Higher Education Case Study

In pre-reform higher education governance system, Chinese central government occupied an absolutely dominant position. After the Chinese Communist Party came into power, an early higher education system was built based on Soviet administration experience. As mentioned by Mok (2001), all universities were managed by national ministries and the central government set a series of unified regulations about financial plans, personnel administration, and even curriculum contents. Moreover, the cost of tuition and accommodation was paid by the central government (Howell 2004). Since the reform and opening-up policy in 1980s, the management system for higher education had changed. The past reform focused on university merging, expanding student enrolment …show more content…
The role of Chinese governments has been shifting from controller to supervisor. A number of private higher education institutions have been established by enterprises or other social entities. A research of Zhao (2012) found that there have been more than one thousand private higher education institutes in China by 2010, and half of them have the authority to grant diplomas or undergraduate degrees. These private universities offer more education resources and learning opportunities to the general public. The authority also has encouraged national universities to build affiliated colleges. Mok (2009) points out that these branch campuses have independent finance and are operated based on the principle of market. These colleges could be viewed as profit-making divisions of public universities and they are funded mainly by corporate sponsors and tuitions fees. Moreover, the central encourages competition among universities. As argued by Li and Yang (2014), more than six hundred higher education institutions have been assessed by a quality evaluation system and the preference of government financial allocation or social sponsorships partly depend on the results of quality assessments. As a result, both public and private universities work hard to develop themselves and to attract talented professors and students. To some extent, the competitiveness of university may improve their …show more content…
Even though all universities must be supervised by the central and local government, they already have more power to decide their own affairs. A report of Mok and Han (2016) shows that universities have autonomy to design curriculum contents and modify the structure of their departments and schools. Higher education institutions to some extent have financial independence from Chinese government. Li and Yang (2014) state that universities have had various financial resources including financial allocation, tuition fees income, research funds and so on, besides; they also have the power to decide how to utilize these