Illinois' Involvement in Asia

September 18, 2007

Thank you for that generous introduction Tom. This is a great forum and certainly a very timely subject. Illinois has enjoyed a rich history with Asia and with its universities, with local and national government, and with the private sector. Our strategic plan calls for even more ties with the region. But this is a special moment in that history and I want to talk about what that means.

Last June in northwest China I stood at the western gate of the Silk Road near Dunhuang. This is where the Great Wall ends its 6,000-mile traverse and where ancient traders once exchanged their goods. Out there in the barren Gobi Desert is also where I toured the Mogao caves that date back to 366 A.D. These Buddhist shrines with their wall paintings and artifacts left me breathless. I had never seen such well preserved frescos depicting hunters, dancers, musicians and miniature icons of Buddha. I did not expect such riches in a desert.

Just a few years ago it might have seemed odd for me, the Chancellor of a major land grant university, to be standing on the clay-colored landscape of the Gobi Desert. But this past summer, when I also traveled to Israel, Cyprus, and Brazil, it made perfect sense. I knew I had to be there.

Consider the symbolism. In the midst of trying to internationalize this university that sits in the heart of the American Midwest I was standing at one of the most historical junctions on the most famous of trade routes - the Silk Road. A place where East meets West. A place Marco Polo visited at the age of 15 in the 1200s. He was so taken with China he stayed for the next twenty years.

Dunhuang itself has historically been a vital crossroads, an oasis even, where many people from different races came together to exchange the most important ideas of the day.

These were the seeds of what we now routinely, and sometimes disparagingly, call globalization. Our exchanges are no longer impeded by sandstorms. We may not be using camels to travel anymore - although I did see them in the Gobi - and we may not be trading spices and silk for gunpowder and paper, but the same principles still apply: Ideas transcending political boundaries. Knowledge shared between people who may not even share a common language. An unquenchable thirst for understanding this complex world we all share, whether it is in 600 A.D. or in the 21st Century.

We look beyond the prairie to seek global collaborations to fulfill our commitments in the areas of energy, environment, human health and education. And we increasingly look east, toward Asia. We want to improve the quality of life for the citizens of the world.

There is no doubt that we are in the middle of a major sea change when it comes to the globalization of education. I see it as a great opportunity. In William Brody's essay "The Coming Test," he notes that "a college degree is an indispensable passport to the globalized economy of the twenty-first century. Higher education, once the rarefied province of the elite, is now viewed by most nations as an indispensable strategic tool for shaping, directing, and promoting economic growth."

I would add that a degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a university ranked twenty-sixth in the world, according to the most recent survey at Shanhai's Jioa Tong University's Institute of Higher Education, has plenty of cachet in the international marketplace, or as Brody labels it, within the "education cartel."  By the way, that same survey ranked us number three among world universities in the fields of engineering/technology and computer sciences.

At the same time we want to prepare our students here at home to step seamlessly into the global economy. To have the skill set and the cultural awareness to negotiate their workplace whether in Bangalore, Beijing, or Berkeley. Our own Associate Provost for International Affairs, William Brustein, who is at this moment on a trip to China, says, "Students who have lived abroad are students who do not shun challenges. Our global students play a crucial role in internationalizing our classrooms."

By now it's a given that the best students, faculty members, and researchers are no longer simply found domestically. They are part of a global brain pool and we need to continue to align our thinking on that scale. Asians especially are savvy consumers of higher education. They demand the best faculty, best resources and the best education to position their children for the best jobs…in the world.

To maintain our prestige with those students and faculty, to stay number twenty-six (and I do believe we can move much higher than that) we must build on what we have at the present. I believe that we have a great story to tell and we have to make that story even better.

Our story includes the long and successful history of Extension, of course. But what is Extension today? We can no longer restrain it within state borders. The problems that we want to solve have no borders.

For example,

• increasing soy in the protein deficient diets of communities in India and Africa and combating malnutrition, which affects half the world's population;
• partnering with Brazil not only for that piece but to create biofuels and other renewable energies;
• improving healthcare and facilitating micro economies;
• increasing literacy rates for men and women;
• controlling malaria, a disease that infects two billion people annually;
•  and confronting climate change.

The list is endless and, at times, disheartening, but it is not unsolvable.

Forget arbitrary political boundaries. These challenges I just listed are global in nature and require international collaborations. When I was in Shanghai having dinner one night this summer I looked over at another table and there was our agriculture dean. In Brazil I was greeted by the chant of I-L-L from a party of Caterpillar executives. Well, you get the idea.

It not just that the "world is flat," as Tom Friedman has famously said. Our 21st Century world is smaller, smarter, and more interdependent. Asia is the great economic engine at the moment. China and India are now poised to move from the ranks of developing countries to that of superpower status. The transformation is nothing short of stunning.

In a new book about the economies of India and China, "The Elephant and the Dragon," author Robyn Meredith notes that if we are to keep up with the dragon-like pace of China and India's slow but steady march into modernity, then our educational system must reshape its mission to compete on a planetary scale.
She writes, "What the U.S. must do is clear: It must strengthen its educational and economic foundations and foster the innovation that will keep the U.S. lead in the technology that underpins so many parts of the nation's culture and economy. Now is the time for the U.S. to recognize the threat to American standards of living and to resolve to raise its game and compete on the new global terms."

The competition for universities is as fierce as the Gobi Desert climate.

James Surowiecki of the New Yorker Magazine writes that "since WW II, the countries that have made successful leaps from developing to developed status have all poured money, public and private, into education. South Korea now spends a higher percentage of its national income [on education] than nearly any other country in the world. Taiwan had a system of universal primary education before its phase of hypergrowth began. The social rate of return on investment in university education in India has been calculated at an impressive 9 percent or 10 percent." The need for a college education has never been greater not only in developing nations but in industrialized countries, too.

While developing nations in Asia like China and India are understandably focused on the economic growth that they need to bring a better standard of living to their citizens, the interpersonal and cultural understanding that result from international education collaborations and exchanges have immeasurable value in terms of cultural understanding, international cooperation, democratization and peace. And that democratization includes higher education. China has doubled its student population and India aims to do the same.

So our role at this land grant university is and should be ambitious. For us to remain a great university, one of the world's "megaversities," "a research and educational dynamo electronically linking the best faculty and the most capable students in a worldwide academic community," we must address the great issues of society.  What a tremendous opportunity. Now we can improve and enrich lives all over the world.

Daniel Burnham, the great Chicago architect once said, "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us."

I thought about all of this on the Silk Road, at Hausu Province State House that evening, and at Shanghai Jiao Tong and Peking universities, and at Lanzhou and China Agricultural University.

I thought about it in Brazil at the University of Sao Paulo and in Rio at the Pan American games and at the top of Iguassu Falls. And when I met with that country's top business executive and education leaders.

And I thought about it in Israel where stood at the lookout point of Nebi Mari and looked out at Gaza. And when I walked the streets of Haifa and sat in the classrooms of the Technion and Hebrew University and in the Women's Center in the Bedouin community of Lakia, and in Al-Qasemi College, the first institute of Islamic higher education in Israel and a key lifeline that reaches out to local Arab women in an effort to educate them as citizens of the world.

And I thought about the importance of educational and cultural exchanges when I signed an online petition posted by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East in strong opposition to an ill-conceived boycott of Israeli universities and academicians by Great Britain's University and College Union.

And in the past year when I met with more than 100 donors to this university.

I thought about all of that this summer. And it began on the Silk Road at that nexus where East meet West.

I'm hardly new to overseas travel but last summer it all came together: I knew I had to be out in the world because the world has come to Illinois like never before. To effect change in the world, it was always important to be out there, on the road less traveled, and to be a university that attracts the best and brightest from around the world. And to some extent we have done that for more than 100 years at Illinois.

But I would argue that today it's gone from being important to being imperative.

That is why most recently we launched the innovative "3 plus 2 program" in August of this year with our good friends at Tsinghua University. Chinese undergraduates will study for three years at Tsinghua, followed by two years here at the Urbana campus and an industrial internship with Caterpillar and Kraft Foods. They will then receive a master's degree from Illinois.

In turn, Illinois students will complete three of their four years of undergraduate study in the United States, then spend seven months in China, immersing themselves in language, cultural and social science studies before signing on for an eight-month internship program with an international company based in China. Following that, they will complete two years of academic study in China. As a side note, the Tsinghua campus was designed by T. Chuang, a 1914 graduate of our own School of Architecture, who modeled his design on our Quadrangle. There is even a Foellinger Auditorium at Tsinghua.

And that is why Illinois Professor of Business Madhu Viswanathan directs the Marketplace Literary Project in India's Tamil Nadu. The project teaches the poor how to become better-informed buyers and sellers complements other efforts to combat poverty, such as microfinance, or supplying small loans for low-income households. This improves the economic opportunities of Indian women who cannot read or write.

That is why we now run 13 programs in 13 countries, including India, in which we are increasing the amount of soy in the diets of those who are malnourished or infected by HIV-AIDS. By replacing wheat with soy we can double the protein level and improve the vitamin and mineral profile at the same time.

There is the Landscape Heritage Conservation program led by two of our Landscape Architecture professors Amita Sinha and James Wescoat, who have developed master plans to preserve historic sites in India including the Taj Mahal area in Agra.

I could go on and on. There are so many partnerships and alliances and MOUs with Asia taking place and many in the works that I cannot possible mention them all.

But here's my lament: I continue to believe that no matter how many good data points there are internationalization is not yet an embedded part of this institution. How do we accomplish that? What's the next step? How do we remain a megaversity and stay competitive with the other great global universities? Is it ultimately a zero sum game for the United States or is it, as I firmly believe, a win-win situation for everyone?

I don't have all the answers to those questions—Chip might—but I do believe that we must think like those intrepid traders that traveled the Silk Road. We must utilize and showcase our strengths in science, technology, and innovation. We must be nimble in the face of change and even upheaval. We must be creative as we bargain and negotiate new territory. And we must keep our eye on the prize: giving students the tools they will need to change the world.  

Asia is key. We need her intelligent, her energy, her diversity. And more than ever we need to share our creativity and expertise. Unlike the heyday of the Silk Road, we are no longer limited by the restraints of distance or the unreliable vagaries of communication. We are only limited by our imaginations. For all our differences, we remain a curious and gregarious species and at this moment in time we need each other more than ever.

Thank you for listening.