Abstract
Higher education in China is currently undergoing a process of re-orientation. This paper focuses specifically on the development of transnational higher education (TNHE) in China over the last decade, as well as its implications for university governance. Major features of TNHE programmes in China will be explored, and a corresponding typology will be presented. We argue that in the face of the fast expanding activities of TNHE, the common irregularities in programme operation, and the less effective and efficient mechanism of quality assurance, may well be the major challenges for university governance in China. Structural reform in university governance is desirable, particularly in terms of empowering the non-public sector in Chinese higher education and of separating the role of the Party from academic administration.
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Notes
The authors want to thank the Research Grant Council of the Government of Hong Kong SAR for offering funding support to the project [HKIEd 7005-PPR-6]. A total of nine interviews, which involved 13 presidents/heads of institutions plus a total of 11 focus group discussions with students concerned have been conducted during the field trips.
This acronym of CFCRS (Zhongwai hezuo banxue) may alternatively be used as an equivalent to ‘transnational education’ in the following discussion. It is notable that CFCRS, as a concept for TNHE development in China, has become increasingly intransparent over the last decade, given a great variety of collaborations from equal partnership to extremely unbalanced cases. This issue will be explored further in the following discussion.
Regarding the management of CFCRS degrees, the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council subsequently issued the Notice on Improving the Management of Degree-Awarding in Activities of CFCRS on 22 January 1996, to legalize and systemize the format of degrees awarded by CFCRS institutions and programmes.
Nevertheless, compulsory education (local primary and junior secondary education) and special sub-items regarding military education, police education, political education and party schools’ education are excluded from the list upon request of the Chinese government.
‘National treatment’ refers to one of the nondiscriminatory treatments offered under the legal framework of the GATS. It requires the treatment of imported goods or services to be no worse than that of domestically produced goods or services.
The enforcement of the Regulations, however, only started from September 2003 onwards.
Countries and regions that are currently significantly involved include the UK, Australia, USA, Canada, Germany, Russia, Ireland, New Zealand, France, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan.
Minban HEIs refers to HEIs owned and/or run by non-state actors. Since the notion of ‘private education’ remains politically incorrect in socialist China, scholars and government officials tend to use the term minban to refer to institutions not run by the state actors. We must nevertheless appreciate the diversity of models in running such minban institutions. For details, see, for example, Mok (2009).
Zhejiang Wanli University is strictly speaking a ‘publicly owned provincial HEI’ exclusively run by the privately owned Wanli Education Group. It is an institution with more than 60 years of history, yet its academic record was poor until the takeover of its management by the Wanli Education Group since 2000.
The University began to recruit students and started its courses in 2004, yet it was officially approved by the Chinese Ministry of Education in May 2005.
There are, however, several CFCRS institutions that bear the title of ‘university’ in their English names earlier than the University of Nottingham-Ningbo, yet legally they are associate schools/colleges of local public HEIs under the collaborative arrangement. Two of the examples here are the Sias International University in Henan Province and the Missouri State University’s branch campus (legally the LNU-MSU College of International Business of Lioaning Normal University) in Liaoning Province.
The Graduate School is headquartered in Beijing with campuses in Shanghai and Guangzhou. Its ‘location’ in the official record was only shifted from Guangdong Province to Beijing in 2011.
http://www.cheungkong-gsb.com/AboutUs/tabid/86/Default.aspx (accessed 4 December 2011).
It is nevertheless worth mentioning that a significant number of CFCRS programmes are in fact conducted beyond the coverage of the list, which implies an absence of proper application from institutions concerned and subsequent approval from the Ministry of Education. Although admittedly, no statistics concerning the number of these ‘unapproved’ programmes is available to date, such irregularities have again been confirmed by heads of institutions concerned in our field interviews (see also Zheng, 2009).
‘Independent college’ (duli xueyuan) may also be known as ‘second-tier college’ or ‘affiliated college’ in different context, yet the former has become a term more commonly used by the Chinese public, as well as the academia today. This is indeed a form of HEI tailor-made for the peculiar situation of contemporary China, which has been encouraged by the Chinese Ministry of Education since the late 1990s to create additional undergraduate programmes beyond the capacity of public HEIs. ‘Self-financing’ is therefore a key feature of the independent colleges nationwide. As a kind of publicly owned but privately run higher education institutions, they have become increasingly popular in China, and many sub-forms in terms of their management and operation have since been developed. For the Chinese government, such colleges could be very helpful in meeting the pressing demands of higher education from the public with their ‘quasi-market’ nature (Mok, 2009, 39).
The University was established as early as in October 1984, yet it could only secure an undergraduate degree-awarding status as late as in March 2000, after the approval from the Ministry of Education. Nevertheless, it is still the first minban HEI with degree-awarding status.
These twinning arrangements refer to different combinations of the year(s) needed for domestic studies with the year(s) needed for overseas studies in partner institutions. For instance, the arrangement of 2+2 refers to 2 years of domestic studies followed by a period of 2 more years abroad. As for the case of 1+2+1, it refers to an arrangement of 1 year in China, 2 years abroad and finally 1 year in China again.
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/fees/tuitionfees/undergraduatecourses.aspx (accessed 31 May 2011). Tuition fee charged by The University for its international undergraduate students in Science and Engineering was £14,260 (around RMB 152,000) for the 2010 intake.
http://www.nottingham.edu.cn/en/admissions/moneymatters/domestic.aspx (accessed 5 December 2011).
http://www.xjtlu.edu.cn/en/admissions/undergraduate/fees-and-finance.html (accessed 5 December 2011). It is, however, worth noting that both the University of Nottingham-Ningbo and the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University charge their international students with foreign passports 1/3 more than the domestic Chinese students. Thus, the tuition fee for international students of 2011 intake is RMB 80,000 per academic year for all undergraduate programmes.
Interview with senior administrators from the University’s related departments, 6 January 2011, Zhengzhou, Henan Province.
It was a point mentioned by most students from the less prestigious HEIs during our focus group discussions.
Again, some Chinese students had clearly expressed this view in the series of focus group discussions. Most who opted for 4+0 programmes did so because of limited financial capabilities.
http://en.sias.edu.cn/introduction.php?article_id=53 (accessed 5 December 2011).
http://www.sias.edu.cn/aboutsias/1427.html (accessed 5 December 2011).
http://en.sias.edu.cn/article_class.php?classID=4&article_id=192 (accessed 5 December 2011).
http://www.sias.edu.cn/aboutsias/1430.html (accessed 5 December 2011).
This is a CFCRS institution established in 2005 through collaboration between the Beijing Normal University and Hong Kong Baptist University.
http://uic.edu.hk/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=62&Itemid=192 (accessed 5 December 2011).
Both the UNN students and graduates participated in the two focus group discussions conducted in UNN’s campus on 27 January 2011 have confirmed our observation in this regard.
Prof. Li Da Yong is President of the Harbin University of Science & Technology.
Prof. Liu Yuejun is Dean of the College of International Education, ZUT. Prof. Sun Wei is Director of the Department of Educational Cooperation & Exchange, ZUT cum Vice Secretary-General, Henan Educational Association for International Exchange.
Prof. Chen Jiaxin is Dean of the International Education College, Henan University of Science and Technology. The provincial government of Henan is particularly cautious recently as Henan, together with Tianjin, Liaoning and Jiangsu, have been selected by the Ministry as the regional focus of its first round of evaluation exercise on CFCRS programmes and institutions.
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Ong, K., Chan, D. Transnational Higher Education and Challenges for University Governance in China. High Educ Policy 25, 151–170 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2012.2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2012.2