Higher Education Reform in China Beyond the Expansion

A major transformation of Chinese higher education (HE) has taken place over the past decade – China has reshaped its higher education sector from elite to mass education with the number of graduates having quadrupled to three million a year over six years. China is exceptional among lower income countries in using tertiary education as a development strategy on such a scale, aiming to improve the quality of its graduates, and make HE available to as many of its citizens as possible. This book provides a critical examination the challenges to the development and sustainability of higher education in China: Can its universities move from quantity to quality? How will so many graduates find jobs in line with their expectations? Can Britain and other western countries continue to benefit from China’s education boom? What are the prospects for collaboration in research? This book evaluates the prospects for Chinese and foreign HE providers, regulators and other stakeholders. It introduces the key changes in China’s HE programme since the Opening-Up policy in 1978 and analyses the achievements and the challenges over the subsequent three decades. Furthermore, it sheds light on new reforms that are likely to take place in the future, particularly as a result of the ongoing international financial crisis.

Introduction - W. John Morgan and Bin Wu Part I: Widening the Provision of Higher Education 1. The Regional Division of the Higher Education Sector in China: A Spatial Analysis - Aijuan Chen and Bin Wu 2. Adult Higher Education in China: Problems and Potential - Naixia Wang 3. The Role of Distance Education in Higher Education in Contemporary China - Bernadette Robinson, Shuoqin Yan and Shukun Mo4. Private Higher Education in China: Problems and Possibilities - Fengliang Li and W. John Morgan Part II: Expansion and its Consequences 5. Thirty Years of Reform of China’s Higher Education Funding Mechanism - Xiahao Ding, Fengliang Li and Yuze Sun 6. The Labour Market for Graduates in China - Fengliang Li, W. John Morgan and Xiaohao Ding 7. The Occupational Orientation of Doctoral Graduates in China - Yandong Zhao and Dasheng Deng Part III: A Growing Global Perspective 8. Higher Education and Chinese Teachers: Professional Education in the Context of China’s Curriculum Reform - Janette Ryan 9. Education Reform in Hong Kong: Implications for Higher Education and for Lifelong Learning - John Cribbin 10. Brain Power Stored Overseas? An Australian Case Study of the Chinese Knowledge Diaspora - Rui Yang

W. John Morgan is Emeritus Professor in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham, UK, and an Honorary Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, UK. Bin Wu is Senior Research Fellow at the China Policy Institute in the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham, UK. His recent publications include, as co-editor, Sustainable Reform and Development in Post-Olympic China (also published by Routledge) and guest co-editor of a Special Issue of the Journal of Contemporary China on ‘Openness of Chinese Society: progresses and challenges’.