10th International Workshop on Higher Education Reforms
October 2-4, 2013, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)
Governance Reforms of Higher Education in China:
Driven Forces, Characteristics and Future Directions
Mei Li
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Institute of Higher Education, East China Normal University
The past two decades has witnessed the tremendous transformation of governance of higher education in China. The driven forces of the reforms lie on the interactions and intersection of factors and agencies at international, national and institutional levels. The forces of global level come from the neoliberalism and market-oriented ideology and academic capitalismpractices and the competition of knowledge and higher education sectors among the countries. The elements at national level include the membership of international organization such as WTO, the construction of strong nation through science and education, and reforms from socialist planning economy into socialist market-oriented economy, transition from agricultural society to industrialized and knowledge society, and redefinition of relationship between central government and provincial government, the massisfication of higher education.The changes and challenges at the institutional level mainly result from the transformation from an organization exclusively rely on state and government into a semi-independent organization which operate in the market and own self-mastery and some autonomy.
The model of governance of higher education in China differsfrom the model of USA, which isfully decentralized and market-oriented. It is distinct as well from the model of pre-reform era, which is centralized, planned, controlled, and national-owned with specialized institution dominated. The current model of governance is a kind of hybrid (mixture) of centralization and decentralization, planning and marketization, public and private, autonomy and control. That is to say, to some extent, the central governments have transmitted part of its former controlled power to the provincial governments and individual institution according to the Higher Education Law. On the other hand, the central governments still control crucial power and resources at the macro level.
Chinese public colleges and universities have long been associated with different levels of political administration. The system has been featured particularly by its high centralization. With increasing calls for delink between governments and higher education institutions, most recently by the Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-Term Education Reform and Development 2010-2020, the situation has started to change. Institutional autonomy has been increasing, accompanied by greater accountability over the past decades. There is a paradox of centralized decentralization: while the extent, procedure and pace of decentralization of governance continue to be controlled and determined by the central government, provincial governments and higher education institutions have more freedom and rights.
Within universities, the structure and process of authoritative decision-making issues that are significant for external as well as internal stakeholders have changed significantly. Focusing on institutional and system levels, this research examines the changing substantive and procedural autonomy in China’s university governance reforms since the late 1990s. It is set in an international context of intensified globalization, and links the global to the national, local, institutional and individual. Based on rich empirical data collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, it incorporates the author’s longstanding professional experiences within the Chinese higher education system to present findings from a case study of East China Normal University, one of China’s top-tier higher education institutions located in Shanghai.
This research reports that China’s university governance pattern has gradually become less centralized, with joint governance between the central and provincial governments. More autonomy has been granted to the institutional level in the domains of financial matters and academic issues, including appointing academic staff and administrators, recruiting students, curriculum and course development. Meanwhile, the government still controls ideo-political education, appointing university presidents and party secretaries. It also finds that China’s governance has its own nature and dynamics. The concept of autonomy in China means different things from the Western tradition portrayed by a distinct separation between the university and the state, as well as the protection of the university’s institutional independence from the state’s direct control. Without an independent status from national politics and the state’s control in the pre-reform age, recent reforms have led to more self-determinationof Chinese universities. Indeed, semi-independence is more appropriate to describe the Chinese situation. Chinese universities are neither distinctively separated from the government, nor squarely under its complete control. They are partially integrated with the government, while maintaining relative independence in other areas.