Opting For The Arts

China's academies are obsessed with getting ahead in engineering and the hard sciences, so the subject of the master's program Dalian Medical University introduced three years ago—photojournalism—seemed surprising. In fact, Dalian, despite its name, was already home to one of China's most popular photography departments. The new program, run in cooperation with Britain's Bolton University, mixes foreign and Chinese students, features top-drawer lecturers from abroad and will expose participants to fresh ideas in composition and journalistic ethics. "Chinese photographers are pretty good technically," says course leader D. J. Clark, "but this is really about getting them to think more critically."

Not long ago, such esoteric pursuits were almost unheard of in a nation obsessed with building a modern economy. It's no coincidence that 17 of 25 Chinese Politburo members are engineers by training. But the boom they've created is granting a growing number of students (at least among the elite) the luxury to explore arts and design courses long taught in the West but relatively neglected in Asia. For now, many of these programs still have a pragmatic bent, turning out the industrial designers, advertising illustrators, and other creative types that China needs as its industries move from copying foreign products to creating their own. Students must be equipped "not just to find jobs, but to create new jobs as well. Society needs new things," says Zhao Zhongjian, director of the Center for Global Education at East China Normal University in Shanghai and a specialist in innovation. "For example, we're now holding a lot of international exhibitions in China, so now we [offer] a major in exhibition design." But some of the programs popping up are much less practical.

This evolution is already well underway in Asia's richer states. Singapore's government exhorts students to "have fun" and is expanding academic programs in soft sciences and the media. And the campaign to inspire creativity is expanding into poorer states besides China, such as the Philippines and India. In India, for example, students can now study subjects ranging from desktop publishing to fashion technology (designing, manufacturing and marketing clothes). And almost every major Indian city has a few drama schools for aspiring Bollywood performers.

China has turned to Western universities to help it diversify. Britain's Liverpool and Nottingham universities now both run joint-venture campuses in China offering programs like media and applied arts. "Last year we had six or seven thousand applicants for around a hundred places in our online game design course," says Joe Chang, vice dean of the School of Communications and Animation at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, which also offers degrees in animation, advertising photography, and comic-strip design.

More and more students are also applying for less technical programs. The China Academy of Art has begun offering courses in arcane specialties like video art. Zhongshan University in Guangzhou has started up classes in comparative literature and feminist studies. In India, the University of Pune recently began offering a master's in Sanskrit linguistics and a diploma in manuscriptology, the study of ancient handwritten texts (mostly in extinct languages).

Still, a creative focus remains largely alien to many educational bureaucracies. In China, for example, the environment has typically been studied as an engineering discipline, ignoring the social, philosophical, even aesthetic dimensions of the issue. New courses on sustainable development at Shanghai's Tongji University aim to change that, but such efforts remain rare. "Traditionally our universities have taught environmental engineering and science, but these are very technical courses," says Tian Qing, who teaches in one such program at Beijing Normal University. "Few universities teach environmental issues from the point of view of environmental consciousness or sustainable development."

The pace of change is also slowed by Confucian ideals—respect for authority, hierarchy, and rote learning. Zhao, the innovation specialists, says teachers need to "foster 21st-century talents." That means understanding that creative arts are no longer a frivolous luxury. They've become a competitive edge.

With Melinda Liu in Beijing and Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi

© 2008