Last month, China’s State Council, the country’s cabinet, approved a comprehensive package to overhaul the national education system.
The plan, which covers kindergarten through college education, stresses the need for better teaching and research, greater diversity in what is taught at colleges, and closing the quality gap between rich and poor colleges. It also takes aim at how colleges are run, urging experiments with American-style university charters and college boards.
The guidelines, which have attracted more than 27,000 comments, according to the education ministry’s Web site, put to paper what many academics and government officials in China have been saying for years: that the country’s education system is outmoded, overstretched, and ill-equipped to train its citizens for the 21st century.
It’s “one of the most important educational-reform documents of the last 30 years,” says Gerard A. Postiglione, a professor of social science at the University of Hong Kong and director of the Wah Ching Centre of Research on Education in China.
He compared the new guidelines to mid-1990s efforts that paved the way for more students to attend higher-education institutions, and to a 2003 law that permits links with foreign institutions.
Sun Xiaobing, director of policy and regulation at the Ministry of Education, said in March that the guidelines will give colleges more autonomy “in teaching, scientific research, enrollment, and international exchanges,” reported the China Daily newspaper. In addition, he said, “Professors will also be given an important position in teaching and academic decisions.”
Rapid Expansion
The guidelines appear to be aimed at fixing several problems that have developed as a result of the rapid expansion of China’s higher-education system. In 1999, 6 percent of college-age Chinese attended universities, but by 2009 that figure had risen to 23 percent, according to Ministry of Education data. Likewise, there were 599 colleges with bachelor’s programs in 2000, compared with 1,079 in 2008.
This growth has brought shoddy teaching, overcrowded classrooms, and academic cheating, many academics and observers say.
“Expansion has been too rapid in the last 10 years,” says Qiang Zha, an assistant professor of education at York University, in Toronto, and a former education official in China’s Anhui province. The result is “a lot of discontent” as families, many of whom are spending their life savings on education expenses, “use the standards of elite education to measure mass education,” he says.
Academics too are increasingly dissatisfied, even at elite universities.
“China has no world-class university, and prestigious universities are based on stacks of funds,” Xu Zhihong, former president of Peking University, has said, according to China Daily.
When Qian Xuesen, the father of China’s space program, died at age 98 in October, eulogies recalled how he’d recently told Premier Wen Jiabao that Chinese universities were unable to produce creative geniuses.
That discontent does not mean professors and the central government are at odds; both sides recognize the need for change. China’s former education minister, Zhou Ji, was abruptly dismissed last fall because of widespread dissatisfaction with the education system.
“It’s the right time for people to pay attention to this,” says Mr. Zha. “The national leaders, they realize, and they’ve heard a lot of these things from university leaders; it’s an interactive process.”
Piecemeal and Slow
How quickly—and substantively—these guidelines will be enacted is unclear. China’s higher-education system is both large and complicated. At present, China’s universities are each run by a president and a Chinese Communist Party secretary appointed by the government. At 37 top universities, the Ministry of Education appoints the leaders; for other institutions, provincial authorities appoint the officials. Top-tier college presidents hold government positions equivalent to vice ministers.
A plan to stop granting official government ranks to university leaders caused a minor squabble during the normally compliant National People’s Congress, in March.
President Gu Hailiang of Wuhan University supported the change, arguing that the government positions open the way to political careers and have encouraged higher-education leaders “to manage the university like some executive department” with little attention to academic development.
Others disagreed.
“To strip the grade depreciates education,” said President Ji Baocheng of People’s University during the meeting.
All involved in the debate agree that if the Communist Party reduces its influence on higher education, the move must be piecemeal and slow.
Premier Wen said during his visit to Peking University that education changes must be “step by step.”
Says Shi Jinghuan, executive vice dean of Tsinghua University’s Institute of Education: “To really identify the healthy relationship between the government and the university needs time.”
The government has given colleges 10 years to make the changes laid out in the guidelines. Each institution can decide what to tackle first, whether it’s tenure, setting up a board, or improving teaching.
As Mr. Postiglione of the University of Hong Kong puts it: “The central government really provides a macroplan. Then it’s up to the provinces.”
