Abstract:

The article is devoted to the actual problem of inter-university cooperation of Chinese universities and their foreign partner universities within the Worldwide Universities Network, the leading global networked educational system uniting 23 universities from different countries. The development of globalization processes, accompanied by interregional and even global social and humanitarian integration, defines a new trend in modern education - the creation of network universities, a network of universities acting as a whole. Network universities are becoming the institutional base of cooperation between national universities of different countries and the practical development of intercultural communication. The WUN project is one of the foremost, firstly, having the longest history among other similar structures, secondly, uniting the universities of the countries historically belonging to different cultural areas.

The development of scientific and educational cooperation of WUN universities contributes to the formation of a unified global education system bringing together national education systems and reorienting national universities to scientific work in the framework of supranational educational structures, which opens up the prospect of expanding their activities and enables the implementation of large-scale research projects. In recent years, following the deepening of the “reform and opening up” policy in China, Chinese universities are increasingly involved in the process of international cooperation. Two universities from China (Renmin University of China and Zhejiang University) have already joined the WUN system. At the present stage for Chinese university participants, due to the long political isolation of China in the international arena (which lasted until the beginning of the 2000s), the topic of synchronization of the educational process with other universities of the Network, the adoption of uniform learning standards operating in WUN, and development of cooperation with the Taiwanese and Hong Kong universities participating in the network is particularly relevant. The authors carefully analyze the activities of the Chinese universities participating in the WUN, while at the same time paying great attention to studying the priority areas of scientific and educational cooperation for Chinese universities, denoting their future prospects in the context of transforming the Network into a “vertically functioning” network university.

Keywords:

The Worldwide Universities Network, Chinese universities participating in WUN (Renmin University of China and Zhejiang University), inter-university collaboration, global education system, academic exchanges, educational projects and programs.