The University of Liverpool has been urged to increase oversight of its joint campus in China after former staff raised fears about teaching methods, “gigantic” class sizes and students’ English language proficiency.

Amid increasing concern over how UK universities manage their Chinese links – and a renewed rush to open branch campuses abroad – 51�Թ� spoke with several people who had worked at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), one of the first international joint ventures in China.

Founded in 2006 by Liverpool and China’s Xi’an Jiaotong University, with each owning a 50 per cent share, the university has grown to offer more than 100 degree programmes to around 25,000 students.

With the institution’s Chinese partner allegedly seeking more control in recent years as the university became more profitable, the staff members claim that some of the programmes being offered at the institution do not compare to the ones delivered at Liverpool’s home campus, despite students graduating with a UK degree.

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The university has stressed that all its degree programmes meet various quality standards requirements in both the UK and China while Liverpool insisted its long established governance processes provide effective oversight of all joint activities.

One academic, who has now left the institution but wished to remain anonymous, previously took up a post at a newly-established department within XJTLU and said they were soon confronted by “gigantic” classes.

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“We really lacked clear leadership and clear guidance. It went from zero students to 120 students in the blink of an eye and that was a major problem,” they said. “You’re…trying to run a seminar with 100 students in the seminar group.”

They said they soon realised their fellow staff members were “extremely inexperienced academics”, with even some managers having little leadership experience. An analysis of appointments at the university shows some rising to senior positions, including acting heads of department, within a couple of years of finishing their PhDs.

The academic also claimed classes were regularly taught in Chinese despite students graduating with a British degree that outwardly signals their English proficiency.

This concern was echoed by several other academics THE spoke to. A second anonymous source said they had seen materials for students being produced entirely in Chinese. They added: “We do have some students that reach year four and still can’t work in English, and so that suggests they never should have been admitted in the first place.”

Tracy Zhang, a XJTLU PhD student, said there was a “tendency, in my experience, for day to day interactions to default to Chinese”.

“You rarely hear English in the corridors, in my experience, and some students said they preferred communicating with staff who can speak Chinese. And such a mismatch, in my opinion, can leave students feeling that they are not getting the international experience that they expected.”

Michael Day, who worked at XJTLU as an assistant professor from January 2022 to July 2023, said that he had had limited interaction with the University of Liverpool during that time.

He said it was up to him to convene colleagues to discuss marking practices ahead of moderation, organising briefings and drafting guidance material describing UK protocols to address potential risks, such as grade inflation and inconsistent judgments.

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“As staff on the ground, we do not feel any real sense of oversight, any real sense of security, which is a significant thing,” Day said. “You are literally living your life in a different country, governed and influenced heavily by political bodies, with a large number of people working within those universities who are strongly aligned to that.”

In a statement, XJTLU said: “Each academic department maintains regular communication with its counterpart school at the University of Liverpool to ensure ongoing alignment in curriculum, assessment, academic development, and collaboration.”

Not all academics shared these concerns about quality assurance. David Herold, currently an associate professor in the department of media and communication at XJTLU, told 51�Թ�: “From my perspective, there is too much quality control, not too little.

“This is one of the main reasons why the teaching load at XJTLU is relatively low, while the admin overhead is horrendous compared to other universities where I have worked.”

He said, in his department, the module handbook, all assessments and model answers or guidelines have to be submitted for moderation before the start of term including by colleagues at Liverpool and external examiners “to ensure comparability to other UK universities and UK standards”.

“Marking is checked, comments are checked, grades given are checked, averages are checked,” Herold said.

He added that the Chinese Ministry of Education also conducts “regular quality assurance checks” and “occasional visits”.

A University of Liverpool spokesperson said: “The University of Liverpool has well-established and supportive governance processes to ensure effective oversight of all joint activities, including teaching, research supervision, and collaborative research.

“These processes involve regular visits to XJTLU and comprehensive annual monitoring.”

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Chris Harris, who worked at the university between 2019 and 2022, including as vice-president of academic affairs for some of that time, said while he felt Liverpool had robust processes in place for quality assurance, the increased involvement of the Chinese partner during his time at the university complicated things.

As the campus grew and began to make more money, Xi’an Jiaotong University began to “sit up”, he said.

To receive more money from the campus, he claimed Xi’an was told it would need to contribute in a similar way to Liverpool, which received a fee for services like marking exams. Subsequently, Xi’an began to send teachers to work there and introduced its own modules into the curriculum.

But “the quality assurance just wasn't there”, Harris said. “I [was] saying, ‘Whoa, hold on a minute here. Liverpool need to look at these modules, they need to look at these teachers’ qualifications. You can’t just import a whole load of modules and stuff and change students’ degrees and put Liverpool labels on them and we don’t know what’s going on.’”

Xi’an Jiaotong University did not respond to a request for comment. The Liverpool spokesperson said its “annual quality assurance processes have found no evidence of decline in quality and standards”.

The tensions that come with delivering a UK degree in China were exposed in other ways too. Multiple sources said some staff members were reluctant to adopt UK styles of pedagogy.

Some faculty have “been brought up educationally in a very traditional way, so they’re loath to move away from that”, said the second anonymous source.

“Many colleagues, in my opinion, rightfully feel that they need to defend their own interpretations, use of language and national and cultural pedagogies,” said Day.

“When I highlighted the importance of aligning our work with UK expectations and with principles of inclusivity and equality, I recall being told that I wasn’t fully understanding, or respecting, ‘the Chinese setting’.

“I recall also a common phrase said to me was that the university was an ‘independent Chinese legal entity, located within China’ and I’ve heard this many times.”

The first academic said they graded assessments in a way that is standard across British institutions, with anything above 75 of publishable quality. However, they claimed others followed the US system, awarding students much higher marks.

“The external examiners…never raised any questions,” they said, but it did create distress among students, who couldn’t understand the disparity between their marks in different classes.

Overall, they said there was “massive grade inflation”, with some teachers believing higher grades would reflect better on them.

“You’re getting a substandard degree happening,” said Harris.

“We’re trying to create an academic culture in a different country, and there’s always that possible accusation that, ‘You’re not in the UK, Chris, you’re in China, why, why would you expect it to run the same?’”

But, he continued, “There’s different, and there’s wrong. And they’re not the same.”

XJTLU said: “All degree programmes are designed and delivered by XJTLU academic staff and are taught and assessed in English. They meet both Chinese higher education standards and the underpinning requirements of the UK Quality Standards System, including the Office for Students regulatory framework, the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications, and the QAA Subject Benchmark Statements.

“XJTLU continues to place strong emphasis on teaching excellence, innovation, and student experience. Continuous feedback, satisfaction surveys, and internal enhancement initiatives ensure that quality improvement is embedded across all programmes.

“The university remains committed to providing innovative and world-class education rooted in China and connected to the world.”

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helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com