Thinking about the reasons for the great divergence between China and Europe, I was wondering how much could be down to the scientific revolution and more specific to great plethora of European Universities founded ca 1100-1500.
While it is rather easy to find lists of Europan Universities, I have had no luck finding a list of corresponding list of Chinese seats for higher learning.
Am I right in assuming that China at the end of this era would be far behind in the number of schools, or is that Western Bias? Or even worse, is the question itself too routed in a Western understadning of knowledge/education?
That's because there is really no "higher education" facilities in China at the time. Imperial China had a large number of private schools on the county and prefectural level (every county had at least one), and the point of these schools were typically to prepare students for the civil service exam. As Timothy Brooks noted in his The Chinese State in Ming Society, "Late in 1369, the Hongwu emperor ordered that 'every prefecture, subprefecture, and county in the realm to establish a school.' These schools were not basic educational institutions. They were places where ambitious young men were examined for the status of shengyuan, registered for higher exams, occasionally exhorted, and kept within the state's sights. They were also ritual shrines to the founders and perpetuators of state Confucianism....The order was carried out in 1370, a year prior to the first sitting for the national jinshi examination in Nanjing. The operations of these schools was maintained so stringently that a Hanlin academician a century later was confident in declaring that 'the schools of this dynasty cover the realm'".
So we can see that a Chinese school was very different from a European university in that they were geared towards different purposes. Thus, the assumption that China in this era lacked schools compared to Europe is rooted in a Western understanding of education and is very Eurocentric.