Traditionally, universities have been seen as bastions for the pursuit of knowledge. However, universities in present day China are often utilitarian and lifeless. Over recent years, many of them have been caught up in numerous scandals.

Last year, the EO teamed up with Sohu and the Goethe Institute to provide a platform for a special Sino-German discussion about the state of higher education.

We invited eight influential Chinese scholars to write about the state of higher education and to propose constructive criticism about how the system could be improved. We also had their articles translated into German.

Likewise, with the help of the Goethe Institute in Beijing, we invited eight German thinkers, writers and educators, including the Dean of Heidelberg University, to write about what they saw as the major challenges currently facing universities. These articles were translated from German into Chinese.

You can view brief English summaries of all sixteen of the articles submitted by both Chinese and German scholars here.

You can view the Chinese homepage of the special feature here.

You can view the German homepage of the special feature here.

This is the first in what we hope will be many cross-cultural discussions hosted by the EO.

We'd also like to acknowledge the hard work of our partners in putting together this special feature: The Goethe Institute, Sohu and Xinhua News Agency.