A comparison of Chinese and Anglo-American ideas about higher education and public good

The chapter compares Anglo-American and Chinese approaches to the individual and collective outcomes of higher education by examining the Western domain of ‘public good’ and ‘public goods’ and the nearest parallel concepts and activities in China. It reviews scholarly discourses of society, state and higher education in the respective political cultures, including individualism and collectivism, university autonomy, the critical function, higher education in civil society, and the global tianxia. A key issue in symmetrical cross-cultural comparison is the position from which it is made. As well as elucidating national-cultural similarities and differences, the paper develops what Sen calls a ‘trans-positional’ view based on integrating the two positional views. The two traditions are not closely aligned. However, aside from the Anglo-American public/private dualism in economics (which occludes collective outcomes), all ideas in both traditions can contribute to a transpositional understanding of the outcomes of higher education.