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The book, which received wide media coverage in China and now has a waiting list for its second print run, is certainly timely: it plays into a growing debate in China about what national universities should be teaching. The country needs a workforce with the skills and creativity to help move away from low-cost manufacturing and, in economic terms, move up the value chain. And some educators believe liberal-arts training is vital to help China deal with its increasingly complex new realities. Yet the well-known intellectual historian Xu Jilin believes that China’s rapid expansion of higher education has had a detrimental effect on curriculum as the country’s universities race to compete globally. “Education these days in like factory-farming chickens,” he says. “Universities all wan to get into international rakings—and most of these depend on research. They’re not interested in providing a unique education for our kids.”