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IU president speaks at U.S.-China University Presidents Roundtable

Vice premier of the People?s Republic of China keynotes event

• June 22, 2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University President Michael A. McRobbie spoke today in Houston at a gathering of more than 50 presidents and chancellors of leading U.S. and Chinese universities.
 
Liu Yandong, vice premier of the People’s Republic of China, gave the keynote address during the U.S.-China University Presidents Roundtable. Rice University and the China Scholarship Council are co-hosting the event, which began Sunday.
 
Liu discussed themes that she will also share Tuesday with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry when she visits Washington, D.C., to discuss programs between U.S. and Chinese educational institutions.
 
The purpose of the conference is to discuss global education, research collaboration and cultural exchanges between the U.S. and Chinese institutions.
 
McRobbie is participating in a panel, “Digital Education, Student Mobility and Liberal Education.”
 
“Today, there is a view in the minds of some observers that digital education can be a substitute for a formal university education. I could not disagree more,” McRobbie told an audience at Rice’s Jones School for Business. “Digital education is a complement, a means to help achieve the enduring purposes of the great universities: the creation, dissemination and preservation of knowledge.
 
“Whether a student is on our campus or on the other side of the globe, it can also be a tool for liberal education,” McRobbie added. “Universities can shape digital education to expand our reach, to connect between our institutions and, most importantly, to enable students to access the education they seek. It allows for unprecedented flexibility in location, time and format. It gives institutions of higher education access to a broader cross-section of individuals.”

Among the Chinese universities represented at today’s roundtable are several with close ties to IU, including Beijing Normal University, the University of Hong Kong, Peking University, Sun Yat-sen University, Tsinghau University and Zhejiang University. Nearly 30 universities from China are participating at the event.
 
Other U.S. institutions participating include Harvard, Emory, Carnegie Mellon and New York universities, as well as several in the University of California system, the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago, which hosted the first roundtable in 2013.
 
More than 3,500 students from the People’s Republic of China are enrolled at IU. Last year, during his fifth visit to China as IU’s president, McRobbie presided over the dedication of the university’s gateway office in Beijing, which serves as a home base for its activities in that country.