If anyone can offer a global perspective on trends, challenges and opportunities in higher education, it is Way Kuo. His experience spans the globe. Before accepting the presidency of City University of Hong Kong in 2008, he served in senior academic leadership roles at the University of Tennessee, Texas A&M University and Iowa State University. He earned degrees in Taiwan and the U.S. and has been honored professionally in several countries.

Way and I met when we were both graduate students in engineering at Kansas State University in the mid 1970s. He was pursuing a PhD and I was working on my MS. We shared an office for a semester until I had to return to full-time work while continuing my graduate studies on a part-time basis. Interestingly enough, our paths crossed again when we were both in engineering leadership positions at Texas A&M University: I as Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and he as Head of the Industrial Engineering Department. During part of his tenure at Texas A&M, Way held the endowed Wisenbaker Chair of Engineering in Innovation. This is important to note when considering the chapters that follow because throughout Way’s career, he has been known for thinking innovatively, particularly about problem-driven research. He has also become a student of, and given careful thought to, approaches used in higher education and their relevance to societal needs.

In his latest book, Way introduces the concept of “soulware” and links it to the internationalization of higher education. He begins with a description of several perceived conflicts, teaching and research, quality and evaluation, and creativity and innovation. He introduces these concepts from the perspective of the history and culture of higher education, sharing from his personal experience how universities around the world map out their own individual trajectories in response to globalization. He then explores the advantages of simplicity, and the importance of integrity and communication. He boldly explores many of the issues and challenges those of us in higher education face, and gives careful thought to how they are addressed.

Technological changes, the introduction of interactive teaching methods, research breakthroughs and globalization have all served to connect higher education across international borders in ways that were previously unimaginable. Way’s book is not just about the past or the present. Rather, it offers useful insights into the future. In an age where robots and artificial intelligence are impacting our jobs and our daily lives, he introduces the concept of “soulware” and analyzes its importance for higher education. Robust soulware prepares students for an unpredictable future with a deeper appreciation of human values. Developing soulware inculcates in students a sense of efficacy and aspiration by engaging with real-world problems and a capacity for empathy through experiential learning and international exchange. Healthy soulware facilitates collaboration, humanizes technology and enhances the human-machine interface. It opens up new possibilities and extends boundaries.

This book is a valuable reference point for educators, policy makers and readers who have an interest in global higher education. Through his thoughtful analysis and structured presentation the reader can take full advantage of that interconnectivity and address the many challenges we as educators face, as we all work toward excellence in higher education.

I was very pleased to learn about Professor Kuo’s new book and his reflections on higher education. As an experienced university leader and practitioner, Professor Kuo has coined a new term, “soulware”, for higher education, defined as “a commitment to concentrating our heart and soul to embrace due process and follow international standards and procedures in all our educational endeavors”. He raises this concept as a credo from his rich education and work experience by comparing higher education systems in North America and China and across the Taiwan Strait, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the mainland.

Throughout the long history of modern universities, the purpose and role that they play have been defined and debated by great minds such as Wilhelm von Humboldt and John H. Newman. Bertrand Russell’s definition is remarkable: “… universities exist for two purposes: on the one hand, to train men and women for certain professions; on the other hand, to pursue learning and research without regard to immediate utility” (On Education, Especially in Early Childhood, 1926). In addition to professional training and knowledge learning, a university’s aims include contributing to society, preserving and developing culture, and promoting cooperation within the globalization context. Bertrand Russell also once said that, “Traditional Chinese education was, in some respects, very similar to that of Athens in its best days. Athenian boys were made to learn Homer by heart from beginning to end, Chinese boys were made to learn the Confucian classics with similar thoroughness” (What Shall We Educate for? 1936).

When we compare modern Chinese universities and Western universities, many similarities can be found. Funding, buildings and equipment are certainly essential, yet a university is far more than that. It is the intellectual community and spiritual home for faculty and students where they gather for knowledge, inspiration, understanding and appreciation. Chinese higher education has experienced rapid growth over the past decades, and it is now widely agreed that hardware is the most significant achievement so far, while more effort is needed for improving software. The term soulware itself prompts us to consider the holistic development of higher education.

I am honored to offer some words as a foreword to Professor Kuo’s book. We share some higher education background. He received his B.A. from National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, in 1972, and I received my B.A. in 1988 and Ph.D. in 1994 from Tsinghua University. We both serve as university administrators, he as president of City University of Hong Kong and I as president of Tsinghua University. As presidents, we share similar considerations not only about the current climate for universities, but also for the future.

We have witnessed the exciting recent progress of Chinese higher education institutions. Tsinghua University will celebrate its 110^th anniversary in 2021. Compared to Western universities, Chinese institutions are rather young. But in step with rapid economic development and significant government funding, Chinese universities have demonstrated greater dynamism. However, the development of higher education is never a short march. It’s a marathon for excellence in quality.

The 21^st century is characterized by innovation and openness. We will witness the millennial anniversary of the modern university in 70 years’ time. Universities have contributed greatly to the development of humankind, and will continue to play an important role, particularly in terms of educating future generations for sustainable development.

Will Chinese universities evolve in a unique way? Many higher education observers have raised such a question. I believe future Chinese universities will become increasingly open and innovative and will learn from Western universities through international cooperation that will be very helpful not only for Chinese universities but also for global higher education.

As we know, ideas within a university are often generated by culture. I believe Chinese universities will remain true to their natural identity and be nurtured by local culture. Differing from their Western counterparts, Chinese universities will demonstrate their own cultural characteristics. In this regard, Professor Kuo’s book offers us many valuable insights.

Soulware: The American Way in China’s Higher Education is a masterful analysis of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the American (USA, Japan) and the Chinese (mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan) approaches to higher education. Its author, Professor Way Kuo, is well qualified to comment on this important problem. He received his college education in Taiwan, went to the United States for graduate study and was on the Technical Staff of Bell Labs. As a researcher, teacher, and administrator in reliability engineering, he had a distinguished career at Iowa State University, Texas A&M University, the University of Tennessee, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory before he assumed his present position as President of City University of Hong Kong.

Way Kuo’s recipe for success at the upper echelons of the educational enterprise has a foundation built on the synergistic blending of teaching and research. The physical assets and operational management of the higher education infrastructure are the hardware and software of an enterprise that has profound impact in the race to a future based on innovation. Way Kuo gives a sharp and critical analysis of how well mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are faring in the international arena, and relative to each other, in the hardware and software aspects of this competition. Adequate financing to build and maintain the hardware/software infrastructure is, of course, a prerequisite. However, what differentiates Kuo’s insights from more pedestrian analyzes is the identification of “soulware” (or mindset) of the academic culture as the missing ingredient why the Chinese approach has been less successful than the American approach.

According to Kuo, “soulware” encompasses different opposing philosophies:

• Internationalization versus localization;
• Autonomy in university operations versus supervision by political bodies;
• Governance by a clearly-defined administration, which is held accountable for adverse results versus large committees whose powers extend beyond an advisory role into the decision-making sphere, but that cannot be held responsible for the consequences of their decisions;
• Institutions of learning versus institutions of political activists;
• Seeking knowledge versus seeking power or profits;
• Standards for professional ethics versus common mercantile practices;
• Simplicity of rules of behavior versus complicated regulations that arise from lack of trust and jealousy of higher-achieving colleagues;
• Qualitative/quantitative assessments of performance by peer review and expert systems versus rewards according to personal relationships;
• Teamwork toward common goals versus fragmented fiefdoms focused on self-interest;
• Reward for creativity versus lip service to innovation while capitalizing on other’s pioneering efforts;
• Benchmarks based on meaningful prizes and rankings versus accreditation by degrees and lofty titles or self-proclamations; and
• Understanding of academic freedom and its attendant responsibilities versus exploiting the immunity granted to the sanctuary of academe.

By statistical analyzes and amusing anecdotes, Kuo goes through topic by topic in devastating detail to demonstrate the ways in which the practices of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan lag behind the best in the world, with America often featured as an example.

Because Kuo emphasizes that “research” is inseparable from the “teaching” mission of higher education, it is interesting and informative that he breaks out “research universities” into four separate categories (with examples):

• Liberal-arts centric (e.g., Princeton)
• Science and technology-centric (e.g., MIT)
• Comprehensive universities (e.g., UC Berkeley)
• Elite concentrations of specialists (e.g., Caltech or Rockerfeller University)

He makes the point that America does not have a federal Department of Education that dictates what role each university should play in the education of society. Rather, America succeeded in higher education because, in essence, it allowed private universities (governed by boards of trustees) and public universities (governed by the States) to discover what it was good at doing. Because America is a big country and has many institutions of higher learning, systems of governance arose, by trial and error, “where it was easy to do what is right, and difficult to do what is wrong”.

Crucial to developing and maintaining superior operating systems of higher education is society’s placing a value on expertise. Unfortunately, as Way Kuo humorously recounts, in Greater China, everyone regards themselves as experts on higher education: taxi drivers, parents of students, politicians of every persuasion, successful and unsuccessful businesspeople, environmental activists, … the list is endless. In reality, only enlightened professors are experts at what universities do and should not do.

With the great power granted by university autonomy (self-governance) comes great responsibility. From the perspective of quality assurance, Kuo argues that professors deserve the academic freedom they so cherish only if they accept assessment and accountability. He even goes so far as to say that disciplines that cannot withstand evaluation by experts are not true academic fields. They do not belong in the modern research university. The statement is bold common sense, validated by several now-existing rankings of the top research universities that broadly agree on which institutions rank, say, in the top 100.

Given how important higher education is to the economic health of the citizens of any country, and therefore to their physical and mental well-being, one can ask to whom is Way Kuo’s present book addressed? In Greater China, policy makers, university administrators, professors, students, and the literate public would most likely read the Chinese edition. Who is the audience for this English translation, which has undergone considerable updating since the original Chinese publication in 2015? Is the English-speaking public in America or elsewhere interested in why mainland China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan lag behind the international leaders in higher education?

My personal answer is: yes, there should be a large international audience for this book even if the reader’s native language is not English. Huge problems have emerged in the twenty-first century whose solutions require global cooperation and a common agreement of what are achievable goals. Foremost among the difficulties are perhaps the challenges of climate change and the collapse of the environment driven by an ever-expanding consumerism fueled by advances in marketing techniques. Saving the future of human civilization may require large transformations of our energy and economic systems. How can such changes be effected without drastic reforms of the systems of higher education in large parts of the world?

The same sentiments may attach to the question why the democracies of the twenty-first century are plagued by ever increasing trends toward becoming autocracies that are hostile to the nobler aspirations of higher education. Some experts have blamed the underlying sickness to the ever growing difference in the incomes of the rich and the poor, with an attendant increase in the relative power of the rich to effect laws and practices that reinforce even greater income disparity. If promoted without careful thought, the rise of artificial intelligence and smart robots can enhance the anxiety of the working poor that the rich and powerful elites are their enemy.

Other experts emphasize the role of the “clash of civilizations” that can occur when there are major shifts in the military and economic prowess of the dominant nations of the world. Whether we have a peaceful or a warlike resolution of these clashes may depend on the wisdom of the educated leadership of the nations of the world.

Thus, rather than disdain or fear the aspirations for higher education in Greater China, many of the empathetic in the English-speaking world may view those aspirations as opening an access to valuable human resources for finding sustainable solutions to these difficult problems. Indeed, as Kuo argues persuasively, the cure for bad financial investments, for income inequality, and for environmental pollution and climate change, is not a retreat from innovation in the sciences, engineering, and humanities, but a wiser use of the ingenuity of the human mind and compassion of the human spirit. Wisdom is the ultimate goal of higher education. It is the illumination of that wisdom among audiences, English-speaking or Chinese-speaking, to which Way Kuo’s book hopes to kindle a spark. I wish him the best of luck.