Chinese Higher Education
(Zoraida Hu, Yuxi Wang)
With a booming economy fueled by technological growth, China has indubitably become a quintessential participant in the globalized world. Each year, millions of Chinese students enroll into different Chinese higher education institutions, and the enrollment rate is increasing every year. The increased size of the educated population has generated significant changes in China’s economy.
As stated by Weifang Min in his article Chinese Higher Education, higher education has been valued as a part of Chinese society since 1100 B.C. Overall, the system of higher education developed slowly under the feudal and authoritarian society of ancient China. Confucius’ education model rose in popularity during feudal times since students’ thoughts and lives were highly structured. Through this Confucian system, students were expected to improve their intellectual skills through reading and memorization of texts and books. People believed, at that time, such a higher education system could “create an ideal social order in which people could live in harmony and be assured the respect and sincerity of their contemporaries.” In other words, such an education system restricted individual’s behaviors, discouraged freedom of thought, and unified everyone’s thoughts into one mold so that the emperor and his status could not be challenged.
Another significant historical factor that influenced the Chinese higher education system was the Cultural Revolution. The Revolution took place after Chinese higher educational institutions experienced a boom in development during the first half of the twentieth century. However, the Revolution’s dramatic social and political changes stifled the improvement of education from 1966 to 1976. University enrollment decreased from 674,400 in 1965 to 47,000 in 1970 (Min, 62). Universities had to shut down because there were no students entering the schools for more than four years. The influence of the traditional Chinese school system, Western models, as well as Soviet models were all neglected by the Revolution. The extensive damage on the higher education system done by the Cultural Revolution took years to recover from.
China expanded the enrollment of universities in order to enlarge its educated population, which led to mass expansion and development of the higher education system after the Cultural Revolution. The system, as Martin Trow has defined, is “when over 15 percent of the age grade have access to higher education” (Bai, 128). The Chinese government realized that an educated populace is the driving factor of the development of science and technology, which leads to economic growth. Therefore, the government established policies to increase the pace of higher education expansion which increased student enrollment to universities. University enrollment increased from 1.08 million in 1998 to 1.59 million in 1999, an increase of 47.4 percent (Bai, 30). Besides expanding the enrollment of Chinese universities, the Chinese government also established the 985 Program and the 211 Project, which were intended to create world-class universities in China and “aim[ed] at strengthening about 100 institutions and key disciplines as a national priority” (Alexander, 11).
The mass higher education system promotes equal education opportunities for individuals, but many problems have occurred because of the expansion of enrollments. As Chen mentions in his article, “Such sudden increases in student enrollments brings about sudden constraints of resources” (Chen, 25). School facilities are overloaded by the large student population, and the conditions of living and studying have worsened due to the widening student body. Another problem of the mass higher education system is that while the number of students enrolling in college increased, the unemployment rate among college graduates has been increasing as well. “In 2008 about 30% (more than a million) of university graduates were unable to secure employment at the end of study (M.Zhou & Lin, 2009)” (Cai, 34).
In addition, the rapid growth of the economy and development of science and technology created a rising new middle class in China. Jing Lin defined the middle class in the article as a “group with financial assets, skills, and education, they can even become a stabilizing force for a developing society.” They have “a distinct lifestyle and access to certain goods and services” (Lin, 181). The newly developed social class plays a big role in the evolution of the higher education system. Middle class families see the problems of the higher education system, and are willing to invest in education. This led to a trend of sending teenagers to developed countries starting in the early 2000s. In the past 10 years, the study abroad population increased dramatically. Studying abroad is considered a way to get high quality higher education without participating in the problematic college entry test: Gao Kao. Moreover, upper middle class families in China believe a Bachelor’s degree or a Master’s degree from developed countries would create more high-paying job opportunities for their children. The returning students, who have studied abroad, are considered more capable by the Chinese society because they are able to complete their studies in a foreign language, and at the same time develop high cognitive skills as a result of a more developed educational environment. Thus, this population gains more social and economic capital in Chinese society.
Table 1: number of Chinese students studying abroad from 1978 to 2013(Source: http://www.eol.cn )
From the table 1 above, the number of students going studying abroad increased dramatically after the 1990s. In 2013, the population of students who were attending school in foreign countries reached 400,000. The study abroad process is referred by Su-Yan Pan as China’s brain gain strategy, which indicates that the Chinese government is sending thousands of students to foreign countries in order to gain sources of new knowledge and innovative technology. Moreover, through students who have studied in foreign countries bringing back their higher education experiences, China plans to improve the “quality of its human capital and hasten economics modernization; and the need to reduce its reliance on foreign resources, develop domestic capacity and enhance its global competitiveness”(Pan, 124). In other words, the resources and knowledge that the students bring back from other developed countries contribute to the nation’s development.
Works Cited
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Jing Lin. “Educational Stratification and the New Middle Class.” Education and Social
Change in China. Gerard, S. Postiglione. New York: M.E. Sharp, Inc., 2006. Print.
Min, Weifang. “Chinese Higher Education.” Asian Universities. Ed. Altbach, Philip and
Umakoshi, Toru. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Print.
Schmidke, Carsten, and Peng Chen. “Philosophy Of Vocational Education In China: A
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