Yale in forefront of colleges' fight for overseas clout

NEW HAVEN -- The way Yale University's leaders see it, the school's future rests, in a small way, with a collection of freakish lab mice in Shanghai, some sprouting tusks, some capable of moving only in counter-clockwise circles, never in a straight line.

The mice were genetically engineered in China, in a lab run by a Yale scientist. Innovations in the lab at Fudan University help researchers in New Haven and students from both schools move back and forth on a regular basis. The collaboration, and the low research costs in China, will speed up the discovery of cures for genetic diseases, Yale officials say.

Looking for an edge in a competitive marketplace, universities are racing to form new international ties of every possible kind -- research collaborations, degree-granting offshoots on foreign soil, study and internships abroad for their students. Most of these efforts are different from the traditional semester studying abroad in Europe; they are focused largely on the non-Western world, and, increasingly, on China.

The joint biomedical research project with China, Yale administrators believe, will not only be good for science, but also keep Yale's name on the minds of the brightest young talents in the world's most populous nation, helping meet the university's goal of expanding its reputation overseas.

''There is intense competition for the best students, and we have to be concerned about that," Yale's president, Richard C. Levin, said in an interview.

Beyond the obvious educational benefits, university officials say they are motivated by the need to dazzle American students with the hippest international opportunities, and to recruit students amid increasing rivalry from universities overseas. China and India are rapidly expanding and improving their higher education systems, while universities in places such as Australia, Canada, and Singapore are competing harder for top students around the world.

There's a new ''open market" for international talent, with some students choosing from anywhere in the world -- the University of Heidelberg in Germany, Imperial College in London, or Boston University, according to BU's president, Robert A. Brown.

''More and more kids are coming out of families that can afford for them to go anywhere," Brown said in an interview. He has created a President's Council on Boston University and the Global Future, to discuss international partnerships. ''The question is, where will they choose to spend their dollars and become educated?"

Next month, the University of Massachusetts at Boston will open the Confucius Institute, a collaboration with China. The institute intends to train high school Chinese language teachers, educate local biotech managers about business in China, and enhance UMass course offerings on Chinese culture and history. The UMass system also plans to open a one-person office in China, to facilitate the flow of Chinese and American students back and forth.

The first group of students to graduate from Bentley College's program in Bahrain with bachelor's degrees accepted diplomas on Thursday; the program includes summers spent on the Waltham campus. (A number of other US universities, including Cornell and Carnegie Mellon, have built campuses in the Middle East.)

The University of Vermont is in talks with China's Peking University about jointly sponsoring a master's degree program. At Northeastern University, ''Dialogue of Civilizations," a program to bring students on short trips to get to know peers oversees, has expanded from just Egypt to nine countries, including Mexico and South Africa, in the past two years.

Professor Denis J. Sullivan, who began the Egypt trips a dozen years ago, said he was frustrated that the university did not begin paying attention to the importance of international efforts until a new provost arrived a few years ago.

''I've been on this soapbox for years," Sullivan said. ''Finally, everybody is like, 'Oh, everybody else is doing it, we have to do it.' "

In the last few years, Harvard University has done a 180-degree turn on its traditional reluctance to send undergraduates to study abroad, and the number of students doing so has more than doubled since 2002.

Yale began to focus on globalism in the late 1990s in part because its international flavor lagged behind other American universities, Levin said. Since he arrived in 1993, the proportion of international undergraduates has jumped from two percent to almost nine percent, the same proportion as Harvard's.

Levin has homed in on China, because of its growing geopolitical importance, he said, and also because Yale had so many ties to the country already. The first Chinese student to earn a degree in the United States went to Yale, and Chinese President Hu Jintao made it one of his major stops when he visited last month.

Some faculty have grumbled that other parts of the world are being neglected in favor of China, but there hasn't been much of an outcry over the university's close relationship with a country that lacks academic freedom. Some at Yale were surprised that there weren't more protesters the day Hu spoke; one of the areas on campus set aside for protest was deserted.

Yale can counter criticism with its China Law Center, which has advised the Chinese government on strengthening the rule of law. Levin strongly defends the relationship.

''China could become a cooperative partner with the United States in the family of nations, or it could become an adversary," he said. ''The more ties we build, the more likely the positive outcome rather than the negative."

Several students said Yale has encouraged their interests in all countries, not just China. Sarah Moros, a Latin American studies major, said Yale gave her $500 to research her senior essay in Argentina, and also awarded her a $15,000 fellowship for a post-graduate project in Latin America. In a couple of years, she may go to law school. ''One of the things I'm considering is which law schools would allow you to study abroad," she said.

Yale has been pushing hard to increase the number of students studying and working abroad, aiming to offer an international opportunity -- study, research, or a summer internship -- to every undergraduate by 2008. That would mean about 1,300 placements a year, double the number of Yale students who went abroad in 2004-2005. Making that possible is expensive for the university because it has pledged to underwrite the costs for those who need financial aid. This summer alone, Yale expects to spend $1.9 million to support 479 students.

The university is starting a new program where about two dozen Yale students will spend a semester at Peking University in Beijing, living and studying with a group of Chinese students. They'll take classes with a mix of Yale and Peking professors. The idea is to go beyond traditional study abroad programs, which often cluster American students in classes without exposure to students from the host country.

The two genetics labs in Shanghai and New Haven are interdependent, working on separate but related projects. Because costs are so low in China, Yale's partner, Fudan University, is building facilities to house several million mice, while Yale can only afford to house a few thousand in the same conditions in New Haven. The Chinese lab, where costs are one-tenth to one-fifth what they are in the United States, discovered a new genetic manipulation technique that was featured last summer on the cover of the influential medical journal Cell.

''We can do things that each side alone could not do," said Tian Xu, a Chinese-born scientist who has taught at Yale's medical school since 1993. Xu directs the lab at Fudan University, which opened in 2002, and is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. ''Yale has a better reputation than Harvard in China, because of things like our lab, which naturally attracts the best students to Yale. For China as well, it doesn't hurt."

Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.