Finding new audiences for the former native speaker

I've been thinking about how I might expand my audience base beyond personal friends, family, and people googling for donuts. (Not that I'm at all unhappy with you folks!) But, I wondered, what could I do to ensure a connection with the savvy erudite group that I hope to reach? Then it hit me. The problem with this blog is that it just hasn't been discussed enough at scholarly conferences. In an attempt to help out would-be "former native speaker" scholars, I provide the following titles (courtesy of the amazing ... PoMo English Title Generator):

• Appropriation and Nationalism in Notes of a Former Native Speaker: Jonathan Benda Desiring Political Power
  
• The Borders of Subjectivity and the Seductive in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• The Labor of Womanhood and the Transformational in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• Fragments as Subject: Hybridizing Historicist Dis-ease in Jonathan
  Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• The Murder of Intercourse and the Erotic in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• Advocating Ethnocentrism: Primal Autobiography in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• Male Transgression and the Transgression of Animal Mythos in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• The Self of Labor and the Peripheral in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• Transforming the Patriarchal Politics in Jonathan Benda: Notes of a Former Native Speaker and Alterity
  
• Performing the Orgasmic Influence in Jonathan Benda: Notes of a Former Native Speaker and Labor
  
• The Resistant Assimilating The Marginalized: Jonathan Benda, Notes of a Former Native Speaker and Tyranny
  
• The Supplement of Autobiography and the Convicted in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• Community and Danger in Notes of a Former Native Speaker: Jonathan Benda Dismembering Neocolonialist Vision

Remember, this is a win-win situation--I'll get publicity, and you can get a line on your CV!

This has got to be a joke

I got this e-mail message today:

D‮ae‬r Ba‮syalcr‬ Me‮ebm‬r,

T‮sih‬ e‮am‬il was se‮tn‬ by the B‮yalcra‬s s‮re‬ver to v‮re‬ify y‮ruo‬ em‮lia‬ ad‮sserd‬. You m‮su‬t c‮pmo‬lete t‮sih‬ pr‮sseco‬ by cl‮ikci‬ng on the l‮kni‬ bel‮wo‬ and ent‮gnire‬ in the s‮llam‬ w‮dni‬ow yo‮ru‬ Barcla‮sy‬ Member‮hs‬ip numb‮re‬, p‮edocssa‬ and m‮rome‬able w‮ro‬d.

Th‮si‬ is d‮eno‬ for y‮ruo‬ protec‮it‬on - b‮suace‬e s‮emo‬ of our memb‮re‬s no lon‮eg‬r h‮eva‬ acc‮sse‬ to the‮ri‬ e‮am‬il a‮serdd‬ses and we m‮tsu‬ ver‮yfi‬ it. To v‮ire‬fy y‮uo‬r e‮liam‬ a‮erdd‬ss and acc‮sse‬ y‮uo‬r b‮na‬k a‮occ‬unt , b‮na‬k a‮occ‬unt , clikc on the lnik bolew: ...

I've gotten some bad spam before, but this is ridiculous...

Donut update

Stopped by Waili Donuts again the other evening and was pleasantly surprised to find a jelly donut filled with blueberry ... uh... jelly! This made me a little more hopeful about the future of my relationship with this institution.

On the other hand, Poagao reports that he found red bean paste-filled donuts at the Mr. Donut in Taipei. I guess this is one of those "glocalization" examples I can mention in my ICC class next semester.

By the way, I was interested (but a little disappointed) to see that one of the most frequently used search terms that led people to this blog was "donuts" (including "Mr. Donut" and "taiwan donuts"). I'd like to think I have more to offer than commentary on donuts, but I guess it's a surfer's market. And "donuts" is a better fitting search term than another one I noticed: "Who cares. Taiwan is a mess anyway."

A year older, none the wiser

Well... "the former native speaker" is a year old(er) today. A lot has happened in the past year (most of which, unfortunately, I can't talk about in this forum). One thing that hasn't changed, though, is that Lien Chan and the KMT aren't giving up on their search for "the truth" about President Chen and V-P Lu's shooting (even the pro-pan-blue China Post puts quotes around "the truth"!). But at least PFP Chairman James Soong had the sense to stay home from yesterday's protest march.

[Update: this is what I get for trying to be clever--my own brother (who knows my bd is in January) e-mailed me to ask if I'd changed my birthday and thinks I'm talking about "my" birthday and not the blog's birthday... (I'll resist getting into any mumbo-jumbo about mediated selfhood... for now... and just say "thanks" on behalf of the blog to those who wished us/it/me a happy birthday!) And now I've added quotation marks to "the former native speaker" which will probably make it clearer (or perhaps even more confusing...).]

Just a note here to myself, to read Amardeep Singh's post "Francis Fukuyama: The Protestant Ethic in an age of Islamic Terrorism" when I get a chance...

"...false friendships, deals, grudges, acts of political sabotage, indecorous alliances, favoritism"

"V. S. Ravens" writes about "The Limits of Tenure" at her large public university in the U.S. What strikes me is that her description depiction of dirty campus politics in the U.S. is remarkably similar to the way some folks describe depict university life in Taiwan. Which is to say, to quote Erma Bombeck, "the grass is always greener over the septic tank". (Gotta remind myself of this sometimes...)

(I should also note that I'm not particularly sympathetic regarding her attempt at what she admits was a "political deal" to remove "the department's ineffectual staff member". It comes off sounding both underhanded and politically naive at the same time.)

Hmmm... don't think they asked anyone around here...

According to a BBC World Service poll, most people see the PRC's influence in the world as positive rather than negative.

The small print that accompanies the graph, though, notes that the margin of error for this poll is + or - 2.5%-45%...

Hu Shih and public speaking

I was looking through Two Self-Portraits: Liang Ch'i-Ch'ao and Hu Shih and came across Hu Shih's description of how he learned how to be a public speaker in English. He was a student at Cornell when he first took a course in public speaking in 1912. As he describes the experience,

My professor, Professor Everett, was a very good teacher. Summer school began in July, and the first time that I was called upon to make a speech, I actually trembled. I had made some speeches before, but this was the first time that I had had to get up and speak in a class of public speaking. Though it was a hot July day, I felt so cold that my feet trembled, and I had to hold on to the small table while I tried to think of what I had prepared to speak. Professor Everett noticed that I held on to the table, so the next time he took away the table and I was forced to think of my subject unaided. In thinking of the subject I forgot my cold feet, so I did not tremble, and that was the beginning of my career as a trained public speaker. (216)

I want to mention this to the students in my FENM class on Friday--I think the Chinese majors in particular will appreciate it...

[3/6/05 Update: At first I thought the "Professor Everett" Hu Shih mentioned was Everett Lee Hunt, one of the early members of the "Cornell School of Rhetoric," according to Thomas W. Benson. But Benson says it wasn't until 1913 that Hunt graduated from Huron College in Huron, South Dakota, "whereupon he was immediately hired [by Cornell] as an instructor in Oratory and Debate" (5). Perhaps, however, Hu Shih was mistaken about the year he took the public speaking course.

Work Cited: Benson, Thomas W. "The Cornell School of Rhetoric: Idiom and Institution." Communication Quarterly 51.1 (2003): 1-56.]

Weather

Here it is only March 2 and it's already rained for about 300 days this month...

Today we did an impromptu speaking activity in FENM (Freshman English for Nonmajors) class. (I always feel like an enormous fraud conducting this kind of activity because I'm about the worst impromptu speaker on the planet... er... well, come to think of it, there's always GWB to make me look good.) In her speech, a student expressed her preference for Taichung because it's not as rainy and windy in the winter as Taipei. It's hard for me to believe that right now, given the rain and wind that have been pounding our apartment this evening, but I suppose it's possible that it's even worse in Taipei right now.

And I just bought a Lonely Planet guide to Belgium that suggests I take an umbrella with me because April is a rainy month...

This one hits home!

"My Day..." from "Stupid Undergrounds" cracked me up... (but rang too true...)

Scholarly publishing in the humanities

James Aune over at the Blogora raises an interesting question: why should scholarly journals in the humanities refuse to allow multiple submissions?

[And here's more discussion from Crooked Timber on the speed (or lack thereof) of academic publishing...]

Language teaching conference cfp--last call

Got this call for papers in my e-mail box the other day. It sounds interesting, despite its use of the dreaded "interrogating". Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to submit anything. But you can!

FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
INTERROGATING THIRD SPACES IN LANGUAGE TEACHING,
LEARNING AND USE

CENTRE FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS
(CELTEAL), UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

27-28 JUNE 2005

This conference, hosted in the multicultural and multilingual city of Leicester in the centre of England, marks the establishment of CELTEAL (Centre for English Language Teacher Education and Applied Linguistics) within the School of Education in the University of Leicester. The theme of the conference, 'Interrogating Third Spaces in Language Teaching, Learning and Use', derives from the interests of the group who have all been involved in working across multilingual and multicultural contexts.
We would like to interrogate the concept of third space which has been in use for several years in cultural studies and applied linguistics. We believe it is time now to explore the validity of this concept, both theoretically and practically in terms of its applicability to a wide range of applied linguistic topics. We would like to take the opportunity to invite those with an interest in the idea of third spaces to engage with us in discussion of its potentials and problematic.

Plenary Speakers

• Adrian Holliday
  
• Bonny Norton
  
• Ben Rampton
  
• Helen Spencer-Oatey

The intermediate spaces - linguistic, discursive and cultural spaces - between established norms have habitually been seen as problematic, because they constitute neither one thing nor another but are, by definition, in-between. A result of contact, they are heterogeneous spaces, but they can also reach autonomy, transcending their component sources through a dialectical process to make a new, expanded space which had not been dreamt of before. On the other hand, the very concept of 'Third Spaces' presupposes, and thereby reinforces, relatively stable and homogeneous norms in the 'first' and 'second' spaces, and this presupposition needs to be examined.

Postmodern theory, particularly in anthropology and cultural studies, has taught us to celebrate these intermediate zones, which have been named 'Third Spaces', because through the struggles of those who create them they present the possibility for stimulation and renewal, as well as threat. But we do not need to adopt postmodernist theory to begin to value these third spaces, whether they become stable or are always in transition.

This Conference will examine what there is to celebrate in the existence of third spaces, and will interrogate the usefulness of the concept itself, in the following areas:

• How language learners construct (or are constrained from constructing) learning experiences that are meaningful for themselves out of what teachers and others intend for them.
  
• How inter-language (phonology, syntax, pragmatic strategies, discourse strategies, genres...) thrives as an independent system in the spaces between the norms of L1 and L2, as fossilised forms, pidgins, idiolects, emergent systems and 'errors'.
  
• How language varieties emerge against established standards, in regional and sub-cultural pockets.
  
• How particular teachers and learners in particular classrooms adopt, adapt, co-opt and corrupt teaching methodologies, course materials, syllabi, curricula and examination systems, and make them work for themselves.
  
• How participants in multi-language interactions mix, switch, translate, and otherwise manage to communicate in one language or another.
  
• How identities are lost, reduced, confounded, re-shaped, and re-made in the move from one language to another.
  
• How learning to write in academic and other genres means finding a way between the established conventions and how you want to express who you are.
  
• How readers extract and impose their own meanings from and on texts, moving themselves towards the text, and the text towards themselves.
  

Submitting abstracts:

Abstracts of 250-300 words, in English, should demonstrate a clear relationship to the conference theme. Deadline for submission of abstracts is 7 March 2005.

Papers will last for 30 minutes, including at least 10 minutes for discussion. PowerPoint and OHPs will be available as standard.

Abstracts should contain:

• Title of presentation
  
• Name(s) of the author(s)
  
• Affiliation of the author(s)
  
• Both email and postal addresses
  
• Telephone and Fax numbers
  
• Any special audio-visual/IT requirements
  

Abstracts should be submitted as email attachments by 7 March 2005 to the following address: email:its2005@le.ac.uk

Details about registration, accommodation, etc. can be found on the conference website: www.le.ac.uk/se/conference/its2005/

Book meme: 123.5

(After reading the chutry experiment)

1. Grab the nearest book.
   
2. Open the book to page 123.
   
3. Find the fifth sentence.
   
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
   
5. Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.
   

Well, this definitely won't impress anyone:

Note that M. and P. before names may be abbreviations for the titles Monsieur 'Mr.' and Père 'Father' (M. René Char, P. J. Reynard). (123)

From the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, sixth edition. (Yeah, I'm working on my Research Methods syllabus...)

Online resource for Chinese speech communication study

Found this website in my travels: 網上口語傳播研究中心 (Speech Communication on the Web), set up by Jack Tzu-hsiang Yu of Shih-Hsin University's Speech Comm. department. It looks like he hasn't updated it in a while, but it has some interesting links, such as to the full texts of most of the R.O.C. presidential inaugural addresses, resources on debating, and resources on interpersonal communication. (It's mostly in Chinese, I should mention.)

Identity crisis

Hmmm... might use this to start off my presentation in Belgium...

Googlism for: taiwan

taiwan is business as
taiwan is the future of china'
taiwan is safe for now
taiwan is qualified for membership of the international
taiwan is getting ready for a war with china
taiwan is integral part of china
taiwan is an inalienable part of
taiwan is "very dangerous"
taiwan is ready
taiwan is a province of china
taiwan is a province of china?
taiwan is now available for temporary importations using a tecro
taiwan is committed to reunification
taiwan is developing advanced technologies for electronic warfare
taiwan is inextricably linked to security
taiwan is this
taiwan is uncertain 6/16/
taiwan is independent"
taiwan is taiwan"
taiwan is business as usual
taiwan is a 'state
taiwan is key issue
taiwan is looking good for 2000
taiwan is not a part of china
taiwan is here
taiwan is ignored
taiwan is a beacon of hope for chinese
taiwan is an important reminder to us all
taiwan is not a province of china
taiwan is to auction five 3g mobile phone licenses in october
taiwan is not a member
taiwan is nobody's pawn
taiwan is experiencing job losses due to global it slowdown
taiwan is a rabies
taiwan is an unwatered region
taiwan is an island and the main water resource is precipitation
taiwan is my harashi
taiwan is a de
taiwan is the future of china' jimmy lai on feeling lucky
taiwan is safe for now the washington post
taiwan is the `motherland'
taiwan is standing in china's way
taiwan is not china by jeff jacoby
taiwan is qualified for membership of the international community
taiwan is down
taiwan is expected to grow to more than us$60 billion by 2010
taiwan is getting ready for a war with china the relations between china and taiwan could be best described with one phrase ? no peace
taiwan is integral part of china member states of the shanghai cooperation organisation proceed from the fact that the chinese
taiwan is an inalienable part of china"? taiwan has belonged to china since ancient times
taiwan is "very dangerous"
taiwan is an internal affair of china
taiwan is a matter of honour
taiwan is ready; are you?
taiwan is 394 kilometers
taiwan is a province of china"
taiwan is now available for temporary importations using a tecro / ait carnet
taiwan is rare and valuable
taiwan is uncertain
taiwan is a sovereign state
taiwan is independent"
taiwan is taiwan"
taiwan is business as usual by bruce einhorn
taiwan is in the first place of the worldwide cd
taiwan is not troublemaker
taiwan is not a part of china in the first year when yung
taiwan is a modern industrialised megalopolis clinging to the fringes of an ancient culture; a string of teeming cities at the feet of a glorious
taiwan is an independent sovereign country
taiwan is ready on 16/7 http
taiwan is not a protectorate of any country
taiwan is a multi
taiwan is world's second
taiwan is world's third
taiwan is ___ island
taiwan is not a member of the who
taiwan is
taiwan is a part of china
taiwan is experiencing job losses from global it slowdown
taiwan is a modern industrialized megalopolis clinging to the fringes of an ancient culture; a string of stinking cities at the feet of a
taiwan is the right thing to do
taiwan is not united with china
taiwan is by definition independent of people's republic of china
taiwan is a thriving free
taiwan is a beautiful island home to over twenty
taiwan is so convenient i wonder if it's a bit much
taiwan is now
taiwan is ready to produce its own submarines
taiwan is a small island on the west side of the pacific
taiwan is free for evangelism
taiwan is turning its back on software from the likes of microsoft to
taiwan is easy to find
taiwan is now ranked among the top countries in the number of sci papers published per capita
taiwan is a small island with a population of only 23 million people
taiwan is an island of 36
taiwan is probably not the first country mentioned when the conversation turns to the spectacular scuba diving that exists in asia; but
taiwan is one of the few countries in the world that has been barred from the 190
taiwan is made a province of china and liu ming
taiwan is a stable democracy
taiwan is controversial
taiwan is at a point about midway
taiwan is a very delicate question because of the tenseness that has historically
taiwan is a modern industrialised megalopolis clinging to the fringes of an ancient culture; a string of teeming cities at the feet of a glorious mountain range

New journal on Taiwan Studies

Just received this information about a new journal:

New Journal

Taiwan Inquiry

Editor: Wylie I. Lee

Editorial Board

Ching-chi Chen, Southern Illinois University-Edwardville; Wen-yen Chen, University of District of Columbia; Y. Frank Chiang, Fordham University; Shutsung Liao, University of Chicago; Bao-tyan Wang, Changhwa Chirstian Hospital; De-min Wu, University of Kansas; Shi-kuei Wu, University of Colorado-Boulder.

Editor, Media Graphics: Bor-jiunn Niu

Assistant Editor, Final Proof: Taitzer Wang

Taiwan Inquiry is the new official publication of the North America Taiwanese Professors' Association (NATPA). It is intended to be published twice a year, but the first phase of publication will be annually. The journal invites the submission of original articles on Taiwan in all disciplines of the social sciences and humanities with a close examination of matter. All articles are refereed for acceptance.

Manuscripts, in English, must not exceed 25 pages and should be typed and double-spaced. Footnotes are to be typed at the bottom of the text, with references at the end of the manuscript. For information on styling, please consult The Chicago Manual of Style.

Please send two hard copies of your double-spaced manuscript and a Windows compatible disk, preferably in Microsoft Word, and a short biographical note to:

Dr. Wylie I. Lee,

Editor-in-Chief

Taiwan Inquiry

TI_editor@natpa.org

8 Bayonne

Mission Viejo, CA 92692

International publishing and local academic discourse

I was working on another post re: the SSCI discussion(s) from here and Scott's blog, but the discussion that has gone on in my absence has made my comments sort of irrelevant. (Don't you guys go anywhere for Lunar New Year? ;-) )

It seems that the discussion has moved from how much we should push individual professors to try to publish in SSCI (or A&HCI) journals to the (possible) effects of SSCI-type criteria on publishing within Taiwan. I think Michael and Clyde are correct that the long-term effects of this new emphasis could be positive if the system leads to a careful reevaluation of what consitutes good research, rather than simple mimicry (or worship) of the Western system. I still share Chu's concern about a "blind following of Western theory"--particularly Western theories of what constitutes "knowledge."

To give an example: Suresh Canagarajah (who grew up and taught in Sri Lanka until 1994) writes about how an article of his was rejected by an American journal partly because of the article's "'unnecessarily hostile tone ... towards western society and values in general'" (this is quoted from a referee's comments). Let me quote from his book, A Geopolitics of Academic Writing:

Consider the many ironies behind my own experience of writing a paper on the social and cultural conflicts for local students in using an American textbook in ESL classrooms. I sent the paper to an American journal after considerable revision, well aware of the need to restrain the expression of feelings in my writing. However, no amount of postgraduate training in the West and further efforts helped to efface all direct indexes of affect (some of which were necessary to carry out my purposes in that paper). The paper was subsequently rejected, primarily on the findings of the referees that a demonstration of excessive feelings betrayed my ideological biases. This is how one referee stated his or her judgment:

Certainly, impassioned writing is to be admired, especially if it is grounded in theoretical writings, as much of this article is. ... Despite these valid aspects of the article, the unnecessarily hostile tone of the writer towards the specific materials used and towards western society and values in general undermines the logic of this argument. ... While I will always support provocative articles which enable readers to re-examine long-held beliefs, articles whose logic is obscured by hostility are counterproductive. Rather than open dialog, they preclude it. For this reason, I am not recommending publication.

It is interesting how in such an important gatekeeping context this reviewer adheres to the classic Western stereotype that feelings are automatically opposed to logic. Feelings are translated as "hostility," which is then rules as "unnecessary" and turns out to be a reason to bar the paper from publication. It is significant how easily something "critical" becomes something that is "hostile." It is in this sense that writing conventions can become a weapon for suppressing positions oppositional to the dominant discourse. Style colonizes! (153-4)

Note also that this article was rejected despite the admission by the referee that it was well-grounded in theory. But the theory upon which rejection was based was the "classic Western stereotype" regarding what constituted acceptable expression of emotion (coming out of the mind/body logic/feeling divisions that still have a great deal of influence in Western academia, despite postmodernist and feminist critiques of these divisions).

This kind of example indicates to me that Western academia has some way to go in opening up to the concerns and ways of knowing of non-Western thinkers. I hope that what happens as a result of local adoption of SSCI/A&HCI is not a one-way transfer of a system of evaluation. In terms of Taiwan, what I hope will come out of these experiments by the MOE in the long run is some kind of understanding of academic discourse that irons out some of the practical problems that Clyde, Michael, and others see with the local academic scene and usefully complicates the standards handed "down" from the West so that we can address the legitimate concerns of people like Chu.

Research in Taiwan in an international context

Now that the semester is over, I had some time to go over some of articles in the "Forum" section of the Taiwan News. Two articles were particularly interesting to me for their attacks on the Ministry of Education's (over-)emphasis on international ranking criteria such as SCI, SSCI, and A&HCI:

1. "Academic Production Amid Global Neo-liberalism" by Chen Kuang-hsing (published Nov. 30, 2004)
   
2. "Reflections on Academic Evaluation and Academic Production: Taking Economic Sciences as Example" by Chu Wan-wen (pub. Dec. 1, 2004)
   

These two articles focus on Taiwan's academic production in a global context and how the push for publication in international academic fora have both disadvantaged Taiwanese researchers and led researchers here to neglect local concerns in favor of broader international issues. (Note: there has been extensive discussion on Scott Sommers's blog about this. I just want to point out two other places where this issue is being discussed.)

Chen argues that the government-encouraged value of competing internationally in the academic marketplace (including having the goal of placing a Taiwanese university among the top 100 of international universities) has led Taiwan "to treat academic production as a quantifiable indicator that counts toward national competitiveness and to implement rewards and punishments based on quantified scores." International academic production necessarily means writing in English instead of Chinese and writing for an audience that is perhaps not so interested in the Taiwan situation for its own sake, he continues.

At the same time, if researchers must use the theoretical framework and language familiar to the English-speaking world in exchange for the possibility of publication, then in the longer term the context and concerns of our society, politics, culture, and history will gradually be hollowed out and publication in the humanities and social sciences will more and more resemble that of the natural sciences and become equally monadic. This obviously runs counter to the recent trend in world academia of emphasizing diversity and heterogeneity.

Chu agrees with this assessment, pointing out that

international evaluation criteria do not attach importance to the functional goal of "serving the needs of the local society." The problems that international journals are concerned about, their problem awareness, is led by the European and North American (it would be more accurate to say the U.S.) academic circles. While these concerns also have their universal significance, they do not necessarily have a lot of overlap with the immediate concerns of Taiwan and any other region.

Chu goes on,

The globalization phenomenon of the humanities and social sciences in catching-up economies like Taiwan is not at all an "international division of labor." Instead, under the shroud of U.S. cultural hegemony, we invoke on our own account U.S. criteria (that we affirm) as standard for mutual evaluation. This might lead to a blind following of Western theory. At the same time it might translate into the commitment of vast academic resources for the research of U.S. mainstream issues as well as the examination of local issues from an American perspective and American problem awareness.

Chen and Chu both argue that Taiwan scholars and government organizations like the Ministry of Education should be aware that using "international" criteria for judging academic production can come with a price if the concept of international standards of quality is conflated with the goal of publishing internationally in Western (mostly U.S.) academic journals. What gets lost is a concern with locally pressing issues and concerns.

Comments on proposal to classify Taiwan's universities?

From the January 21 Taipei Times:

Plan divides universities
A proposal championed by the Ministry of Education's higher education department for universities to be classified into a number of categories was the subject of heated debate yesterday during a national conference of university heads. Participants in the panel discussion, which was presided over by Mou Tsung-tsan (牟宗燦), chairman of the Association of Private Universities and Colleges, were divided on the proposal, in which universities would be divided into four categories -- teaching universities, research universities, professional universities and community universities. Due to a jump in the number of institutions, universities have shifted from providing an elite education to a universal education, which has resulted in financial pressure, lower quality graduates and low competitiveness, an departmental official said. To iron out these problems, the department proposed that universities be classified into the categories and that the government offer them funds based upon specific needs, the official said.

Intriguing idea, I must admit--at least on first glance. But also a little scary. Anyone know more about this?

Too young to feel this old...

I'm a little slow in linking to this, but this post from Wil Wheaton's blog cracked me up. His conversation with his kids about why Phil Collins could possibly have been "an international superstar" in the 80s and why Bono sported a mullet ("'The mullet was the official haircut of rock and roll,' I said") reminded me of how I feel every year when I'm facing a new group of students. I don't quite have the same experience over here, but I have noticed that some of my students don't know that Zhang Fei and Fei Yuqing used to have a weekly show together... (OK, I'm not even going to try to explain that reference...)