Thursday, August 20, 2026 | 8:00 PM EDT
By 2025, China had twice as many college students as the United States, four times as many STEM graduates, and double the number of STEM Ph.D.’s. In Higher Education in China, Gerard A. Postiglione examines the world’s largest state-directed higher education system within the complex interplay of China’s social, economic, and geopolitical ambitions.
Dr. Postiglione describes the tension between domestic imperatives and global aspirations. As China aims to cultivate a world-class higher education system by 2035, it faces three formidable challenges: graduate employment, equitable access, and governance reform. How do both elite Chinese research institutions and rapidly expanding second- and third-tier colleges navigate these pressures amid a shifting landscape shaped by urban-rural inequality, labor market demands, and technological disruption?
In an interview conducted on August 20, 2026, Dr. Gerard Postiglione joins Margot Landman to discuss how China’s evolving academic system may influence its long-term trajectory and, perhaps, the global order of knowledge and innovation.
Speaker
Gerard A. Postiglione
Gerard A. Postiglione is emeritus professor and honorary professor, University of Hong Kong, and former director of the Centre of Research on Education in China, and the Consortium of Higher Education Research in Asia. His scholarship includes 22 books and nearly 200 articles and chapters.
He has been project consultant to the Asian Development Bank, OECD, UNDP, UNESCO, World Bank, the Ford Foundation in Beijing, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. His policy reports were received by the China’s State Education Commission, Ministry of Education, and several provincial departments of education.
In the media, he has appeared on CNN and China’s CCTV. He has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post, and quoted in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Fortune, Science, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Times Higher Education, University World News. He has written for Hong Kong’s English and Chinese press.