Managing God's Higher Learning

U.S.-China Cultural Encounter and Canton Christian College (Lingnan University), 1888-1952

By (author) Dong Wang

Not available to order

Publication date:

15 June 2007

Length of book:

226 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739157473

Managing GodOs Higher Learning offers a distinct empirical study of Lingnan University and addresses issues of adaptation and integration. Author, Dong Wang, demonstrates that many aspects of Lingnan _ governance, links with the local society, financial management, education for women _ have either never been made the subject of scholarly discussion or are different from what we think we know about U.S.-China relations in the past. As the first co-educational institution of higher learning in China, Lingnan made monumental strides in the management of programs for women, a fact which confounds the assumptions made by China historians. The author argues that LingnanOs growth, resilience and success can partly be accounted for by entrepreneurial operations. Wang also contends that Lingnan found ways to adapt and 'layer' a Christian presence at a time when the nationalization and secularization of higher education was making rapid headway. Based on information from archives located across the Pacific, this book will appeal to scholars of Chinese history as well as those interested in Sino-American relations.
Professor Wang?s rich study is not an institutional history of the old style but a theoretically informed reassessment. Canton Christian College, originally an example of that uniquely American institution, the liberal arts college, in a generation becameLingnan University, a multifaceted research institution embedded in the emerging Chinese nation. Wang concludes that this was not 'cultural imperialism' but a multi-cultural and Trans-Pacific enterprise which sets an example for NGOs in China today....