John William Medendorp is a PhD candidate in Michigan State University's Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education program. John is a researcher on global higher education and has extensive experience working internationally. He has conducted dissertation research in China over the last three years and will soon publish on the topic of returning Chinese PhDs. He is a supporter of, and has been in recent collaboration with, Azusa Pacific University's Global Ph.D. in Higher Education program, which is launching a cohort in Zhengzhou, China, in August 2013.
In my last entry, I stressed the importance of having a high-level, high-impact Christian presence among the leadership in higher education institutions around the world, both Christian and non-Christian. In this post, I want to describe a program that, I believe, is the perfect vehicle for providing the tools for this presence. The program to which I am referring is Azusa Pacific University's PhD program in Global Higher Education.
This has been the quest of many individuals and many groups throughout the history of mankind. The efforts usually fall into one of three categories, or a combination of the three.
Private higher education in China is a recently founded, rapidly expanding sector. When economic reforms were introduced in China after Deng Xiaoping's assumption of power in 1978, the way was open for private higher education. The first private higher education institution (HEI) in the post-Cultural Revolution era was Zhonghua Societal University, established in Beijing in 1982.