeffrey Lehman joined university leaders and officials from across China for Duke Kunshan University’s (DKU) inaugural undergraduate convocation on August 14. Founded in 2013,  DKU follows NYU Shanghai to become China’s second Sino-American joint university. Last week, they enrolled 266 freshmen from 10 Chinese provinces and 27 foreign countries.

NYU Shanghai is looking forward to working with DKU to further a shared mission of providing innovative and diverse liberal arts educations to students from China and throughout the world, Chancellors Yu and Lehman noted.

“NYU Shanghai started as an experiment in the field of global higher education, but we are not alone. Many schools are looking to foster similar experimental environments,” Chancellor Yu said at a panel at the convocation. “We are pushing for change, using our precious experience and innovative thinking to inspire colleges and universities on a national level,” he said.

“We think of DKU as our sibling university, an institution that shares our intellectual values, and we look forward to many happy years of cooperation, mutual support, and loving rivalry,” Vice Chancellor Lehman said in his keynote address to the convocation.

According to Chancellor Yu, the mission of joint universities goes beyond measuring the numbers of outstanding students recruited, majors opened, or graduates selected by top tier companies and grad programs. “More important is motivating and initiating education reform and changing the way people understand it,” he said.

Vice Chancellor Lehman also addressed how global higher education can help promote a culture of innovation in China and around the world.

“Through experiments like NYU Shanghai and Duke Kunshan, China is now breaking tradition. Far more than 25% of our undergraduate students come from other countries [and] Sino-foreign joint universities enable the creation of new ways to nurture multicultural effectiveness in the next generation of students.”