Building links with institutions overseas means ensuring a global outlook, Shi Jing reports in Shanghai.

While competition has become increasingly fierce among the 400-plus privately-run colleges in China, Wenzheng College of Soochow University in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, stands out from its peers with its strength of internationalization, a strategy that has been adopted over the past 20 years since it was founded in 1998.

Wu Changzheng, head of Wenzheng College, returned to Suzhou in mid-March with good news after a business trip to Canada－it will soon start cooperation with another Canadian university in May, when his college is to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

"We would like to bring more chances to our students so that they can gain an upper hand in the job market. This has been at the core of our education policy for the past two decades," says Wu.

Wenzheng College organizes overseas study tours for its students during the summer vacation, and it has also launched cooperative programs with overseas universities. It has rolled out programs with several universities in the United States, including the University of Idaho, Ball State University in Indiana and Northern Arizona University.

The flexibility provided to the students at the college, which is embodied by the full execution of a credit system, has made it possible for all the overseas exchange programs or study tours to be initiated by students themselves, according to Shi Shengwei, deputy head of Wenzheng College.

"Students can obtain their degree over a timescale of the minimum three years to the maximum of eight years as long as they gain all the required credits. This means they will be able to take a gap year to study overseas. Some of the overseas study programs can also be translated into credits," she says.

According to Tang Fengzhen, director of the school's international cooperation and exchange office, Wenzheng College started a program five years ago that offered both bachelor's degrees issued by the Chinese college and the University of Idaho. Under the program, a student can study at Wenzheng College for three years and complete another year of overseas study. Of the first 24 students enrolled for this program with the University of Idaho, 14 are now pursuing further studies in the US and Australia.

In this era of mobile phones and access to the internet, it seems much easier for young people to get to learn more about the world. But as Tang stresses, the experience gained in an overseas environment is invaluable and unique.

"We talk about economic globalization all the time, the effect of which will be a feature of all the students' future careers. If the students can have some basic understanding of this in advance, they will feel more confident in work, for example, when negotiating with future clients," she says.

Besides, international communication is not only crucial for students but indispensable for the college.

"A college without international exchanges can hardly seek further development, let alone rise to be a global first-rate college," she says.

But it is not easy for the students facing the different and challenging environment in the US. To help them, Wenzheng College provides its students English classes during the summer vacation to enhance their language proficiency, and teachers from outside China are invited to give lectures on campus.

It is also challenging for the overseas teachers giving lectures there. Each overseas teacher will be rated at the end of each semester by the students and poor results could lead to dismissal, says Tang.

Mohan Gogineni, a US lecturer at Arizona State University, has been teaching under the cooperative program at Wenzheng College for two years. His course in electrical engineering is a difficult subject that requires a great deal of "abstract thinking". The challenge is even greater for Chinese students as it is given in English, he says.

But it was to his great delight to see students getting in tune with the US style of education-asking questions of the teacher whenever necessary. It was a major marker of progress, as Gogineni found out, for most of them were initially neither comfortable nor confident in asking questions.

Like the rest of the faculty, he was impressed by the campus, which is one of the most beautiful in China and is a harmonious blend of scenery and architecture. Its signature library, for example, designed by Wang Shu, a Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, is set between the lake and hills.

And the college has carried out renovation work to guarantee excellent facilities for the students, as Gogineni noticed.

"It means that the college is willing to invest in the students," Gogineni says.

The overseas exchange programs at Wenzheng College are perfect for students like Xia Qianhan, who had planned to do further postgraduate studies after college in China. The 22-year-old undertook a business studies exchange program in the US during the first summer vacation at Wenzheng College, and she went to study fashion design at the University of East London for the summer vacation during her sophomore year, before spending a month traveling around Canada in her third summer.

"The overseas study trips have helped a lot regarding my application for postgraduate programs. They were both very challenging experiences, as they had little to do with my major," says Xia, who majored in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. "It was totally unexpected that Wenzheng College could offer so many exchange programs."

But for Wu, head of the college, the long-term goal is to make its international communication a two-way process, which means the school will be receiving more students from other countries and regions in the future.

Contact the writer at shijing@chinadaily.com.cn