Director: Daniel C. Levy

New Private Realities in Chinese Higher Education

PROPHE Summary (by Yingying Xu):
China adds major elements of privateness in education as it turns attention to educational challenges such as costs for expanded access and fear of damaged quality through university growth, amalgamation, and fast increasing tuition fees. Facing these situations, Chinese government policy has included decentralization in educational administration and diversification in educational financing, student loan schemes, and a private education law that provides a legal framework to facilitate private growth. Private higher education in China has experienced a vigorous growth in recent years, and private institutions have been established at all levels. At the higher education level, as of 2002, this meant mainly private colleges that give only self-study programs, but also over a hundred institutions giving sub-bachelor degrees and a few awarding the bachelor degree.

For the full story (shown with permission) see EdInvest News, August 2003. "Facilitating Investment in the Global Education Market," by Michael Latham.
http://www.worldbank.org/edinvest

PROPHE Observation (by Daniel C. Levy):
China illustrates the worldwide tendency for private higher education growth to be an integral part of a larger package of reforms that increase privateness, system decentralization, and market mechanisms. The Chinese case is dramatic in particular for its contrast to three communist decades (until the early 1980s) of heavy, centralized state control of a public system. In higher education the private share of enrollments remains smaller than in many Asian and other countries but the rate of private growth has been spectacular, particularly in non-universities.