BEIJING NORMAL UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Education

Sample Final Assignments for the partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the course
“Chinese History and Culture”
(Education Systems, Policy and Management in China)
A) Higher Education
1. 201729010036 Understanding higher education reform in china: student loan policy.

2. 2017390110038 An exploratory study on current trends and the consequnces of research

activities among Chinese universities.

3. 201729010054 Internationalization of Chinese higher education institutions: a meta-

synthesis of strategies and issues on the quest to world-class status.

4. 201429010013 Challenges to Study Abroad: Responses from International Students at a

Comprehensive University in Beijing

5. Chinese Non-English Major Students' Attitudes towards Using the English-Medium

Instruction Strategy: A New Perspective

6. 201529010008 Challenges and Opportunities in Multicultural Learning Environment:

The Case of International Students in China/BNU

7. 201529010012 Exploring Internationalization: Foreign students perception of Chinese

Higher Education: A case study of Beijing Normal University.

8. 201529010002 International Students’ Expectations and Actual Experiences in Chinese’

Higher Education: Case study in Beijing Normal University.

9. 201529010015admission officer in higher education: perspectives of faculty member

and student affairs professional of Beijing normal university.

10. 201539010028 Impacts of reforms in Chinese educational system

11. 201520910004 Assessing the influential factors of international African students

in choosing a Chinese higher education.

12. 201529010010 Expectations and challenges of African students inBeijing Normal

University, Beijing, China

13. 2013229010017 Chinese higher education enrollment policy: Fairness of system for
students’ choice of university

14. 201339010006 A Preliminary Observation to an Appropriate Aggregate Size of Chinese

 Higher Education.
15. 201339010005 Internationalization of Higher Education in China: What are the Rationales
behind it?
16. 201339010004 Making people employable: Reforming higher education in China.
17. 201629010053 Is Merger a Success? Exploring the Outcomes and Challenges of Mergers of
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in China.
18. 201629010056 Major factors that influence international students mobility in and out of
China
19. 201629010072 Analysis of internationalization of higher education in China: A review of
study.
20. Inequality of higher education admission system: A review paper university in China.
21. 201629010083 The influence of current economic growth on higher education in China.
22. 201639010053 Organizational Culture and Its Influence on the Performance of Chinese
Higher Education Institutions: The Case of a State University in Beijing

B) Gaokao

1. China and the Current Gaokao Examination Policy: Perspectives of Undergraduate Chinese
Students.
2. 201529010009 The National Higher Education Entrance Exams "Gaokao" and its creating of
route learning attitude in students: a study of Chinese students in Beijing Normal University."
3. 2015 2901 0023 Preparation of Secondary School Students’ Transition to Higher Education
in China
4. 201529010007 Chinese students’ enrollment to the university programmes: the gaokao
experiences and its influence on the takers.
5. Prospects and challenges of admission system of the 21st century of higher education in
China
6. 201329010002 How Do Senior Secondary School Teachers Influence Students’ Achievement
in National College Entrance Examination.
7. 201329010013 What are the impressions of Chinese students on the importance of the
national college entrance examination (Gaokao)?
C) Teacher’s Development and Support

1. 201729010065 Prioritizing the Teaching Work Force: Strategies for Recruiting and
Retaining Quality Teachers in Rural Areas within China.

2. 201739010035 A review of teachers’ professional development in china: a lesson to

Tanzanian teachers for 21st century skills.
3. A qualitative investigation of the effects of mentoring: Teacher narratives from Tianjin,
China.
4. Enhancing teaching e-learning skills through an online teacher training program
5. Comparative study on Teacher‘s preparation, Training and development: The case study of
The People’s republic of The People’s republic of china and Rwanda.
6. 201629010067 Analyzing Free Teacher Education Policy in China: Looking into the life of
three free teacher education students.
7. “Never For Prize, Only For Peace”: An Exploration into the current validity of this maxim in modern
Chinese Education.
8. Teacher Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in China: A look into the unique
features and challenges in relation to Western models.

C) Others
1. 1. 201739010028 Higher Vocational education reform: matching skills to markets in China
2. 201739010032 Factors underlying the demand for private tutoring: A case study of China
3. 201729010062 Parent Involvement in Education: A Comparative Study in Tanzania and
China
4. 2014-39010010 Chinese students’ attitude towards English Language learning
5. 201539010003 Development and Perspectives of English, as a Language of Instruction and
Learning, in Chinese Educational System.
6. 201529010011Understanding the importance of Early Childhood Development in China and
the Impact on Children’s Future Academic Achievement.
7. 201539010029 Barriers and challenges of educational development in China: comparative
analysis on migrants residents.
8. 201529010005 Chinese Education System Reforms Resulting from Western Influence: 16 th
 century – 1911
9. 201539010007 Comparison of secondary school science curriculum in China and Korea.
10. 201529010024 Chinese Undergraduate Freshmen Perceive High School As Giving Them Adequate
Academic Preparation For Their University Studies.
11. 201439210001 Clustering applications in education and exploiting of big data in education
12. 201329010014 The effects of the local household registration(hukou) on access and
equity on enrollment for migrant children into public primary schools in beijing.
13. 201629010062 The effect of globalization on the development of an early childhood
education in china – reviewed paper.
14. Evolution of private education in china since 1949 up to now.
15. Empowering ethnic minority students through multicultural education in china: Challenges
and recommendations.
16. 201629010065 Educational challenges in minority regions of China (a case study of the
ethnic minority) primary schooling.
17. 201629010073 Chinese Teachers’ barriers in integrating ICT into Classroom Teaching
18. The student-teacher relationship factor affecting students’ motivation and academic
achievement

19. 201639010056 Equity issues in Chinese education: Addressing girls’ education at Higher
Secondary Education level- a policy gap

20. Determining the Reasonableness of Reasonable Returns: Article 51’s Effects and
Implications on Private Education in China.
 BEIJING NORMAL UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

COURSE: CHINESE EDUCATION

UNDERSTANDING HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM IN CHINA: STUDENT LOAN POLICY

WRITTEN BY:

201729010036

Instructors:

LiJiayong (PhD) &Sang Guoyuan (PhD)

DECEMBER 21, 2017

ABSTRACT

The students loan policy and loan schemes were first introduced in US and Europe during 1950s with a smaller
scale, which later adopted and expanded to more than 30 countries in 1980s, 50 countries in 1990s and 70
countries in 2000s . The number has continued to grow. (Woodhall 1983, 1990, 1991, 2004; Johnstone 1986;
Le Metais 1987; James &Hoenack 1988; Douglas Albrecht & Adrian Ziderman 1992; 2008). Chinese student
loan policy was first introduced in 1986 due to the needs of time-being and amended for several times until
found its current shape in 1999.

This paper aims to draw a general picture of ‘Student Loan Policy’ (SLP), alternatively financial aids for local
Chinese student in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and how these support were appropriated to students
during their pursuit of study. First, an overview of Students loan and its development will be introduced and
later those challenges and issues faced during reforms, transition as well as how student loan policy was
improved as an alignment of new changes in related documents. Finally, discussion and recommendations will
put lens on existing five types of financial support and how these can improve for the betterment of
newcomers, future learners and prospect entrees of Chinese HEIs.

KEY TERMS: STUDENT LOAN POLICY, HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION, REFORM IN CHINA

INTRODUCTION

China is one of countries whose enrollment rate in HEI is the highest in the world. Merely 34,5 million
students are studying in HEIs in China which is certainly a huge number (National Bureau of Statistics of
China, 2016). Government institutions, and other stakeholders are collaborating and in charge of such complex
issues in which they are required to take various conditions into an account such as students’ social needs, their
background, class, ethnicity, university, and profession. These are, on the one hand, all connected to fiscal
issues in economy ruling society. On the other hand, students are risking their life to study in different country,
region, city all on their own. Therefore, income is crucial for them to survive. With respect to this,student loan
policy and financial support with conditions became one of the worldwide, effective solution for a such
complex phenomenon.

Despite that, it is also important and considerable matter that implementation of the policy in which student
loan schemes across globe are varied due to the demand, system and structure characteristic as well as
economy (Jamil Salmi, 2015; Ziderman, A., & Albrecht, D. (1995). As a consequence, student loan in higher
education has attracted global attention and governments in all parts of the world updated and revised loan
policy in order to facilitate additional education resources, advocate education system to be accessible and
equal for all, and to produce more skillful personnel resources, namely labour force for future betterment of the
nation. These moves have been encouraged by such bodies as the World Bank (1980, 1986a, 1988) and the
Asian Development Bank (1988). Student loans have also been the focus of books published by the
Commonwealth Secretariat (Woodhall 1987) and the International Institute for Educational Planning
(Woodhall 1990, 1991).

SLP was also considered as a part of capitalist infrastructure for financing education as mentioned by Li
Shouxin and Mark Bray(1992). Accepting the definition mentioned, it attracted my curiosity in the light of
knowing how socialistic country has, whether such policy was successful or not, adapted the capitalist method
as a solution or option for emerged demand and issues. In particular, whether the process of introduction,
formulation and implementation of SLP faced an opposition from political or elite groups, and how public
mass reacted to the policy and what other challenges had to be dealt with in order to supporting HEIs, fulfilling
students’ need and successful completion of post-secondary programme.

The purpose of the SLP; however, the schemes may have varied by goals, initiatives, economic status of the
nation among countries, is generally to provide equity of education. In Hong Kong, for example, the primary
purpose is to ensure that "no student who has been offered a place in one of the institutions [of higher
education] should be unable to accept it because of lack of means" (Hong Kong 1985, p. 2; Bray 1991, p. 16).
In this case, the intention of SLP is simply that impoverished as well as prosperous students should gain access
to higher education and advocate needy students with financial limitation. In some countries equity rationales
are taken further. Loans may be part of a package in which fees are increased in order to extract extra revenue
from rich families.

Student loan schemes may also aim simply to limit government expenditure on higher education. In some
cases, constraints on higher education expenditure are recommended in order to liberate resources for other
educational levels which may generate higher rates of return (Psacharopoulos 1985; World Bank 1986a; Selden
and Wasylenko 1992). Alternatively, limits on higher education expenditure may be advocated in order either
to reduce total government expenditure or to release money for non- educational purposes (Colclough&Lewin
1990, pp. 34-6; Woodhall 1991, p. 2Hallak 1991). Corresponding to this range of objectives is a range of
structures. Most programmes, including that in China, provide a simple mortgage-type arrangement. They have
a fixed repayment period, usually with a 'grace period' immediately after completion of studies to allow
graduates to find jobs. In connection with, terms of repayment period also vary depending on a country
situation such as 2 years in Peru, 6 years in China, and 15 years after graduation in Panama.

Understanding this wide range of objectives and structures attached to such a policy and its complexity, this
paper put emphasis on S L P & Schemes in Chinese context, and therefore attempt to analyse an overview of
policy formulation, implementation and potential consideration towards policy efficiency and enhancement. It
presents factual information and evidences from a variety of sources regarding the goals and structure of the
loan scheme, and compare early and present practices, progress, pros and cons vice versa.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

1. Research method:Document review

Document analysis is a form of qualitative research in which documents are interpreted by the researcher to
give voice and meaning around an assessment topic (Bowen, 2009). Simply, document analysis is a way of
collecting data by reviewing existing documents.

This research is to investigate the origin and development of Student Loan Policy of PRC and its
implementation in higher education settings. SLP as earlier stated, is a part of financial aid and supporting
system, so that it would be impossible to cover all the factors and variables that impact on the implementation.
Thus, document review is chosen as my research method not only allow me to grasp different scholarly
perspectives upon chosen topic, but also related to the feasibility of conducting research.

2. Research questions

SLP has been studied by different scholars and its formulation, implementation and practices are similar in one
way, but also different in another way. Various countries have either developed their own schemes or borrowed
one from other countries and therefore adapted to their national contexts. Even though, student loan as a means
of supporting mechanism or a part of financial aid system in common perspective these days, much differences
can be experienced through implementation. In particular, ideology behind SLP could be interpreted as to
provide equity, equality and quality of education; however, those failure, default rate, economic crisis, having
lack of resources or other interest from external parties intervene the ethos of initiative in SLP and result varied
outcomes. In connection with, I am interested in knowing what uniqueness in Chinese context is and how it is
differed from other countries as well as similar experiences that should be maintained, improved or resolved in
order to provide more educational opportunities to mass public. In addition, I am not familiar with the context
of China, so that I came up with the following three questions to develop my research paper regarding the
topic.

- How student loan policy is developed in China?

- What are the factors that influenced necessary changes and amendments in such policy?
- Do existing SL schemes meet demands and needs of prospect students in HEIs?

To reemphasize the significance of each question, first question will guide me for all the process of
investigation as well as help me draw overall picture of SLP. Latter two questions will allow me to put critical
lens on examining loan policy or schemes in China and analyseits efficiency upon target group. It is also
believed as my contributionto academic research pond.

3. Limitations:

This research paper is developed through analyzing available documents, research findings, articles and
existing literature on student loan in broader perspective and student loan policy in China as narrowed focus.
As a researcher, my analysis and conclusions could be opposed or criticized by other scholars. With this
regard, I have encountered following limitations that should be considered for further studies.

- Availability of documents: Student loan policy document, or research materials could be found in
massive amount; however, it was challenging to find ones related to Chinese context. In particular, no
detailed statistics and concrete evidences were found, except general information drawn in statistical
books or researcher’s citation.
- Language barrier: It could be one of the most significant factor. I assume that there would be plenty
of readings, findings and document in Chinese language done by domestic intellectuals and scholars
which would have been valuable for this paper.
- There was no other external source of support that can justify the quality, content and reliability of the
paper. Also, there was no triangulation to validate the document analysis.

LITERATURE AND FINDINGS

Student loan policy (SLP) and schemes are practiced in more than 60 countries as a one of the crucial
financing mechanism for revenue in higher education institutions (Jamil Salmi, 2015) as well as it functions as
a support system for those who need access to tertiary education, but limited with their financial difficulty.
History of student loan or similar practices would be controversial from philanthropic effort to federal system
or even to system that focused on a political discourse (Matthew B. Fuller, 2014). Gabriel Betancourt,
Columbian from poor family background, was believed to be first founder of modern student loan institute
ICETEX in Colombia in 1950s inspired by his real-life story. ICETEX is not only considered as first institution
giving loans to students for an academic purpose in Latin America, but for all over the world. Later, this cost
sharing support mechanism flourished across the globe (Jamil Salmi, 2015). So, what also makes this type of
financial aid crucial and ubiquitous is that government and public agencies were no longer in capable of
funding HEIs after changes from elite education to mass education system during late 1980s. In this transition,
an equal access to higher education became feasible, yet in reality it was unaffordable for those who were from
impoverished background. As result, NGOs, commercial banks, non-profit institutions took part in supporting
access to those target group students with low-interest loans. Therefore, student loan could be interpreted as
another type of financial aid that creates many ways to assist students in paying ever more of their own
education and related expenses with repayment conditions, period and interest (Richard Hopper, 2015).

Similar to most of other countries, China went through same scenario from elite education system that is
closely tied to governmental plan then shifted to mass education due to reform and opening up policy.
However, shifts that was expected to bring light to students’ future prosperity in tertiary education and equal
access to higher degree, quality of education, insufficient number of teacher profession, funding for
institutional revenue, infrastructure, relatively massive quantity of students among other issues had to be
considered thoroughly.

BACKGROUND OF HIGHER EDUCATION TRANSITION AND REFORM IN CHINA

People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949 and later on the system of higher education went through two
different economic systems and structures: a planned economy from 1949 – 1978 (stage one); the socialistic
market-oriented economy from 1978 until present (stage two). The shift between two systems has shown
essential and great differences over the time and the following statements will demonstrate details in these two
stages (Hong &Wenli 2003; Li Lixu 2004; British Council 2013).

STAGE ONE (1949 TO 1978)

Under the condition of the planned economy, the relationship between the government, higher education
institutions, employers and college graduates was quite simple in which each body and their collaboration was
tied up to the government. During that time, higher education was totally free in China; however, graduates
were appointed to the planned destination where s/he would work without any choice for their career. The
designated workplaces would have been chosen by central government and if the graduate give up the plan, the
person would be restrained from social welfare and services (Li Shouxin and Mark Bray 1992).During planned
economy system, no significant reform was carried out, but minor operations (Li Lixu, 2004).
THE STAGE TWO (1978 TO PRESENT)

In 1978, following the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese people realized that the old planned
economic model no longer worked for China. This emerged notion had the central government put into the
situation to take action. In accordance with, Deng Xia Ping introduced market oriented economic system. The
process of economic transition has led to a series of tremendous changes to the society. Market demand and
supply, taking over from the government plan, is beginning to play a fundamental role in resource allocation
and utilization. The governmental administrative function in higher education is changing from direct
administration to indirect macro-control (Hong etal 2003, 2013).

Under the condition of the market-oriented economy, labor market demand and supply has become more
important to HEIs, which results in student enrolments and higher-education expansion. During 1949-1988,
the students could receive ‘free’ higher education without paying tuition costs, as well as could obtain grants
for their living expenses. Since then, all students were required to pay tuition fee for their academic
development.

STUDENT ENROLMENTS AND HIGHER-EDUCATION EXPANSION

HE reforms and the opening up in 1978 due to market oriented system introduction, there emerged urgency of
stabilizing demand and supply not only in HE institutions, but also in job market. Because tertiary education
was considered as preparing fewer number of elite, intellectual groups aligned to the planned scenario from
government which then turned into mass education. Also, there is no doubt that the enormous population
brings a heavy burden to the education system in China, especially for the higher education system. Due to
increasing number of prospect students in Chinese higher education, the government, ministry of education
and ministry of finance had to take action in order to deal with emerging considerations such as funding
institutions, providing quality tertiary education and adequate facilities and teaching staff etc. With a regard to
the risen need, Chinese government partially introduced tuition fee in 1985 (Zhang Minxuan, 1998) andHong
Shen &Wenli Li, (2003) and noted that tuition costs rose year by year along with the expansion of higher
education and the increase of the operational budget of higher-education institutions and then estimated the
increment rate among consecutive four years.(refer to table )

Central government made a decision in 1999 to expand higher education to meet the demand of the people for
higher quality of learning, which made even greater expansion alongside mass higher education. Although
government took action to deal with issues and challenges occurring in HE, there has still existed some degree
of inequality of educational opportunities between the urban and rural areas. Yinmei Wan (2006) also revealed
several points in her article that average level of higher education in China was lower than that in other
developing countries; and higher education during the time of expansion constrained by inadequate state
resource, job allocation in labour market after graduation so that government had to choose moderate and
steady expansion instead of rapid expansion due to limitations aforementioned.
Besides the drawback in bringing reforms in education system, there were achievements to celebrate. In 2002,
China’s gross enrolment rate in higher education increased to 15 per cent from 9.8 per cent in 1998—meeting
the minimum standards of mass higher education defined by Professor Martin Trow. The rate increased to 21
per cent in 2005, 23 per cent in 2007, 26,5 per cent in 2010 respectively. (Wei Jianguo and Wang Rong 2011;
British Council 2013)

Table 1: Expansion of HE in 1990-2010

In addition, government expenditure on education has significantly raised 106 billion yuan in 1993 to 548
billion yuan in 2002 (Li Lixu 2004). Increment in expenditure on education as to reform is crucial factor for
bringing notable change according to action plan made by Ministry of education (MOE) in 1998 and
promulgated by CPC and MOE in 1999.

HIGHER-EDUCATION BUDGETS AND FINANCING CHALLENGES

Chinese higher education institutions used to be funded by the government before the implementation of the
opening up and reform policy. However, the volume of student enrolment has significantly escalated over the
time, and therefore Chinese government could no longer be in charge of funding higher education institutes. Li
Shouxin and Mark Bray (1992) noted that between 1978 and 1987 enrolments expanded from 865,000 to
2,064,000. Other reforms were in administration, course structure and specialist orientation (World Bank
1986b; Han 1988; Su 1990). In contrast to the previous structure which had only permitted students to be
enrolled according to state plans, the new structure permitted both students who were sponsored by their
employing work-units and students who paid their own fees (China 1985, pp. 14-15). Enrolment in the latter
two categories comprised 7.6 per cent in 1986, and grew to 11.9 per cent in 1989 (China 1990a) As a result
The Chinese central government produced a document: ‘Decision on Reform Educational Structure’, in 1985.
One of the enacted section of this document relates to the tuition fee policy which allowed higher education
institutions enroll a small quota of prospect students as self-supporting students. These students would cover
all the expenses by themselves e.g. programme fee, dormitory fee, health service and so on. Although the
reform of financing higher education to generate diverse revenues began before the great expansion of
enrolments in 1999, the expansion of higher education in the three years of 1999-2001 accelerated the reform
and raised the tuition-cost level. This document was effective for certain period of time, but was not vigorous
enough to sustain as expected so that higher education institutions have changed the enrolment policy from
two-track to one-track.

DIVERSIFICATION OF SOURCES FOR FINANCING HIGHER EDUCATION

A predominant source of funding higher education revenue was that of direct money stream from the central
government until 1987. In other words, HEIs were all dependent on government expenditure which restricts
other forms of funding mechanisms. Having a glimpse at a table provided by British Council report, Chinese
HEI revenue was formed by more than of its 90 per cent from government and rest constituted by university
generated fund until 1990. Although, slight changes have been made that was caused by reforms in education
in which HEIs were given more autonomy to make their own decision including funding mechanism.In details,
government funding sharply decreased from 78 per cent in 1997 to 44,08 per cent 2007, later showed an
increase and stabilized around 60 per cent in 2010s. Rest of the revenue for HEI is constituted by other forms
of funding such as donation, tuition fee, and social organisations or individuals (British Council report).

There are a total of nine sources as financial streams for higher education in China: state appropriation,
earmarked education levies, tuition costs and fees, support from school or university- affiliated enterprises,
donations from individuals and social organizations, educational foundations, research funding through
competitive mechanisms, educational loans, and revenue from financial capital market operation (Li and Min,
2001). The revenue from tuition costs and fees was only 1.04 billion Yuan in 1993, but reached 12.75 billion
Yuan in 1999; this was a great increase. Donations increased from 0.12 billion Yuan in 1993 to 1.62 billion
Yuan in 1999. Meanwhile, tuition costs and fees as a proportion of total expenditure increased gradually from
6.18 per cent in 1993 to 23.35 per cent in 1999 (Hong and Wenli 2003).

According to British council report (2013), it was estimated that total expenditure on higher education took up
15,4 per cent in 1999, reached almost 30 per cent in 2012.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FINANCIAL AID POLICY

As the costs of higher education were shifted from the government to the students and parents, more financial
aid for the poor students was needed. In China, there is a series of financial aids including grants, scholarships,
work-study, student loans and so on. The following information upon existing types of aids and financial
support in China is constituted from British council report, Zhang Minxuan 1998 and Hong &Wenli 2003.

Grants:In 1993, the central government established ‘Subsidy funds for special needy students’; which was
initially to help the needy students to survive from the fiscal issues. Moreover, every eligible applicant receives
the same amount of money, between 200-400 Yuan per person, so it is a small sum for the poor student. A
decade later, the State Grants Foundation was established in April 2002 according to ‘Regulations on the State
Grant Administration’ by MOF and MOE. State grants will be awarded to the academically deserving needy
undergraduates in the regular higher-education institutions. Every year 45,000 students will receive grants at
two levels, i.e. 10,000 students will receive 6,000 Yuan per year and the remaining 35,000 students will receive
4,000 Yuan per year; at the same time these students are exempt from tuition fees for the same year.

Scholarships: in July 1983, MOE and MOF issued ‘Regulations on temporary arrangements for grants and
scholarships’ which was intended to take over the position of grants moderately and become means of major
aid form. However, scholarship eligibility was based on merit, not needs of students. The amount of
scholarship will be varied by region, type and level and given annually.

Work-study: helping poor students, the State Education Commission issued ‘Regulations on building work-
study funds in regular higher-education institutions’ in 1994, which was to generate working environment for
poor students. Although, it soon after diminished because of opposition of workers and increasing
unemployment.

Free education for Normal Universities: This option brought to an existence in 2007 due to insufficient
number of qualified teachers in impoverished areas in west and middle regions of mainland China. According
to Ministry of Education and affiliated six normal universities agreement, eligible students will enjoy free
education, accommodation and subsidies for living expense. In return, the graduates are expected to work and
serve in rural school for certain years as to secure given opportunity.

Green channel: Eligible and qualified students will be supported financially as if they are in the situation to
loss access to higher education caused by low income status. These students receive different subsidies
depending on their situation.

Tuition Make-up: Since 2009, to make up tuition state student loans for students who agree to serve three
years or longer in the middle and western regions. It provides CNY6, 000 per person per year, up to three
years. It also applies to students who serve military service after graduation.

Tuition-cost waiving: another important measure to aid needy students. In 1995, the central government began
the policy of waiving or excusing tuition costs under certain circumstance such as high-need profession in
which only a few number of students can obtain the aid. Although, higher-education institutions started
gradually cancelling this form.

In 1997, universities and colleges put in place reforms with regard to tuition costs, and all students had to pay a
higher proportion of instructional costs than that in 1989. This has proved particularly difficult for the students
from the underdeveloped western areas. Because distribution has an imbalance; the population in the east is
much higher than that in the west. On this foundation of the geographic and demographic diverse
characteristics of China, its economy shows an unavoidable imbalance, which appears not only between the
west and the east, but also within each area. Generally speaking, the economy in the east of China is much
better than that in the west of China, and the economy in the cities is much better than that in the rural areas.
But even in cities, there is still a big income gap between rich and poor. This kind of imbalance creates large
obstacles for the widespread modernization of China. Accordingly, a project was established in 2000: ‘Access
to higher education for the needy of the underdeveloped western region’.

FORMULATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF STATE-SUBSIDIZED STUDENT LOAN POLICY

THE ‘OLD’ STUDENT LOANS (FROM 1986).

In July 1986, the State Council approved a ‘Report on the reform of the grant system in regular
higher-education institutions’ and the Student Loans Scheme (SLS) was introduced in 85 institutions out of
1,954 existing at that time. July 1987, the SLS was extended to the whole country following on the document
‘The implementation method of the Student Loans Scheme in REHI undergraduates’. The loan size was small,
only up to 300 Yuan per year per student for living expenses, and the target group was the poor undergraduates.

Student Loans Scheme, in 1986, was managed by institutions, the average loan money was small, only
300 Yuan per year, that is to say, the student received only 25 Yuan per month; the repayment period was short
and the loan had to be repaid before graduation. This caused some problems such as some institutions,
especially local institutions, were short of funds, meaning that poor students might find difficulty in obtaining
a student loan; the average amount of loan money was insufficient to resolve the difficulties of the poor
students; unfairness of repayment policy as it is known that most students have no earnings before graduation.

THE ‘NEW’ STUDENT LOANS (FROM 1999)

In September 1993, the government modified the policy.General-Commercial Student Loans Scheme (GCSLS)
is set up. In December 1999, the ‘Regulation on Student Loans Administration’ submitted by the three
ministries (PBC, MOE and MOF) opened the General-Commercial Student Loans Scheme and its
implementation started in the spring of 2000. Simultaneously, state-subsidized students loan practiced in eight
pilot cities and later expanded to nation-wide policy with promising four types in 2000. BOC, Agricultural
bank, ICBC participated. In 2003, nation-wide policy stopped due to increasing cost and risk.

In 2004, Henan province cooperated with the China’s Development bank and introduced loan in business
model, which followed with other provinces. In 2007, revised policy promulgated that allows students from
families with financial difficulties pursuing their post secondary education in not only undergraduate, but also
in vocational and technical colleges. It was considered as an improvement.

With the expansion of higher education and economic reforms, the central government reformed higher-
education financing, including the system of financial aid to students. Student financial aid takes five forms in
China: grants, scholarships, work-study, tuition-cost waiving, and student loans. Because of the introduction of
tuition fees in higher education, and the spread of higher education, the existing system of financial aid was
insufficient to cope with the difficulties of the poorer students. The central government therefore issued the
new Student Loans Scheme (incorporating GSSLS and GCSLS).
 To make the GSSLS more workable, the central government made several amendments to it, including
legislation on loan limits, repayment period etc. These changes have achieved satisfactory results, but the
GSSLS still has certain problems that need to be resolved.

Main features of four types of student loans in China (Shiro Armstrong &Bruce Chapman, 2011)

Commercial bank Rural credit China China development

loan from agency in cooperative loan from development bank bank loan from
HEI’s region agency in household’s loan from agency agency in household’s
region in HEI’s region region

Principal Commercial banks Rural credit China development bank

provision cooperatives

Borrower’s Borrowers are Borrowers are Borrowers are Students and their
eligibility students: full-time students or their students: full- time parents are co-
junior-college parents—it varies in junior-college borrowers; only
students, different places students, grantedto junior-
undergraduate undergraduate college students and
students, second students, second undergraduates and
bachelor’s degree bachelor’s degree excluding
students and students and postgraduates and
graduate students graduate students second bachelor’s
from public from ordinary degree students
ordinary colleges colleges and
and universities universities

Loan size Not exceeding Not exceeding Not exceeding Not exceeding
RMB6000 per RMB6000 per school RMB6000 per RMB6000 per school
school year per year per person school year per year per person
person person

Loan HEIs and Rural credit Mainly in the Mainly in the charge
origination commercial banks cooperatives charge of HEIs of county-level
student assistance

Interest Borne by the In some provinces, it It is usually borne Which level of

subsidy government at the is borne by the by the local government bears it
corresponding level provincial government at the depends on the
according to the government, but in corresponding afliation and location
afliation of HEIs other provinces, it is level according to of the HEI at which
borne by the local the afliation of the student is enrolled
government at the HEIs
corresponding level
according to the
afliation of HEIs

Risk-sharing Risk compensation Risk compensation Risk compensation Risk compensation

fund: the fund: it varies in fund: the fund: which level of
 government and different provinces government and government bears it
HEI each shares Guarantee: in some HEI each shares depends on the
half of the risk provinces it is required half of the risk afliation and location
compensation fund; that the borrowers compensation fund of the HEI at which
the part borne by provide a guarantee the student is enrolled
the government is
determined
according to the
afliation of HEIs

Repayment The principal and It is generally required It is required that It is generally

conditions interest must be that the principal and the principal and required that the
paid off within six interest be paid off interest be paid off principal and interest
years after yearly within six years yearly within six be paid off yearly
graduation yearly, after graduation years after within 10 years after
quarterly or graduation graduation
monthly

Loan Both HEIs and Rural credit HEIs are The county-level
collection commercial banks cooperatives are responsible for student assistance
are responsible for responsible for loan loan collection centres are
loan collection collection responsible for loan
collection

***source from: Wei Jianguo& Wang Rong (2011). Student Loan Reform in China: Problems and Challenges

DISCUSSION AND FINDINGS

Education loans and financial aids allow students gain access to higher education and pay their education fee
including tuition fee, course materials, lodges and living expenses. Student loans are different from the
ordinary loans because of its low interest, easy repayment methods with governmental subsidies in some cases
which reduce heavy burden and pressure from students. (ChinaEducationInfo). With respect, each year there is
an increasing number of students, especially those who are in undergraduate level, apply for student loans
which impacted private loans as a supplementary source of finance for households’ higher education
investment. Frankly, these types of loans have become an inseparable component of revenue for HEIs (Felicia
Ionescu& Nicole Simpson, 2015).As having gone through various articles, research materials and publications,
student loan policy and schemes developed in China is in the process of sustainability, yet several issues
should be taken into considerations.

Student loan policy is one of crucial part of education reform in China. After starting HE expansion, student
enrollment sharply rose consecutively so that it was irreversible as well as compulsory for the government to
introduce more options, particularly cost-sharing system and student loans to support needy students (Yinmei
Wan, 2006). On the one side, cost-sharing system has changed the rules of access to higher education. This
mechanism helps government release some of its pressure and share with private agencies, as well as budget
appropriation and amount per student can be increased (Fuller B. 2014). As a result, more and more students
enjoy equal access to tertiary education. On the other side, it is still existing question that whether does cost
sharing system and student loans provide equity in education. Yinmei Wan (2006) stressed out gaps between
students from different background has been increased since expansion in HE in China. She also criticized if
government and HEIs fails to develop such collaborative system that provides employment on a job market.
According to National Bureau of Statistic of China, human force could be increased by more than eight million
skillful college and vocational programs each year.

Fuller B. exempted U.S. statistics showing that seventy-four percent of college and university students
received some form of financial aid in 2010 (NCES, 2012) which means what if there is insufficient working
vacancy on job market, they will be unable to repay their loans. That results the worst scenario of student loan
policy and its endless criticism: default (Hua Shen &ZidermanA. 2008; Fuller B. 2014; Felicia Ionescu&
Nicole Simpson, 2015;Richard Hopper 2015). However, no research findings have been shown in this matter
for Chinese case. It is not clear in China that how many students receive certain type of loan and financial
support compared to self-support students. Hua Shen&Ziderman A. (2008) compared different countries and
their practices on SLP. They found China has been progressing and default rate is 35.37 per cent which is
average in most countries. Default of repayment or any other forms of cancellation regarding student loans is
subsidized by the governments which is common case and considered as risk sharing system in international
perspective. China first introduced risk sharing system during the reform of 2004 in order to stabilize SLP and
reduce the burden of default rate, loss of commercial banks (Richard Hopper, 2015; Hua Shen &Ziderman A.
2008)

RECOMMENDATION

PRC is unique country due to its size of population, density of metropolis area, ethnic diversity and
demography. Thus, implementation of such policy and evaluation criteria for its success is quite arguably
varied. However, it is inevitable that policy makers, stakeholders and mass public all are eager to fulfill the
needs of the society alongside policy initiative. In so doing,the followingnumber of issues are suggested to be
taken into an account and consider when modifying the existing student loan policy to fulfill students need and
improve the quality of service.

1. If the student loan policy aims at providing equity and equality of education regardless from students’
income, region and programme, the scheme needs flexibility. Generally, there should beprocedure and
selection criteria, but it would be better if eligibility requirement does not limit their options due to region or
level of degree. Some students are not yet eligible to apply for student loans. There are restrictions on the
eligibility of applicants from private HEIs and independent colleges. Some loans are not accessible to graduate
students. In other words, student loans are neither equally accessible to students depending on a level of
programme, region nor restricted to some institutes because of their private status.

2. Similar recommendation would follow by the amount of loan. The loan size fails to meet the needs of some
students. At present, the maximum amount of all loan types is RMB6000 per annum. According to the study of
Song Yingquan, however, the private educational expenditure of a student in a locally owned HEI, on average,
is more than RMB10 000 including tuition and fees, accommodation, board expenses, and transportation fees.
In addition, the tuition fees for medicine and art majors are higher than for other majors. Generally, the tuition
fees of private HEIs and independent colleges are more than RMB10 000. As a result, for students with no-
grant or other forms of financial assistance, the current loan size is relatively lower than the actual needs in
their pursuit of higher education. It could be discussed and altered.

3. The distribution of student loans cannot fully meet the needs of the students. According to one of the
statistics, GSSLS only favoured by few number of total prospect students. Thus, distribution or allocation
mechanism is expected to be transparent and open to high need students with flexible options and repayment
conditions.

4. There used to be disadvantages with the repayment options. The repayment period for all types of student
loans was six years, however, it changed in 2015 that national student loans was extended to the school year
plus 13 years, no longer than 20 years.

5. A credible, transparent and collaborative system among public institutes, commercial banks and private
agencies is expected to be developed which promote not only suitability and accountability of loan, but also
suit its allocation to target students, as well as does ensure repayment collection, related documents,
registration, and avoid default risk.

CONCLUSION

Student loan policy and schemes according to some researchers’ definition are a part of a capitalist
infrastructure for financing education, a method to cultivate potential students from impoverished area and
become an instrument to advocate a flow of human resource. On the one hand, the purpose of student loan is
basically similar in many countries. Systems and structures, on the other hand, vary in terms of formulation
and implementation of the policy. Alternatively experiences and practice in different countries are divergent
from one another even though there is a shared ideology.

In the context of China, student loan policy, namely the goverment subsidized student loan scheme
(GSSLS) has reached an outstanding result over the years. For example, the scheme has clearly identified
target population, government set up an environment for students applying for the financial support, partially
sharing risk and establish embodied organizations to be responsible for distribution and allocation of budget
etc. However, it was noticed that the policy still needs some improvement for making it feasible, adequately
reachable for target group and equal access to loans regardless from provinces, institutions and individuals.
Reforms on this policy have been taking place and it is obviously not easy to formulate considering different
variables in order to favour students and achieve its goal. As an author of this analysis myself, GSSLS needs to
be improved in order to maximize the benefit for both attainments of students and country, which is optimal
goal of the policy. However, the political environment and the population of the country is much more
prioritized aspect to the government. Hence, there is no need of rush accepting all recommendations and
suggestions neither from other countries nor international organisations. Instead, it would be better the policy
be developed by own country intellectuals considering pros and cons from timely manner and experience.

Reference:

British council: A Brief Overview of Chinese Higher Education System https://www.britishcouncil.in/

sites/default/files/higher_education_system_of_china.pdf

Chinese Experts Panel, 2002. Implementation report for the Third Basic Education Project in China.
Washington DC: World Bank.

Cronin, J.M.; Quarles Simmons, S. 1987. Student loans: risk and reality. Dover: Auburn House
Publishing Company.

Douglas Albrecht., Adrian Ziderman, 1992. Student Loans and Their Alternatives: Improving the
Performance of Deferred Payment Programs;Higher Education, Vol.23, No.4, Student Loans in Developing
Countries (Jun., 1992), pp. 357-374

Felicia Ionescu&Nicole Simpson, (2015). Default Risk and Private Student Loans: Implications for
Higher Education Policies

Fleisher, B.M. 2002. Higher education in China: A growth paradox? International Conference in
Honor of Gregory Chow: China and the World Economy, City University of Hong Kong.

Fleisher, B.M.; Dong, K.; Liu, Y. 1996. Education, enterprise organization, and productivity in the
Chinese paper industry, In: Economic Development and Cultural Change, p. 571-587.

Fuller, Matthew B. (2014) "A History of Financial Aid to Students," Journal of Student Financial Aid:
Vol. 44: Iss. 1, Article 4.

Hong Shen.,&Wenli Li 2003. UNESCO andInternational Institute for Educational Planning: A review
of the student loans scheme in China; UNESCO BangkokMom Luang Pin Malakul Centenary Building 920
Sukhumvit Road

Hua ShenAdrian Ziderman(2008) Student Loans Repayment and Recovery: International

Comparisons, Discussion Paper No. 3588 July 2008

Jamil Salmi, (2015). Student Loans in an International Perspective: The World Bank Experience

Jiao, X. (2001). To ensure the accomplishment of every college student’s schooling. In: China
Education Daily, 3 September 2001.

Li Lixu, (2004). China’s Higher Education Reform 1998-2003: A Summary , Asia Pacific Education
Review 2004, Vol. 5, No. 1, 14-22.

Li Shouxin., Mark Bray, 1992 -Attempting a Capitalist Form of Financing in a Socialist System:
Student Loans in the People's Republic of China;Higher Education, Vol. 23, No. 4, Student Loans in
Developing Countries pp. 375-387

Li, W.& Min, W. (2001). An analysis of the current and potential scale of Chinese Higher Education.
Journal of Higher Education (Chinese), 22 (2), 27-31.

Maureen Woodhal, (2004). Student Loans: Potential, Problems, and Lessons from International
Experience

Richard Hopper, (2015). Student Loans in Comparative and International Perspective, International
Higher Education: Special Focus: Student loans in Perspective

Thomas M. Selden and Michael J. Wasylenko, (1992). Benefit Incidence Analysis in Developing
Countries, Country Economics Department, The World Bank

Wei Jianguo., Wang Rong, 2011. Student Loan Reform in China: Problems and Challenges, Financing
higher education and economic development in East Asia; ANU press (2011)

World bank report 1980, 2008

Yinmei Wan, (2006) Expansion of Chinese Higher Education Since 1998: Its Causes and Outcomes

Ziderman, A., & Albrecht, D. (1995). Financing universities in developing countries. London: Falmer
Press

ZHANG Minxuan, (1998). Changing Conceptions of Equity and Student Financial Support Policies,
Higher Education in Post-Mao China,Hong Kong University Press

http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2017/indexeh.htm

http://www.chinaeducation.info/education-funding/education-loans/index.html

China Statistical Yearbook 2009 https://ebook.dgbas.gov.tw/public/Data/35219595129.pdf

Forbes magazine https://www.forbes.com/sites/jlim/2016/08/29/why-china-doesnt-have-a-student-

debt-problem/#555874e61a58

APPENDIX
Figure 1:

Figure 2:HE structure under the control of PRC during planned economy system.
iIs
lE
tH
i
u
f
1
r
o
t
c
S
d
n
a
m
e
D E
O
M
s
u
R
&
y
c
P
m
v
o
g
a
r
n
e
C
Figure 3: Current HEI stakeholders for students loan, grants and enrollment
C
y
/p
u
b
L
k
B
O
M
's
I
E
H
m
v
o
lG
a
tr
n
e
Table 2: Expansion of Higher Education in 1990-2010

New Entrants (Million)

Enrollments (Million)

Gross Enrollment Rate

1990

0.609

3.4%
1998

1.084

9.8%
2005

5.045

23

21.0%

Data Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China,

http://data.stats.gov.cn/workspace/
2010

6.618

31.05

26.5%

index;jsessionid=C781D208E25C79B326BDB5A26F52CE16?m=h gnd

Table 3: Higher Education Institutions in 2012

Regular Higher Education

No. of HEIs

2,442
Increase b/w 1998-2010

510%

290%

170%
By degrees offered

--4-yr HEIs 1,145

--2- to 3-yr HEIs 1,297

By affiliation

--Central ministries 113

Ministry of Education 73

Others central ministries 40

--Provincial 1,623

--Private 706

Adult Higher Education 348

Private Agencies

Data Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China (2012),

http://data.stats.gov.cn/workspace/index;jsessionid=C781D208E25C79B326BDB5A26F
52CE16?m=h gnd

Table 3: Higher Education Enrollments in 2012

No. of HEIs

Regular HEIs 25,632,973

--graduate programs 1,719,818

doctoral level 283,810

master’s level 1,436,008

--Undergraduate programs 23,913,155

4-year HEIs 14,270,888

2- to 3-yr HEIs 9,642,267

Adult HEIs 5,831,123

--4-year 2,475,495
 --2- to 3-yr HEIs 3,355,628

Total 31,464,096

Data Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China (2012),

http://data.stats.gov.cn/workspace/index;jsessionid=C781D208E25C79B326BDB5A26F52CE16?m=h gnd

Institute of International and Comparative Education, Beijing Normal University

Title: An exploratory study on current trends and the consequnces of research activities among
Chinese universities

Department: Faculty of Education

Student ID: 2017390110038

Abstract:
China continues to be one of the world’s largest producers of academic research
papers,contributing massively to both national and international journals annually. In
maintaining such position, the government has put up policies and practices in assuring that
actors and entire universities engage in research activities. However,such initiativeinitially
aimed atmotivating and encouraging research production seems to be pressuring researchers and
directly leading them to research misconducts and negligence of other activities of similar
significance. Hence the study employed a qualitative approach to extensively review existing
literaturesto determine thecurrent research trends and the consequences of pressure to engage
into research activities among Chinese top rated universities. The study found out that China
research activities has significantly improved and the country has beentop ratedin terms of
research and publications. However, it is to a cost of research misconductas well as negligence
of other academic activities of equal importance. The study recommends for a new system that
promote ethical research activitieswhich brings about a shift from quantity to quality research
publications for professional evaluations.

Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................28
1.1 Background of the Research..................................................................................................................29
1.2 Statement of the Problem.......................................................................................................................31
1.3 Research Questions................................................................................................................................32
1.4 Significance of the Study.......................................................................................................................32
1.5 Definition of Terms................................................................................................................................32
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS...............................33
2.1 China Higher Education Context...........................................................................................................33
2.2 Research Centers....................................................................................................................................35
2.3 China Management of research funding and achievements....................................................................35
2.4 A comparative grip of Research international trends in the OECD countries.........................................36
2.5 Theoretical Framework..........................................................................................................................37
2.6 Conceptual Framework..........................................................................................................................37
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY................................................................................................................38
3.1 Research methods and techniques..........................................................................................................38
3.2 Data analysis..........................................................................................................................................39
3.4 Study limitations....................................................................................................................................39
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS.........................................................................................39
4.1 The current trends of research activities among academic staffs in Chinese top universities.................40
4.2 The consequences arise as a result of pressure for academic staffs to conduct research and publish.
..................................................................................................................................................................... 42
4.21 Serious shortage of imaginative and innovative research.................................................................42
4.22 Less priority being given to teaching and service roles....................................................................43
4.23 Homogeneity Research and fabrication of data................................................................................43
4.24 Misconduct in research.....................................................................................................................44
4.25 Writing for Publication.....................................................................................................................45
CONCLUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS........................................................................................45
REFERENCES...............................................................................................................................................47

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Research

Globally institutions of higher education operate to deliver the three main functions, namely
teaching and learning, community engagement and research and innovation. (Roy, 2016).
Among the three key functions of higher education institutions, literature points out that
research and innovation has been the most emphasized functions since the 20 th century.
Similarly the Chinese government has realized the need for research especially after the opening
up to the outside world, (Gu,Li,Wang ,2009) were research was proclaimed to be the major
function of them all and the government pronounced “universities to be education centers and
research centers”( p171).

Whether the university is a research oriented institution or notthe pressure for academics tocarry
out research and publish remainssimilar both in public and private universities. Such pressure
in academia to rapidly and continually publish academic work to sustain or further one's career
is described as “perish or publish” (Garfield, 1996). Although the philosophy of perish and
publish came from America, it has evidently spread throughout countries, even in China.
Chinese universities are as well putting great pressure on their research-active staff to publish,
Tian, Su and Ru (2016) emphasized that Chinese academics pressured to publish not only in
local journals, but in internationally indexed journals.
The importance of research cannot be over emphasized, Gu, et. al (2009) asserts that through
research and innovation not only do higher education institutions create codified knowledge in
different forms namely; publications, patents, and prototype, but, institutions also contribute to
the local and national economies through research commercialization, problem solving, and
providing public space especially for developing nations.
Rosenberg and Mowery (1993) argues that universities in developing countries such as China
have a bigger role to play when compared to higher learning institutions in developed nations.
Their role is to conduct research that contributes to technological development and industrial
performance, with diverse interfaces between research universities and the commercial sector.
Gu et. al (2009) echoes “that the development of research in higher educationinstitutions is of
vital importance for fulfilling the national strategy of rejuvenating China through science and
education and further added that research in China is of greater importance for “improving the
quality of higher education’’ (p171).

Currently, the output of research and innovation has been used as tools for administrative
purpose of performance that leads to rankings of institutions and promotions of individuals
(Resnik and Zeng, 2011; Harley and Lee, 1997). A study carried by Tian, et al (2016) reveals
that the chances of one to be fully recruited depends heavily on the number of publications in
selected list of journals relevant to discipline the individual has or signed to have at the end of
the contract. Fawzi and Al-Hattami (201, p1) echoes that research measures the “quality of the
institution and career success among faculty members, interest in institutional rankings, and
prestige seeking”.

Bouchikhi, and Kimberley (2001) warns against exerting pressure to researchers to publish is
certain journals because it may lead to negative consequences. Giving an example of United
Kingdom (UK), were by tools such as Assessment Exercise and Research Evaluation
Framework are used to assess research productivity and are largely characterized by counting
numbers of recognized publications and such action come at the expense of innovation and
quality papers . Similarly in United States of America (USA) the same philosophy has led
research outputs being questioned in terms of the quality and has further led to the negligence of
other academic activities, including teaching training as most academics devoted most of their
time in research or activities related to research.

Tian et al. (2016) states that the “publish or perish” philosophy is relatively new, this is evident
from the studies related to research and publication especially on Publish-or-perish culture in
China which has received a little empirical investigation thus far, hence this study aims to
contribute to the investigations pertaining to the research activities in China.
It pacifically looks at China current trends in terms of research as well as the consequences
that might arise as a result of “publish or perish philosophy “ . The study acknowledges that
there are independent researchinstitutes outside the higher education institutions for example the
Chinese academy of social sciences centers (Gu et al., 2009) or research institutions of line
miniseries or industries, however this studyaimed at narrowing down to research carried out in
universities.
The reason two folds, firstly because research carried in universities has its own unique features,
as described by Gu et al.,(2009), researchersin higher education institutions have multi- tasks
such as of teaching and learning, community involvement and it may be challenge to balance
these big roles of similar importance. Unlike research centers were by researchers are full time
researchers without other responsibilities. Secondly research in higher learning institutions
aims at contributing to knowledge creation and distribution. Gu et al., (2009), continue to
explain that in higher education institutions“knowledge is created and by research, distributed
by teaching and applied through community engagement”, hence it creates a circle of
knowledge production (p 175) which plays a significance difference is the society.
Apart from the above sectionwhich is the introductory chapter, the rest of the paper is organized
into 4 other chapters; chapter 2 presents the literature review, chapter 3 describes the
methodology that was used, chapter 4 presents the findings and discussions and the last section
is the conclusions and recommendations. The paper ends with the list of the references that were
used to inform this study.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Just like any other country, China is keeping up with boosting their research productions.
Chinese government and universities use publication in peer-reviewed journals as an important
benchmark to evaluate all researchers’ performance, which subsequently affects their salary,
funding applications and future promotions. The publication is not just in any journal, but in
internationally indexed journals in order for the country to be competitive with the rest of the
world. Literature establishes that as much as such policies and practices brings about of
significantly improvement in researchactivities it is to a cost of research misconduct as well as
negligence of other academic activities of equal importance.Hence the study aims to explore on
the current trends of research among Chinese universities and the consequences for the enormous
pressure exerted to institutions and actors within institutions in particular as they persevere in
their careers.

1.3 Research Questions

The study aims to answer the following research questions:

a) What are the current trends of research activities among academic staff in Chinese top
rated universities?
b) What are the consequences for pressuring academics toconduct research and publish in
international indexed journals?
1.4 Significance of the Study

Carrying out an exploratory study on Chinese research trends and the consequences experienced
as a result of pressuring for more publications is of significance as it informs on the current
status quo in terms of research and subsequently allows one to predict of the future research
directions of the country. In addition it allows for possible solutions to be suggested with
regards to the pressure being exerted upon academics. For a comparative grip, the study is of
great significance in understanding the educational processes and practices of other nations to
evaluate ownsresearch trends and consequences as an indicator of global economic
competitiveness as well as to learn from other nations’ policies and educational practices in
order to improve one’s own.

1.5 Definition of Terms

Academic Research: creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock
of knowledge, including knowledge of humans, culture and society, and the use of this stock of
knowledge to devise new applications (OECD, 2015) conducted by academic staff’s at the
institutions of higher learning in China.
Higher learning institutions: Chinese post-secondary educationthat offers higher
qualifications

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

2.1 China Higher Education Context

China has currently the largest education system in the world (National Bureau of Statistics of
China, 2014). Since the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, China's higher
education sector has experienced high enrollments. Example by 1949, the Chinese higher
education sector was small with just 205 institutions of which majority were publicly owned
and few to non-private universities according to the China Education Yearbook quoted by
Johnes and Yu (2008) and the figures keeps rising up.
The government being the overall oversee of higher education provided funds for all
institutions. The funding process is described by Gu et al (2009) to be low by then.
However,after the universities restructuring into 3 categories namely; a) teaching institutions, b)
teaching research institutions and c) research institutions higher institutions were informed that
a greater proportion of their operating funds would derive from sources other than government.
That meant that for teaching institutions the sources of funds was to be tuition fees paid by
students or finance from other sectors of the economy. While for research oriented universities
funds was to be derived from money generated from their researchand development funds. The
funds for research in Chinese universities deriving from the government fell by 75% to 43%
between a period of 1985 to 1995 (Xue, 2006). There has been unequal distribution of funds to
base on the type of research in particular applied research has been recently getting a bigger
share of the funds in comparison to basic and development research.
The funds has been rising in 2004 to 2006, howeverthe percentage of funds derived from
government has remained constant at around 55% of recently with funds from private sectors
changing depending on the economy status .

In the year 1985, the research force of higher educationinstitutions was very weak as described
by Gu et al.,(2009, p172) due to few researchpersonal in higher education. However,there has
been a gradual increase due to a reform of personnel system in higher education system and
teacher’s enthusiasm in conducting research as well. As of 2005 there were only 1,792
universities and colleges, of which 678 have Research &Development (R &D) activities. Of
these,49 have science parks and host 95 State Key Labs and of these, 59have graduate schools.
Academics and students have been scooping awards for leading force research and innovations
ever since2000 in their disciplines (Gu et al,2009) . About twothirds of total R&D expenditure
in the higher education sector is concentrated on thetop 50 universities.A few top universities
such as Tsinghua and Peking University are strong in bothresearch and entrepreneurial
activities. They are active in creating their ownenterprises, science parks, transferring
technological results and establishing links with industries and local government.

As China is experiencing rapid economic growth and comprehensive social transformation it

subsequently have direct effects on its education system in China at the national level. The
Department of Policies and Regulations in the Ministry of Education is in charge of educational
reform policies and strategies, including the research and survey of relevant issues. Hence the
higher education institutions have to keep a balance between the two tasks and at the same time
combine them by including students, especially the undergraduates in the process of research
and embodying the research achievements. In most institutions generally the research
publications are boost are the post graduates researches Gu et al., (2003 p.1735) echo that one –
third of the research works are conducted by postgraduates. This ration could have increased
due to the increment of postgraduates students in recent years.

2.2 Research Centers

A part from the higher education institutions carrying out research there are other research
centers created for research purposes (Gu et al., 2009) . Most of them are linked to the line
ministries, for example within the line ministry of education there are about 3 research
institutions directly affiliated to it namely a) the National Institution of Education Sciences , it
research on issues related to education thereby leading important educational topics and policy-
making; b) the National Centre for School Curriculum and Textbook Development c) The
National Education Examinations Authority of the Ministry of Education focuses on
examination. This is similar to other ministries as well.
It is worth noting that even at Local government’s level, there is also an educational research
institutions, which focus more on curriculum and pedagogy whilst at the grassroots level, and
everyschool has a “teaching study group” of which some are very active other are not(Gu et al.,
2009). Active groups play an important role in educational research as their contributions are
practical experienced based.

2.3 China Management of research funding and achievements

Literature shows that equal distribution of research funding is a challenge not only for China,
but it is a universal challenge. With regards to states funding, China has put in measures through
application and examinations that guides the system in making sure that the funds are allocated
to researchers that are in line with the needs of the country if they are to be funded with the
state’s money. In addition, the system guides against the self-allocation of resources, self-
satisfaction type of assessment and self-recycling of research production(Gu et al., 2003). With
regards to the achievements or awards gained from the research, the government has as well put
up policies that states that “researchachievements of higher education institutions belong to the
university and the researchers and the income form transferring the achievements is shared by
the university and the researchers”(p179) . This serves as a motivating factor to most higher
education institutions and researchers in particular to disseminate their research outputs.
However, it is worth noting that in most cases language plays a major barrier in research in
China for example, there are many scientific journals but are not published in English, but in the
native language mandarin which has meant that much of current scientific development in
China is not readily available to non–Chinese-speaking scientists and hence it is not competitive
to the outside world. However, few works are translated into English and few abstracts of
papers are in English.

2.4 A comparative grip of Research international trends in the OECD countries

Without any doubt there has been significantly growth in terms of research and development
among OECD countries for the last recoded two decades (Lancrin, 2009). The OECD
reportfurther explained that such an increase is accounted for about 80% of all Research &
Development expenditures in the world (OECD, 2005).
Although the funds variations across countries, most of the research and development are
carried out by OCECD countries are carried and funded by business sectors. Which shows that
business expenditures on the performance on research continues to rise. This increasing
performance and funding of Research & Development by businesses revels to be one of the
most significant trends of the past decades.
Although with exemption of countries such as “Greece, Poland, Portugal and Turkey, were by
more of the research were expenditures in the higher education than in the business sector
“(Lancrin, 2009)
What seems to be a saddening trends in research identified in the report is the involvement of
government in research and development in terms of funding. There is a recorded relative
declining trends of government participation inResearch & Development the funding source.
The government-funded R&D decreased from 0.85% to 0.68% of GDP, and the percentage of
total R&D financed by government, from 40% to 30.4%.
This funding decline is relative though: in real terms, government expenditures have actually
increased by 60% since 1981. The share of government military R&D has decreased
significantly between 1986 and 2001 (from 43 to 28%).
Despite the reduced funding, ever since the early 20th century, academic lives and careers have
been guided, first in the United States and later in other countries, by a “publish or perish”
philosophy whose effects are described increasingly controversial (Altbach, ,2004)

2.5Theoretical Framework

The study is rooted in human capital theory, which is one of the theories that had always been
the subject of bitter criticism in the literature. However, asEmrullah(2014, p1) asserts it has
“comfortably survived and expanded its influence over other research disciplines”.Although
researchers refined Smith’s supposition by categorizing education as an investment good.
In this case academics are regarded as employees in a university and are considered as assets.
Having become an asset like any other, the assumption is made that these skills and knowledge
/
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d
s
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le
it
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n
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can be invested in with the expectation of achieving a rate of return from doing so (Kjelland,
2008). As such, this means that individuals would invest in human capital, such as formal post-
secondary education, with the idea that acquiring such human capital enables a person to be
more productive. Hence research output and publications are measurement of productivity and
efficiency of academics.

2.6Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework depletes the relationship between concepts as informed by the
literature. Based on the human capital theory were academics are seen and assessed as assets to
universities, and are expected to deliver researcher papers otherwise the system itself will
eliminate them in the competitive and promotional posts. Such pressure exerted to academics in
forms of policies or practices to research and publish can indeed increase research publications
in journals locally or internationally as required, however the more the publications increases
the high the chances of academic misconduct such as fraud, ghost papers, plagiarism and
falsifications, not only that but the time allocated for other academic activities related to
teaching or learning, community engagement is shifted and re redirected to single activity of
research and publications. There is a causal relationship and the framework suggest that until
the pressure is reduced there is high probability of the process to regenerate itself.
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research methods and techniques

To answer the two research questions a qualitative approach was used, deepened in
phenomenology. Were by extensive literature review was carried out. The study population is
the overalluniversities in China and pacifically looked at the top ranked universities in China. A
summative content analysis wasused which began with the searching of keywords specifically
from the top ranted universities in China. websites and later from peer-reviewed journals and
some other different studies were selected from Emerald Publishers, SAGE Journals, Taylor and
Francis, Springer and Google Scholar databases . The keywords used in searching were; "
academic research in higher learning institutions in China”; challenges and trends in research.
Different synonyms and alternate words were also used such as researches in universities as
different countries use different terminologies. The articles were collected and checked against
descriptors to select the 5 articles that were reviewed. Descriptors checklists included, the date
of publishing, the number of citations, and the content addressed. The researcher also drew on
her personal experiences being a student in China and exposed to higher education institutions.
Other additional genuine materials such as the OECD reports were added to provide the
background to the study.

3.2 Data analysis

The data is analyzed using thematic themes generated from the research questions.

3.4 Study limitations

Much rich literature could have been analyzed if it was written in Englishlanguage, however
since most of the literature is in Chinese language and the researcher does not understand the
language only few available materials were analyzed.

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1 The current trends of research activities among academic staffs in Chinese top
universities.

China’s international rankings in research and publications is magnificent despite of the

language challenges the country is faced with. Chinese academics involvement in research
activities as individuals and as group researchers is evident not only at the national level, but at
the international level as well. The Ministry of Education and leaders in Chinese universities are
trying a number of different approaches to motivate academic staff with the aim being to
improve their research performance. This could be traced immediately after the Cultural
Revolution ended, Chinese science began to slowly recover from its slumber. (Resnik and Zeng,
2010). The national policies were some of the issues that had made the environment fertile for
progress. Commencing with the national policy of ‘reform and opening up’ designed by Chinese
leader Deng Xiaoping. Tracing from history, in 1973 “the Science Citation Index listed only one
paper from China and by 1979, the Index listed 932 papers” (Resnik and Zeng, 2010 p 6).
The government periodically invests a huge amount of money in the 100 Chinese key
universities in the 21st century with the aim of facilitating their teaching and research
development. Project 211 is the one of the example at the State level for education during the
Ninth Five-Year Plan and Tenth Five-Year Plan period that the government foresee research and
innovation being the central point(China Education and Research, 2001).
These governments’ efforts were not in vain, and yielded results as reflects on the number of
scientific publications in the past decade. The data released by the Chinese Science and
Technology Information Institute (CSTII) cited by Tian et al., (2016) shows that in 2012
international research papers that were published by academics in Chinese higher education
institutions amounted to 1.14 million. Comparing with figures of 2011 there is notable
increment of 11.8%.
The increment is not a once time increment, but a positive trend from the time the government
recognized and acknowledge research activities in institution of higher learning. In 2011
Chinese authors produced 193,733 SCI papers, which is almost about 4 times more than the
figure in 2002 and China by then scooped the second-largestSCI producer, behind the United
States Qiu (2015). In addition to the awards China was ranked number 9 in the world in terms
of publications.

From the history, one can predict the current trends and future trend of research in China
considering that the philosophy of perish or publish is much stronger than ever and that there is
a dramatically increased research expenditure according to Tian et al., (2016).The current trends
in research is that international publications have been accepted as indicators of the universities’
research strength andclosely related to their rankings in league tables. The universities
management get pressure from the state and then pass on this pressure for international
publication to academic faculties through the introduction of various evaluation and rewards
policies to academic staff.
In the research-centered universitiesin particular which are defined as , “Academic institutions
committed to the creation and dissemination of knowledge, in a range of disciplines and fields,
and featuring the appropriate laboratories, libraries, and other infrastructures that permit
teaching and research at the highest possible level” by (Altbach 2013, p316). Research is
regarded as the major indicator for asuccessful recruitment in any higher learning institutions or
in some other non-learning institutions as well (Qiu, 2010).
In conclusion to the trends, it is visible through its funding that Chinese government has made
substantial commitments to science and technology innovations through research. China is the
world top third country putting money in research and generally the government’s budget is
allocated in its key drives of the economy.
Medium and Long-Term Plan for Science and Technology (MLP), the Five-Year Plan for
Science and Technology (FYP) and the National Science and Technology Programmes are some
of the plans
that reflects that China priority is research and innovation. Li, (2009) echoes that even the
current MLP for 2006-2020 encourages indigenous innovation to raise gross expenditure on
R&D (GERD) of the gross domestic product (GDP) to 2.5% by 2020 from 1.30% in 2005. Li
further clarifies that China is not only rated as the second country with respect to scientific
publications and citations it as well rated the top in some pacific research fields such as
nanotechnology.

4.2 The consequences arise as a result of pressure for academic staffs to conduct research
and publish.

The study finds that research activities has become major and important intermediating factor in
economic development in the twenty first century and has increasingly rated as important in the
universities contexts. Despite a sharp increase of academic publications in different fields,
literature detects a negative consequences caused by the publish-or-perish philosophy as
presented below:

4.21 Serious shortage of imaginative and innovative research

The study finds that there is reported observable shortage of imaginative and innovative
research in management studies despite a sharp increase of academic publications in the field.
Similarly,Adler &Harzingcited by Tian et al., (2016 p. 3) believe that the academic assessment
system based on quantitative measurement has pushed researchers away from “genuinely
fostering” original knowledge. Liu and White (2001) point out that research on national
innovation system has been subject to criticism especially for Chinese people, there are ongoing
debates on creativity and innovativeness amongChinese people commencing from the primary
school. Studies such as of Stats (2011) has linked China inability change in its practice of
radical innovation due number of factors, such as its history and culture. Further elaborating that
Chinese’s history and culture have kept it from “experiencing the openness, opportunity, and
cooperation which are basics of creativity that leads to innovation. Although it is the same
history and culture that had brought about by innovative pursuits and products such as
gunpowder, compass and many other products Chinese have inverted (Staats, p. 46) Johnson
and Weiss (2008) advised that “China needs to breakout of this traditional approach to education
if it is to progress beyond incremental and imitative innovation to radical innovation” (p 51).
Of recently the government seems to be aware of such dilemma and ongoing discourses that in
1990s a new legal framework was put in place at the national level to cement the role of
universities in the innovation system. Wu (2010) clarifiers that in April 1999, the State Council
gave its approval to the "Several Provisions on Promoting the Transformation of Scientific and
Technological Achievements.” The ultimate goal was to acknowledge and reward the
discoverers of new, commercially useful knowledge and make it easier for research personnel to
move back and forth between research and business (Suttmeier and Cao, 1999) hence forward to
motivate and encourage creativity and innovations among researchers.

While the educational foundations of China still in process to be shaken and shifted towards an
educational system that must move in the direction of educational critical thinking practices ,
the shortages of innovative and imaginative research continues as the pressure of academic to
carry out research and publish keep persisting .

4.22 Less priority being given to teaching and service roles

The study shows that as the emphasis is placed on scholarly productivity and the publication
output of academic staff less time remained for other academic activities such as teaching and
learning and community engagement. Literature shows that there is less acknowledgements
given to academic staffs when engaged in other academic activates out the research processes.
(Erero, 1994)

4.23 Homogeneity Research and fabrication of data

The study finds out that another adverse effect of pressure to publish experienced by Chinese
university academics is the growing homogeneity in research. The researchers produced tend to
report research results in line with dominant paradigms, so as to maximize the chances of their
papers being accepted. A semi-structured interviews conducted on seven young faculty
members in science and
engineering disciplines on this tenure-track contract by Tian et al., (2016) shows that most
explained that “to increase research productivity that was expectant of them by their employer
(the university) they developed a tendency to work on topics and use methods in line with
current norms, rather than risking novel practices that might offer significantly original
outcomes”(p13). Luukaand Mouritsen (2002) echoes that not only does homogeneity limit the
abilities of researchers to develop a critical stance, but it threatens the conversation and progress
of research in general. In worst-case situations it is also found that researchers may fabricate
data to get their articles published according to Fanelli (2012). This observation is supported by
Lawrence (p. 10) who declares that the over-emphasized significance of publication “usually
reduces the objectivity of the arguments and, eventually damage the practice of science.

4.24 Misconduct in research

There is an established relationship in the literature between the pressure for research and
publication and misconduct. The Chinese research misconduct could be traced as early as by the
late 1990s, when Chinese scientific journals became alarmed about ethical problems with
published research, in terms of plagiarism (Resnik and Zeng, 2010).Resnik and Zengdefined
ethical problems to range from plagiarism and unattributed ghost-writing”(p3).The pressure to
produce results has played a significant role in misconduct problems not only in China but in
other countries as well, including the U.S., South Korea, and Europe,(Shamoo and Resnik,
2009). For China several cases of copying large portions of published papers drew the attention
of scientists and the national media (Xiguangand Lei, 1996). Similarly a viral case reported in
1997 of two cases of wholesale plagiarism republishing someone else’s article under a different
name (Wang, 1999) had gone viral and commentators had partly blamed the system that put
pressure on research and publications. The State Council of China cited by
Resnik and Zeng(2010) echoes that there are two issues responsible China’s increasing research
misconduct namely a) China’s flawed research assessment system, and b) the over-stressing the
number of publications.
Although the government and the Chinese Association for Science and Technology (CAST) has
developed strict measures to protect against such misconduct such as a code of conduct to
combat plagiarism and other types of misconduct including copyrights Wang (1999). Zhang
and Grieneisen (2012) reports that there are quite number of Chinese researches and from other
countries as well that have been retracted due topublication misconducts, but most of them are
due to plagiarism and duplicate publication, distrust data or interpretations. Recently in 2017 the
Sciencejournal, theSpringer Nature publishing company, retracts 107 research papers by
Chinese authors alone which were published in the journal Tumor Biologyalone since 2012
to2016 (Chen, 2017).
The retraction of publication does not only reflects a waste of time and finance but it questions
the eligibility of any other studies that cited such publications.

4.25 Writing for Publications.

The study carried by Tian et al., (2016) on young academics shows that most the participants
where publishing for the sake of publishing and attaining numbers that were conditions for their
contractsthat they had signed for. However, such mentality undermine the uniqueness of research
in academia as opposed to research carried by research institutions of line ministries or
industries.Gu et al., (2009) venerated research in higher institutions saying that it informs and
improves the knowledge production process , because knowledge get the opportunity to go
through the three functions when produced at institutions ; knowledge is created, distributed by
teaching and applied by social services, hence making up the knowledge production process.
This then means that if academics are publishing for the sake of publishing, then the knowledge
production process is left incomplete and researchers end up being frustrated and they do not
look forward to the research results or research outputs.

CONCLUSSIONAND RECOMMENDATIONS

The study concludes that China has made progress in terms of research over the past years and
the forecast shows a similar positive trend. This is contributed by the government continued
prioritizing of research, innovation and developmental activitiesthrough financial budgets.
China government figures spent on research and development is incomparable to other
developing countries and some developed nations as well. The study further finds out that the
policies and practices introduced by the government which were meant to motivate for more
research and publicationsturns out as pressures for researchers especially those in academia
arena. Such pressure has led previously and might continue to lead to research misconduct such
as plagiarism, homogeneity, falsifications of data, ghost’s publications and many other unethical
research conducts. In addition the pressure had led academics to neglect other academic
activities that are not acknowledged and do not have any promotional advantages, although of
similar importance. While the study finds out that there are some procedures put in place in
order to curb the research misconduct, such as the establishment of committees for
investigations and development of ethics related documents,the study suggest that these policies
and practices are rather treating the symptoms rather than the causes of research misconduct and
negligence of other academic activities. Hence posing a threat because such misconducts may
still manifest in another way other than the identified, hence a need to treat the identified cause
which is the “ pressure “, in order to reduce and avoid future research misconduct and
encourage researchers to engage in research on free will and curiosity , subsequently cultivating
a research culture that encourages ethical behavior.

Henceforward, the study recommends for the government to relook at its policies and practices
to encourage quality over quantity. A shift should be redirected to the innovativeness instead of
counting numbers of recognized publicationsby a university or by an individual. Academics can
submit a portfolio of which they can submit two best articles and write a report to defend why
they think their articles deserves to be evaluated for salary, funding applications and future
promotions. Evaluating academics on their best paper and self-evaluation report will not only
motivate researchers to commit into innovative research which is more challenging and unique/
problem solving , but researchers will have ample time to redistribute and attend to other
activities of equal importance to their careers and work. The study further recommends
researchers to consider expanding on this study to look for other alternative solutions to reduce
the pressure of research and publications.

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Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University

Course: Chinese History and Culture (Education Systems, Policy and
Management in China)

Challenges to Study Abroad: Responses from International Students at a

Comprehensive University in Beijing
 Course Assignment # Final Assignment
Submitted By
ID No: 201429010013
Course Instructor: Prof. LI Jiayong and SANG Guoyuan

Fall, 2014
Abstract

For the past few decades, China has become an important destination of international students
from different parts of the world. By using phenomenological research underpinnings, this study
explored the adjustment challenges experienced by international students and how they respond
to those challenges in their transient lives. In order to have an in-depth analysis of the study
question, I used a case study approach in which a comprehensive university found in Beijing
formed a unit of analysis. From the six in-depth interviews I did with international students from
Europe, Asia and Africa, it was found that there is diversity in perceiving challenges and how
interviewed international students deal with them. Based on the findings of this study which are
supported by literature, international students’ experiences in China are under theorized,
therefore, I recommend for further research.
 1. Introduction

Students’ movement across national and regional borders is an important aspect of the
internationalization of higher education (Luijten-Lub, 2007; OECD, 2004). This movement leads
to the emergence of group of students in host countries referred to as international students or
foreign students. For the past few decades, China has become an important destination of
international students from different parts of the world. Moreover, the country has set ambitious
targets to become the ‘biggest destination’ for foreign students to study in Asia by 2020 (Brunei
Times, 2010).
Although the country has set ambitious targets to attract more international students, little is
known about international students’ experiences in China. Additionally, with about 60 years
experience in hosting international students, there is no much information about challenges
facing international students from the international students’ perspectives. In particular,
challenges facing international students and how they deal with them are yet to be researched
extensively. Although the trend of international students’ flow in China experience exponential
growth, this does not mean that there are no challenges that international students face in their
daily life in pursuit of academic goals. This is logically true as the institutions receive
international students from various parts of the world with varied socio-economic, political and
academic culture. Therefore this study aimed at bridging this knowledge gap by investigating
challenges facing international students and how they respond to them by focusing at one
comprehensive university found in Beijing as a case of analysis.

2. Purpose of the study

The study sought to investigate the challenges facing international students and their responses to
those challenges at the case university from international students’ perspectives. In particular, the
study aims to explore the adjustment challenges experienced by international students and how
they respond to those issues in their transient lives. It should be noted that this study was/is not
meant to evaluate the performance of the university, its departments or staffs in handling
international students. Rather, it was undertaken to document the voices of international students.

53
 3. Literature Review

3.1. Why study abroad?

With international education on the rise, the question of why so many students choose to leave
their home countries to study abroad is an interesting and complex one (Steele, 2008). The
reasons why students decide to study abroad are well known. They include the quest to learn
about other cultures, learn new ways of thinking and behaving, make new friends, and improve
their cross-cultural knowledge and skills, gaining access to higher education for students where
their countries cannot meet the demands, the need to develop the international perspectives and
skills, enhancing foreign language, and developing cross-cultural understanding (Altbach and
Knight, 2007; Sherry, Thomas and Chui, 2009). On a personal level, international students may
develop new outlooks, increase their self-esteem and confidence, and mature as a result of their
independent life experiences in another culture (Sherry, Thomas and Chui, 2009).

Moreover, the decision to study abroad may be analyzed using a push-pull theory. Using this
theory, there are “push factors” that literally pushes students to study abroad. These factors
include availability of scholarships to study in foreign school, poor quality of education in the
home country, lack of research facilities in the home country, failure to gain admission in
institutions at home, discrimination against minorities, enhanced value in the market place of a
foreign degree, and politically unpleasant conditions at home (Steele, 2008, p. 20-21). On the
other hand, there are “pull factors” that attract students to study abroad. The pull factors includes
the availability of scholarships for international students, good quality of education, availability
of advanced research facilities, availability of appropriate educational facilities with likely offers
of admission, presence of relatives willing to provide financial assistance, positive political
situation in the host country, congenial socio-economic and political environment to migrate, and
the opportunity for general international life experience (ibid, p.20).

3.2. Rationales for international students recruitments

Steele (2008) raised important questions related to this sub-theme. Why do countries and higher
education institution recruit international students? Surely, each country must have enough
citizens that they could encourage to attend higher education institutions? Why bother with the

54
complex issue of foreign students when institutes have enough domestic students to fill their
seats.

Botha (2010) categorized the rationales for recruiting international students into two levels. At
the national levels, human resource development, strategic alliances, commercial trade, nation
building, social, and cultural development are dominant rationales for international students’
recruitments. The institutional level rationales are international branding and profile; income
generation; student and staff development; and knowledge production. Similar rationales were
observed in the 2005 Cudmore study in Canada. Cudmore (2005) pointed out top three rationales
that institutions gave for participating in the recruitment of international students in Canadian
Colleges as; the opportunity to generate revenue, the opportunity to bring foreign perspectives to
the local student body, and the opportunity to foster international trade links. He further argued
that foreign students become ambassadors for Canadian trade and political interests abroad; and
international education is a good vehicle to promote the sale of Canadian goods and services
abroad.

Despite the fact that, Cudmore’s arguments are based on empirical studies mostly done in
Canada they can be applied to other parts of the world. The increased government underfunding
to higher education institutions has triggered the institutions to opt for international students-
especially fee paying students- as sources of funds in many countries (Steele, 2008). This has
changed the landscape of international students’ recruitment from the long existed humanitarian
motives to the revenue and export earnings.
Moreover, the literatures suggest the idea that the presence of international students in campuses
is vital in fostering institutional reputation. In Cudmore (2005) views, international students are
vital for the quality and relevance of higher as their presence partly assists in building a stronger
international and intercultural dimension to teaching and research as well as ‘branding’ country’s
higher education once they return to their home countries.

Higher education institutions are increasingly realizing that international students provide a vast
knowledge base about culture, education, and practices of other countries that eventually help
domestic students prepare for a global work life, which may certainly involve living and working
in other countries and cultures (Steele, 2008). In other words, the presence of international

55
students increases multi-culturality of the campus.
Some countries are using recruitment of international students as one means of attracting more
people for immigration. This is particularly important in countries with labour shortages because
recruiting foreign students can be very beneficial for the host country in addressing specific labor
shortages. Australia has been popular in attracting international students who are eventually
encouraged to stay in the country. The study done in 1999 revealed that 50% of immigrants were
people who had formerly graduated from an educational institution in Australia (Steele, 2008, p.
24).

3.3. International students in China

Contemporary internationalization of Chinese higher education is featured by the importation of

foreign language programs and international orientation of the university curricula. Introduction
of English-language products into Chinese campuses; implementation of the medium of
instruction in the English language or bilingually (Chinese and English); and integration of an
international dimension into university teaching and learning have played great role in attracting
international students from various parts of the world. Huang (2007) illustrates that in 2001, a
document issued by the Ministry of Education (MOE) indicated that in the coming 3 years, from
5% to 10% of all curricula in the leading universities must be taught in English, especially in
such areas as biology, information science, new materials, international trade, and law.

The available statistics suggest that there were approximately 240,000 international students in
China in 2009 from more than 190 countries around the world studying in about 610 higher
education institutions (Swissnex China, 2010; The Brunei Times, 2010; Xinhua News Agency,
2006; Relax News, 2010). The exponential growth experienced in the last decade warranties the
prediction that the number must have been increased in the past few years.

3.4. Challenges facing international students while on study abroad

Literature suggests that international students studying at higher education institution in various
countries are faced with numerous challenges. These challenges require higher education
institutions to re-evaluate teaching and learning strategies in the light of the increased
recruitment of such students in order to consider ways in which their experience can be improved

56
(Kehm and Teichler, 2007, p. 271). There is a strong need to be aware of such problems in order
to ensure an effective and enriching experience for international students and the institutions
which host them (Sherry, Thomas and Chui, 2009).

Kashyap (2011) in his phenomenological study of ten graduate students at a private research
university in the U.S concluded that “international students’ social experiences have been
oversimplified; in fact, they lead extremely complex lives as they negotiate a world—and
manage a life—comprising home and host country” (p.19).

It is quite often for international students to experience a period of adjustment known as culture
shock once they arrive at foreign country though at different level, intensity and pace. Some
students may have the opportunity to travel with other students from their home country, or may
have traveled before, but many travel alone for the first time. Disparities between what students
expect as compared to what they can achieve continue to influence their adjustment (Tas, 2013,
p.14). Unfortunately, some students decide to drop out when experiencing difficulties and
problems. Tas (p.14) argues that finding a way to acculturate these students into communities
and campuses will not only enrich their lives, but will increase the possibility of retaining them
as students and allowing them to complete their educational goals.

In a qualitative inquiry of 85 international students at a United States university, Gebhard (2012)

found that students were challenged by academics, social interaction, and emotional
reactions to their new life. Not surprisingly, many students emphasized challenges with
academics, but a language problem that surprised some students was academic reading. In
addition, some students found professors’ lectures and seminars challenging. Apart from
academic challenges, some Asian students were disappointed and anxious about their inability to
socially interact with Americans when they first arrived. In addition to academic and social
adjustment challenges, students expressed how emotionally challenging adapting to another
culture can be.

In the exploratory study of 121 international students by Sherry, Thomas and Chui (2009)
recorded many of the problems that international students experience at The University of
Toledo, including: concerns over finances and health insurance; difficulties adjusting to new
cultural norms and homesickness; lack of cultural understanding and community inclusion; and
57
language issues, in particular the need for additional assistance with spoken English.

Bamford’s study clearly demonstrates the difficulties that overseas students have in adjusting to a
new academic environment in the UK (Bamford, 2008). This case study done in London
University, focused on the international student experiences in the classroom and how
international students adapt to a different educational system, academically, culturally and
socially. The study revealed that language difficulties, social and cultural adjustments and
differences in study methods compared to the country of origin are the major challenges facing
international students (Bamford, 2008).

International students often encounter difficulties in adjusting to their new cultural environment.
They come to the classroom with different worldviews, different cultural and linguistic
backgrounds, and varying strategies for learning. In addition, they vary widely in academic
ability, motivation, prior educational experience, and language proficiency (Al-Sharideh and
Goe, 1998; Lin and Day Scherz, 2014).

Language proficiency has been found to be critical for internationals’ socio-cultural adaptation to
the new environment. Nevertheless, language proficiency involves mastery of different skills—
namely, reading, writing, speaking, and listening, each of which may affect acculturation
differently (De Araujo, 2011). More specific language challenges to international students-
mostly from Non-English speaking communities- were found by another study in the U.K by
Bailey and Pieterick (2008). Their study aimed at looking on students’ reflections about the
academic writing process in their first year at a UK university and exploring areas where the
transition from their previous learning environment presents a challenge. It also compares the
previous experience of home and international students with respect to length and frequency of
written assignments, research and organisation of ideas, language and referencing of sources.
Their major findings were that international students face constraints in terms of content,
discourse patterns, lexis and conventions (Bailey & Pieterick, 2008). However, Sherry, Thomas
and Chui (2009) caution that a narrow focus on the personal characteristics of international
students (such as their language proficiency) runs the risk of avoiding much larger environmental
problems, such as racism in the host community

De Araujo (2011) in his systematic review article summarized six major findings in the literature

58
concerning the adjustment issues experienced by international students enrolled in the American
higher education system. He found that original studies done in United States colleges, revealed
the pressing issues facing student sojourners such as English language proficiency, social
support, length of stay in the U.S., perceived discrimination or prejudice, establishing
relationships with Americans, and homesickness. With regards to the mode of inquiry of the
review literature, De Araujo found that majority of the studies, 16 out of 21, employed
quantitative approaches, four studies used qualitative approaches and only one used mixed
approach. Thus, he recommended further in-depth understanding of the adjustment needs of
international students in their host environment by employing qualitative methodologies.

A survey of 420 international students studying in Beijing done by Sumra (2012) came up with
pressing problematic issues facing this group of students. While responding to Sumra’s study
questionnaire, international students showed concern in issues of social problems like part time
job opportunities, language, health facilities, food and living, gap between local Chinese and
international students, and offices reluctance to release data when doing their research projects,
(p.113). Academic challenges like administration of academic matters and the quality of
instructions were also identified in the study, (P.120). Another interesting finding of this study
was the divergent in prioritizing adjustments problems between international students and host
institutions’ faculty staff who are actually serving the students. He found that some problems
were underestimated in some major areas by the faculty and staff involved with them. Some
problems are overestimated by faculty/staff that are not major problems for international
students, (p.121). It is obvious that students have overall problems with social culture and some
academic problems that are linked with social set up. However, since the study employed
questionnaires with 19 adjustment problems that were rated by students, it didn’t capture many
details and get in-depth analysis of international students’ experiences and how they approached
those challenges.

Some of the literature also highlights the vulnerability of international students to exploitation.
Such exploitation may occur when there is insufficient commitment on the part of an educational
institution to equal opportunity; when foreign students receive low quality education or are
financially exploited; and when an educational institution regards internationalization as little
more than a chance to sell products to ‘‘foreigners’’ (Sherry, Thomas and Chui, 2009).

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Specifically, the key adjustment problems faced by international students include the following
four major categories: ( 1) general living adjustment, such as adjusting to food, living/housing
environment and transportation, adaptation to a new climate (weather), dealing with financial
problems and health care concerns; ( 2) academic adjustment, such as lack of proficiency in the
language, lack of understanding of the educational system, and lack of effective learning skills
for gaining academic success; ( 3) socio-cultural adjustment, for example, experiencing culture
shock, cultural fatigue, or racial discrimination, having difficulties in adjusting to new
social/cultural customs, norms and regulations, differences in intercultural contacts/social
activities, and encountering conflicts between host standards (or values, world views, life styles)
and those of home country; and ( 4) personal psychological adjustment, such as experiencing
homesickness, loneliness, depression, frustration, or feeling alienation, isolation, the loss of
status or identity, and feelings of worthlessness (Tseng and Newton, 2002).

Prior research suggests that international students can experience many challenges as a result of
language and cultural barriers, academic and financial difficulties, interpersonal problems, racial
discrimination, loss of social support, alienation and homesickness. Problems may occur in
adjusting to a new culture, experiencing academic differences, dealing with developments in
their country of origin (including the death of family or friends), experiencing anxiety about
returning home, and dealing with financial, emotional and cross-cultural challenges

3.5. How International students respond to challenges

As noted earlier, international students may face difficulties, both academically and socially, due
to their cultural background. As sojourners, international students are residing in a culture that
may be much different from their own. Hosting institutions have been long aware that
international students face problems and may consider incorporating programs to acknowledge
the different ethnicities on campus by building a community of diversified learners (Armani.
2008).

There are various types of coping strategies that are used by international students as an attempt
to cope with problematic experiences. Within the general stress and coping approach, Lazarus &
Folkman (as cited in Sumer (2009, p. 10) identified two main ways of coping: (1) problem-
focused coping that refers to the attempt to change or solve the problem; (2) emotion-focused

60
coping that refers to the attempt to regulate the emotions associated with the problem. Moreover,
there is avoidance-oriented strategy which encompasses behavioral disengagement, denial,
venting of emotions, the inability to see the potentially positive aspects of change, and mental
disengagement (Sumer, 2009).

Apart from the above three strategies, Diaz-Guerrero identified two ways of coping: active and
passive coping (Sumer, 2009). Similar to problem focused coping, active coping seeks to alter
the situation that is appraised as problematic. It is suggested that these types of coping might
have limited success if the problematic situation appraised by the acculturating individual lies
within the host-culture, and when the host-culture is not willing to accommodate the needs of
these individuals. On the other hand, passive coping involves patience and self-modification,
which is similar to the assimilation acculturation strategy (ibid, p.10).

In the previously introduced qualitative study of 85 international students at a United States

university, Gebhard (2012) found two categories of behaviors that were employed the students.
To manage their problems, students made use of behaviors that can facilitate adapting to the
new culture, as well as behaviors that can obstruct them from adapting. Facilitative
behaviors include coping strategies, use of supportive people, observation and imitation, and
reflection. On the other hand, behaviors interpreted as impeding adaptation included expecting
others to adapt, complaining, and withdrawing.

During process of adjustment, international students are faced with managing academic, social,
and emotional problems, and researchers have ascertained that international students establish
a support network of friends, usually consisting of co-nationals or friends from similar
cultural backgrounds (Gebhard, 2012). Studies also show that students reach out to the
university and larger community to help them solve problems. For example, students use the
international office, trusted academic advisors, international student clubs, and academic
services, such as the writing center, computer labs, and tutoring services (ibid, p. 185).

Withdrawal is also a strategy that Gebhard (p.190) found to be used by international students in
the U.S. He argued that when international students have limited English proficiency and lack
experience and familiarity with American interactive behaviors, some students find it difficult to
make friends and establish a social network with Americans. As a result, these students withdraw

61
into the expatriate community, and this action appears to hinder adaptation when the purpose
is to avoid interaction. Withdraw was also reported by Sumra (2012) in which he asserted that
some students leave the studies without completing because of the adjustment problems
especially related to language barriers. All international students either on scholarship or self
paid study in China, come with high expectations and feel restless and stressed because of
unnecessary language barriers in and off campus (ibid, p. 122).

3.6. Institutional roles in international students’ adjustments

There has been a tendency of the host countries and universities in particular to emphasize that
students should adapt to the new environment (Sherry, Thomas and Chui, 2009). This emphasis
on the international students having to ‘adapt’ or ‘adjust’ may effectively involve placing all the
responsibility for change on the international student, and none on the University. University
staffs have a great role in assisting these students to success integrate in the new society. The
authors insisted that students who are not provided with effective social, cultural, or economic
support may be vulnerable to social exclusion (p. 35). The perceived support that this group of
students is receiving has crucial in enriching their experiences in the host country.

Based on the results of his qualitative study in which he interviewed 10 international students at
The Ohio State University (OSU), Zhai (2004) recommended that to ease international students’
adjustment issues in United States, the following practices/programs should be considered:
enhance academic orientation, improve international student counseling, strengthen language
support, increase interaction with American students and establish social connections for
international students. His recommendations were more inclined on host institutional support in
steady of shouldering adjustment burden to international students.
In particular, Steele (2008) points out the crucial role of instructors/professors in helping
international students adjust successful to a new environment and the importance of being
knowledgeable and sensitive to the issues of the international students they serve. Apart from
using standard language when instructing, professors after class should meet with the
international students specifically to discuss methods of teaching, expectations, class rules, and
so forth, as well as the students' concerns about the system. Also, the instructor should speak
directly to the students about common classroom practices inherent in the host country, such as

62
cheating, plagiarism, attendance, tardiness, and self-directed learning. Finally, the instructor
should explain his or her expectations to the students and then offer to help them accomplish
their goals
After studying adjustment problems of Iranian international students in Scotland using mixed
method approaches, Mehdizadeh and Scott (2005) provided specific recommendations to
universities. They urged the universities to: send more detailed pre-arrival information for the
students, offer multicultural training workshops to those who come into contact with
international students, provide awareness about dependent and independent learning methods,
and supervisors to be supportive enough and take into account cultural and religious restrictions
when providing assistance to international students (p. 491).
The adjustment of international students to cultural and academic environment in China needs
attention in policy making and in academic settings and in socio cultural adaptation (Sumra,
2012). International students are the community that can be easily affected by
adjustability and impression of the country. The host country that is unable to fulfill the
requirements and to solve the problems, leave students hopeless and with mixed impressions.

4. International students’ challenges and support: Towards a conceptual Framework.

Several studies have investigated international students’ experiences. A number of factors have
been found to be influential in helping international students adjust to the new environment and
successfully complete their studies. The factors include: cultural distance, age and gender, social
support, family support, acculturation strategies, length of stay in the host country and language
proficiency. Moreover, as indicated above in the literature, there are a number of strategies that
international students use in dealing with challenges they face while they are abroad.

The challenges facing international students and how they adjust to living and studying in China
is not fully explored. Therefore, this study aim to investigate these questions based on Berry’s
(2006) model of acculturative stress and adaptation (see Figure 1). The model is built on the
psychological acculturation framework basis and thus allows a comprehensive study on
individuals’ acculturation by considering both individual characteristics and contextual
influences. This model categorizes acculturation into two levels; group/cultural and individual/
psychological. By this categorization, it allows an investigation of individual characteristics in

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terms of international students’ status, education/academic background, cultural background,
social skills, e.t.c. Moreover, this model emphasizes social support and relevant factors in the
host culture thus allowing for an exploration on the social context, such as faculty and campus
influences on international students’ adjustment. The model further highlights individual
wellbeing during adaptation which allows for an understanding on international students
adjustment challenges and coping strategies.

Group Level Individual level

Society of Origin Moderating factors prior to acculturation

-age, gender, education, religion, health,
language, status, pre-acculturation e.t.c

Stressors Stress Adaptation/

Acculturation Adjustment
experience

Society of settlement Moderating factors during acculturation

-Contacts, social support, social attitude
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework: Acculturative stress and adaptation,
adapted from Berry (2006), p. 45

5. Research Design

5.1. Data collection

Data collection involved an in-depth personal interview with participants to gather descriptive
information for this study. In-depth interview is often employed in phenomenological studies as a
means to generate detailed descriptions of the reality from the participants lived experiences and
perception (Daly, 2007). Six graduate international students were purposely selected to inform
the study questions. Two students were selected from each of the following region; Asia, Africa
and Europe. This regional selection was purposively done so as compare regional variations in
terms of perceived challenges and coping strategies. It also helps to understand how their
regional backgrounds influence their adjustment in Beijing. These key informants were selected
because of their potential backgrounds and experience in informing the research.

In order to ensure anonymity, responds real names are not presented. Instead, the researcher
decided to pseudonym the respondents as Voice 1 to Voice 6. The fictitious name “Voice” was

64
purposeful selected to imply that this research were undertaken to represent international
students voices and accounts of their lived experiences. Therefore, Voice 1 and Voice 3 are Asian
international students; Voice 2 and Voice 4 are European international students; Whereas, Voice 5
and Voice 6 are international students from Africa

5.2. Data presentation, analysis and interpretation

The qualitative data gathered from interviews were analyzed through the process of
categorization, description and synthesis in which data were reduced into identifiable patterns
and themes (McNabb, 2008; Wiersma & Jurs, 2004). As Wiersma and Jurs (2004) argue, data
reduction was necessary for the description and interpretation of the phenomenon under study.
Thematic analysis, which emphasize on what is said rather than how it is said were a dominant
strategy in this study (Bryman, 2008). Thematic presentations are backed with quotations to
support and/or highlight explanation of the findings. Only poignant and/or representative quotes
of the research findings were selected. Besides, quotations are rendered verbatim except where
square brackets were used.
The researcher co-authored the data by summarizing and reflecting on what the interviewee was
saying, thereby interpreting the meaning that the interviewees gave to their data. This ensured
that participants’ meaning was accurately captured and it kept the interview focused. Moreover,
in order to examine the challenges experienced by international students and how they deal with
them, researcher’s prejudgments about the reality were suspended so that he may see it as the
participants would see it (Daly, 2007).
6. Findings and Discussion

6.1. Findings
The findings presented in this section illustrate the challenges facing international students at the
case university as well as their coping strategies from my research participants’ perspectives and
experiences. Moreover, the international students’ opinions on what kind of support will help
them deal with challenges are presented. In other words, what do they think could be done to
improve international students’ adjustment at the case university?

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6.1.1. Challenges facing international students at the case university

6.1.1.1. Financial Challenge

Financial challenge was evident particularly to scholarship students. The participants expressed
their concern about the monthly stipend provided by the Chinese Scholarship Council not being
enough to survive in the expensive city of Beijing. This was particularly irritating to those
international students who left their jobs with lucrative salaries. This can be evidenced when two
students sincerely expressed their concern about financial challenges. One respondent said that:
One of the biggest challenges I have been facing is that I come from a nice salary
and then coming to 2000 RMB scholarship stipend which is the deviation of 6
times at least if not more (Interview, Voice 4).
One the other hand, one respondent indicated some degrees of satisfaction with the monthly
stipend offered by the Chinese government. In responding to whether financial provision is
challenges, one respondent said:
The government of China really cares international students. They give us 1700
RMB per month. Though it is not much, it is enough to live. You can buy food,
clothes… (Interview, Voice 2)
6.1.1.2. Accommodation, physical environment and hygiene
Accommodation provided by the university on campus also seems to be an issue for some
international students. Majority of international students particularly on Chinese government
scholarship they live in dormitories of shared rooms; two students per room. Some of my
respondents, graduate students, showed dissatisfaction with system and consider it as
challenging.
….I was living in a nice apartment… I had three bedrooms in my own place and
all over sudden you come to China and they offer you a shared dorm room…and
you are actually turning 30 yrs old; I don’t know how to do this (Interview, Voice
4).
Apart from the accommodation issue, the city environment, weather and campus hygiene posed
challenge to my participants. The air pollution in Beijing was/is so stressful according to my
participants. One of the European respondents showed discomfort with weather;
…weather probably is a most thing I don’t like here because it gives me problems
such as headache and bad mood (Interview, Voice 2)
In particular, female participants also showed a concern about the hygiene of campus washrooms
and admitted it as challenging.
…washroom is always a struggle (Interview, Voice 1)
Something I don’t like the most is the toilets …and the weather and particularly
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 pollution that make me sick very often (Interview, Voice 3)
6.1.1.3. Language barrier
Language is also one of the challenging issues to international students in China. All my
participants were concerned with this. Although some have learnt the Chinese language, still
what they know is not enough to make them fully integrated in the society. Reading and writing
is the most pressing challenge.
…the language was of course difficulty…Chinese is different from our language
(Interview, Voice 6)
…language is challenging. Although I know Chinese a little but still is not good
enough… when I need to do most of the things around, I can’t use English
because most of the Chinese people they cannot speak the language. …Chinese
people don’t speak English with me because my face looks Asian and they expect
me to speak Chinese that I can’t speak fluently (Interview, Voice 3).
The issue is that I have an Okay in terms of spoken language, but in terms of
reading and writing am really lacking. So you really notice here when you arrive,
everything is in Chinese and not in English. So at first it was a bit difficult
(Interview, Voice 4).
6.1.1.4. Pre-arrival program information and orientation
There were mixed reactions on the pre arrival information sent to international students. The
University, through International Students’ Office, usually sends information to prospective
students such as admission notice, VISA application form, Medical examination form and
international students’ hand book with basic information about the campus, how to get on
campus, rules and regulations, e.t.c. Some participants argued that the information were enough
while others not.
…I think that the information they give us in the hand book are enough, but
perhaps are enough for basics, but I had to find something more to get more
information (Interview, Voice 3).
I just received admission notice and information that come and register on that
day and that you will be offered accommodation and health insurance…
information was really lacking beforehand (Interview, Voice 4).
Also one participant was of the opinion that the orientation programs given by the
university were not enough to assist her in adjusting to the new place.
I don’t remember to be honest. What was the orientation about? But I know there
was something from the Internationals Students’ office. That one I did. Then there
were something for the faculty as well. But I don’t really remember getting much
of the information from these events though I attended. They [the information]
were too superficial (Interview, Voice 4).

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6.1.1.5. New foods, new friends, new everything
The participants expressed their concern about cultural shock and the overall new environment.
Encountering new foods, friends and life style was challenging, according to the participants.
One participant shared a stressful moment when she arrived despite being Asian.
…food, yes! Absolutely, yes! .because on the first day when I came here I had
lunch at the canteen and it was all weird. I don’t know. The food taste differently
from my home food…..it is oily and salty and how the serve the food is awful
(Interview, Voice 3).
However, there were a different experience from another Asian student who argued that being
Asian it helped her to because the food are almost similar to her country. “…it was not difficulty
because I am Asian. So I didn’t have difficulties with food, living conditions” (Interview, Voice
1)
Developing friendship with students from other regions looked challenging to some
international students, particularly my Asian respondents. One of the respondents
sincerely expressed that;
Being around international friends …all new people, all new culture, new life
style…. So it is quite different. And I don’t know. I am a silent person…., I have a
close friend. She is European. She is quite open. She is like an extrovert because
she expresses a lot. When she is angry, she just shows it up which is opposite to
me. I will keep silent. I won’t say anything... and her life style is different from
me because she like hanging out with friends. But for me as an Asian I hang out
only occasionally on special events, not almost every week (Interview, Voice 3).
However, despite experiencing a variety of challenges, my respondents were appreciative in
some of the campus facilities and services. Infrastructures like classrooms and library services
seems satisfactory to international students. Some were also appreciative of the teaching and
overall academic affairs despite pointing out there are some challenges with English language
instructions with some of the instructors.
I think in terms of infrastructures, like library, classrooms they are pretty okay.
There is no any negative point to say on that (Interview, Voice 4).
I really like the overall academic stuffs and programs… although some instructors
cannot speak fluently in English… it gives me challenge in following their
teaching (Interview, Voice 2).
Sports and recreational facilities were also highly appreciated by the respondents. Being availed
to those activities seem to help international students reduce stress and anxiety of being in a
foreign country.
There are a lot of opportunity to play tennis, volleyball, basket ball, football , do
gym, swimming… there is everything that can keep you relaxed (Interview, Voice

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 2).
6.1.2. International students’ responses to challenges
How international students responded to challenges facing them varies from one participant to
another with some commonalities. Non Asian students seemed to have more difficult than their
Asian counterparts. Asian students expressed their comfort with variety of issues such as food,
climate, culture and related aspects. My two Asian Participants insisted;
…I think it [adjustment] was not difficulty in my case because I am Asian. So I
didn’t have problems with food, the living conditions… (Interview, Voice 1).
…Yes! Because I am Asian I don’t feel so much different although the place is
different, people are different but I would say the mind of people, how they react,
… behave are quite the same with our country (Interview, Voice 3).
Below is the presentation of the strategies used by my participants to respond to different
challenges.

6.1.2.1. Taking challenges positively

Although the respondents told many challenging moments in their transient lives, some of them
treated those moments as positive. They argued that they helped them to become strong. Below
is the narrative from a female European international student;
I really like China although I have been facing challenging moments. I had
depression here. But difficulties made me stronger and courageous. …and gave
me more energy to face the new world (Interview, Voice 2).
6.1.2.2. Seeking alternatives: Doing part time jobs and seeking parental support
With financial challenges, some of the students are relying of parental support and savings as
well as finding part time jobs around.
… I asked my parents for support and I had my savings that I am really worried
touching them. I started doing some other works on the other side like teaching.
…I started applying for other scholarships for the coming years (Interview, Voice
4).
6.1.2.3. Learning the Chinese language and using mobile technology
With the language challenge, my respondents keenly admitted that they have been learning
Chinese language both in and out of formal classes. They argued that they have no way out than
learning the language if they want to fully integrate in the new society. Apart from learning the
language, the translation services such as Google translator available in their handsets have been
helpful when they need to communicate.

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 6.1.2.4. Withdrawing: Living off campus
Some of the students especially those who are not satisfied with campus accommodation and
they have the financial capacity, they have decided to live off campus. One of my participant
responded that when she realized that she cannot stay in the shared dormitory she decided to live
off campus.
…I moved out of the campus. …! Because I couldn’t really deal with it, I couldn’t
really concentrate because we had totally different rhythms with my roommate,
rhythm of studying, living, of anything else…. staying in the same dorm I knew I
would never finish my studies in the I would do it when I have my own space, my
own working area. So I moved out (Interview, Voice 4).
6.1.2.5. Consulting university staffs
When face with challenges, respondents made use of university staff. They confessed that those
staffs are really helpful to them.
It is so helpful…I had health problem one day, they really helped me…. They are
real approachable… (Interview, Voice 5).
6.1.2.6. Keeping silent; let it go
One of the responses to challenges facing individual is keeping calm and silent to let the nature
take its course. My participants also they used this strategy when they were challenged. This is
common for international students as most of the time they are ignorant and unaware of the rules,
regulations and culture of the new environment. When asked, what did she do to deal with
delayed supervisor assignment, my respondent replied; “I had to wait until the system works and
does the things that they have to do for me” (Interview, Voice 4).

6.1.3. Social and academic support needed

When participants were asked about what kind of supports they think are most helpful in their
adjustment process, there were different responses depending on individual challenges.
On the issue of language and interaction within the campus, participants were of the opinion that
most of the information should be available both in English and Chinese. They also strongly
asserted that pairing and class integration of international students with their Chinese
counterparts would be a great assist. By doing that, a learning community can be created that
both international students and Chinese students can learn from each other. One participant
suggested that;
…it could be an idea to have the Chinese students in the same class for some

70
 courses as the possibility to facilitate the interaction. To have a more integration
than the separation we have right now (Interview, Voice 4).
Besides, the respondents urged for the attachment of new students with a senior or continuing
students especially in the early days. They argued that this will help new students adjust easily to
the new environment. One respondent suggested that “I think there is a need for senior students
to talk and help the new ones” (Interview, Voice 1).
With regards to financial challenge, my participants argued for the improvement of the
scholarship bursaries in order to help international students sustain themselves adequately as well
as raise the quality of international programs.
…I think the rise in scholarship that can help people actually sustain themselves
adequately (Interview, Voice 6). …I do believe that if you want to raise the
quality of the program you need to raise the quality of the salary (Interview, Voice
4).
6.2. Discussion of the findings
This section presents an interpretation and discussion of the findings presented in the previous
section. In this section, I interrogate the findings of this study with previous studies as well as
theoretical and conceptual underpinnings. The purpose is to situate my study in a dialogue with
both previous studies and theories related to this study area.
The financial challenge seemed to have a mixed reaction. The difference was basically
determined by whether the respondent is fresh from college, not worked before, or came to the
university after leaving his/her job. Three participants who actually have work experience
complained about the inadequacy of the monthly stipend while the rest (three) who had never
worked before they showed satisfaction with the stipend. Therefore, their previous social and
economic status determined their financial experiences. Concern over finances for international
students have also been reported in literature (consider Sherry, Thomas and Chui, 2009; Tseng
and Newton, 2002). It has been found in this study that those who are not satisfied with stipend,
they use passive coping strategy (Sumer, 2009) which involve patience and self modification.
Patience in the sense that, they don’t complain and self modification by finding alternative
sources of finances.
With regards to accommodation, my respondents were concerned not with the quality of the
dormitories, rather the shared room arrangements. At the graduate level, my respondents didn’t
expect to live in a shared room. Coming from a different tradition, where graduate students are
treated as adults and researchers, one of my respondent showed dissatisfaction with the situation

71
and decided to live off campus on her own expenses. This is typically a withdrawal strategy to
challenges also reported by Gebhard (2012), international students in the U.S, and Sumra (2012),
international students in Beijing. Sumer (2009) used the phrase “avoidance-oriented strategy” to
explain similar strategy.
Also the washrooms cleanliness emerged as pressing challenge. These issues may be treated as
mundane, but it may have an impact on the overall lives and impression of international students
and international advocacy. Initially I thought it to be very negligible challenge, but after having
pointed out by three of my respondents, my understanding was changed. Some of the
challenges, such as weather and pollution, experienced by my respondents are beyond the control
of the university. However, they have an impact on the academic lives and adaptation of the
students (Tseng and Newton, 2002). Therefore, international students made use of the
assimilation acculturation strategy (Sumer, 2009), similar to passive coping in dealing with these
challenges.
Language proficiency as reported in other studies (Gebhard, 2012; Sherry, Thomas and Chui,
2009; Bamford, 2008; Al-Sharideh and Goe, 1998; Lin and Day Scherz, 2014 and Sumra, 2012)
seems to be a universal challenge for international students particularly those going to countries
with different language with their own. All my respondents showed concern over difficulties in
interacting in and out of campus with Chinese people because of lack of Chinese language
proficiency. With this challenge, my respondents made use of what Gebhard (2012) referred to it
as facilitative behaviors of learning the language and making use of the technology. They also
used emotion-focused coping strategy (Sumer, 2009) by attempting to regulate the emotions
associated with the language problem.
The pre arrival information delivery had mixed experiences. Some of the respondents were really
appreciative and claimed that they were enough for them to get prepared for the new life while
other reported lacking enough information. This can either be attributed to inconsistence of the
system or prior experiences on what information deemed necessary to an individual. This equally
applied to the experiences of international students with the orientation programs prepared by the
university departments. As recommended by Zhai (2004) and Mehdizadeh and Scot (2005), there
is a need to strengthen these programs to easy international students’ transient life experiences.
The respondents adapted some facilitative behaviors (Gebhard, 2012) such as finding more
information, use of supportive people and imitation facilitate their adaptation.

72
Going abroad, especially for the first time is always stressful. The problem becomes more
stressful when everything that a sojourners encounters are new. Among the four respondents, two
had established an understanding of the context before coming through their acquaintances. And
they admitted experiencing less challenges because of that. New encounters’ problems have been
also reported by Tseng and Newton (2002) when they studied internationals students’
experiences in the United States. Interaction with new people in a new context requires both
social and psychological preparation. Gebhard (2012) reported Asian students’ disappointment
and anxiety because of their inability to interact with the Americans when they first time arrived
there. Therefore, my respondents used a network of acquaintances comprising of co-nationals
and friends from similar cultural background to facilitate their adjustments in the new
environment. This strategy has also been used by international students in the U.S (Ibid)
This study also have emerged with the unfair treatment and perceived discrimination experienced
by non-Western international students. These phenomena have been primarily dominant in the
United States contexts (Tseng and Newton, 2002; and De Araujo, 2011). On the other hand, the
two European students interviewed seemed not experiencing discrimination. The affected
respondents reported to use passive strategy and emotion-focused coping in an attempt to deal
with a situation. However, this concern raises the need for multicultural training to those who
come into contacts with international students as recommended by Mehdizadeh and Scot (2005).
With respect to social support needed, respondents were of the opinion that more close ties with
local Chinese students will help internationals students to easy adaptation challenges. They also
suggested the need to have both Chinese and English in official communiqués. However this can
be quite challenging because not all university staff have English command. Since Chinese is the
dominant language in this community, international students are urged to learn Chinese if they
really want to comfortably integrate in the community and thus make living abroad less
challenging.
On the basis of the thick description of the qualitative data presented, Figure 2 below
summarizes the findings of this study. It shows the interrogation of adjustment determining
factors, challenges facing international students at the case university and how they have been
dealing with those challenges. That is, successful adjustment or acculturation is dependent of the
background factors of an individual, the nature of the challenges and how he/she is dealing with
the challenges facing him/her

73
Iq
A
fN
D
M
w
v
-
P
S
L
d
k
c
b
R
p
u
iy
m
F
g
ln



a
h
/C
o
s
e
tr Figure 2: Summary: Adjustment experiences of international students at the
case university

7. Conclusion and Recommendations

The scope of the following conclusions is limited to the context and lived experiences of
international students at the case university. Thus, applied to other situations, these conclusions
may yield incorrect assumptions. Still, these conclusions are relevant to the experiences of
international students and the overall internationalization of higher education projects. Basing on
my findings from this study, the following conclusions are made:
It is evident that Asian students have less adjustment problems/challenges as compared to
international students from other regions because of their socio-cultural proximity.
There are almost similar challenges facing international students I interviewed in the case
university to those reported in the “Western” context particularly the United States and
Canada as depicted in the literature reviewed in this study. There are also similarities in
terms of coping strategies used by international students in these two distinct contexts.
There is diversity in perceiving challenges and how interviewed international students
deal with them in my study context. The coping strategies employed are more
individualized depending on the perceived challenges individual experiences although

74
 they all fall under the similar overall theoretical underpinnings developed in “Western”
context.
 The interviewed students experienced a great degree of comfort with the overall
university systems and argued to be mostly challenged with issues beyond the university
control.

Basing on the findings of this study, I recommend the following:

 Future research should focus on the critical interrogation of international students’ socio-
economic, geographic and linguistic backgrounds and the perceived challenges
particularly by focusing on how these background features influences their coping
strategies in the case university and other universities in China. The suggested further
studies may be done within the internationalization, cultural shock, adjustment and social
conflict frameworks. By doing this, these studies will help to construct, develop and
advance knowledge of international students’ experiences in Chinese context, which I
argued, based on literature reviewed in this study and my own experiences, to be under
theorized.

75
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 Chinese Non-English Major Students' Attitudes towards Using the
English-Medium Instruction Strategy: A New Perspective

International and Comparative Education Institute,

Educational Leadership and Policy
Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

Abstract
This article outlines the necessity for investigating the attitudes of local students towards the use
of language-medium instruction strategy in their programs in China. It starts by presenting an
overview of English as a global language and a brief presentation of the concept of 'Attitude'
and how the motivation factor plays a significant role in the conception processing of attitudes.
Semi-structured interviews with three graduate students majoring in different programs are
conducted. Interpretational and reflective analyses identified that the informants hold very
positive attitudes towards the use of English-medium instruction strategy at their current
programs. The participants, furthermore, expressed their complete readiness to join post-
graduate programs wherein only the English-medium instruction strategy is applied. In addition
to the factors identified in the literature, the current article reports new factors that led the
participants to conceive positive attitudes: maintaining a global friendship, obtaining a
leadership position, and acquainting with international scholars. Moreover, it is argued that
'quantity' precedes 'quality' in higher education institutions. Finally, the article provides a
suggestion for how to meet the students' language needs and maximize the competition in
obtaining top world-class university rankings.

Keywords
English-medium Instruction Strategy, Students' Attitudes, Quality and Quantity in Higher
Education, China

Background
As an international language, English is the language of scientific communication in multilingual
contexts (Galloway, 2013; Matsuda, 2013), considered as "a symbol of modernization" (Kachru,
1985, p. 16), and used as a medium of instruction in many universities worldwide particularly in
non-native speaking countries with a vision for future access to the scientific and technological
progress in the developed countries (Surur, 1981), and to further education overseas and careers
in governments (Evan, 1999; Liu & Zhao, 2011). This English language has then become the
property of all those who speak it as its non-native speakers outnumber its native speakers (Kaur,
2014). Recently there has been an emphasis on the use of English as a Lingua Franca in teaching
contexts (Seidlhofer, 2004); however, the recent emergence of the 'global Englishes' terminology
as a new field combines both 'global Englishes' and English as a 'lingua franca' (Galloway,
2013). This language of English has also become a necessary tool for global higher education
institutions to compete with one another and promote more internationalization by
accommodating both international and domestic students who use English-medium instruction
(Chen & Kraklow, 2014). In other words, the use of English-medium instruction has become a
strategy adopted by universities to compete in a much globalized world through promoting their
profiles (Altbach & Knight, 2007) and to prepare local students who meet the demands of the
global markets (Doiz, Lasagabaster, & Sierra, 2011).

As a competent in the world economy (markets), the People's Republic of China needs to further
cultivate citizens who can communicate in this international language (English) easily to further
compete in the global economy (Zheng et al., 2009). This global economy competition
involvement encourages China towards putting a stronger emphasis on English language
education that is administered by the Ministry of Education at primary and secondary schools
(Ministry of Education, 2001). Even before entering universities, students must take the entrance
exam known as Gaokao in which English is tested as a main subject. Furthermore, two
standardized national English proficiency tests are administered at Chinese universities: 1)
College English Test (CET), and 2) Test for English Majors (TEM). CET is designed to assess
the ability of non-English major students to use English and is of two levels: Band 4 that reflects
an intermediate level, and Band 6 which indicates upper intermediate level. All applicants are
required to pass CET with Band 4 before graduation (Ministry of Education, 2001). Moreover,
English-medium instruction has also been adopted in several universities in China but
surprisingly enough these majors seem to be only established for international students.

At the tertiary level, learning of English as undergraduate, graduate, or post-graduate language

major is offered in most of the universities in China. Research on English language major
learners in China showed that learners positively view the learning of English as a major and are
highly motivated to learn the English language (Liu, 2007a; Liu & Zhao, 2011; Yang et al.,
2010). Additionally, Yu (2010) reported that Chinese college students have positive attitudes
towards English and their 'Chi-English' as an accent. Similarly, Zhang and Ding (2011)
accentuated that Chinese students had no significant negative attitudes toward their Chinese
accent while learning or speaking English. Resultantly, it is very acceptable that English has
become the world language and it is the language of any speaker who can convey their ideas
well.
On the contrary, Chinese non-English major students might have different attitudes towards
learning English and this might differ from one province to another and from one university to
another, too. Xu et al. (2010) presented that multifaceted attitudes towards English exist and
students' pragmatic needs (while learning English) should be well thought of and be addressed
accordingly by instructors. For example, Liu and Laohawiriyanon (2013) investigated Chinese
non-English major students' attitudes towards learning cultural themes of different countries in
an anonymous university in China and showed that students preferred to learn themes concerning
their own culture followed by themes of international target culture (English). This indicates how
important to explore the attitudes and preferences of students so as to make the teaching-learning
process more engaging and effective.

English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in Taiwan is employed in different universities with a

switch code of Mandarin in the classrooms (Wu, 2006). While in the mainland of China, students
do not have more opportunities to use English in "authentic settings and generally have low self-
efficacy and poor attitudes toward English language learning" (Zheng et al., 2009, p.206).
Therefore, this present study is very different from all mentioned above in many dimensions
some of which are the following. First, it is the first study that aims to find out the attitudes of
Chinese university learners majoring in different specialty areas other than English towards the
use of the English-medium instruction strategy in their programs. The participants are graduate
students at a Chinese university given the pseudonym of Heaven University to keep its
anonymity. Second, it is the first study that employs qualitative methodology and the findings of
such a study provide implications not only Heaven University education policy makers but also
other policy makers of other Chinese universities.

Overview of Attitudes

Attitude is a central issue in the field of psychology. Researchers have provided several
definitions for the concept 'attitude'. For example, attitudes are ones' positive or negative
reactions toward any aspect of social world (Fazio & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 1994; Tesser & Martin,
1996). According to Eagly and Chaiken (1993), attitude is "a psychological tendency that is
expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor" (p. 1). More
specifically, attitude is a construct used to explain consistent human behavior patterns (Baker,
1992, p. 10). Fasold (1984) regarded attitude as either mentalistic or behavioristic. In other
words, attitude is seen as a variable that intervenes between a stimulus and a response that affects
people's behavior (Fasold, 1984, p. 176). There are three components of attitude: 1. Cognitive
attitude that is related to thoughts and beliefs, 2. Affective attitude that is associated with
feelings, and 3. Behavioral (intentional) attitude that is concerned with events planning and
doing in particular circumstances (Baker, 1992, p. 12). Moreover, Bloom (1995) pinpointed that
"a meaningful correlation between the meanings of success of attitude is significantly important
as cognitive behavior" (as cited in Hussein, Demirok, & Uzunboylu, 2009, p. 432). The crux of
all these definitions is that attitude is positive or negative and this is due to many factors: one's
social background, geographical area, age, gender, and personal achievements are all factors that
form one's beliefs that lead to showing one's attitude towards an object (Gardner & Symthe,
1975a; Jones, 1950).

Attitudes on language are known as language attitudes (Fasold, 1984). Littlewood and Liu
(1996) proposed three types of language attitudes: affective, socio-political, and pragmatic
attitudes. These language attitudes types are centered on students' feelings towards a target
language or culture (Pierson, 1987). These feelings are not arbitrarily obtained. They,
nevertheless, have been got through social and schooling experiences. Language ability plays a
crucial role in one's attitude towards a particular language. However, this language ability might
be affected negatively if that student has negative attitudes toward that target language (Sze-yan,
2005, p. 3). There are factors that play a significant role in the formation of students' language
attitudes: use of and familiarity with the target language, stereotypes, previous experiences, and
future goals (Galloway, 2013, p. 795). The most important factor, however, is 'motivation' as it is
the trigger that forms the attitudes.

Motivation is the concept that many researchers have studied for a long period. Generally,
motivation is a "combination of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language
plus favorable attitudes towards learning the language" (Gardner, 1985, p. 10). This definition
seems to separate the concept of attitude from that of 'motivation'. Motivation is of three types:
1) Integrative motivation that describes students who have positive attitudes towards the
community of L2 (Gardner, 1985); 2) Intrinsic motivation which is the engagement in an activity
that is enjoyable to do (Noles et al., 2000), and 3) Extrinsic motivation that refers to actions done
for the sake of reaching an instrumental end such as receiving a reward or avoiding a punishment
(Noles et al., 2000, p. 61). Motivation could be positive or negative and, as a result, the attitude
would also be either positive or negative. However, the degree of motivation and how it is given
or perceived can also change the attitude. In brief, motivation plays a high significant role in the
process of conceiving and perceiving attitudes.

This paper focuses on the affective attitudes of graduate students towards the use of the English-
medium instruction strategy in their graduate programs. In other words, this affective dimension
is related to finding out whether students like or dislike the use of English as a medium of
instruction in their programs and the reasons behind their feelings. Meanwhile, the paper sheds
light on the pragmatic dimension that deals with the usefulness or unusefulness of using English
as a medium of instruction.

Research Aims and Questions

This study generally aims at exploring the attitudes of Chinese non-English major graduate
students towards the use of the English-medium instruction strategy in their programs. Therefore,
the study has one general question: what are the attitudes of Chinese non-English major graduate
students towards the use of the English-medium instruction strategy in their programs? From this
general question, the following sub-questions are driven: 1. Why do Chinese non-English major
graduate students have such attitudes (positive or negative)?, and 2. What are their suggestions
that might influence the university overall educational language policy? From these sub-
questions, the researcher has also formulated other sub-aims: a) to find out the factors that have
led to the formation of such attitudes, and c) to elicit any suggestions that might affect the overall
educational language policy.

Research Setting

This paper is confined to Heaven University that is located in Beijing (arabcized as Pekeen and
romanized as Peking), the capital city of the People's Republic of China. The main mission of
this international university is to prepare teachers in many fields. This university has one major
faculty: Faculty of Education that comprises several schools. There are 22 different
schools/colleges in the University. There are also two separate departments, 37 research
institutes, and a library that contains over 4.1 million volumes and about 17,300 GB of digital
resources, with 1,400 GB e-books.

Heaven University houses 60 majors that offer bachelor's degrees, 36 majors offering masters'
degrees (first level), 153 majors offering masters' degrees (second level), 24 Ph.D majors (first
level), 108 Ph.D majors (second level), and 25 post-doctoral majors. Within all these majors,
there are only few programs that adopt the English-medium instruction strategy; only one
doctoral program in the Faculty of Education (Educational Leadership and Policy). There are
only 7 master programs wherein the medium of instruction is English: a) Educational Leadership
and Policy (Faculty of Education), b) Higher Education and Students' Affairs (Faculty of
Education), c) Contemporary Development of China (School of Social Development and Public
Policy), e) Ecological Environment Protection and Management (School of Environment), f)
World Economy and China (School of Business), g) China's Population, Resources, Environment
and Development (School of Geography), and h) Laws Program in Chinese Law (School of
Law).

Research Methodology

After exploring the number of undergraduate and graduate majors at Heaven University and
realizing how many majors are instructed in English, the researcher adopted the qualitative
approach by using a case study. A case study is a suitable and flexible inquiry for studying a
specific issue within its natural context (Yin, 2003). More specifically, I adopted the
Instrumental case study that "provides insight into a specific theme or issue" (Mcmillan &
Schumacher, 2010, p. 345). Within this Instrumental case study, the author employed the in-
depth interview as a basic mode of inquiry effective in "… understanding the lived
experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience" (Seidman,
2006, p.10).

To answer the questions of this study, the researcher designed a semi-structured interview. The
researcher conducted the interviews with three students of master's degree programs. Participant
1 is majoring in Educational Technology. Participant 2 is majoring in Technical and Vocational
Education. The major of participant 3 is Educational Law. Mintzberg (1979) argued that it is not
a matter whether big or small the research sample is, or what researchers' interests are, as the
main purpose is to collect data systematically (p. 585). Having three participants helped the
researcher systematically collect data and in depth. This was also very effective in the process of
systemic analyses by transcription of data, intensive reading of data, and interpretation and
reflection analyses of data (Gall et al., 2003, p. 452).
Findings and Discussion

After analyzing the data, the researcher found several patterns that reflect the attitudes of the
students towards the use of English as a medium of instruction in their programs. The themes
also pinpoint the factors that led the participants to possess such attitudes and how to meet the
language needs of students. Here are the main patterns.

1. Students' Preferences and Readiness

There is no dispute about the state of English as an international language and its use a medium
of instruction in many universities worldwide. Benson (1991) considered English useful for a
selection of modern functions while it could also be regarded non-useful for local students. This
assumption seems to be true in the case of Heaven University that houses hundreds of majors
instructed in Chinese. Although all programs but eight ones at Heaven University are instructed
in Chinese, the participants preferred the existence of more programs instructed in English so
that students can have the choice to enroll in the program they prefer. They also expressed their
readiness to join the English-instructed programs in their post-graduate studies. Participant 1
expressed her attitude by saying:
I'll be very happy to join a post-graduate program in English. I will also advise my
friends to join programs where teachers use English in teaching … because I am
currently engaged in reading books, articles, etc. in English as requirements for
some of my courses that [laughter] instructed in Chinese despite the actuality
instructors can use English…. I guess I spend one third of my time for reading
English materials…. I am fully aware that English is important in my field and I'm
fully ready to spend all time in reading English materials and not mixing [Chinese
and English] that distracts my attention here and there!
I think that the discourse of participant 1 indicates that she prefers to be instructed in English in
her current program. Instead of being instructed in Chinese inside the class while English is used
mostly outside the class for research purposes, the participant expresses her ultimate preference
towards a program fully instructed in English. The discourse also implies that the participant
suggests a new policy for her current program to adopt the English-medium instruction strategy
as most of the instructors are capable of teaching the courses in English. Similarly, participant 2
expressed that she spent most of her time in finding and reading English publications and then
uses the translation process to convey the ideas in the Chinese language. She said:
 I need English as I am in need to read materials written in English about my major
and to get good knowledge, I must read them…. Then I make translations into my
language and use them in my papers or projects. This is troubling: the translations
take lots of my time and it is better for me to be taught in English and write the
assignments in English without the burden of translation!
This above discourse shows that it is not a translation major where students are trained on the
processes of translation through more practice. Participant 2 seems to be unhappy that she spends
most of her time in translating from English into Chinese. The discourse suggests that policy
makers of that program need to rethink of the curriculum and the courses requirements and how
to reflect the needs of their students. I analyze the discourse of participant 2 as an indicator for
the absence of evaluation of students' needs assessment that is important in educational
institutions.
Participant 3 also reflected his attitudes towards the English-medium instruction strategy by
saying:
It is better to use English in the classrooms. English is important for all of us and
that is why we must undergo English tests from primary schools until we become
professors…. Policy makers know this reality but they do not give us any option. I
prefer to do my studies in English…. I'm ready and must study in English in future
even if abroad.
This statement indicates that participant 3 is willing to pursue his post-graduate studies in
English within the boarders of his country providing that policy makers rethink how to change
the medium of instruction of his program. The statement also shows that English is very
important in the Educational contexts in China as it is highlighted in all educational stages. As a
result, it is suggested, instead of compelling students to travel abroad for achieving their
language-medium instruction needs, education policy makers are advised to implement the
English-medium instruction strategy for many programs at their universities in addition to the
existing English-medium instruction programs that have invited hundreds of international
students.
In short, I contend that the participants have expressed their preferences of selecting English as a
medium of instruction for their current and future studies. They also expressed their readiness to
continue their studies in programs wherein the English-medium instruction strategy is
implemented. The informants also referred to traveling abroad in case their needs are not met in
their own country. Instead of caring for the needs of international students only, language policy
makers also need to concern themselves with the needs of their local students who will really
care of the development of the country better than any others. The author is aware of the
challenges of implementing this language policy for many programs at all universities and how
policy makers might think of the issue of cultural identity loss but I suggest that they consider
establishing a whole university where all majors exist and instructed in English. This university
will meet the needs of such students and achieve a top world-class university ranking.
2. Factors' Behind Students' Attitudes
Factors behind the presence of students' positive attitudes towards the importance of establishing
several English-medium instruction programs are much related to academic purposes. All
informants expressed their need for English language for achieving academic readings and
writings. They emphasized the point that English is a key language in scientific communication
and how it is very significant in their current studies and future identities. Participant 1
expressed:
I think English is important in any academician's life … it is necessary for reading
international papers in our field. When I want to write a review paper, I must look
for papers and books written in English language … English is also important for
my future career … I am looking for a teaching career at a university …
universities, as you know, demands instructors to publish papers in high-impact
journals. So, I need to master English and I wish to be instructed wholly in English.
The above discourse is encouraging in the view that the participant looks forward to becoming a
university instructor and an international researcher who anticipates publishing good articles in
high-ranking journals. The discourse also reveals the truth that higher education institutions are
competing with one another through publishing in high-impact journals for the sake of
promoting the profiles of their universities while some professors might publish for the sake of
surviving in the academic positions or receiving funding and salary increment (Feng, Gulbahar,
& Dawang, 2013; Lee & Lee, 2013). Participant 2 also expressed a very similar factor behind her
positive attitude towards the preference of using the English-medium instruction strategy. She
stated:
I am happy with my English … You might not believe that I enjoy using it more than
 my native language. This is because I spend most of my home studies in English and
writing reflection/synthesis papers which I translate into my mother tongue for the
courses requirements…. I want to do my post graduate studies in a western country
where I will be instructed in English … But if my university provides this option for
me, I will stay here and join the program.

The above statement confirms the findings of several researchers who stated that English has
become necessary for scientific research, future studies, technological progress, improvement of
universities profiles, and often jobs in today's globalized markets (Altbach & Knight, 2007;
Doiz, Lasagabaster, & Sierra, 2011; Evan, 1999; Galloway, 2013; Liu & Zhao, 2011; Matsuda,
2013; Surur, 1981). The statement also points out to a significant attitude that the participant
prefers to do their post-graduate studies at their universities providing that the English-medium
instruction strategy is implemented in their future studies. Furthermore, it appears that the
participant is not content with the current language policy where they spend lots of time for
translations from English into Chinese. Instead, they prefer to use English without any efforts in
translating texts and this might ease the process of learning for such students. The policy makers
might need to establish English-medium instruction programs. Otherwise, they might benefit of
the suggestion that advises the incorporation of courses that train students on academic writing
and writing for publication purposes in the current programs (Martin, Rey-Rocha, Burges, &
Moreno, 2014). The third participant also expressed similar factors and added that:

I need English for corresponding with my international friends and for making it
easy for me to live with this world where English is dominant in many sciences…. I
also want to have a leadership role one day and I think English will be one of the
requirements for such a position.

In this discourse, participant three expresses the factor of keeping the good relationship with
their international friends through the use of English as the main source of communication. In
addition, the statement indicates that English is also significant in their study major which
belongs to these world sciences in which English plays a crucial role.

To conclude, I personally think that the factors behind the students' attitudes towards adopting
the English-medium instruction strategy re-enforce those found by previous researchers. In
addition, the current study states that keeping a good relationship with global friends, obtaining a
leadership position, and acquainting with international scholars are also key factors in the
presence of students' positive attitudes in adopting the English-medium instruction strategy in
their future studies. All these factors, as I have argued, motivate such participants to conceive
positive attitudes; therefore, positive motivation is the first step towards perceiving and
conveying positive attitudes.

3. Quality Comes After Quantity

It is true that quality is very important in all life dimensions; however, quantity is sometimes is
more important than quality especially in academic situations where there is a big gap between
equity and equality issues. Almost all higher education institutions are craving for the
improvement of quality issues in their programs as they have entered the endless arena of world-
class universities competition. It is argued that those current top universities have initially
attained the concept of equity by providing equal access, opportunities, and treatment to all
affiliates without making any discrimination among them. Later, they carefully considered the
concept of equality through giving appropriate opportunities and supports to their affiliates
according to the needs of those individuals.
Equity can be quantified while ''true equality can never be quantified, because all men are truly
different from each other" (Coates & Topham, 1974, p. 250 as cited in Dunleavy, 1989, p. 214).
Equality is the concept that can simply be defined as a quest for sameness in all social life
aspects. It is concerned with the variability of individuals and how to improve these differences
individually. Equity, on the other hand, deals with standardizing a public policy treatment of all
individuals equally without considering the differences among these individuals (Dunleavy,
1989, p. 214). The participants of this study expressed that their university has made a great
success in establishing many numbers of programs that can lead to achieving the issue of
quantity and this is, according to them, an essential step towards a permanent success. Participant
1 expressed his viewpoint by saying:
In our university, there are lots of programs that specialize in different education
and science areas … we have several professors and educators in our program, for
example, and this, according to my thinking, is a matter of quantity that is essential
in academic life.
The above statement of participant 1 shows the participant's attitude towards the importance of
providing equal opportunities for professors and students in joining different majors for teaching
and learning respectively. The statement also pinpoints the author's assumption that quantity
should precede quality in the educational contexts. Furthermore, participant 1 explained that
"quality can't be attained when there is no quantity" which means that quality is subjected to the
realization of achieving quantity in educational programs, at the outset. Similarly participant 2
demonstrated her attitude by uttering the following discourse:
There are a great number of programs that are instructed in Chinese and only few
ones instructed in English… and those taught in English seem to be established for
inviting international students only. Our university is doing well but they [university
policy makers and main implementers] need to consider establishing more
programs for both international and national students at the same time.
This might be true as this above discourse focuses on both concepts of 'equality and equity'
discussed above. The presence of an acceptable number of English-medium instruction
programs, according to participant 2, is important as there might be many local students who
prefer to join such programs. The presence of such English-medium instruction programs will
not only lead to improvement in quantity of programs but also urge policy makers to reflect upon
the development of those programs in terms of quality. On this theme, the third participant
revealed his attitude by stating the following:
Less programs is a problem especially when these programs are founded without
paying attention to local stakeholders [Chinese students] … we, Chinese students,
need to realize our hopes by attending the program we prefer and use the
instruction medium we feel happy at. This is not happening in my university and
many other universities in China. The Ministry of Education is looking for having
top world-class universities … they have established some majors instructed in
English but they paid no attention to us or thought of giving us any choice to join
the major where different instruction mediums are offered.
This above statement, as I interpret, is very crucial for education policy makers who need
reconsider the needs and preferences of their local students. The Chinese students might need to
join programs that are taught in English and the policy makers need to respect these students'
needs by realizing their views in reality. The above statement also suggests that attaining the
needs of local students will also help attain the standards of top world-class universities for
which the Chinese government has paid greater attention these recent years.
To conclude, I content that good quantity is the first step to a better quality. The universities
policy makers need to work on this new concept 'quality comes after quantity' and try to provide
several programs wherein the English-medium instruction strategy is implemented. Voices of
local students are critical for the development of local higher institutions.
Conclusion

In this paper, I have presented the attitudes of Chinese non-English majors graduate students at
Heaven University towards the use of the English-medium instruction strategy. The participants
expressed their positive attitudes towards the use of the English-medium instruction strategy in
their programs and highlighted the need for programs instructed in English not only for inviting
international students but also for realizing the hopes of local learners. They, furthermore,
underscored the point that they prefer the English-medium instruction strategy in their current
and future studies and unless policy makers consider their attitudes, they would leave the country
for realizing their personal needs and preferences. Therefore, I suggest the Ministry of Education
in the People's Republic of China to implement this new idea of establishing a university that
adopts all programs with the use of the English-medium instruction strategy. Local and
international students are welcomed to this university so long as they meet the entry
requirements. This university will certainly be one of the top universities in the world then.

The paper also outlined the need for studying the attitudes of local students and the factors
behind their attitudes. Meanwhile, the paper presents a new model that could be adopted for
achieving the two important issues of 'equity and equality' in higher education institution.
ity
u
q
E A Model for Equity and Equality in Higher Education Institutions
This model shows how equity and equality concepts can be realized at higher education
institutions. The model suggests that higher education institution policy makers need to
investigate the attitudes of their affiliates whose attitudes are based on the internal and much
strongly on the external motivation. By motivating students positively, the students will conceive
positive attitudes and critical awareness towards which programs they prefer and which medium
of instruction they like. Considering the attitudes of students will also lead to rethinking of the
number of programs instructed in that preferred language. Achieving this will also lead policy-
makers to consider the most important issue of 'equality' that directly leads to the presence of
good quality. Again, good quality will lead to having positive motivation in the hearts of students
towards education and this will enforce the author's idea that good inputs lead to good outputs.
To conclude, I personally believe that the application of equity leads to the presence of true
equality. And the existence of true equality leads to good quality. In other words, good quantity
precedes good quality and the presence of both helps in achieving the standards of top world-
class universities.

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 Challenges and Opportunities in Multicultural Learning
Environment: The Case of International Students in China/BNU
ID#: 201529010008
2015 December 31

1.0 Introduction

The development of technology softens worldwide boundaries and opens cultures to a bond and
mixed new ground enabling mobility of individuals all over the globe freely. This causes ever-
increasing interdependence internationally for mutual communication and educational exchange
among individuals, institutions as well as nation-states and result internationalization of higher
education institutions (Altbach & knight, 2007). This means that institutions of higher learning
are rapidly becoming melting pots of diverse cultures and languages as universities continue to
attract a rich mix of racially and culturally diverse students (Singh & Rampersad, 2010). In other
way such circumstances contribute to have a multicultural learning setting in an institution.
It has been a very long time that Chinese higher institutions have experienced international
students inflow from different corners of the world (Huang, 2003). According to Huang’s
statement, before 1992, China’s experience regarding internationalization of higher learning was
a traditional outflow of international scholars, faculty members, and students to abroad.
Basically, it was the reverse of what is presently ongoing; more students were going out to
acquire higher education degrees. Currently, the number of international students and
scholarships has risen steadily over the past decade. According to Chinese Scholarship Council
(CSC) report, the number of international students in China in 2013 was over 356,000. These
students with different nationalities, color and religious beliefs come together and they form a
multicultural learning environment and diversity. This in turn, creates challenges as well as
opportunities. In this view, the current research provoked to study the issues of multicultural
learning environment and diversity in China. Based on its economic boom and
internationalization of higher education, China has become a strategic threat in the global market
for international students. The internationalization policy of higher education will transition
China from being the world largest consumer of overseas education to becoming to the world
biggest supplier or provider of higher education degrees and services. In the efforts of
educational reform (2011-2020) and internationalization and to participate in globalizing higher
education, China’s Ministry of Education (2014) introduced a new policy to begin admitting into
Chinese Universities some 500,000 foreign students annually by 2020, thereby making China to
be the largest provider of foreign scholarships and gradually becoming the world leading supplier
of higher education degrees to international students across the globe. The purpose of this robust
investment in international students market has myriad of intentions and unintended
consequences. In some quarters, especially western commentators, it is assume that China wants
to compete with its western counterparts as the enrollment and recruitment rates of foreign
students to the United States, United Kingdom, France and Canada are dramatically declining.
On the other hand, some scholars argue that hosting huge number of foreign talents may infuse
or inject revenues into Chinese economy and enrich the enrolment profiles of Chinese
universities (Douglass & Edelstein, 2009). Despite the determination by the Chinese authorities
to recruit large number of international students and the current increasing migratory flow of
foreign students into China, there remains to be a missing variable which has to do with
understanding the diverse backgrounds and multiplicity of their cultural heritages which can
serve as an enrich component of higher education in China. Furthermore, deeply understanding
the ingredients of multicultural learning environment and exploring the experiences and
challenges face by international students especially at Beijing Normal University (BNU)
English-taught programs will inform the administration, researchers and faculties in policy
formulation and decisions for future programmatic intervention, recruitment, placements and
improve service delivery for future scholars. These research findings may also provide specific
insights for higher education planners and faculty to make maximum use of international
students and tap onto their experiences, skills and talents to better understand the risks and
prospects in China’s foreign policy and soft power strategies through scholarships. Through these
scholarship invitations or soft power technique that aims to attract global talents or foreign
brains, the perceptions held outside about Chinese educational system change overtime following
the return of these foreign graduates.
Although many studies have been done on international students in multicultural learning
setting, however, little have been said about international students specifically in China.
Therefore this study will focus on the international students in multicultural learning
environment in Chinese higher education system in general, with particular emphasis on
international students live experiences including opportunities and challenges at Beijing Normal
University’s (BNU) mainly students enrolled in the English-taught programs. Through survey
questionnaires, using BNU as case study, this study examines challenges as well as opportunities
faced by international students in higher education as they pursue their studies in multicultural
learning environment. The findings might help the upcoming international students to enhance
their learning abilities by utilizing the opportunities and adequately engage in coping mechanism
to the challenges presented by the multicultural learning environment and be able to adjust.

Literature Review
Accommodating international students of higher education coming across sectional diverse of
culture, beliefs, and languages and varying prior academic knowledge are challenged for host
institutions (Wu et al, 2015). However, it has various benefits for the economy of students'
countries of origin, the host country's economy, and international and local students themselves
(Pandian, 2008). He added that, international students also diversify higher educational
institutions by creating a cultural learning environment for domestic students where in the higher
education context.
In recent years, the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) has started to attract more international
students. PRC has entered the market with declared ambitions to become regional education
center by attracting as many as several hundred thousand international students of higher
education to the country (UNESCO, 2009). Studies indicated that the number of international
students has nearly doubled worldwide in the past 10 years. In 2012, there were more than 4.1
million official international students (Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, 2012). Over 356,000 students also in china according to Chinese Scholarship
Council (CSC) report, in 2013.
According to Volet and Ang (1998) report, one of the major educational goals of the
internationalization of higher education is to prepare students to function in an international and
intercultural context. Cultural variety on university campuses creates ideal social opportunity for
intercultural learning; however, the main challenging aspects of the internationalization of higher
education are the difficult environment of interactions between local and international students as
well as among international students from different backgrounds.
Many studies indicated that the mobility of international students among higher institutions are
in order to cope with the global academic environment (Altbach, Laura & Rumbley, 2009). In the
other way, when people of different nationalities, color and religious beliefs come together they
form a multicultural learning environment and this is for the purpose of studying and exchanging
experiences among each other (Jiang, 2005).
Furthermore, as many researchers agree that the difference between prior educational
comprehension in the student’s home culture and the requirements of the host institution
surrounded into the host culture may result in international students’ uncertainty, frustration,
unmet course expectations, and disappointment with the learning process and results
(Dautermann, 2009 & Shattuck, 2005).
According to David (1983), learning in multicultural school environment where academics
and students are from diversity of countries and cultures is a real challenge. These challenges
could be when individuals experience a new cultural environment; they are likely to experience
conflict between their own cultural predispositions and the values, beliefs, and opinions of the
host culture (Briggs 1983). In contrast to these views, other research said that, if they get
adequate training program, the Cultural Communication challenges, can help in cross-cultural
adaptation by improving interpersonal and social communication skills. Furthermore, students
from different cultures learn in different ways and that they differ in cognitive styles, self-
expression and communication styles (Bennett, 1995). Understanding the differences, culture and
learning style by these international students will help in contribute to their success in learning
The circumstance surrounding the international students learning in multicultural
environments can be related to the theoretical perspective of (Burgonn, Dillman
& Stern, 1995). Burgonn , in his Interpersonal Adaptation Theory, observes that there are three
aspects that sound any form of interaction in our communities. These interactions are bound by
expectation, requirement and desires.
Expectations are beliefs centered on the future. In the context of International students, when
they conceived the idea of coming to study in china for instance, they had their individual
expectations built from different backgrounds. Some from the technological point of view, other
expectations were grounded in the economic boom of china in the recent years and others from
their own cultural prejudice they grow up with their native countries. Upon arriving in china,
they might experience what is referred to as cultural shock, mental isolation, communication
difficulties, disillusionment, and study pressures. Consequently, undesirable academic
achievement as well as unmet requirement of the institution may be happened in their study.
As Gullahorn quoted in his W Curve adjustment theory “little fish in a big pond’’ this could be
applicable to international students of higher education when they come to china they might face
with difficult issues like communication problem, adjust with the context, and acculturate with
diversified culture and massive ethnicity of china .

Other study supported W Curve adjustment theory on an international student' learning

experiences and their adaptations to the U.S. educational system report (Guofang, 1999). He
identified several adjustment mechanisms. The mechanisms are motivations for learning,
frustrations of cross-cultural living and learning, including communication difficulties,
discrimination, disillusionment, and study pressures, satisfactions of cross-cultural living,
including a cleaner environment, having the necessities of daily living, fair school enrollment
policy, and a law-governed society , their strategies for coping with limited English in school
work and in daily life , new perspectives they had gained through learning and their hope of
opening doors with better credentials, multicultural differences in the classroom and daily life,
including a more interactive student-teacher relationship and differences in behavioral and value
systems. The study concludes that institutions must be aware of and help international students
adjust to such cross-cultural differences.
Study in U.S. academic system, Althen proposes that orientation programs for international
students should include practical information about housing and communication, and how to
adjust to a new culture (Althen, 1990).
Heikinheimo and Shute (1986) did a qualitative study and found that verbal communication
skills, educational issues, and social interaction were the most difficult adjustment problem areas
for international students. These students were more likely to have positive academic and
nonacademic experiences if they could adapt to and enjoy contact with the host community, and
their successful achievement of academic goals is more likely if the emotional and social
atmosphere is pleasant and the environment congenial.
In other word, Multicultural environmental education (MEE) is "a new field of theory and
practice for environmental education where content is influenced by and taught from multiple
cultural perspectives. It is conscious of its own cultural perspectives and of the function that it
has in the world and in the lives of diverse students and communities (Running &Grass, 1996).
 In this case, the researcher tries to see the theory on the learner’s perspective. He remarked
that learning outcomes of international students influenced in multicultural environment taught
by multiple cultural perspectives. If the learning outcomes of the students are affected, then live
of the individuals and the communities, and the world as whole is affected as well. It is like
different face of one coin.
Last, but not least, are the affective dimensions involved in the formation of culturally mixed
groups. There is repeated evidence in the literature of international students' experience of
homesickness, loneliness and stress in the host environment (Burns, 1991). Many studies
proposed that, international students' difficulties in forming friendships with local students
(Barker, Child, Gallois, Jones & Callan, 1989; Nesdale & Todd, 1993). Furthermore, cross
cultural barriers is expected to be uncertainty thus anxiety reduction strategies can play a role
(Lee & Boster, 1991), regardless of whether students are local or international.
It leads to deep understanding of social dynamics exiting within and between cultural groups
by reducing discrimination, prejudice that existed between groups of different cultural groups
(Nieto, 2012). When multicultural learning environment enhances ones critical reflection on
experience and improves on how to work collaboratively with others development of a sense of
caring and civil responsibilities (Boyer, 1981, Barbera, 1991, Delve, Mintz and Stewart, 1990).

In summary, this study tries to examine the research questions by referring several literature
reviews related to opportunities and challenges encounter by international students in
multicultural learning environment during their study. In this review, theoretical and practical
approaches have been explored. Some of the studies claim that, studying within an environment
where students with various cultures and different languages can be enjoyable and provide
benefits to students, not only in their professional development, but in their development as a
human being. Some of the benefits are become aware of different cultures, do things differently,
learn to work in a multi-cultural team and so on. In contrast to these views, other researchers
describe it as challenge and hardship including cultural shock, mental isolation, communication
difficulties, disillusionment, and study pressures.
Research Methodology
The research was conducted in order to understand the situation of international students
especially in higher education relative to identifying the challenges and opportunities
international students face in China’s higher institutes during their studies in Multi-cultural
learning environment using BNU as a case study, the furthered investigated how those
opportunities and challenges affect students’ learning as well as how responsive the institution is
in creating conducive learning environment. The findings from the study are expected to benefit
upcoming international students to enhance their learning by exploiting the opportunities and
adequately employ copping mechanism to the challenges that could be presented by multicultural
learning environment.
Institutions may have clear understanding on how to provide support services to enhance their
learning. To achieve the above, questionnaires were distributed using random sampling approach
with participants within postgraduate and doctorate programs on the school campus of the
Beijing Normal University from several programs. International students especially who have
stayed a year or more from both levels mentioned above participated in responding to the
questionnaire. The survey questionnaires were close ended and divided into three sections.
Section A: was basically based on demography information, Section B: were also about
respondents attitudes toward challenges and opportunities that affect multicultural learning
environment. Section C: dealt with the respondents’ attitude towards Chinese education,
environment and culture.

Sample Population of the Study

Based on the setting and objectives of the research, the researcher focused her attention on
foreign students who are enrolled in the English-taught programs rather than sampling other
international students who have spent a year or more and are also admitted into Chinese
language programs. Despite the presumption in the Chinese language courses could speak
English, majority of them students hailing from other Asian countries are probably challenged by
the English language. The sample population of international students was selected because I
believed that they bring with them vast human, social and economic values and contributions
into the host country or university. Through a simple convenience sampling method, I distributed
survey questionnaires to twenty (20) international students on BNU campus and about seventeen
of the respondents returned the filled-in questionnaires.
Research Findings
The research examined the challenges and opportunities that affect international students in
higher education in China as they pursue their studies in a multi-cultural learning environment
particularly at Beijing Normal University (BNU). Moreover, participants were identified as
international students who were studying in undergraduate and graduate programs in BNU using
purposeful sampling. This sampling technique is appropriate for this study in order to fully
answer the research questions and grasp a lot of information about the phenomena (Palys, 2008).
Furthermore, so as to generate more representativeness some demographic variables, ethical
issues with regards to confidentiality were considered as well as academic levels were also
controlled. For example, participants were selected from different countries, such as, South
Korea, United State, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, France and
Kazakhstan and participants were also selected from Africa as well. They were furthermore
selected from different academic level such as undergraduate and graduate programs and they
were asked to voluntarily participate.
Having different backgrounds, the researchers tried to establish the relationship with the
participants. Based on the friendship with all participants, she considers herself a researcher from
an insider perspective. This insider role allowed me to conduct research with a population from
which I am also a member. The participants were typically more open so that allowed for a
greater depth of data to be gathered. Throughout my study, I have developed a close friendship
with my participants. I met my participants in classes, at dormitory, waiting room and dinner
parties; therefore, this relationship allowed me to get my participants and then distribute my
questionnaires.
Twenty (20) survey questionnaires were given out to these international students of which out of
that number (17) seventeen were returned which represent eighty five percent (85%) of the total
questionnaire sent out. Out of this number 42% were males and 58% were also females which
also included six PhD students and Master students.

Further, nearly one third of the respondents were in group one, over half of the study population
were in group two while 18% of the respondents were also found in group three. Subsequently,
89% out of this total were CSC full Scholarship funded while two were partial scholarship
students from BNU. Hence, the result shows that international students are mostly challenged by
language barrier and the intensity of the curriculum. One quarter also expressed that they are
been confronted by the weather and climate conditions as well as the food. 91% of the
respondents were people who have lived in China for the period a year or more. They were also
divided in to four regions including Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Discussion
The study reveal that the curriculum is to some extent very compress and intense as well as the
language barrier which also cause students not to adequately interact with most Chinese students
and others even outside the campus. According to the respondents, the high intensity of the
curriculum has also continue to keep students overly busy with class room related matters always
not having time to practically enhance their field of study. The survey results showed that
Students hailing from Africa are also challenged by the environmental or climatic conditions.

Learning in multicultural environment can be rewarding as well as challenging for international

students. Firstly, students hailing from different and complex cultures and who have strong
socio-cultural identities can experience maladjustment and cross-cultural shocks. The data show
that a significant percent of international students especially from African countries experienced
shocks predominantly from the change in temperature (cold weather), food and sometimes arts of
social discrimination in the subways, public buses and/or restaurants. Such forms of social
discrimination often happen outside of the school environment or school campus. Secondly,
international students especially from countries with poor educational systems are challenged by
the intensity of the curriculum, mode of instruction, intense course works and technology.
Thirdly, there can be melting point or mingling of different cultures in which students learn
different cultural values, norms and ways of life. For instance, allowing an African student to
share room with an Asian student or some other nationalities. On one hand, more than half of the
respondents agreed that the Chinese educational system can be compare with some western
countries. This means China internationalization of higher education policy is making significant
impact in its educational front which also suggests that there is an increasing need for further
improvement and transformations especially in terms of curriculum, profile of faculties, intensity
of coursework and quality of publication.
Further, more than half (53%) of the participants agreed that professors of the international
English-taught programs are knowledgeable and encourage friendly learning
environment/interactions between them and students while more than two-quarters strongly
agreed. In addition, evidence suggests that there is more friendly relationship between local
Chinese students and foreign students as compare to the perceptions that has been speculating
amongst the both groups that either Chinese students are too busy and because of that they are
not so friendly while on the other end, international student (non Chinese) were seen by Chinese
students as not also been friendly. The study reveal the reverse of this is true as Chinese students
are friendly and also incorporative accept that the language barrier by some which is the major
problem causing some of them not to fully interact with international students. Hence forth, the
social interactions between local and foreign students are high and cordial as suggested by over
half of the respondents (52.5%). And as stated above, this suggest that foreign and local students
can co-exist in a multicultural learning environment. As it relates to free movement and access to
public transportation in Beijing, the data disclose that international students can easily access
these social services without hindrance or discrimination. In relations to access to medical and
other services, almost three-quarters of the research participants agreed that they can access
medical services and they are covered by insurance schemes. In this regards, I believe that
facilities provided by Chinese universities and government can be comparable to most western
countries’ educational system. As China is transitioning towards becoming a leading world
supplier of higher education degrees to international students from all walks of life, it is poised to
improve facilities and services comparable to world leading universities in the west which I
believe will attract more foreign talents.

Conclusion
Given the above, the study has shown that the learning environment even thou challenging but
there are also a lot of opportunities that students benefit from. The study also reveals that
Chinese education can be compare to that of the west and that is a complete recipe for the flow
and attraction of more and more international students most especially been beneficiaries of
Chinese government and other scholarships with in China. According to the research conducted,
the situation clearly depict that the long history of Chinese culture and history through its
education is gradually creeping across the globe and been spread by scholars who schooled in
China. In some instances the best practices despite of the challenges, are taken back to our
various countries and we tried to improve or strengthen our educational system by those
 opportunities that we also benefited from especially from the learning environment and also our
friends in classes and around campus.
The study presents a picture of students’ environment of learning consisting of local and foreign
students together, their interaction both in classroom and outside and the institution as whole,
giving them the opportunity to clearly express the situation with regards to live experiences
during their studies thereby also appreciating how strong students become after going through
the holistic academic process through the multicultural learning environment.

References
Altbach, P G., Reisberg, L., & Rumbley, L. (2009). Trends in global higher education: Tracking an
academic revolution. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization(UNESCO) 7, place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SPSet and printed in the
workshops of UNESCO
Althen, G. (1981) (ed.).Learning across cultures: Intercultural communication and international
educational exchange. Racine, Wis: Johnson Foundation, Inc. Althen, G. (1990) Orientation of
Foreign Students. NAFSA field service working paper.

Barker, M., Child, C., Gallois, C., Jones, E., & Callan, V.J. (1989). Difficulties of overseas students in
social and academic situations. Australian Journal of Psychology, (pp.43).

Bennett, C. (1995) Comprehensive Multicultural Education (3rd Ed.). Needham Heights,

MC.
Bryman, A. (2008). Social research methods (3rd Edition). Paperback, Oxford University Press

Briggs, N, E. (1983). Application of inoculation theory in an intercultural context. Eric reproduction

service No.Ed225 221. Chinese Culture Connection, The. Chinese values and the search for
culture-free dimensions of culture. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 18 (2), (pp.143-164).
Press
Briggs, N, E. (1983). Application of inoculation theory in an intercultural context. Eric reproduction
service No.Ed225 221. Chinese Culture Connection, The. Chinese values and the search for
culture-free dimensions of culture. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 18 (2), (pp.143-164).
Burgoon, J. K., Stern, L. A., & Dillman, L. (1995). Interpersonal adaptation: Dyadic interaction
patterns. New york: Cambridge University Press.

Burnrs, R.B. (1991). The adjustment of overseas students: A study of the academic, cultural, social
and personal problems of overseas first year students at an Australian university. Canberra:
Australian National University.
Guafang, W. (1999). The learning experience of Chinese students in American Universities: A Cross-
Cultural Perspective.Education Bradley University .

Education Systems, Policy and Management in China

Exploring Internationalization:Foreign students perception of
Chinese Higher Education: A case study of Beijing Normal
University

201529010012

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
Higher Educational provision extends beyond serving the local population;as a result many
students travel across the globe for various reasons to attend Higher Education. The success of
civilization rests on the kind of education the population of that civilization undergoes. Higher
education in its own right plays a very cardinal role in grooming a workforce that is not
onlyefficient, innovative and well informed, but also capable of moving different sectors of an
economy forward.Felix Corral, (2003) states that internationalization of higher education has
emphasized and highlighted in this century, in this framework, consider the academics and
students as the most obvious and important features of internationalization, becoming the
distinctive characters of this process, because not only are beneficiaries of knowledge, but also
producers of it in the long run. To this end, Higher education is being constantly transformed
through the process of internationalization and (Knight, 2007;Bjorn,2010; [CITATION Ste04 \l
2052]supports this by referring to Internationalization as being the driving force for change in
higher education. From this, one can consider Highereducation as the exemplification of a global
network made by the internationalization of knowledge and exploration in an economy but
especially in an incorporated global society.

A good higher education institution is one that constantly reviews its systems and field specialization offered
in order to meet the needs of the country it serves and also the global demand, thereby managing to stay
relevant in provision and ethos. A close look at internationalization and one discovers that it is discussed in
relationto physical mobility; academic cooperation and academic knowledge transfer as well as international
education (Teichler, 2004; Knight, 2010). This mix places on higher education institutions, with the task of
implementing both new courses of the traditional type and a wide variety of courses of new types for graduates
or non-graduates who are seeking to update or refresh their knowledge and skills, to reorient, to change career
or to widen their general education[CITATION UNE09 \l 2052]
1.2 Statement of the problem
A lot studies have been done in relation to internationalization[CITATION Ste08 \l 2052 ]; [CITATION
Spr09 \l 2052]; [CITATION Wil10 \l 2052 ][CITATION AAC11 \l 2052]. However the perceptions of the
beneficiaries of internationalization have not fully been explored.This paper is going to explore
internationalizing of Chinese higher education from the perspective of foreign students. This is because
Chinese Higher Education seems to be attracting a lot of foreign students as a result of its move to
internationalize its institutions.
1.3 Significance of the Study
This study seeks to explore the perceptions of foreign students on internationalization with regards to whether
or not they understand the institution they are in and what significant players have made it possible for them to
study in a country other than their own.
1.4 Objectives
1.To explore the Chinese higher education system.
2.To examine foreign students’ perceptions of internationalization in Chinese Higher Education system
2.To determine the motivating factors for the choice of Higher education institutions by foreign students in
China.
1.5 Research Questions
This paper is going to be using the following questions for operation
1.How do international students view Chinese Higher Education?
2.What are the criteria for their choice of HEI in China?

CHAPTER TWO

Literature Review
2.0 Rational of internationalization
Internationalization ofhigher educational institutions (HEIs hereafter) is becoming a fast growing trend in
many countries and the activities that surround it are approached with varied motives, even though they
overlap often. To this effect, [CITATION Kni101 \l 2052]noted that internationalization means different things
to different people; similarly the foundations for involvement in the process are different among and between
stakeholders. However, there area number of rational that come into play when considering this. According to
[CITATION Wit99 \l 2052 ] these are the aspects of academic, Social/cultural, economic and finally the
political rational that need to be considered. The suggestion of this is that different approaches can be used
with regards to internationalization. Huang [CITATION OEC04 \l 2052 ] has outlined some of the
motivations that have dominated the contribution of HEIs in educational activities these include among other
skilled migration, revenue generation, capacity building and mutual understanding.[CITATION Han02 \l 2052
]points out that internationalization can be viewed as the huge number of activities aimed at promoting an
educational experience within an atmosphere that truly integrates a global viewpoint. In a survey conducted by
the International Association of universities in 2003, in 66 different countries, it was found that mobility of
students and teacher was regarded as most important reason for making internationalization an institutional
priority and was regarded as the quickest feature of internationalization[CITATION Kni032 \l 2052].Student’s
flow in and out of HEIs as well as that of lecturers signifies the move towards internationalizing the said
institutions.[CITATION Bot10 \l 2052]pointed to the fact that there is no university that could detach itself
from international influences even in education field. A look at OECD data revels that the United States, Japan,
Australia, Germany, France and the UK are the destinations for approximately 75% of all international students
to OECD countries. International students are now more likely to get enrolled in the highest levels of education
than in the past, mirroring an increasing internationalization of academic research and science [CITATION
OEC091 \l 2052 ]. The trends of internationalizationkeep changing and so do the demands of society. Higher
education is tasked to try and bring about harmony and provide for the demands of different nations.
2.1Internationalization of Chinese Higher Education System
The opening up policy of 1978 has brought a lot of development in the field of education, among which
internationalization of the HEIs is one such. Internationalization of Chinese Higher Education got highly
upgraded with the introduction of two most significant projects, 211 and 985 in 1995 and 1998 respectively.
The main objective of the two projects is to build top-class comprehensive universities competitive to the
world of education by the year 2020[CITATION Jia09 \l 2052].When 985 project was initiated in 1998,
sufficient funds were made available for top ten universities which included Beijing, Tsinghua, Zhejiang,
Nanjing etc. The projects involves the participation of both national and local governments allocating
sufficient funds to certain universities with the view of building new research centers, improved facilities, hold
international conferences, attract world renowned faculty and visiting scholars and help Chinese faculty to
attend conferences abroad[CITATION Wen06 \l 2052] Extension of the project (985) was launched in 2004,
which incorporated 36 universities[CITATION Wen06 \l 2052]. With these two master plans implementation,
Chinese higher education has witnessed a period of unprecedented expansion in 21 st century. In 2002, the gross
enrollment rate of higher education reached 15% for the first time. There were 25 million college students in
Chinese higher educational institutions of different types in 2006, which actually outnumbered the size of
college students in the US [CITATION Wen06 \l 2052]Again, in 2006, universities and colleges recruited a
total of 5.4 million new students’; five times the total number in 1998 (1.08 million) (Zhou, 2007).The
comprehensive universities are meant to take on international curricular and teaching method. In further steps
to internationalization of Chinese higher education are characterized by the introduction of foreign language
programs and international orientation of the university curricula. Introduction of English-language products
into Chinese campuses; implementation of the medium of instruction in the English language or bilingually
(Chinese and English); and integration of an international aspect into university teaching and learning have
played great roles in attracting international students from various parts of the world.[CITATION Hua07 \l
2052 ] illustrates that in 2001, a document issued by the Ministry of Education (MOE) indicated that in the
coming 3 years, from 5% to 10% of all curricula in the leading universities must be taught in English,
especially in such areas as biology, information science, new materials, international trade, and law. This kind
of push towards introducing a medium of instruction that is understood worldwide has certainly attracted new
clients to the higher education institutions. Furthermore, the country has set impressive targets to become the
‘biggest destination’ for foreign students to study in Asia by 2020 [CITATION xin10 \l 2052 ]. This means that
Chinese higher education is making moves towards creating easier access to its HEIs for foreign students.
According to [CITATION Cai11 \l 2052] the incorporation of the international dimension into Chinese higher
education lies in its desire to increase the quality of higher education and improve its international reputation.
Such a move is bound to not only attract international recognition in education on the global platform but also
in other sectors for development.
2.2.1 Administration
At the end of 1992, the outcomes of 1990 higher education reforms were put forward at the National
Conference on Higher Education Work: “Large Size, Higher Quality, Optimized Structure and Improved
Effectiveness” [CITATION Hao00 \l 2052] Another experienced came in the midst of 1993 where higher
education was mandated greater institutional autonomy. This sovereignty power encouraged institutional
operation in responses to needs of society.
The administrative aspect of institutions in China have played a very important role in maintaining the
integrity of institutions as well as ensuring that internationalization is realized. A committee manages public
universities and the highest position in the University Party Committee is the Party Committee Secretary
(normally translated into English as either Chancellor or the Chairman of University Council), who leads a
Standing Party Committee. The members of Standing Party Committee hold the key leadership posts in
administrative organs of the university. The task of the Standing Party Committee at each university is to
ensure that the university follows the Party Committee’s guidelines, and to take responsibility for the political
education of university administrators, teachers, and students[CITATION Jia09 \l 2052]. In each institution,
the President works under the leadership of the Committee of Chinese Communist Party. The Committee of
Academy and the Representative Conference of Faculty and Staff deal with faculty and staff issues. The Party
Committee Secretary is vested with overall governance, which is often much stronger than that of the
university president. The Party Committee’s political supervision is implemented in the university through
various Party branches and sub-branches at all levels of the university. Virtually for every academic
administrative head, there is a parallel Party Secretary[CITATION Han93 \l 2052]. Within a centralized
educational system, the Ministry of Education controls all higher education institutions through policy-making,
legislation, planning, funding, and evaluation. All HEIs have to adhere to the guidelines provided by the
government through the ministry of education and other ministries that have a shared interest in education.
2.3 Funding
The funding of Chinese HEIs has seen a lot of changes since the 1990s. Between the 1950 to the 1980’s all
public institutions were government funded.The government made incremental adjustmentsaccording to higher
education institutions’ development needs and the available budget for higher education [CITATION Zha09 \l
2052]. Reforms since the 1990s saw a shift of financial responsibilities from the State to non-state sectors, and
the main approaches include charging tuition fees andencouraging universities to generate revenues. Over
time, the cost of higher education has shifted from government to parents, students and other purchasers of
university services is a typical feature of the cost recovery policy in higher education [CITATION Joh98 \l
2052] This move has helped many universities generate income and also it foster creativity for the universities
in terms of how they generate money.The adoption of the cost recovery system saw the abolition of the unitary
Scholarship and in its place, six types of financial assistance introduced these include, scholarships, tuition
waiver and reduction, special subsidies to exceptionally disadvantaged students, work-study programs and
student loans[CITATION LiW01 \l 2052]. The scholarship system has not only benefited the Chinese students
as the scholarship programs run by Municipalities, HEIs and the Chinese government are offered to
international students as well.
The Ministry has a few affiliate agencies that play different national coordination roles on
educationinternationalization. The Confucius Institute, University scholarship, Municipality scholarship and
the China Scholarship Council (CSC), which is the most important. The CSC providesfinancial assistance to
Chinese citizens wishing to study abroad and to the foreign students wishing to study in China. In 2014 alone,
the Chinese government awarded a total of 377,054 scholarships to international students to study in China
[CITATION Pro14 \l 2052]. The government pays the fees and accommodation for these foreign students
thereby creating income for the HEIs. The number of student studying in under scholarship excludes those who
are self-sponsoring students and those sponsored by institutions from their countries of origin.

2.4 Rankings
The Chinese HEIs has a ranking system though not formally captioned as ranking but rather as evaluation of
HEIs. Since the enactment of the Provisional regulation for the Evaluation of Regular HEIs in 1990, a multi-
layered national evaluation system for the higher education emerged [CITATION Wan011 \l 2052]. The
evaluation of postgraduate level is separate from the undergraduate one. The process when examined ranks
institutions according to which one does what best. The processes are rigorous and require that HEIs adhere to
certain specifications or they risk being awarded a fail when the evaluation takes place. Government
institutions do this evaluation. However, since the 1990s,none governmental organizations have taken interest
in ranking Chinese HEIs. An example is the Academic Ranking of the World Universities conducted by
Shanghai Jiaotong University[CITATION Jia09 \l 2052]. This shows that Chinese HEIs are being recognized
on the international scene and are beginning to compete competently with the worlds’ renowned universities it
also shows that China is making the effort to provide higher education that is internationally competitive.
2.5 Foreign Students in China
The available statistics suggest that there were approximately 377,054 international students in China in 2014
from more than 190 countries around the world studying in about 610 higher education institutions[CITATION
Sta10 \l 2052 ]; [CITATION Wan011 \l 2052][CITATION Pro14 \l 2052] The statistics indicate that China
is rapidly increasing the number of foreign students as the year 2020 approaches.[CITATION Wan011 \l
2052]attributed the number of scholarships available among others, as a probable reason for the influx of
foreign students in China.These numbers it can be argued, could be as a result of the number of Chinese
government scholarships, amongother reasons, that the country makes available every year.
Research has shown that there are not only economic advantages for individuals who obtain college degrees in
comparison to those with high school diplomas only, but also increased well being in terms of health and civic
engagement [CITATION Day02 \l 2052 ][CITATION Dee041 \l 2052 ][CITATION Ros96 \l 2052]This can
be viewed as one of the possible reasons that move student to making that decision to study in a new
environment. However to say that the reasons for the decision to study abroad by an individual only rest on
personal gain, is a shallow way of looking at the whole issue and[CITATION Ste081 \l 2052 ] stresses in that
with international education on the rise, the question of why so many students choose to leave their home
countries to study abroad is an interesting and intricate one. Dynamics of international students’ migration
might also be a result of the worldwide growth in higher education [CITATION UNE09 \l 2052][CITATION
Ago12 \l 2052 ]This supports the view that internationalization is becoming a global trend and cannot be
separated from globalization even though the two concepts are different.In a bid to understand the motivation
behind foreign students’ attractionto study and pick an institution to achieve this, it becomes imperative that
the issues surrounding internationalization of education should be analyzed.

CHAPTER THREE
Methodology

3.0 Introduction
The methodology entails setting out methods used in order to gain perspective of the research question. The
study area, research design, participants, data collection and data analysis are discussed herein.
3.1 Area of study
The area of study was Beijing Normal University. This location was picked because it was easy to access and
the large number of international students from different parts of the world provided the sample population
needed.
3.2Research type
This study took on a quantitative approach. Questionnaires were used to collect the data needed for this study.
Respondents were asked to fill in the necessary information, which was used for the statistical representation
of the findings in the study.
3.3Sampling Method
The target population was foreign students at Beijing Normal University from different faculties.The research
sampling method that was used in this study waspurposive sampling as the targeted group was foreign students
who were the main focus of this study. This method was adopted in order to target the group of people for
whom this study relied on.
3.4Sample size
The sample that was used in this study was 30 students from different countries across the globe. This was
done to try and capture the different views shared by different countries from developed to developing ones.
3.5 Data Analysis
The data collected from the respondents was analyzed using SPSS software to draw meaning from the
information collected.This data was then used to draw tables and chats that were then used to explain the
findings.

CHAPTER FOUR:
Findings

4.1 Demographics

Table 4.1 Profile of Survey Respondents

Variables Categories Frequencies Percent %

Age of Respondents 24 - 29 21 70.0

30 - 35 7 23.3
>35 2 6.7

Gender of Respondents Male 17 56.7

Female 13 43.3

Level of Study Undergraduate level 1 3.3

Master level 23 76.7
Post-graduate level 6 20.0
Table 4.1 is a representation of the demographic findings.
The findings reveled that 70% of the respondents aged between 24 and 29 and that only 6.7% were above 35.
It was also found that 56.7 % of the respondents were male while 43.3% were female. For the level of study
only 3.3% were undergraduates and the majority were from the postgraduate level and represented 76.7% of
the sample size.

Table 4.2Understanding higher education in China

Number Percent (%)
Private and Public universities 28 53.8
Teacher college of education 9 17.3
Technical and vocational institution 10 19.2
Nursing college 5 9.6
Total 52 100

This table explored how foreign students understand Higher education in China. The study indicated that
53.8% of the respondents thought that higher education in China means Private and Public universities while
17.3% thought it was Teacher college education and 19.2 % thought Technical and vocational institutions.

Table 4.3 Administrative system and Categories of University

Variable Categories Percent (%)
Administration system Party Secretary 3.3
President 33.3
Both Party Secretary and 60.0
President
Categories of
university 985 6.7
211 50
Both 985 and 211 6.7
None 26.7

Again, foreign students understanding of administration system was also explored 60 % of the respondents
believed that both the Party secretary and the President are responsible for the administrative affairs of Higher
education intuitions in China and only 3.3% said it was the party secretary.
Again the study reveled that only 6.7% felt that the university was both under the 211 and the 985 projects.
55.6% said it was a 211project university the rest did not know.
Out of the sample size 56.7% felt higher education was very good the lowest recorded was 13% representing
good. It showed that the respondents feel that the education system is good and this is a good indication.
Internationalization of higher education in china

Number (n) of Respondents

0 5 10 15 20 25

Scholarships

English Taught Course

Visiting Professors

Factors
Number (n)
Offshore Campus Percent (%)

Exchange Program

Student Mobility

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Percent (%) of Respondents

The survey showed that the factors that attracted respondents to studying in china because of the English
taught programs ranking at 19.6%. This was followed by the availability of Scholarships coming in at 18.5%.
Foreign exposure was another factor that was regarded important coming in with 18.5% similar value with
availability of Scholarships. The lowest motivation was that of offshore campus with 12%.
 CHAPTER 5

5.1 Introduction

This study aimed at finding out the perceptions of foreign international students of the internationalized
Chinese higher education. This chapter discusses influential factors that have been found in the course of this
study and relates to research, which has been done within the same research area.
5.2 Students understanding of Chinese higher education institutions
Table 4.2 shows that 53.8% of the respondents think that higher education is public and private Universities
while 17.3% think it means teacher education collages. This shows that in as much as the respondents may
understand in part what the Higher Education system of institutions in China; they still do not understand the
whole picture of higher education.
5.3 Institution Categories, Administration System and ranking
The respondent’s views concerning the categories of institution as shown in Table 4.3 indicate that 60% said
both the party secretary and the president of an institution run the institution a concept explained
by[CITATION Jia09 \l 2052] that names the party secretary as being the top most position. This finding could
indicate that there is a slight misinterpretation that could be a result of translation of who a party secretary is
and who the president is for Foreign international students as they may tend to try and relate the concepts to
their countries of origin where the systems and titles may differ.
Of the total number of respondents, 56.7% rated Chinese education as Very good a sign that the education they
are receiving is above average for them.
5.4Internationalization of Chinese HEIs and factor influencing students to study in China
The ‘opening up policy’ which has over the years seen the development of the economy has also played a role
in education and is at the center of Chinese HEIs increasing the introduction of English taught courses, hosting
more international students and increasing scholarships. Thisit can be said is the sum total of the Chinese
government’s move to build World Class Universities as suggested by[CITATION Jia09 \l 2052]. 40% of the
respondents were recorded as saying that the driving force for their presence in China was the availability of
scholarships this is in relation to [CITATION Wan01 \l 2052] who attributed the influx of international
students to the number of scholarships made available by China.While this accession may be true, the survey
revealed that 10% of the respondents said the English taught courses were their reason for attending HEIs in
China. It is important also to state that the second highest motivating factor for studying in China among the
respondents to be recorded was that of the quality of education with 30%. This is in relation to the policies that
China has allowed with regards to the evaluation of HEIs.
5.5 Conclusion
From the study it may be concluded that, perception of internationalization of higher education in China
reflects mobility in respect of students, professors, exchange programs, curriculum etc. other significant factors
includes offshore campuses and merging of universities. Again, foreign students’ motivation of studying in
China includes quality of education, as BNU is known for its famous reputation of number one leading Normal
University in China. Additionally, scholarship, research and types of international English taught programs
were motivating factors that drive foreign students in pursuance of higher education in China. Students rating
of English taught program as good is an indication of successful integration of local and international program.
The out come reveled that there is need to educate more and more international students on the Chinese higher
education systems and especially on the category of university in order for them to really appreciate the chance
that they have been accorded especially to study at BNU.
Finally, the Study has brought to light the fact that the internationalization on the Chinese education is
touching and shaping many different lives thus improving both the individual by providing them with an
opportunity at a better life and also helping in capacity building of many nations around the world. The
benefits that are accorded to students are tenfold and stand to have a huge influence in the intellectual cycles as
well as in fostering social and economic development through various contributions that students will stand to
make once they have graduated. Internationalization should be viewed and used as a tool that promotes cultural
interactions and boosts cooperation among different HEIs to bring about uniformity in education.

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APPENDIX
This questionnaire is to collect data from you for a research work to find out the what international students’
perceptions on Chinese higher education to the university, what the level of understanding Chinese Higher
education is and the factors lead to choosing China as a destination for Higher education attainment. The
information you give will be recorded and used purposely for this study. You are therefore assured of privacy
and confidentiality; and you are free to withdraw from the study at any time. Thank you for your co-operation.
SECTION A
Please tick (√) the answer applicable to you.
SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC DATA
1. Age
A. 18 - 23 [ ] B. 24-28 [ ] C. 29-34 [ ]
2. Gender
A. Male [ ] B. Female [ ]
3. What level of study are you perusing?
A. Undergraduate [ ] B. Postgraduate [ ] C. PhD [ ]
4.How many years is your program?
A.2 B.3 C.5 D. more
SECTION B
Please tick (√) the answer applicable to you.
UNDERSTANDING UNIVERSITY SYSTEM AND ADMINISTRATION
5. What do you understand about higher education in China?
A. Private institutions B. Public institutions C. Other
6. Under which category does your university fall?
A. 985 B. 211 C. Other
7. Which of the Scholarships are you aware of in China?
A. CSC Government Scholarship B. University Scholarship C. Confucius Institute
D. Local Government Scholarship
8. Who is responsible for administrative affairs in your Higher education Institution?
A. Party Secretary B. President C. Both President and Party Secretary
9.Are you aware of any exchange programs with other universities in your faculty?
A. Yes B. No
10. If YES what are/is the Program/s
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
11. How would you rank the following in order of importance?
1. Scholarships
2. English taught course
3. Visiting professors
 4. Offshore campus
5. Exchange programs
6. Student mobility

SECTION C
Please tick (√) the answer applicable to you.
PROGRAMS. INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH TAUGHT PROGRAMS
9. Are you on scholarship?
A. Yes B. No
10. Would you have attended BNU without a scholarship?
A. Yes [ ] B. No [ ]
11. How do you rate Higher Education in China?
A. Excellent B. Very Good C. Good D. Average
12. Would you recommend your friend or relative to study in China?
A. Yes B. No
13. If NO, why?
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

THANK YOU

International Students’ Expectations and Actual Experiences in

Chinese’ Higher Education: Case study in Beijing Normal University.
 Student ID: 201529010002
Version No. 1
Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University
Department of International and Comparative Education
31-12-2015

To:Dr.SANG Guoyuan
Associate Professor
Institute of Teacher Education
Email:guayuan.sang@bnu.edu.cn

CC:Teaching Assistant
Abdulghani Muthanna, PhD candidate

Table of Contents
Abstract...........................................................................................................................127
1. INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................128
1.1 Purpose of the Study..........................................................................................128
1.2 Research Questions...........................................................................................129
1.3 Significance of Topic..........................................................................................129
1.1 Definition of Terms............................................................................................130
2. LITERATURE REVIEW...................................................................................131
2.1 International Students in China.........................................................................131
2.2 Cross-cultural Adjustment issues...........................................................................131
 2.3 Cultural Adaptation issues......................................................................................132
3.1 Research design.....................................................................................................134
3.2 Participants............................................................................................................134
3.3 Data Collection Method.........................................................................................134
3.4 Data Analysis..........................................................................................................135
4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.........................................................................135
4.1 Expectations.......................................................................................................135
4.1.1 Academics issues and campus resources................................................135
4. 1.2 Expectation of cultural and interaction issues...........................................136
4.2 Actual experience..............................................................................................137
4 .2.1 Academics issues and campus resources...................................................137
4.2.2 Cultural and Interaction issues...................................................................139
5. CONCLUSION....................................................................................................140
5.1 Limitation and Future Research.............................................................................141

Abstract

In recent years, Chinese higher education is becoming the destination of many international students
from different corner of the world. In this study, the international students’ expectations they had
about Beijing Normal University (BNU) before their arrival compared with their actual experiences in
academics, campus resources, cultural and interaction issues at BNU were examined. Through
semi-structured interview, the findings revealed that their expectations in several instances matched
with their actual experiences. The study indicated that the academic supportive services and
campus resources being provided by BNU are overall satisfactory apart from some interaction and
cultural adjustment challenges like communication problem with staff and local students, problem in
accessing the library (Chinese language version) and adjustment challenges like food, dressing
style, and types of weather. Therefore, having a better understanding of these students’ interaction
problems and cultural adjustment challenges, the university’s academic and administrative staff can
recognize students’ needs. The university is required to meet international students’ need not only
academically and materially but also interaction and cultural adjustment challenges.
Key words: Anticipation; actual experience; international students; higher education; case study
BNU; China
 1. INTRODUCTION

International students are becoming vital constituents of China’ higher institutions and the
values are getting better through government support and more emphasis is given to promote
educational exchange, collaboration with foreign higher institutions and cultural exchange (Sumra,
2012). According annual report of China Association for international education (CAFSA, 2013), in
2011, the number of international students studying in China dramatically increased from 9.98 to
10.38% and accounts 292,611 for the first time compared with previous years. Recently, 328,330
international students from 194 countries and regions have pursued their study in 660 higher
education institutions (CAFSA, 2013).
Pan (2013) proposed that, though local and international mass media described China as it is
becoming a centre of attraction for foreign students extensively, educational investigation into this
area and its academic implications are not yet sufficient. In fact, the institutions in China are not
much attractive yet due to lack of efficient plan for foreign student in their academic setting and
socio-cultural adjustment issues (Rong, 2005). Therefore, making qualitative research and
examining the expectations and actual experiences of international students at Beijing Normal
University (BNU) which is one of the famous education universities in China can serve as reference
for future research and fix the gab in this area. Becoming a responsive to the adjustment issues,
academics and social life experiences of those students can enable Chinese’ higher education to
become key contender for foreign students (Pan, 2013). The result of these findings will contribute
for having clear evidence regarding the expectation and actual experience of international students
at BNU combined with the literature review about related studies may provides higher institutions of
China with better evidences of how to meet students’ wants and needs.
In this study, the researcher has employed a semi-structured interview. The first set of
interviews explored what the international students’ initial expectations had about studying in China
in general, at BNU before their arrival in particular. The second interview examined the actual
experiences the international students have within their one and half year study experiences at BNU.

1.1 Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine the international students’ expectations
they had about BNU before their arrival and then to identify the actual experiences of those students
during their one and half year studying experiences at BNU. The study further aims to suggest
solutions concerning of the Chinese’ higher institutions responsiveness in accommodating the
international students before and after their coming. In this study, the experiences related to
academics, campus resources, and interaction issues, cultural adjustment cases are examined.

1.2 Research Questions

The central research question is what are the international students’ actual experiences
throughout their one and half year studying experience at BNU compared with their initial
expectations of those students before their arrival? These vital questions bear other sub-questions,
which are required to understand the main research question. As a result, the following research
questions are examined:
 What are the international students’ actual experiences compared with their initial expectations
about the academics and campus resources at BNU?
 What are the international students’ expectations in contrast to actual experiences about their
interaction with local and international students to be like at BNU?
 What are the international students’ early expectations related to actual experiences of their cultural
adjustment issues to be like at BNU?

1.3 Significance of Topic

The significance of this study is to provide clear understanding about the expectations of
international students had before arrival at BNU and the actual experiences of those students who
have studied at BNU for more than a year. The findings of this study together with the literature
review are significant in contributing both for international students who study in China and Chinese’
higher institutions. First it expected to benefit the upcoming international students in having a clear
expectation and real picture of Chinese’ universities and colleges based on that clue they can have a
thorough direction. Second, it can serve for higher institutions of China with a better understanding
of how to meet students’ wants and needs so that the inflow and attraction of foreign students to be
significantly increasing that could potentially result high reputation and economic gain for Chinese
universities and colleges.

1.1 Definition of Terms

International students: international students are those who travel to a country different from their
own for the purpose of tertiary study however the definition of "international student" varies in each
country in accordance to their own national education system (OCED, 2015)
Expectation: a belief that something will happen or is likely to happen
Experience: the process of doing and seeing things and of having things happen to you
Cultural Adaptation: Cross-cultural adaptation occurs when people from one culture move to a
different culture, learning the rules, societal norms, customs and language of the new culture. By
bringing their existing thoughts, feelings, behaviors and beliefs with them, a person will integrate that
into their new society while adjusting and accepting to the new standards, thereby creating a
multicultural person (Zaki, 2014)
Cultural Adjustment: Living in a culture that is different from your own can be both an exciting
adventure and a challenging process. Regardless of what country you are from, it is common for all
international students to go through a period of cultural adjustment. Understanding this adjustment
process and getting support through this transition will help you to have a more fulfilling experience,
both academically and personally (CMHC, n.d)
 2. LITERATURE REVIEW

In this literature review, an attempt has been made to explore related studies to international
student’s anticipations and the actual experiences of their study about the host institutions or country
in general. The review further focuses on international students and studies with specific to Chinese
context; some theoretical foundation of the present study will be explained including adaptation and
adjustment factors addressed in this literature.

2.1 International Students in China

In recent years, China is attracting a significant number of international students from around
the world (BeBe, 2012, & Hu, 2014). This could be due to the Chinese government commendable
effort and Chinese’ growing magnitude in the world market (Cai & kahtamaki, 2014; Hu, 2014).
However, still more attention is needed in an international students affairs in Chinese’ higher
education particularly with socio-cultural and academic settings (BeBe, 2012).Basically, the
international students’ choices, experiences, and expectations considerably differ by their political,
economical and cultural context (Hu, 2014). BeBe (2012), in his study about the issues of
international study in China comes with several problems and perceptions such as inconvenience in
adapting to new culture, communication problem, financial and psychological problem, interaction
and academic problems. Therefore, Hu (2014) recommended that Chinese’ universities and colleges
for international students should introduces new mechanisms and means of academic and socio-
cultural support system that could settle the problem of foreign students in China rather than placing
them with burden to cope by themselves.

2.2 Cross-cultural Adjustment issues

Haber and Van (2015) states that international students with regard to adjustment issues in host
institutions most of the time confront with a set of difficulties as they have to familiarize themselves
with a new social life and educational atmosphere. Study in US higher education also indicated that
international students face with academic challenges, social isolation, and cultural adjustment
problems (Garza, Guzman & Wu, 2015). Therefore, host institutions have to be prepared before the
students’ arrival to meet students not only academically but also socially and culturally.
According Beall (2012), making education and research areas up to international standards are
significant objectives for higher institutions for many reasons. These include raising quality standards
and global relevance, attracting the best students and staff, producing income, pushing the
boundaries of knowledge through research and promoting internal diversity (Beall, 2012).
International students with culturally varied conditions may experience adjustment tension within
their host institution that is unique to them, such as cultural differences, language constraints, and
social behaviors (Araujo, 2011).

2.3 Cultural Adaptation issues

Study about international students in USA indicated that, adapting with new settings is a great
challenge; it requires dealing with the folks, culture, school, psychological issues, and behavioural
changes (Garza, Guzman, & Wu, 2015). Challenges including Language complexity, diverse
communication styles, and the long practices of adapting to American culture (Roark, 2013).
In such circumstances, host universities of the international students needs to be critically
responsive to the challenges of those students and required to provide them with proper guidelines
for accommodating culturally suitable services and programs in acculturating and adjusting them
(Sumer,2009). Furthermore, Sicat (2011) recommended that cultural schooling must be
systematically provided to the foreign students before they come from their home of origin. Movies,
documentaries, seminars and orientations needs to be given to the students before coming to their
host institution (Sicat, 2011). As a Roark (2013) further clarified, cross-cultural adaptation could not
realized overnight, it requires mental training, understanding, direction, and tolerance. Study about
foreign students in Philippines’ University indicates that, international students encountered with
several difficulties such as kind of food, sanitation ways, religious conviction, fashion style, taking
apart from home, means of transportation, connection with other students, type of weather and
education related factors like academic techniques of instructors and means of teaching (Sicat,
2011).
Many studies indicated that the adaptation difficulties are basically diverse among different
foreign students and they can be influenced by varies factors in dealing with the situation such as
demographic features, including age, sexual category, married status, country of origin, individual
factors like previous experience, predicator understanding, verbal communication competence,
students’ aims, behavioral characteristics, such as self-esteem, sociability, compassion, flexibility,
boldness), previous life factors for instance availability of resources, social bear network, size of
community, cultural and national diversity on campus (Kitsantas, 2004 ; Poyrazli & Kavabaugh,
2006).
Those features at same time can provide evidence for international student in
understanding cross-cultural adaptation process likewise to host institutions. At the time of cross-
cultural adaptation procedures foreign students may encounter with various challenges, such as
learning the academic culture and unusual education system, creating new relationship and building
a new common support system (Poyrazli & Grahame, 2007). Nevertheless, the most important
inconvenience for foreign students is to make a winning intercultural transition as quickly as possible
and still remain vital on their academic mission (Cushner & Karim, 2004).
When the students fail to become accustomed to a new culture, international students may
experience both psychologically and physically problems, such as tiredness, appetite trouble,
dyspepsia, bodily tiredness, wistfulness, despair, confusion, and feelings of separation and isolation.
In contrast to all challenges mentioned above, (Nakatsuka, 2014) , proposed that not all international
students encounter with difficulties in host colleges and universities but also many students broaden
their viewpoints and even their life in a new place by meeting new friends and social environment
makes life more enjoyable.
In summary, the literature review of the present study mostly deals with western context apart
from few with Chinese settings. The studies related with Chinese settings presented in this research
are most of them used a quantitative method to identify the problem of foreign students in Chinese’
higher education which is hard to identify the real and live problems of the phenomena. The present
study however, tries to understand the phenomena using qualitative approach which is laid in the
real empirical aspects of the international students. Generally, the reviews concentrate on identifying
the adaptation and adjustment challenges that the international students encountered in their
respective host institutions during their study. The arguments of those studies were international
students greatly encountered with challenges and difficulties of adapting and adjusting with their host
universities and colleges during their studies. As a result, their academic achievement and social life
may not be successfully secured. The other few arguments were also being exposed with different
culture and context not only results challenges but also opportunities of broaden of their viewpoints.
Finally what king of preparation should be done by higher institutions to settle the challenges that
defectively affect international student’s academic and social life have been covered in this reviews.
 3.RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research design

This study adopted a qualitative case study approach for the reason that the main purpose of
this study was to understand in depth the issue of international students’ expectation before arrival
and actual experience during their one and half year study at BNU. Cases study is a suitable
qualitative research method for the present study because it focuses on empirical knowledge
(experience) of the phenomena and close concentration to the influence of its social, cultural, and
education contexts on the international students (Baxter & Jack, 2008).

3.2 Participants

The selected participants were ten second year international students who are studying
graduate programs at BNU. This is because thinking that those students at least have one and half
year experience in BNU. Considering The time and the language barriers, the researcher, used a
convenience sampling since this technique deals with selecting people who are easy to reach and
access. In this sampling technique representativeness was incomplete. However; in order to
produce more representativeness some variables like gender, nationalities and level of studies were
considered. For example, participants were selected from different countries, such as, Eritrea, South
Korea, Japan, Malawi, Mexico, Pakistan, Tanzania, India, and Ghana. From the total participants
three were females where as the others were males.

3.3 Data Collection Method

The study employed broader face-to-face semi-structured interview in order to collect qualitative
data from ten participants. The interview procedure is conducted at students’ apartment and each
interview lasted for about 30 minutes. At this meeting, both writing a note and audio-recorder devices
was used .The main aim of the interview was to collect date about the expectations the participants
had before arriving at BNU and their actual experiences at BNU. Furthermore the fundamental
reason for using this kind of approach is in order to deeply understand the respondents’ point of view
and experience rather than to make generalization about the phenomena. The interview was held in
English because this was the only communication medium that the researcher can possibly manage
and be flexible.

3.4 Data Analysis

The interview is presented and analyzed in explanatory and expressive methods to grant
meaningful interpretation and discussion (McNabb, 2008). The data analysis was primarily meant to
use the research questions to narrow the scope of the study (Gabriel, 2013).The presentation and
analysis of the interview results is therefore sorted out into themes based on the findings of the
research. Finally, the data is rewritten with reference to the literature review and empirical studies.

4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The study aims to describe the expectations that international students studying at BNU had
before the beginning of their study and compare those to the experiences the same international
students have at BNU after one-year and half study experiences. In this section, the researcher
presents the findings from the study by dividing into two big topics: expectations and experiences.
Under those topics the interviews are subdivided in to themes. The expectation section comprises
two themes including academic and campus resources within one theme and cultural related issues
and interaction matters are also categorized within another theme. This is because similar ideas are
grouped with one theme. The same applies to experience section because they are interrelated
each other.

4.1 Expectations

4.1.1 Academics issues and campus resources

The participants are asked about their expectations of academics issues and campus resources
at BNU they had before they came to BNU and replied that they had many optimistic expectations as
BNU is the most popular education university in China. With regard to the teaching-learning
activates, the participants stated that student evaluation criteria, thesis guidelines, library facilities,
every website and library should have English version; internet access, academic advisors and
defence committee , well technologically equipped classrooms and teaching facilities would be more
convenient and ever fitting. A respondent said:

As a world class university, I expect that BNU should have very clear academic guidelines
regarding the teaching-learning process as well as thesis writing and evaluation criteria. As far
as the teaching-learning process, I expect that instructors should use a student-centered
pedagogy that includes each and every student. This also expected to include proper and
objective assessment of students as their academic achievement. While thesis writing is
concerned, I expected a proper guidance and evaluation of the study. During paper defense,
the defense committee should also come prepared by reading the research paper and with a
written comment for the candidate. Last but not least, I also expect that every website (including
the library) could have an English version especially for the international students (Interviewees
from Africa, South America and Asia).The resources that I expect to use most are academic -
human and material resources such as professors, advisors, internet facility, library (mostly
online), canteen as well as administrative offices including the ISO and Faculty.
Other participant from Africa also stated that he had expected that there would be a big class
size which wouldn’t be more conducive for him because he considers himself as a shy that could
probably affects his academic achievement. “I thought I would be shy in front of big class population.
I have absorbed a lot of knowledge and influences which I couldn’t get in my own country.”

4. 1.2 Expectation of cultural and interaction issues

 The participants’ had expected that cultural issues particularly language wouldn’t make any
difference especially in academic area since they understood that the medium of instruction is
English. In addition of that, they thought that they could communicate using English language with
Chinese youngsters since English language would be common for everybody. Besides, they
expected that food species and weather would be their major trouble in their study life especially the
respondents from Africa.
To be frank, I thought that Chinese people (at least the youngsters) are good in English as it
was one of the compulsory subjects in their national examination. However, in order to
communicate well and live in China, Chinese language is very important as the Chinese people
are not good in English. Moreover, I had a concern about the cultural differences and their
impacts on my daily and academic life. The most serious thing I had expected before I came to
BNU was to face with difficulties accustoming foods and the climate situations.
The respondents’ thought concerning interaction capability with their students from home,
international students from other countries and local students in host institution and outside, most of
the respondents replied that they expect language will be barrier particularly with Chinese students.
However, they agree that interaction with all the community of BNU would have been benefited them
if they could speak and interacted properly.
I am a social person who could interact with anyone regardless of gender, race or citizenship.
Hence, I expect to interact with anyone equally. I thought international students and Chinese
students live in the same dorm. I also thought that Chinese students and local students learn in
the same class and in this case I expect to communicate and interact with them will take time
and will be tough. I therefore expected to interact with them all equally regardless of whether
someone is a local student or international student.

All the above excerpts indicate that different international students have different choices, and
expectations (Hu, 2014), although there are some common issue that almost every students expects
from top universities like BNU. These issues include quality human and material resources as well
adaption to the environment such as good professors, quality instructional materials, Chinese
language, etc. This is also in agreement with the idea of BeBe (2012) who argues that more
attention is given to international students’ affairs including the socio-cultural and academic settings.

4.2 Actual experience

4 .2.1 Academics issues and campus resources

Based on the respondents thought, academics and campus resources in BNU are reasonably
good particularly with most of the professors who come from outside and inside but they further
expressed, there is still lack of clear guidelines about thesis evaluation and research ethics with
some of the professors. Furthermore, the library and other websites are inconvenient to access
easily. Generally, As far as the campus resources and academics are concerned, the respondents
stated that there is enough and quality facilities and qualified academicians. BNU is international
outstanding institution with excellent professors and quality education.
I found that BNU is a very good university with many good academicians both from within and
outside of China. However, it still lacks some guidelines including thesis evaluation guidelines
and research ethics guidelines. Hence, many professors come to thesis defense without
reading the research paper and evaluate students just from the 10 minutes presentation. They
don’t also come with written comments and feedback to candidates. Moreover, some professors
dominate the class instead of allowing students participation while others become biased
towards white students from the West.
Most of the participants described academic supportive services and administrative offices in
BNU as effective and efficient in providing international students with necessary and update
information about what courses to be taken along with their timetable of the courses. Moreover,
accommodations like dormitory and hygiene are well organized .Stipends are always in advance.
The library website is mainly in Chinese which makes access difficult for international students.
With some of the problems, BNU has many good things including its international reputation,
visiting scholars and many excellent professors. The platform for students’ and staff interaction
is also exemplary, as administrative offices including the ISO and Faculty are strong, effective
and efficient in providing us on time information. Dormitory and hygiene services are the most I
like in BNU. I have been here for one and almost half year, our salary comes always on time.
Other respondents noted that the class size and learning environment along with the teaching
facilities in BNU are maintained with international standards and quality. They expressed their
satisfaction by saying there are adequate and good physical learning environment. However, there
are some professors who are irresponsible to give clear direction in teaching and assessment
matters.
Some faculty members are helpful, while others are not at all. Some give us clear directions
about assignments and how to go about it. There is also a problem with some lectures failing to
understand what the teacher wants to say and explain due to jargon. I have been active in all
academic related activities and I give myself a thumb up for that. I found that classes are really
small and allows me to actively participate in the learning process. Additionally I expected that
faculty members are at the disposal of students, academically advising them whenever
necessary. However, I find that some faculty members don’t really care about it. This puts me in
a very difficult situation.
Respondents from Mexico and Africa replied to the question about academic issues that in BNU
there is lack of academic counseling and insufficient international students’ activities to reduce
stress and to give guidance. Furthermore, they described the public offices at BNU as reluctant to
provide data for research including the local people.
I don’t know why the local people if you ask them to give you any information they escape
away (Africa) and as BNU is a big university with a lot of different diversified group, it is
expected to advertise their academic counseling and make its activities familiar to students
incase international students face with psychological problem and improper direction.

Regarding to the library facilities, a student from Republic of Korea stated:

Since I came to BNU, I’ve used library facilities as well as online resources. For the Education
Faculty members, we have more than two extra libraries and rooms for studying. And the
professors are also very helpful in a way to provide all of related materials without any charges.

4.2.2 Cultural and Interaction issues

Most of the respondents explained that there is communication problem due to lack of translators;
most of Chinese society don’t speak English; most posted notices are hard to understand; campus
staff are not willing to cooperate with international students due to lack of English language.
Therefore, misunderstandings because of language barriers are common among the internationals
students themselves, teaching and non-teaching staff and local students at BNU. This badly affects
the academics and daily life of the international students as well. Apart the language barriers Beijing
is a very good and safe place to live and the people are friendly and cooperative once you get to
know them. The multicultural nature of the students in the BNU enable them to have great
advantage for sharing different social and cultural experiences which makes BNU a melting spot for
the various students. The respondents further stated that cultural exchange and acculturation
activities among the diverse groups of the population carryout in classes, field trips, and other
academic/social activities are the main motivators to cope with Chinese culture and social life.

Besides the language problem, Beijing is a very good and safe place to live and the people are
friendly and cooperative once you get to know them. The multicultural nature of the students is
great advantage for sharing different social and cultural experiences which makes BNU a
 melting spot for the various students. These cultural adjustments and situations occur in
classes, field trips, and other academic/social activities. My major concern was how to get
integrated in the Chinese culture especially their food. However, there is one factor that I
overlooked, that is language. The moment I arrived here, I found that everyone is speaking
Chinese including workers in the dormitories, faculty support staff members and international
student office. I could only meet few people here and there who could speak a little English.
This up to now has greatly compromised my adjustment and is affecting my study. I can’t say I
have fully adjusted to the Chinese culture because of language which in my view is an integral
part of culture.

In these excerpts one common problem repeatedly mentioned is language barriers halt
international students from interaction with local community which is similar with the idea of (BeBe,
2015;Kitsantas, 2004; Roark, 2013) and takes significant time to adapt the new culture without
having basic Chinese language training. However, as Roark (2013) suggests, cultural adaptation
couldn’t realized over night, it requires mental training, direction and tolerance.
I do not define a boundary with nationality. If you have a common interest, you can be friend or
a working partner with anyone. Our classmates are under the same program and same goal
(short-period), so we support and help one another. Personally, here in BNU, there are lots of
students from my country. It does not make sense that you become a friend with everyone
within your society. Basically, we have a different type of Korean community here in China as
well. Also I have been involved in different groups out of the program like church community,
Chinese language class, and personal relationships besides academic fields.

One from Korea stated that communication and interaction with any one depends up on
individual interest and willing of the person (Nakatsuka, 2014), by exposing themselves with any
one, student can broaden their viewpoints and even their life in a new place by meeting new friends
and social environment makes life more enjoyable.

5. CONCLUSION

The study is meant to clearly understand the international student’s expectations they had
before arrival at BNU and to examine their actual experience for one year and above studying
experience at BNU. Furthermore the present study tried to give the foreign students chance to
express their feeling on how the BNU can better serve the international students who will come in
later time.
The result of the research demonstrated that there are relationship between international
students’ anticipations and actual experiences especially with academic supportive services and
campus resources. The findings further indicated that international students satisfied with qualified
professors both from inside and outside of the university .Class structure is different than their home
class structure. However, Chinese class structure is satisfactory. Concerning the social interaction,
international students are friendly among each other, but there is some communication difficulties
with Chinese students and campus staff as they expected. Furthermore, food issues, dress style,
types of weather and Chinese version online library remain the main challenges of this study.
In this study, some theoretical foundation including adjustment issues, adaptation and related
studies for development of the international students could be further explored. Last not least, the
research results tried to provide ideas for student affairs professionals and future research as people
desire to help international students adapt to life at Chinese universities. Higher education
institutions have a responsibility for the development of all students they bring to campus. The
proper research, training, and implementation must come about if these institutions want to keep on
having students from around the globe study.
This study suggests that some preparations need to be made by the university that will hug
foreign students upon pursuing their study. Language translators during research and other related
activities, accessible electronic library with English version websites and other data sources,
considering international students food, viable orientation in overall adjustment procedures like
accessing electronic library and teaching Chinese language more than before are some of the
suggestions proposed by the researcher.

5.1 Limitation and Future Research

This case study was focused on small and particular number of international students in one
University, BNU, of the whole Chinese’s universities and colleges due to the time and financial
limitations. Therefore, making generalization based on these findings may seriously belittle the
validity of the research. The result may not represent the entire international student voices in all the
Chinese higher institutions. Similar future studies can tackle the limitation.
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Appendix A

Expectation Interview Protocol

Why did you choose China for your study?
Why did you decide to come to BNU to study?
What did you expect about academics at BNU?
What did you expect about your social interaction will be at BNU?
What did you expect concerning cultural adjustment at BNU?
What, if any, campus resources did you anticipate you’ll use the most?
Did you expect you’ll be interacting more with Chinese students, foreign students or other? Why?
Actual experience Interview Protocol
What have you been experiencing with the academics at BNU since your arrival?
How was your interaction with local and international students at BNU community?
How have you been adjusting with the culture at BNU community since your arrival?
What, if any, campus resources have you used the most?
Have you interacted more with Chinese students, International students or with home mate
students?
FACULTY OF EDUCATION, BEIJING NORMAL UNIVERSITY
COURSE: CHINESE HISTORY AND CULTURE (EDUCATION SYSTEMS, POLICY AND
MANAGEMENT IN CHINA)

ADMISSION OFFICER IN HIGHER EDUCATION: PERSPECTIVES OF FACULTY

MEMBER AND STUDENT AFFAIRS PROFESSIONAL OF BEIJING NORMAL
UNIVERSITY.

COURSE ASSIGNMENT #FINAL ASSIGNMENT

ID NO: 201529010015
COURSE INSTRUCTORS: Prof. LI Jiayong& Dr. SANG Guoyuan
Fall, 2015.
ABSTRACT

For the past few decades, Chinese Higher Education has been struggling to improve student’s
affairs such as improving academic advising, giving non refundable financial support, improving
admission systems,improving residential life, encouragingstudent’s organization, and giving
much attention on food and dinning.The administration of students affairs have been adopted
from the American higher education system and started to spread all parts of Asia and Africa.
This paper will concentrate on admission officers and their role as student’saffairs. The current
state of the program was investigated through exploring the beliefs of admission officers,
undergraduate students and students’ affairs professionals. Additionally, available university
hierarchy documents were critically examined. A pilot study pointed to the need for interviews
with faculty members and students affairs professionals. Face to face interviews were designed
and conducted. Three admission officers, five recent admitted graduates’ students and three
students’ affairs professional from Beijing Normal University were interviewed. All interviews
were audio-recorded and transcribed. An extensive reading of the transcriptions led to the
identification of major patterns. Several themes were found. These themes highlight various
aspects. The findings showed that admission officer is placed under students’ affairs
administration. The findings, furthermore, revealed that the students’ affairs professional paid
much attention to the functions of admission officers. Finally, despite the well done job by
admission officers, all participants agreed on the need for re-evaluating admission officers
responsibilities whether under the students affairs or under the main administration.By using
phenomenological research underpinnings, this study explored the perspectives of faculty
member and student affairs professional to asses who is an admission officer, what are the
qualifications of an admission officer, what are the functions of an admission officer and lastly to
investigate how they organize their work. In order to have an in-depth analysis of the study
question, I used a case study approach in which Beijing Normal University formed a unit of
analysis. Keywords; students affairs professionals, admission officers, Beijing Normal
University, FM- faculty member, SAP- students affairs professional, RS-recent admitted student
AAHE-American Association for Higher Education.ACPA- American Collage Personnel
Association,NASPA- National Association of Students Personnel Administrators
 1. INTRODUCTION

Student affairs profession is very important in relation to student development that is why
student affairs professionals have the responsibility to understand all external and internal factors
that help a student development. Therefore they should know what they believe, what they
value, their responsibilities and their self identity, and thus it make a philosophy. Students’affairs
professions includeadmission officers, who have the responsibility to enroll students and give
them the higher education studying guidelines.The first year of college is a critical period for
many students on college campuses across the world. The transition from high school to
university environment constitutes a period of new and intense academic, interpersonal and
personal pressure. This experience varies with institutional size, type and location but common
effects and trends have been identified. These trends have been the focus of number of studies
that have explored variables that impact students’ retention, as well as how to provide more
appropriate learning environments. Programs and interventions have been designed to enhance
and improve the experience of first year students. A particular focus of these interventions has
been on how to improve the retention of first year students through the establishment of learning
communities. To foster student’s retention and maximize students learning, many institution of
higher education have focused increased attention and resources upon the social and academic
undergraduate and graduate community. (Gordon, 1998).This paper will explore the admission
officers and their place in the whole University administration. According to the 1937 and 1949
Student Personnel Point of View the admission officer should be placed within the purview of
student affairs because their functions has been attracting and admitting students(Hosslers,
1988). Not only that but also helping students to make a successful transition from high school to
college (Munger&Zucker,1982) and to recruit students for specific colleges and university
( Shaffer & Martinson, 1966). Thus it is important for admission officers to understand the need
of students and to know the Institution by whom they are employed. In this way the admission
officers can help students make the best college choice decision possible while at the same time
recruiting students well-suited to the specific Institutions they represents. Because of the increase
complexity and tremendous changes occurring at colleges and universities it is incumbent upon
faculty and student affairs professionals to forge collaborative partnership in order to enhance
students learning (Johnson &Cheatam, 1999).
Faculty members and students affairs professional have the responsibility to model collaboration
and to learn from one another. (AAHE,ACPA&NASPA, 1998).Thus it is important to investigate
who is an admission officer.
Who is the admission officer,gatekeeper or Salesman? Thelin (1982) has labeled these two
contrasting images of admissions as the gatekeeper and headhunter images. In the beginning of
19th century the admission officer was more of gatekeeper until the 21 st century where an
admission officer of today is more of a salesman than gatekeeper. In China most of the
admission officers are both gatekeeper and salesman. In United States of America most of the
admission officers are salesmen. In Tanzania especially the admission officers of private
University are salesmen and they place themselves in the students’ affairs administration.The
purpose of this case study is to investigate how faculty member and students affairs professions
at Beijing Normal University (BNU) describe the functions and skills of admission officer, the
challenges and issues they face and how do they evaluate its organization. The research questions
are who is an admission officer, what are the main functions of an admission officer, what are the
basic skills of an admission officer, what are challenges of an admission officer and how do they
evaluate its organization.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW.

As higher education has changed in scope, structure and mission, theadmission profession has
been called to perform new functions, takeon new responsibilities, and in some instances, bear
the burden for theinstitution’s very survival.Today more than ever students’ affairs must respond
to a wide range of demands for accountability and respond to requests to assist faculty in
designing the best learning environment for students. Technology is affecting how students’
affairs professionals work with students to deliver traditional programs and services (Gordon,
1998). As the Chronicle of Higher Education noted, just afew decades ago, admission officers
counseled students instead of crunchingnumbers. The job was more academic than marketing-
oriented, andenrollment management barely existed in anyone’s vocabulary. Today, theChronicle
observed, the admission (or enrollment management) office is adrastically different operation,
and its success or failure “often determinesa college’s financial health and prestige.”The changes
in the admission function have opened up new opportunitiesfor those who pursue a career in this
area.
At the same time, these aspiringprofessionals are finding that they need to constantly acquire
new skillsand master new disciplines without a formal or explicitly-defined careerpath, such as

i|Page
certification or licensing, in order to advance. For example,they may have responsibility for
overseeing marketing and social mediacampaigns, conducting complicated statistical analyses,
and learningand applying new technologies along with continuing to build trust anddevelop
relationships with prospective students, their parents, high schoolcounselors and the broader
education community.How can an admission professional at the entry, mid-point or senior level
ofhis or her career navigate the changes in higher education and the admissionprofession and
acquire the knowledge and skills needed for the professionals?
Most of the admission officers have no ideas about their role as students’ affairs practitioners
even though they perform their duties as students affairs practitioners and thus the profession
remains somewhat ill-defined, especially for young professionals confused and even turned off
by uncertainties. (ACPA & NASPA, 1998, Rentz&Saddlemire, 1988)

3. METHODOLOGY.

Qualitative methodology was used in both data collection and data analysis. During data
collection there was aface to face interview with three faculty members (admission officers),
three student affairs professionals and five recent admitted graduate students. Personal
interview is a method used to gather primary data by researchers pursuing qualitative
research strategies (McNabb 2008). The aim of the interview was to get individual
perspectives on the functions, skills, challenges and organization of admissions at Beijing
Normal University. The researcher designed the semi-structured interview questions with a
focus on addressing these four central questions: 1. what are the functions of Admission
officer? 2. What do you think are the basic skills for an Admission Officer? 3. How do you
Evaluate admission Organization at Beijing Normal University? 4. What are the issues and
Challenges facing Admission at Beijing Normal University? Theresearcher conducted the
interviews (audio-recorded) with five recent admitted students of master's degree programs.
The length of each interview ranges between 45 and 60 minutes.
Each interviewee was interviewed individually. Then the researcher conducted the interview
with three admission officers and three students’ affairs professionals and each interview took
almost 75 minutes. Selection of students, faculty members and students affairs professionals
was based on criterion sampling as the researcher focused on including a participant with

ii | P a g e
 interrelated and connected responsibilities and skills.. This technique increases the chance of
finding out different attitudes towards the issue under study. Theparticipants voluntarily
participated in the study and a consent form was obtained before conducting the interviews.
In order to ensure anonymity, responds real names are not presented. Instead, the researcher
decided to pseudonym the respondents as faculty member (FM), students affairs professional
(SAP) and recent admitted students as (RS). The researcher co-authored the data by
summarizing and reflecting on what the interviewee was saying, thereby interpreting the
meaning that the interviewees gave to their data. This ensured that participants’ meaning was
accurately captured and it kept the interview focused.

4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

4: 1 ORGANIZATION AND PRACTICES OF ADMISSION

Success of any higher education in the world depends on the students outcomes which in
turn it mostly depend on the excellent admission organization. Both faculty member and
student affairs professional had similar answer to the question,How do you Evaluate
admission Organization at Beijing Normal University? They all agree that at Beijing Normal
University the office of Admission organize the admission into different departments namely
undergraduate, postgraduate and International student’s admission office. (Comprehensive
enrollment system) And to some extent they work together to achieve the institutional
mission. Their responses are in line with the literature review that faculty member and
students Affairs professional have the responsibility to work together and enhance the
learning activities (NASPA, 1998). At BNU the admission of both undergraduate,
postgraduate Chinese students are centralized. The undergraduate is mostly controlled by the
government under the Ministry of Education (MOE). Great efforts have been made to ensure
an open, transparent and fair college admission system.
Since 2005 the MOE has implemented `` the sunshine project`` of college admission issued
policies or measures promoting the transparence of information, stronger supervision and better
services for fair admission process. And because of that the number of students in Chinese
regular higher education had grown five times in 2007 compared to the year 1998. (Wang, 2009).
Therefore one can say that organization of admission office is related to the factions of students’
affairs and hence ensuring the status of the particular university.Much of recent evidence

iii | P a g e
concerning the centrality of educational attainment in the process of intergenerational social
mobility is based on the seminal model of occupational attainment developed. Formal schooling,
typically defined either as years of schooling completed or degrees attained, plays an important
dual role in these dynamics models of the status attainment process. In terms of institutional
persistence and obtaining bachelor degree scholars have suggested that an important contextual
effect of selective colleges is to increase student’s commitment to the institution. Since the
privilege of enrolling comes at such a high cost (both financially and in terms of academic effort
and achievement). If the students perceive that particular college confers high adult social status
on its graduates, the greater the value he or she will place on membership in it and graduation
from it.(Feldman, 1991).

4: 2 PERCEPTIONS ON THE REQUIRED SKILLS

Every professional has major guidelines skills and in order to ensure good performance of any
job there must be correlation between job description and skills. Most of the literature review
shows that master degree is not enough for the excellent admission officer as participant SAP
noted that:
“Admission officers need to be friendly and energetic as well as have excellent
communication skills. They enjoy meeting new people, giving presentations, and
answering questions about their institution. Extended travel might be required to meet
with students and stakeholders.”

Also participant FMsaid:“In general, an admission officer needs to be familiar with their
university or college and feel comfortable promoting it to potential students. No
particular certifications or education is necessary for this position, though a bachelor's
degree and a valid driver's license are often required.

Some employers may prefer candidates with a master's degree in a related field and
experience in college admissions and financial aid processes. Strong computer skills
and proficiency with statistics can be helpful in organizing and analyzing admission
information”.

RS think that “admission officer should at least have master degree in Education,
psychology or business, Not only that but also admission officer should be honest with

iv | P a g e
good communication skills and marketing skills. heor she should have quality of being
a salesman” Like many higher education Organizations, human capital is student Affairs
greatest resource and that it is important to understand how to effectively recruit, select,
develop, supervise and evaluate this resource. (Winston &Creamer, 1997). FM and SAP
also agree that the higher education systems are competing to get talented students
from all over China. They said:

“Beijing Normal University is also competing with Peking University to attract best and
talented students are one of their aims”.

Admission officer should possess the best communication skills and marketing skills.
SAP& RS noted that:

“An admission office should possess self respect, good moral and honest skills, not only
that but also she/he must have an understand about students development theory apart
from having master degree or doctorial degree in the field. The admission officer also
must possess computer skills, and communication skills to help him or her perform the
task easily and perfectly. The admission officer should have marketing skills in order to
establish some strategies to attract students from different places and with different
background and expectations, interest and knowledge.

The author analyzes the discourse of SAP, RS and FM that there is a need to re-asses the general
required skills of an admission officer given the fact that every participant has special needs to
accept who should work as an admission officer. But their statements indicate that admission
officer should be placed under students affairs.

4: 3 PERCEPTIONS ON THE FUNCTIONS OF ADMISSION OFFICER

As students affairs practitioner admission officers have their own responsibility to fulfill in their
respective higher education institutes. One the participants named SAP discoursed that:
“The major functions of admission officer are to analyze what type of students are suitable for
the University, to understand the prospective students (their talent and financial status), to
establish the ways to attract students, to establish the strategies to retain the students and

v|Page
advertise the University. Therefore the functions are directly related to the University Mission.”
The above discourses is directly explain how admission officers work with students’ affairs and
hence make them students affairs practitioners as stipulated in the NASPA documents. The
admission officer FM also discourse the functions as follows: Reviewing Applications.The
process for reviewing applications is a bit different at every college. Typically, an admissions
officer will check that you meet the college’s minimum academic requirements, like test scores
and GPA. Then, they look at the rest of your application to get a feel for the type of individual
you are and decide if you’re a good fit for their college. Remember that the average admissions
officer will have hundreds even thousands of applications cross their deskanddeciding who gets
inultimately, the job of an admissions officer is to decide who to accept waitlist and deny. They
may not follow an exact checklist, but admissions officers know what they are looking for. They
only want to offer admission to students who will be happy and successful at their college, and
they make their decisions accordingly.A largely office-based role, you will be working within a
team and communicating with both departmental and central university staff. A comprehensive
knowledge of the admissions process is essential”.
SAP discourse that an admission officer of BNU is also responsible for preparing orientation
books and communicating with prospective students through website, electronic mail and letters.
To act as a bridge between the community and BNU. An admission officer should ensure
community balance between prospective students and the college. Not only that but also she/he
should have a dipper understanding of the mission and analyses what kind of students are
suitable for the university and how to get them. To reduce drop out and carry out follow up study
oriented to alumni.
(Thelin, 1982: Astin,1977) noted that the 1970`s offices of Admissions begun to use marketing
techniques such as improve publication materials, targeted mailing strategies to attract larger
number of students. Therefore the statements above give an explanation about the relationship
needed between admission officers and students which at the end stipulate the work of admission
officer as students’ affairs practitioner. Admission officers are placed in the work of students’
affairs professionals. Therefore from that clarification from the participants and the literatures it
is discoursedthat admission officers in BNU unknowingly place themselves in the students’
affairs professional.
4: 4 ISSUES AND CHALLENGES FACING ADMISSION OFFICERS (BNU)

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It is the fact that admission officers of any higher institution are dealing with enrollment of
students, thus it is their daily responsibility to ensure maximum number of enrolled students each
year. The participant FM & SAP both discourse that: The major challenge is to attract talented
students because most of them with high financial status prefer to go abroad to study in countries
like Japan, Australia, Canada and United States. Because of the project 985 and 211 we need to
make an effort to attract a lot of best talented students. The second challenge is the centralized
financial policy by the Ministry of Education which hinders the capability of Beijing Normal to
work under its own control. This challenge also has impact to the collaboration between faculty
members and admission officers because it seems that faculty members depends totally on the
process of admission to get best students, that is why in the interview one of the faculty member
gave out examples of complain that nowadays they get low skilled students in their department.
She said:
“I’ve had faculty members in an arts department in the school of arts “You know, we haven’t
enrolled a decent male singer in the last three years. My music class has gone to hell.
Thus it is clear that with few exceptions, admissions officers recognize the fundamental conflict
between their organization-centric behaviors and their expressed commitment to student skills.
Also students are more likely to rate their institutions high in academic reputation if they show a
high degree of academic or athletic involvement or if they i nteract frequently with faculty and that
will be as a publication of the institution outside. The third challenge is that BNU has no
professionals in the admission system and most of the workers have little experience (FM& SAP).
Those who go into admission field generally enter directly from college and that they have no
experience at all.Another challenge is that of recruiting and hiring qualified, diverse staff
members is Universal across all areas of students Affairs Practice. (Raetz,2001). And because of
that it becomes very difficult to ensure well done responsibility in the field. Admission officer
have difficulties in performing their responsibilities.
Admission officer said:“A big thing for us right now is trying to recruit a multicultural and
diverseclass. . . We look for first-generation college students; we look for EasternEuropean,
America and Asia. We look for religious diversity; welook for a number of different factors. . . .
That is a very important institutionalpriority for us. . . . Are we concerned about institutional
needs? You bet. We’re also concerned, as are most university…less so here than at many, but to
some extent here… So if we’re going to be able to have a socio-economically diverse class, then

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we have to have at least a good share of those workers who can carter for diversity. . . . So, sure,
institutional needs are what my job is about” From the above statement it is clear that BNU as a
higher institution with multicultural background students needs a lot of efforts to enable
admission officers to fulfill their daily duties as far as the profession is concerned.Limited and
sometimes strained access to university in job trainings for admission officers makes things
difficult for them to perform their duty. BNU systems are somehow not designed for handling
international data (phone numbers, addresses) most of them are in Chinese. Participant FM
discourses that “Perhaps one of the greatest challenges to attracting and keeping talented and
qualified men and women who will determine the future of the profession and, quite possibly
higher education is raising awareness of admission as a career option and starting to outline a
viable career path”.
CONCLUSION
Discussions in this paper revolve around the major themes identified during the interview. Both
respondents thought are in line with literature review. Therefore based on this interview it is
evidence that both faculty member, student Affairs Professional and newly admitted students
have the same perception about admission officers job description, skills and the challenges they
encounter in everyday accountability. They also agree with NASPA document that the perfect
placing of admission officers is in students’ affairs professionals even though it is steel a
challenging matter to the university. And to them placing admission officers in students’ affairs
box will ensure excellent performance and good quality outcomes.
Students are more likely to rate their institution high in academic reputation if they show a high
degree of academic and interact frequently with faculty. All of these issues can better be achieved
when they received the best orientation from admission officers. The best orientation can help
them select the best courses related to their interest and prior qualifications. As pointed out by
the students theoristsChickering&Stanford that students in their first year need a lot of attention
and care to help them pass through their worse transition period and enable them to deal with the
challenges they come across with. They need a lot of support from faculty members, peers, and
from the environment. The most crucial thing is that the support should not exceed the
challenges they have; there should be a balance between challenges and supports. Even though
they both agree that it is hard to balance between challenges and support but as students’ affairs
practitioner, admission officers should work collaboratively with both faculty members and

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administration to carter for success. Good admission services can led to high ranking of the
university too. Establishing the feedback scheme from stakeholders and creating a follow up
survey to enhance quality assurance of the services provided by the admission office can be used
to improve the services of admission officers. Further research should be conducted to improve
students’ affairs because students’ affairs are the key instrument for attaining institutional
mission.

REFERRENCES
Astin, A. W.(1977) Four critical years, Jossey-Bass publisher, San Francisco.
Evans. N.J., Forney. D.S. & Guido-DiBrito.F.M. (1998).Students Development in College,
Theory, Research and Practice (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Evans. N. J., Forney, D. S., Guido, F. M., Patton, L. D., &Renn. K.A. (2010).Students
Development in College: Theory, Research and Practice (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.

Felman, K. (1991) How college affects students, Jossey-Bass publisher, San Francisco.

Gordon, W. T. (1998) College students’ affairs journal

McNabb, D. E. (2008) Research Methods in Public Administration and Non Profit Management:
Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches. 2ndEd. PHI Learning Private Limited, New Delhi.
Nagel, S. (2001) College Student Affairs Journal: Development of an Academic Honest Policy:
A case study in Collaboration with Faculty:vol . 20, No 2 spring 2001
Raetz, T. (2001) College Student Affairs Journal ``Conducting Job Analyses and Creating
Position Descriptions for Student Affairs Professionals`` Vol. 21, No 1 Fall 2001.
Rentz, A.&Saddlemire, G (1988) Student Affairs Functions In Higher Education: Spring Field
Illinois, USA, Charles Thomas Publisher.
Sanford, N. (1962).The American college. New York: Wiley.

Sanford, N. (1966).Self and society. New York: Atherton Press

Wang, L. et al (2009) Higher Education in China: Zhejian University Press, Paramus New
Jersey

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Winston, R. (2001) College Student Affairs Journal: Staffing in Student Affairs: A survey of
Practices:Vol. 21 No 1 Fall 2001
Appendix A; Interview Questions
 What do you understand about admission officer in Chinese higher education system?
 What are the functions of Admission officer?
 What do you think are the basic skills for an Admission Officer?
 How do you Evaluate admission Organization at Beijing Normal University?
 Do you think there is a relationship between students’ affairs and admission officer?
Why?
 In your opinion where do you place the functions of admission officer? Why?
 In your opinion are there any comparative features between admission officers among
different universities in china? Why?
 Basing on your experience do you believe in students’ affairs professionals? Why?
 What are the issues and Challenges facing Admission at Beijing Normal University?

201520910004 Version 1

Table of Contents
Abstract.........................................................................................................................................................xiii
1. Introduction...............................................................................................................................................xiv
1.1. Background of the Study................................................................................................................xiv
1.2. Statement of the Problem...............................................................................................................xv
1.3. Purpose of the Study.......................................................................................................................xv
1.4. Research Questions.........................................................................................................................xv
1.5. Significance of the Study.................................................................................................................xv
1.6. Limitations of the Study.................................................................................................................xvi
2. Review of the Related Literature.............................................................................................................xvi
2.1. Theoretical Frameworks................................................................................................................xvii
2.1.1. Economic Model.........................................................................................................................xvii

x|Page
 2.1.2. Sociological Model......................................................................................................................xvii
2.2. A Brief Overview of Chinese Higher Education..............................................................................xvii
2.2.1. Historical Overview................................................................................................................xviii
2.3. Internationalization and Innovation of Chinese Higher Education...............................................xviii
2.3.1 Internationalization................................................................................................................xviii
2.3.2. Innovations..............................................................................................................................xix
2.4. International Mobility of African Students.....................................................................................xix
2.5. Presence of China............................................................................................................................xx
2.5.1 China as a Welcoming Place for African Students.....................................................................xx
2.5.2. A favorable Academic Immigration and the Scholarship Policy Factor.....................................xx
3. Methodology..............................................................................................................................................xxi
3.1. Research Design.............................................................................................................................xxi
3.2. Population and Sample...................................................................................................................xxi
3.3. Sampling Procedure......................................................................................................................xxii
3.4. Research Instrument.....................................................................................................................xxii
3.5. Data Collection Procedure.............................................................................................................xxii
3.6. Data Analysis.................................................................................................................................xxii
4. Results and Findings...............................................................................................................................xxiii
4.1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................xxiii
4.2. Section A. Analysis of Demographic Data.....................................................................................xxiii
Table1. Gender Distribution of Respondent.............................................................................................xxiii
Table 2. Age of Respondents......................................................................................................................xxiii
Table 3: Level of Study of Respondents....................................................................................................xxiv
Chart 1: Country of Origin of Participants..............................................................................................xxiv
4.3. Section B Analyses of Research Questions....................................................................................xxv
4.3.1. Research Question one: How did African students get information on Chinese Universities?. .xxv
Table 4: Source of Information...................................................................................................................xxv
4.3.2. Research Question Two: What motivates and influences African students to study in china?. xxvi
Table 5. Respondents’ Reason to Study in China.....................................................................................xxvi
Chart 2: Decided to study in China because of Chinese Government scholarship...............................xxvii
Table 6: Other Reasons of Study in China...............................................................................................xxvii
Table 7: Principal Influences towards Study in China..........................................................................xxviii
4.3.3. Research Question Three: What are the influential factors in their choice of Chinese
Universities?......................................................................................................................................xxviii

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Table 8: Choice of a Chinese University....................................................................................................xxix
Table 9: Barriers in your Local HE System..............................................................................................xxix
5. Discussions, Summary and Conclusion.................................................................................................xxx
5.1. Summary of the Research Process.................................................................................................xxx
5.2. Major Findings..............................................................................................................................xxxi
5.3. Conclusions..................................................................................................................................xxxii
5.4. Suggestions for Future Study.......................................................................................................xxxii
References...................................................................................................................................................xxxii
Appendix....................................................................................................................................................xxxiv

Assessing the Influential Factors of International African Students

in Choosing a Chinese Higher Education.

Abstract
The study examines the factors that influence the international African students in choosing
Chinafor their higher education. A sample of 35 students from various part of Africa was selected
using convenient sampling technique at Beijing Normal University. Descriptive research design
was used for the data. Convenient sampling technique was employed in selecting 35 respondents.
A questionnaire was used to collect data from the selected students. Data collected from the
study was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 16.0. The
findings of the study indicate that majority of the African students view China as a welcoming
country for foreign students and that Chinese Universities areimproving their reputation making
marks in terms of international cooperation in higher education. The high ranking status and
quality of Chinese higher education is also an attractive factor when students are deciding on
which foreign schools they are to apply. Additionally, it was found that the establishment of the
Chinese government scholarship scheme has attracted the large number of international African
students in Chinese Higher Education.

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KEYWORDS: CHINA, HIGHER EDUCATION, AFRICAN STUDENTS, MOTIVATION

1. Introduction
1.1. Background of the Study

Global trends and innovations in these contemporary times have contributed to the
internationalization of education, thus making education unlimited to national boundaries.
Students are no longer constrained by national boundaries when it comes to the selection of
where they want to go to pursue further studies. Many organizations and universities believe in
internationalization of education and are working around the globe to make this reality and
accessible to all who want to pursue advanced studies. A significant number of studieshave
examined the philosophy of education choice and decision making, particularly in the viewpoint
of a country of origin of students and consumers in the developed world (Mazzarol et al., 2002).
International student mobility has become an important element of world higher education.
Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (2009) maintains that there are 3.0
million foreign students studying worldwide from different countries. Typically, 90% of the
foreign students are from Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
countries. The OECD describes international students or foreign students as those students who
travel to a country different from their own for the purpose of study. Opening universities to
international students can be seen as national pride for the host countries. More importantly,
university education plays an indispensable role in creating human capital which is essential
socioeconomic development of a nation (Naceur, 2009). Many countries especially in the
developing world lack the necessary infrastructure and other logistics to meet the ever increasing
demand for higher education (Marjik, 2003) and this compels most their students to seek higher
education outside their home countries. Verbik and Lasanowski (2007) argue that the growing
population of African students in china tells the extensive global trend of the increasing number of

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students who pursue higher education outside their homelands each year. China has allotted substantial
resources to develop “world-class” education systems and has begun to actively compete with
their Western counterparts for receiving international students (Chan and Ng 2008). The influx
of International students has exponentially increased from 1,236 in 1978 to 328,330 in 2012 (Luo
2013). The number of foreign students in Chinese institutions of higher education continues to
rise annually. The increasing international student enrollment in Chinese institutions of higher
education does not only reflect China's economic growth, but also impart the advancement inthe
internationalization of its higher education.

1.2. Statement of the Problem

The growing reputation of Chinese Universities in international standard has attracted many
students to move to China for advanced studies. For instance, the enrollment of African students
in Chinese universities has been increasing steadily since 2006. In 2010 alone there were over
260,000 international students from more than 180 countries and region schooling in China and
more than 50% of these students are from Sub-Sahara Africa (China.org.cn). In recent years
indicate that African students are choosing universities in China over Western Europe or North
America for their advanced studies. This study is interested in investigating principal factors that
attract African students to study in China.

1.3. Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to examine why more and more African students are studying in
China regardless of the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic differences. In doing so, the researcher
explores the main factors that attract or pull African students to study in China by interviewing
some selected students on the reasons for choosing China over other countries. The study is also
interested in knowing how the Chinese universities prepare these African students to meet
employable needs in the global workforce.

1.4. Research Questions

This study attempted to answer the following research questions:

1. How do African students currently studying in China get information about Chinese
higher education?

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 2. What factors motivate and influence African students to study in China?
3. What factors influence their choice of a particular Chinese university?

1.5. Significance of the Study

The findings in this study will serve as guidelines for those authorities who make decisions on
who is to come to study in China. The findings will assist the Chinese Government in identifying
the main motives behind the mobility of African students to China for higher education. The
findings of the study are likely to create awareness on the impact and contributions graduates
from Chinese universities are making on the socio-economic development on their respective
countries after their studies in China. Knowing the motives of African students studying in China
and the impact these graduates are making after graduation will be critical for the Chinese
Government in considering granting scholarship to prospective students from Africa.

1.6. Limitations of the Study

The target population for the study did not capture the entire African student population in China.
Out of the students population only forty (35) of the students were taken as a sample for the
study, since it was difficult to get all the students to partake in the study as a result of limited
time factor and inadequate resources to cover the entire student population. The study is thus
limited in the sense that it does not cover the entire African student population in China
undertaking advanced studies in various fields.

2. Review of the Related Literature

Internationalization has become a central element of universities across the world (Ayoubi and
Massoud, 2007). Subsequently, more and more universities are turning into advertising focused
organizations with the intention of targeting students as their clients’ (Chen, et.al2008). Similarly,
universities have become a brand for these clients. (Kurz et al., 2008). The movement of students
across cultures and geographical frontiers in pursuit of advanced international education has been
triggered by the globalization and international cooperation among countries in the world.
Previous studies involving international education have two distinct research dimensions. One

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dimension has been to study the macro-environmental variables that influence outflow of
students from their countries of origin. Another dimension is to identify reasons of choice at an
individual level by exploring the perceptions of students (Duan 1997).

2.1. Theoretical Frameworks

Several theoretical models have been proposed to define the factors that influence student’s
intentions to further their study at a specific university. The underpinning theoretical frameworks
of this study are two emerging models: economic and sociological models proposed by Hossler
et al, (1989). These theoretical models describe the various processes by which a student selects
a college. The conceptual approaches describe the institution choice process and factors that lead
students to their institution choice.

2.1.1. Economic Model

Economic model emphasizes institution choice between enrollment in a High Educational

Institution (HEI) in one’s catchment area or its pursuit in another area. Economists are interested
in the relationships between the attributes of “goods” (e.g. college and job characteristics) and
individual choices (Jackson, 1982). Generic research indicates that individuals will select a
particular HEI, if the benefits of attending outweigh the perceived benefits of attending other
HEI within their comfort zones (Hossler, et all, 1985). Therefore, the economic model stresses
on the rational decision-making process of students and their families and the variety of ways in
which different student’s rate and use the college attributes to make their final institutional
choice.

2.1.2. Sociological Model

Sociological model was developed from educational and status achievement research, focusing
on the aspirations of individuals desiring to study in a HEI. The sociological model specifies a
variety of social and individual factors leading to a student’s occupational and educational
aspirations (Jackson et al 1982). In the derivative model, developed by Blau and Duncan (1967),
family, socioeconomic background, and students’ academic abilities are predicted to have a joint
positive effect on aspirations for a higher institution. Sociological models of college choice have

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focused on the identification and interrelationship of factors including parental encouragement
and academic performance as indicators of enrollment in HEI. (Sewell & Shah, 1978)

2.2. A Brief Overview of Chinese Higher Education

2.2.1. Historical Overview

Chinese higher education dates back to the Han Dynasty (roughly 1600BC-1046 BC) but modern
higher education in China is generally considered to emerge in the late 1890s. In its early history,
western higher education, especially Christian higher education, played an important role in
shaping Chinese higher education. By the mid-1920s, there had emerged a diverse higher
education landscape consisting of national universities, church-affiliated universities, corporate
universities and other types of private universities. Chinese higher education entered a period of
massive development after the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949. By then there
was only 205 higher education institutions in total, consisting of 123 state and provincial
universities, 61 private universities, and 21 church-affiliated universities. (Gu et al 2009)
In the early 1950s, Soviet Union exerted a profound influence in the restructuring of Chinese
higher education. Following the Soviet model, the Chinese government took a series of measures
to reform its institutions of higher education with the goal of developing specialized institutes
and strengthening comprehensive universities, focusing on the development of industry-oriented
talents and teachers (Gu et al 2009). In consequence, Chinese higher education experienced a
dramatic reformation and developed into a total of 229 higher education institutions.
In 1977, Deng Xiaoping made the decision of reforming the National Higher Education
Entrance Examination (Gao Kao, an equal mechanism for students to strive for their rights to
receive higher education), which had a profound impact on Chinese higher education in history.
From the 1980s on, Chinese higher education went through a series of reforms that significantly
brought improvement. These reforms provided higher education institutions the autonomy and
ability to better meet the needs of students, with the state focusing exclusively on macro
planning.
Official statistics indicate that Chinese higher education system consisted of over 2,442 regular
(academically oriented) colleges and universities, 348 adult higher education institutions, and
823 non academically-oriented private agencies. Since the late 1990s, Chinese higher education
has experienced rapid development.

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2.3. Internationalization and Innovation of Chinese Higher Education

2.3.1 Internationalization

Chinese higher education has become increasingly open and recognized in terms of international
exchange and cooperation. Every year over 300 thousand Chinese students go overseas for
undergraduate and graduate education.On the other hand, China welcomes international students
to pursue higher education in China (Zhang and Ma 2013). The Chinese international
cooperation of higher education includes academic exchanges, cooperation in sciences, and
international infrastructure-sharing. For instances, some of the Chinese’s first-class universities
are emerging as world top institutions in the creation and dissemination of new knowledge, and
in exchanges with scholars from other countries, in large-scale international research
cooperation, and in promoting cultural exchanges. In strengthening the internationalization of
its higher educational system, the Chinese government in collaboration with the ministry of
education, has established a scholarship scheme in accordance with educational exchange
agreements or understandings reached between Chinese government and governments of other
countries, organizations, education institutions and relevant international organizations to
provide both full scholarships and partial scholarships to international students and scholars.

2.3.2. Innovations

The Chinese government attaches great importance to the strategic role that science and
innovation play in improving society’s productivity and comprehensive national power. China
has invested heavily on strengthening scientific capacity and infrastructure in universities,
research institutes, large-scale enterprises, and science parks, and it has selected a batch of
research universities to conduct fundamental research (Yan 2009). Further development of the
innovation system is the enhancement in the capacity of basic research in universities by
expanding the participation of science and research, accelerating the process of knowledge
transfer and the partnership between technological higher education institutions and enterprises
in china to improve technology transfer and advancement in the society.

2.4. International Mobility of African Students

The phenomenon of higher education migration is relatively common and highly developed in

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Africa. Since the 1960s, African students have favored going outside of their respective countries
to pursue advanced studies mostly because of the shortage in terms of quality of academic
training that was falling behind compared to the rest of the world (Marshal, 2013). Today,
African students travel all over the world in pursuit of higher education. The 2006 report of the
UNESCO Institute for Statistics indicated that African students are the most mobile in the world
with one out of every 16 or 5.6 percent. At first most African students went to Europe for further
studies. The main reasons why African students chose Europe over others include the deep ties
such as common language and similarities in educational systems that most African countries
have with their former colonial masters.The main causes of this long lasting pattern are the deep
ties such as common language and similarities in educational system that most African countries
and their former colonial masters had. In current years, however, the general migratory
movement of African students has have evolved and changed substantially and today the trend is
not as clearly unidirectional as it used to be.

2.5. Presence of China

Cooperation between China and African countries started in the 1960s, but has grown in the
academic and scientific fields during the past decade to become an “investment for the future” in
the 2000s, (Campus France). Since 2003, the number of African students who come to study in
China increases more than 20% every year. For instance, in 2005, Chinese universities hosted
2,757 African students and in 2006, this number increased to 3,737, which represents an increase
rate of 40%. Again in 2009, The Chinese Ministry of Education reported that there were 12,436
African students studying in the country thus making China Africa’s biggest economic partner,
followed by France and the United States of America.
The reasons for this new trend include the efforts of Chinese Government in creating cultural and
linguistic centers in Africa, the Confucius Institutes, and a doubling of study grants for African
students in the areas of medicine, agriculture, languages, education, economics and management.
The increased Chinese government grants, to 5,500 African students in 2012, and the
establishment of 100 joint research and development projects to strengthen the teaching of the
Chinese language also explain why China has become very attractive place for advanced further
studies.

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2.5.1 China as a Welcoming Place for African Students

2.5.2. A favorable Academic Immigration and the Scholarship Policy Factor

Generally speaking, it is much earlier to get a student’s visa to study in China in comparison with
EU or US student’s visas. For instance, it is very easy for foreign students on a Chinese
Government scholarship get a Chinese student visa upon enrollment. The host university
generously assists students in filling the visa application and the scholarship application. Those
foreign students on private funding are generally assured to get a student permit provided they
pay the university’s expenses (personal communion, 10th June 2012). Students on short term
programs such as taking Chinese training, there are many language schools that take care of the
immigration formalities. Such students are often qualified for a student residence permit. Also
the China’s Government’s “open door policy” which was launched in 1980s has increasingly
opened the China’s borders to attract many foreign students from all over the world. The Chinese
scholarship incentive is also a key factor in making China attractive destination for African
students.

3. Methodology
This section would discuss the methodology used for the study. It will address the research
design, the population, the sample, and sampling procedure. It will also describe the instruments,
data collection procedure and data analysis adopted to achieve the purpose of the study

3.1. Research Design

Research design is a plan of study, providing the overall framework for data collection. It
provides the basis upon which data is collected and analyses in an attempt to answer the research
questions. Best and Khan (2005) argue that there is no one single scientific method for scientists
to use in their investigations. However, accuracy of observation and objectivity are some of the
ingredients in all scientific methods of collecting and analysing a research data. This study will
adopt the descriptive research design to collect quantitative information to examine factors
influencing international Africans’ decision to study in Chinese high educational institutions.

3.2. Population and Sample

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The target population of the study included all African students in Beijing Normal University.
And the sample was extracted out from the population. The sample captured (35)African
students of all levels, programmes and country of origin within BNU.

3.3. Sampling Procedure

In order to obtain a better sufficient sample size to support the separate analysis of the
population, this study employed convenient sampling technique in selecting the students. This
sampling technique helped reduce sampling error of selecting either students from Northern,
Western, Eastern, Central or Southern Africa. Out of the student population, thirty-five (35)
students of them were taken as a sample for the study. The sample was limited to thirty because
of the difficulty in getting all students to participate in the study, time limited, and inadequate
resources to cover the entire student population.

3.4. Research Instrument

Questionnaires were adopted to collect data by the researcher. The questionnaire was in two
sections. Section A& B. Section A consisted of the demographic information and elicited the
background information of the participants. Information under these categories included sex,
major, level of study, and country of origin. Section B, dealt with the sources of information of
the student, motivation for studying in China, the principal factors influencing in China and the
underlying reasons for choosing a particular Chinese university.

3.5. Data Collection Procedure

In order to ensure maximum returns of the questionnaires, the researcher first established rapport
with the students to explain the purpose of the study to them and tried to answer concerns that
respondents might have. The questionnaire was handed in person to the sampled population at
various vintage points to be completed by the students. The researcher himself collected from the
respondents without any lapse. The researcher made sure that the questionnaires given out all
collected in a timely manner.

3.6. Data Analysis

The data for the research was analysed using the Statistical Product for Service Solution version

xxi | P a g e
sixteen (SPSS 16.0). The researcher used descriptive statistics, frequency distribution, and
percentages to analyse the data on the background information of the respondents and how they
answered the questionnaires.

4. Results and Findings

4.1. Introduction

This section analyses and discusses the data collected from students on assessing the factors
influencing international African students in choosing Chinese universities for their higher
education. The section is in two parts: A and B. A presents the analyses of demographic data of
respondents and Section B presents the analyses of the research questions.
4.2. Section A. Analysis of Demographic Data
In this section, the researcher presents and discusses the preliminary data which consist of
personal or background information of respondents. This includes the age distribution, gender,
level of study, and country of origin. These are represented in table 1, 2, 3& chart 1
Table1. Gender Distribution of Respondent
Gender Frequency Percentage%
Male 23 65.7
Female 12 34.3

Total 35 100
Source: Fieldwork data 2015
Table1 shows the gender distribution of respondents, (65.7 %) of the respondents were males
whiles (34.3 %) were females this explains that the male respondents were more than the
females.
Table 2. Age of Respondents

Age Frequency Percentage%

18 -25 6 17.1
26 - 30 18 51.4
30& Above 11 31.4

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 Total 35 100
Source: Fieldwork Data 2015
Table 2, shows the age distribution of the respondents. Majority of the respondents were within
the age of 26-30 representing 51.4%, while 31.4% fall within 30&above and the remaining
17.1% captured those within the age of 18-25.
Table 3: Level of Study of Respondents
Programme Frequency Percentage%
Bachelor 0 -
Masters 34 97.9
Doctoral
1 2.9

Total 35 100
Source: Fieldwork Data 2015
This table shows the distribution of the level of study of respondent. From the table majority of
the respondents with the figure 34 representing 97.9% were pursuing a master’s programe while
there was only one doctoral student 2.9%,

Chart 1: Country of Origin of Participants

Source: Fieldwork Data 2015

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This chart displays the country of origin of the respondents. From a descending order 9
respondents representing 25.7% came from Tanzanian, 7 respondents representing 20.0% came
from Ghana, 5 respondents capturing 14.3% came from Liberia ,4 respondents representing
11.4% came from Cameroon, Malawi and Eritrea had an equal share of 3 respondents
representing 8.6%, and finally Uganda and Ethiopia captured 2 respondent representing 5.7% of
the sample.

4.3. Section B Analyses of Research Questions

4.3.1. Research Question one: How did African students get
information on Chinese Universities?

The researcher was also interested in finding out the various sources where the African students
how and where first heard about Chinese higher education before deciding to study in China.
Item 7 was developed to provide sources of information regarding Chinese universities. To elicit
some responses, the researcher provided some options to the respondents.

Table 4: Source of Information

Frequency Percentage %
Chinese website 23 65.7
Media advertising 2 5.7
Educational agent 5 14.3
Others 5 14.3

Total 35 100
Source: Fieldwork Data 2015
With reference to table 4, 5.7% had access to Chinese higher education or universities through
media advertising, 14.3% of the respondents had their information through educational agents
and others equally. Others said they heard about Chinese universities from students from their

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country of origin, friends, and relatives. Majority of the students representing 65.7% indicated
that they heard about Chinese higher education from Chinese website.

4.3.2. Research Question Two: What motivates and influences African students to study in
china?

This particular question was directed toward the knowledge of what really influences African
students to pursue advanced education in China. To help answer this question four items were
presented to the respondent. The responses to this question are summarized in table 5, chart 2,
table 6 and table 7.
In Item 8, the question was focused to unravel the main reasons why African students decided to
study in china and the responses has been summarized below in table 5.

Table 5. Respondents’ Reason to Study in China

Frequency Percentage%
Live and work in china 4 11.4
Internationally recognize qual. 17 48.6
Learn Chinese language 10 28.6
Others 4 11.4

Total 35 100
Source: Fieldwork data 2015
Table 5 shows that 48.6% of the students choose a Chinese higher education for the purpose of
having internationally recognized qualification, 28.6% opted to study in China in order to learn
the Chinese language and 11.4 % of the respondents equally choose Chinse higher education so
that they live and work in China and other places where knowledge in Chinese culture, history,
and philosophy are required.Items 9 also sought to find out whether the respondents came to
study in China because of Chinese Government scholarships. The question asked was: “Did you
decide to study in China because of CSC? Below are the responses:

Chart 2: Decided to study in China because of Chinese Government scholarship

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Source: Fieldwork data 2015

Chart 2 displays that 22 out of the 35 students representing 62.9% grab the opportunity of
Chinese Government scholarships and came to study in a Chinese University. The reverse is that
13 students representing 37.7% negated the idea of studying in a Chinese university because of
CSC

Item 10 also looked at some of the other factors that led to the respondents study in China. . The
excerpts are captured in table 6.

Table 6: Other Reasons of Study in China

Frequenc Percentage
y %
China a welcoming country for foreign 15 45.7
students
Professional contact 6 17.1
Gaining awareness of Chinese culture 9 25.7
Others 5 11.4

Total 35 100
Source: Fieldwork Data 2015

Table 6 shows 45.7% of the students’ claimed China as a welcoming country for foreign
students, 25.7% said they wanted to gain awareness of Chinese culture, 17.1% claimed

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professional contacts and the remaining 11.4% representing others factors such as enhancing
their opportunity to gain a higher education with higher standards.
Item 11 also was directed towards the key principal factors that have made China to be very
friendly to foreign students. The question asked was: “What are the principal influences toward
your study in China?” The responses from respondents are indicated on Table 7

Table 7: Principal Influences towards Study in China

Frequency Percentage%
Friends 13 37.1
Local institute 10 28.6
Sponsorship 12 34.3

Total 35 100
Source: Fieldwork Data 2015
On Table 7 the study shows that 37.1% of the respondents were influenced by their friends,
34.3% claimed it was through sponsorship and the remaining 28.6% said their local institution.
Drawing inferences from the table majority of African students have been recommending
Chinese Universities to others.

4.3.3. Research Question Three: What are the influential factors in their choice of Chinese
Universities?

Again the researcher was interested in finding out the factors leading to the choice of a Chinese
University by African students. In order to investigate the primary reasons why African students
to study China, the researcher asked questions captured in items 11 and 12. Excerpts of these
items are captured in table 7 and 8.

Item 12 was directed towards the factors that lead to the choice of a Chinese University.
Table 8: Choice of a Chinese University
Frequency Percentage%
For quality education 17 48.6
Affordable cost of study 1 2.9

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 Innovations and high status C Uni. 12 34.3
Others 5 14.3

Total 35 100
Source: Fieldwork Data 2015
Table 8 explains that 48.6% of the students chose a Chinese university for a quality
education.While some, 34.3% of the respondentsclaimed the innovations and high status of
Chinese higher education influenced their decisions, other factors such as experiencing diversity
in education methodologies and going beyond borders influenced students’ decisions to study in
China. These reasons represent 14.3% of the respondents, and 2.9% of the respondents indicated
that their decision to study in China was influenced by the affordable cost of study in China.
Item 13 focuses on the pushing factors in higher educational systems in the students’ respective
countries that influenced their decision to study in China. Here the researcher explored some of
the barriers in the higher educational system in Africa that often compels African students to
choose to study in China instead of studying in their own countries. The findings of this
exploration are interpreted on Table 9 below. African students’

Table 9: Barriers in your Local HE System.

Barriers Frequency Percentage%
Absence of research policy 12 34.3
Minimal admission rate 14 40.0
Dilapidated infrastructure 9 25.7

Total 35 100
Source: Fieldwork Data 2015
Table 9 shows that 40% of the respondents indicated that there is minimal admission rate in their
local higher educational system, 34.3% claimed there is an absence of research policy in their
local higher educational system and the remaining 25.7% of students said that the dilapidated
state of infrastructure in their locals was a key factor pushing them to study in China.

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 5.Discussions, Summary and Conclusion

In this section, the researcher presents the summary of his study, the major findings and
discussion, conclusions as well as suggestions for further study in other areas.

5.1. Summary of the Research Process

The major purpose of the study was to explore the motivational factors of international African
students in choosing a Chinese higher education. A sample of 35 students from various part of
Africa was selected using convenient sampling technique. A self-constructed questionnaire was
used to collect data for analysis and the data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics
presented in frequencies and percentages.

5.2. Major Findingsand Discussions

1. Majority of the respondents (65.7%) attested that they got information on Chinese
Universities on Chinese websites.
2. 48.6% of therespondents claimed that they choose Chinese higher education for the
purpose of having an internationally recognized qualification.
3. The respondents representing 62.9% grab the opportunity of Chinese government
scholarship to study in Chinese University. 37.7% negated the idea of studying in a
Chinese University because of CSC.
4. The study revealed that majority of African students (45.7%) described China as a
welcoming country for foreign students.
5. 37.1% representing the majority of the respondents said they were influenced by their
friends to pursue a higher education in China.
6. The study revealed that 48.6% of the students chose a Chinese University because of its
quality.
7. 40% of the students attested to the fact that there is minimal admission rate in their local
higher educational system which leads to their mobility to China for advanced studies.

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These findings given here enabled the researcher to draw a firm linkage to the aspect of the
literature review which holds that Chinese higher education has become increasingly open and
recognized in term of international exchange and cooperation (Zhang & Ma 2013). Second with
regards to the findings,the Chinese scholarship incentive is of key importance in the growth of a
large African student population in China. The indication of the majority of the respondents
(45.7%) that China is very friendly to foreign students supports the literature review that
emphasized that China has opened its borders to attract foreign students from all over the world
(Ferdjani, 2012). Based on these findings, one can infer that Chinese higher education had gone
through strong reforms and innovations as indicated in the literature review above. Lastly
(Marshal, 2013) idea in some of the literature that maintains African students have favored
going outside for further advanced studies because of lack of quality academic training in their
own countries has a significant stance in the study with regards to the findings.

5.3. Conclusions
Based on these major findings the researcher concludes that Chinese higher education is indeed
internationalized in the sense that it has an attractive reputation and stronger publicity that
attract students and allow them to get access to every aspect of information thereby fulfilling the
international cooperation of higher education. It is emphatically clear to c that Chinese higher
education is making waves in terms of quality and high ranking status as most of the
respondents indicated in their responses to the research questions, a

5.4. Suggestions for Future Study

The researcher recommends that future research study should use much larger sample size to
validate these findings and further explore into why many African students are trooping in to
read medicine and ICT Programs in China.

References
Ayoubi, R.M. and H.K. Massoud, 2007. The strategy of internationalisation in universities.
International Journal of Educational Management, 21(4).

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Blau, P. M. (1967). 0. D. Duncan. 1967. The American Occupational Structure. New York,
London, Sidney: Wiley.

Best, J. W. & Khan, J. V. (2005) Research in Education (10thed) Pearson Publishing Co.
Chan, David, & Ng, Pak Tee. (2008). similar agendas, diverse strategies: The quest for a
regional hub of higher education in Hong Kong and Singapore. Higher Education Policy,
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China.org.cn.
Campus France. 2011. Chiffres Clés n°6, Les étudiants internationaux. Online:
http://ressources.campusfrance.org/publi_institu/etude_prospect/chiffres_cles/fr/brochure
_campusfrance_chiffres_cles_n6_2011.pdf. Accessed: 17 October 2015
Duan, J. P., 1997, The Influence of Various Factors on International Students in Selecting
Universities: A South Australian Study of Chinese Students from Hong Kong and
Malaysia, Ph.D. thesis, University of South Australia, Adelaide
Gu, J., Li, X. &Wang, L. Higher education in China. Zhejiang University Press, 2009.
Ferdjani, H. (2012) African students in China; An exploration increasing numbers and their
motivations in Beijing.
Hossler, D. (1985), “A research overview of student college choice”, Association for the study
of Higher Education, Chicago, IL.
Jackson, Jerlando FL, & Heggins III, WJ. (2003). Understanding the collegiate experience for
Asian international students at a Midwestern research university. College Student
Journal, 37(3), 379-391.
Marjik, C.V., 2003. Globalization and access to higher education. Journal of Studies in
International Education, 7(193): 1-15.
Marshal, j. (2013) International mobility of African students – report. University word new.issue
no.279
Mazarrol, T. & Soutar, G. (2002). Push-pull factors influencing international student destination
choice. The International Journal of Educational Management, 16(2), 183-195.
Mazzarol, T. and G.N. Soutar, 2008. The global market for higher education: Sustainable
competitive strategies for the new millennium. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham.

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Naceur, S. B., & Kandil, M. (2009). The impact of capital requirements on banks’ cost of
intermediation and performance: The case of Egypt. Journal of Economics and Business,
61(1), 70-89.
OECD. (2007). Education at a Glance 2007.
OECD. (2011). Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators. OECD Publishing. China
Ministry of Education. (2011). Over 260,000 international students studying in China in
2010.http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/moe_2809/201103/1158
86.html. Accessed 19 October 2014.
Sewell, W. H., Haller, A. O., & Portes, A. (1969). The educational and early occupational
attainment process. American sociological review, 82-92.
Stage, F. K., & Hossler, D. (1989). Differences in family influences on college attendance plans
for male and female ninth graders. Research in Higher Education, 30(3), 301-315.
UNESCO (2006) New patterns in student mobility in the southern Africa development
community. Unesco institute of statistics
Verbik, L., & Lasanowski, V. (2007). International student mobility: Patterns and trends. World
Education News and Reviews, 20(10), 1-16.
Warr, P., Jackson, P., & Banks, M. (1982). Duration of unemployment and psychological well-
being in young men and women. Current psychological research, 2(1-3), 207-214.
Yan Fengqiao. China’s Academic Profession in the Context of Social Transition:
Institutional Perspective. Economics of Education Research (Beida). 7(2).
2009.
Zhang Li, Ma Luting. Theory and Practice on Modern University System with Chinese
Characteristics East China Normal University Press. 2013.

Appendix

FACULTY OF EDUCATION
QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS
The following questionnaires form part of a study being undertaking on “the motivational factors
of African students in choosing a Chinese Higher Education”. I would be grateful if you take part

xxxii | P a g e
by responding to them to the best of your ability. This is purely an academic exercise and your
anonymity and confidentiality is guaranteed.
Section A: Demographic Data

Tick (√) the appropriate responses to the question, unless otherwise stated

1. Gender: Male ( ) Female ( )

2. Age: 18-25 ( ) 26-30 ( ) 30& Above ( )
3. Nationality ……………………………….
4. What are you currently studying? …………………..
5. What is your previous educational attainment?
Please specify…………………….
6. Does your previous educational attainment relate to your current study? ....
Section B: Please tick as many as applicable
Sources of Information
7. How did you get to know about Chinese Universities?
Media advertising ( ) Chinese websites ( ) Educational Agent ( ) Others
specify…………….

Motivation and principal influences leading to your Study in China

8. What was the main reason why you decided to study in china?
Live and Work in China ( ) internationally recognized and respected qualification (
) learn Chinese language ( ) others specify…………………………
9. Did you decide to study in china because of the Chinese government scholarship?
Yes ( ) No ( )
10. Did you decide to study in china because of the following reasons?
Professional Contacts ( ) Gaining Awareness of Chinese Culture ( ) China as
welcoming country ( ) others specify………………….

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 11. What were the principal influences towards your study in china?
Friends ( ) Local Institution ( ) Sponsorship ( )
Factors in the choice of Chinese University
12. What made you choose a Chinese university?

To acquire a quality university education ( ) Affordable Cost of study ( ) Innovations

and Ranking status ( ) Others specify

13. What are the barriers in your local HE system that influenced your study in china?
Absence of research policy ( ) limited admission rate ( ) Dilapidated Infrastructure )
14. Would you recommend a Chinese university to other country mates who are planning to
study abroad?
Yes ( ) No ( )

Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University

International MA Program in Comparative Education
(Education Management and Leadership)
International and Comparative Education Research Institute

Education Systems, Policy and Management in China

Higher Education;
TITLE:Expectations and challenges of African students inBeijing Normal
University, Beijing, China

STUDENT ID NO:201529010010

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Content page
Abstract ………………………………………………………………….. 1
Introduction ………………………………………….…………………….2
Purpose of the study……………………………………………………....3
Significance of the study……………….………………………………….4
Statement of the problem……………………………………………….…4
Research questions …….. …………….……….…………………………..5
Literature review………………………….……,………………………….6
Methodology ……………………………………………….……………..10
Finding and interpretation ………………………………………………...11
Discussion and Conclusion ……………………………………………….13
Reference ………………………………………………………………… 15
Appendix…………………………………………………………………..18

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 i
Abstract
This study was aimed at exploring the expectations and challenges of international African
students who studying in higher education institutions in China. The main objectives of this
study was to understand expectations and Challenges of the international students who studying
graduate programs at the Beijing Normal University, by focusing much on African students and
their academic expectations throughout their studies in Beijing Normal University
Findings suggest significant differences among international student’s expectations and
challenges based on the expectations on their studies. In order to make wide context the study
suggested the important of international student to work on their expectations and adjusting their
social lives to lower the challenges that may hinder them to cope into local society and achieving
good performance.
Survey questionnaire was used as the quantitative data collection technique; findings
correlated to the participants’ adjustment to the new studying environment include academic
expectation and challenges, and understanding of the Chinese language and culture. The study
found that participants have different academic expectation and experienced different challenges
in the new learning environment.
Keywords of this study are Student Expectation, International Students, Challenge, Higher
Education, Higher Education Institution, African Student, and China

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 1
Introduction
China is the fourth largest country in the world after Russia, Canada and U.S china is located in
Asia continent on the South East Asia and is the largest population country in the world with
1.357 billion people, Population of change, (2015)& (Largest Countries)
The Higher Education in China has been changedsince the market reforms in 1970s, from those
years China economichad rapidly growth very fast for a short period of time and high
government investments pushed up the expansion of Chinese higher education. Carnoy et al.
(2012) in earl 2000s, China had aimed at establishing world Class elite University and at the
same time encouraged the other university to expand their enrollment on higher education
institutions.
In 2013 China attracted 328,330 international students from 200 countriesto study at 746 higher
education institutions, which is an additional of 12% since 2011. Up to date China is
theimportant study destination for many students around the world. Referring to the outline of
“National Medium and Long-term Plan for Educational Reform and Development (2010-2020)”
and “the Study in China Plan,” China will host 500,000 international students by 2020 (China
Ministry of Education 2011).
President Xipledge that China would advance “African talent program”, by providing 18,000
scholarships for African and train 30,000 Africanexperts in different areas of disciplineObulutsa,
(2013).
China among the countries that attracted many international students and those students have

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different expectations toward their studies in china, expectation is defined as believing that
something is going to happen or believing that something should be a certain way (dictionary
2015). This study wants to find out what are the expectations and challenges of international
African students toward their study in china.
Providers of education should realize expectations of international students from different
countries and traditional background and help them to reach their goals Stacy (1999).Academic
success leads to the self-esteemthat helps the student to cope in the new country. This means the
sometime social life that student has in new environment can affect the academic expectations of
a student Also the social life adjustment is important for international student academic
adjustment Hellsten (2002)
2
Also education for international students in any country they are should not be the matter of
enrollment and study to complete a certain level, but it should be enhancing them to meets the
academic expectations. International education is the understanding of cross-culture and gaining
of interactivity competence in various ways of communications and makes the students or
graduatesbeingcompetitive in the global markets, Stacy (1999). Though there are
supportiveComponents of success but the environment in general, special abilities, personal
work habits and attitudes are the central factors for high expectations, Tannenbaum, (1997)

Purpose of the study

The study aiming at knowing about the challenges and academic expectations of the are the
international students who are studying in Beijing Normal University in Beijing, china.This will
help to know what the image they have about their study and education system of China. Also it
will help to recognize how the international students have been planned themselves to manage
their academic activities during all time of their studies.

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 3

Significant of the study

The study will help to recognize how the international students have motivate to choose
china as their study destination, since the study aiming at knowing about the challenges, it will
help to suggest the ways to overcome reduce the challenges that international student face on
their social living and in academic in general. Also knowing about the expectations’ of
international students this will help to understand the perception and reality of about the chines
higher education system and quality of education provided

Statement of the problem

Internationalization of education made the people around the world to move from one country to
another for purpose of education. China is among the countries that attracted many international
studentsvarious countries who studying in different universities in China.
It is obviously that most of the students are likely to consider having the study programs outside
of their homecountries if they got enough financial sponsorship, the Chinese Scholarship Council
(CSC) began in 1997 to establish a series of government scholarships for international studies in
due to the agreements signed between China government and foreign governments,
organizations, and education institutions. By 2013, the total amount of government scholarship
amounted to over 300 million US Dollars, and the number of Chinese Government scholarship
students was 28,768, making up approximately 9% of the total number of international students
(Chinese Scholarships Council 2014).
Every student had different expectations and plans in various issues such as social affairs,
academic and economic issues during and afterthe completion their studies in China. To find out

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the expectations in different aspect as mentioned above is huge task, by focusing on African
international students who currently study in China the study want to explore the academic
expectations and challenges they face during their studying in higher education institution in
China.

Research questions

The study focus on understanding the expectations and challenges of the African
international students based on the academic and social lives in Beijing Normal
University, in order to come up with the suggestions for the institutions and authority on
reducing challenges and higher the expectation achievement of the students in
particular and international studying environment in general, The following are my
guided research questions for the study;

1. What are the academic expectations of international student during the all-time of
their studies in china?

2. What are the challenges that student face in their studies?

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 5
Literature review
Expectation is defined as believing that something is going to happen or believing that something
should be a certain way, Yourdictionary (2015 ). Providers of education should realize
expectations of international students from different countries and traditional background and
help them to reach their goals, Stacy, (1999). Academic success leads to the self-esteem that
helps the student to cope in the new country. This means the sometime social life that student has
in new environment can affect the academic expectations of a student Also the social life
adjustment is important for international student academic adjustment, Hellsten, (2002)
It is very important that international students familiarize themselves with the standards for
academic integrity and student conduct, international students face more challenges in their
Studies than local students the studies have documented that, Kuo & Roysircar, (2004), Berry
&& Berry, (1991), not only due to language barriers, but also because international students have
different expectations and approaches to study from local students (Grey, 2002)
Frequently cited challenges international students experience includes difficulty with the English
language, cultural differences, and loneliness, Abreu &Kim (2001), Berry, (1997). Most of the
students are studying English as there second language so probably one of the difficult students
had.Adjustments for international students are related to their life and/or academic experiences,
that is, they have to deal with life and academic stresses in the new environment,Burant, Crist
&Misra, (2003). Life experiences include social-life; housing and practical issues, and academic
experiencesare related to their studies, Sam, (2001).Also the different international students have
come to different learning environment where they have difference teaching approach.Gu,
(2006),regard of the education environment in China, a teachercenteredlecture method has been
dominant in the Chinese teaching and learning culture for centuries.
In making sure that academic expectation achieved, student also can evaluate on their own about
the skill they have acquired and how they can utilize them to bring effect to the society. Baruch
et al (2005) developed a model for evaluating what the graduates received after completing their
studies. They say in order to realize that the acquired level of degree can bring positivity to
graduates, we have to endowing them withfive kinds of human capital: i)

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 6
theoretical knowledge capital, this can be acquired from one’s studies, ii) social capital gained
through peering with relevant people, iii) cultural capital “gained from valued people in society”
(p.54), iv) inner-value capital attained by self-labeled and awareness, v) marketvalue capital as
evidenced by enhanced earning potential.
Passing the examination in high marks being the greatest goal for students, some says that it
probably can decrease the capacity of interaction as the social constructivism addressed.
(Schellens, Valcke& Zhu, (2009) social-constructivism approach that encourages students to
actively participate in class has been promoted in recent years; education systems still put a lot of
emphasis on examination scores
For international students to achieve their academic expectations there are two important aspects
which are social support and connectedness. Inose &Yeh, (2003) international students face
many challengessuch as language, culture, academics, finances, racial discrimination, and
homesickness.Several studies showed that international students mostly are lonely because they
lack of friends and social networks, poor understanding oflocal cultural and linguistic
environment.
Some aspects should be consider on making the international students fit on their studying
program, institution should conduct orientation before developing refined intercultural
programming students to make them being familiar with their new learning environment ,
(Briggs, Dreasher, Horner, Nelson &Peterson, (1999) on Their considering ofinternational
students in US they said “the orientation of internationalstudents, visa advising, crisis
intervention with international students and programs improving relationships
betweeninternational and American students”
McDowell &Montgomery, (2009) argue that international students can work together and help
each other to get a successful learning experience at university even if they do not have a close
social and cultural contact with domestic students.Due to thetechnology advancement,
international students have different experiences in dealing and adapting the new environment
and avoiding homesickness. The Internet assist the international students can be close to their
family and friends back home by contacting with them in various ways.

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 7
Kelly (2010) internet helps students toovercome homesickness, but spending a lot of time online
communicating with those in their home country may also slow down the process of adapting to
the new environment.
Edwards &Tonkin, (1990) previous educational experience may contribute to the international
students be listener in the class instead of speaking. (Lemov), having high expectations is
important plan for students achievement for both who have high and low history of succession in
their academic achievement
On reviewing of the gifted student expectations the research shows that, particularly striking are
the effects of low academic expectations on gifted students. Dalzell, (1998) the development of
students potential rests, in part, on high expectations. The population of gifted students is one of
America’s most valuable resources;it is fair to say that, from this pool of students, many of our
future leaders will emerge.Graduate international students as the local students, all together they
have expectation of wide the knowledge from the basic knowledge they have. (Minnesota
University)Graduate students in all programs will gain expertise in a particular area of study and,
especially in PhD programs, seek to expand the knowledge of that disciplinary field by
discovering and pursuing a unique topic of scholarly research.
Studying on African students in U.K show that most students having high expectation on achieving
their higher education because it they took it as the way of preparing them to be the
leaders,Carter&Maringe, (2007) African students have ambitions beyond gaining employment and
pursuing a subject of their interest. They look at higher education as preparing them for leadership
positions when they return to their countries.
Wan, (2001)onechallengefacingthe international students is financial issues, high living cost and
financial burdens important issues concerns for most of internationalstudents. But this looks like
vice versa for African students, where by many of them are from low-income/ middle-income
countries, do not consider this as a problem hinder factors on their academic activities.
TheAfrican students got adequate financial support from the Chinese government, this associated
with bilateral trade cooperation between the African countries and China, that promoted by this
two parts economic relation and cultural exchanges. Obulutsa, (2013) says trade partnership
between China and Africa is about to reach 200 billion US dollars in 2012.

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 8
Bilateral economicpartnership shouldalso promote more academic relationships between two
sides, from Governments and institutions, academic exchanging programs have been
establishedand promoted, also the quota scholarship scheme for African students has increased,
McMahon, (1992). This might led to the high satisfaction levels among African students who
study in top universities in Beijing with lower financial burdens.
9
Methodology
The study designed based on qualitative approach on finding out what are the academic
expectations and challenges of international African students toward their study at Beijing
Normal University.
Population
The targeted population wasthe international students of Beijing Normal University. Emphasis
was on the African students who are studying post graduate program

Sample and sampling strategies

In the study, convenient sampling method was used to select participants (respondents) from the
population. The convenience sampling method allowed selection of participants based on their
availability or easier volunteering.
Data collection procedure
Data for the study was collected through primary source, where by the instrument usedfor data
collection was paper basedquestionnaires. The structured questionnaires will involve both close-
ended and open-ended questions.
Open-ended questions gave the respondents chance to express themselves for their own words;
representatives provided the answers in details by writing using their own words. Also the
Closed-ended questions that gave the answers which fit into a certain categories and participant
had to select from them. The study also collected participants’ demographic data, including
gender, age range, number of years being in Beijing Normal University, their home countries,
and if they had familiar of speaking Chinese language.
29participants filled the paper based questionnaire that means, out of 35 African international
students, 6 didn’t respond. This made the total of 82.8%respondents who filled the paper based

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questionnaire out of 17.1% who didn’t respond.
Ethical roles and principles were strictly considered

10
Findings
Analyzing the findings the researcher intendto answer the research questions by interpreting the
qualitative and offer discussions based on the findings related to the literature reviewed.
Many of the African students satisfied with the quality of education provided, all the respondents
agreed that having the chance to study in china couldn’t be possible for them if didn’t awarded
the scholarship, most were likely to study in china also because they believe that quality of
education provided by universities in china is high compared to their home country universities.
In explaining more about their satisfactory of the education quality most of them relate the
quality with the world ranking of universities and development level that country attained, the
following are some of the answers on the question, ”Are you satisfy with the quality of education
provided in China?”The answer was yes/no but, if yes explain, and if no explain. All answered
yes and the following were their more explanations;
‘China has attained high development level for a short period and only the good education
system can make this possible’,‘only quality education can bring development’, ‘quality
education can make people to achieve more development’, ‘quality education is what attract
students’, ‘many student from developed country like Japan, U.S and European countries come
to study in china this show how quality it is’
All participants whoresponded to the study are under the scholarship provided by government of
china, in answering about scholarship, they said that the economics and trade relation between
their countries and china made of them get the scholarship for studying in china and they agreed
that by themselves theycan’t afford the cost of studies and livingin Beijing, china. McMahon,
(1992) Bilateral economic partnership should also promote more academic relationships between
two sides, from Governments and institutions, academic exchanging programs have been
established and promoted, also the quota scholarship scheme for African students has increased.
Most of the Africansexpectations based on job orientation, they expect much on getting a job
after finishing their studies.25 participants out of 29 which is the86.2 % participants replied that,
studying in china will add their value on the job market competition in their home countries or

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elsewhere, they also mention the reason behind this is because most of China
11
Universities have higher status in the world than their home country universities. The
questionwaswhat is your motive for studying in china? The answer to select wasa.) To improve
you Chinese language, b) to understand Chinese culture ( ), c) Status of china universities is
high than my home country ( ), d) to prepare to get job (), e)Easier to enter university more
than home country ( ), what are the reason for your answers above”
Most of the African international student preferred to work in china more than in their home
countries, through their responding to the questions about their future plan after finishing the
studies. 15 participants which are the same as 51.7% prefer to work in china, on their responding
they say“good working condition’ ‘good salary compare to my county’ ‘getting experience of
working condition in change’ ‘the China currency Is more valued than my county’s currency so
little salary here is big amount in my county’ ’ good living condition here compare to my
country’
10respondents which arethe same as 41.3% they answer prefer to work in their home countries,
and on replying this, they mentioned family saying that they facelonelinessstaying far from their
relatives and friends, some said if they will go back to work on their home country, they will
contribute something to their countries development. Remain 4 respondents which are the same
as 13.7% like to pursue further education in china because they want to have higher qualification
to be competitive on job market where ever they will be
Language is a challenge that African international students in their social living. About all
participants of participants agree that they face some difficulty in their social living due to the
language barriers between them and local people in and out of the campus and mostly who face
this challenge are the new comer’s students. Most of them agreed that, to improve their Chinese
language skills is the important for them to cope with the social life and understanding the
Chinese culture. Inose &Yeh, (2003) international students face many challenges such as
language, culture, academics, finances, racial discrimination, and homesickness

12

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Discussionand Conclusion
The study findsthat, most of African student have higher expectations due to their high
satisfaction quality education provided in Beijing Normal University in Beijing, China. Alsothey
expect to improve their competitiveness in their home countries job market; also they took higher
education achievement as the way of preparing them for leadership or managerial post on the
job. Carter’s and Maringe, (2007) study on African students in the U.K. suggested that, in
contrast to domestic students, African students have ambitions beyond gaining employment and
pursuing a subject of their interest. Further research are thus needed to explore whether African
students studying in China have similar ambitions, and how international education in China can
help them becoming leaders in their professional fields back home.

Even though international students are learning Chinese language, still the writing ability of
these students not adequately developed. The Chinese authorities should have to consider that,
before the students landing to china for studies should be taught little ability of understanding
Chinese, this might help to facilitate the international studentsto cope the new social and
learning environment, and this could possible through Confucius department that have been
established in almost many universities in Africa and the world.
From also these findings the future research should explore how the poor understanding poor of
local language can affect the academic expectations for international student.

The study found that expectations and challenges are almost similar for all African international
students in the data sample. From the findings, there are number of factors that made students to
achieve their expectations, from the participants who are the African international students’ who
studying and living at the Beijing Normal University, they frequently mentioned language
barriers,previous learning and living experiences, and cultural backgrounds. In social life
Chinese language proficiency and culturaldifferencescaused barriers to international students
who had willingness and attempts to make friends withnative Chinese speaking friends. On the
other side in academic issues all of themagreed that no barrier in their learning and they are fully
13
Involved on their academic works because their major ofstudies are taught in English, Although
language proficiency was mentioned by many participants as one factor that hinder their full

xlvii | P a g e
engagement in thesocial issues on and off campus, it was often cultural differences thatthwarted
not absorbed their efforts to be seen in the community they live in. It is not shock
thatinternational students feel more comfortable having friends and seeking assistancefrom
students from their country, but if the university can find ways forinternational students to
communicate not only with their own cultural circle this will increase their ability to achieve
what they expect and lowering the challenges on their new studying environment level

xlviii | P a g e
 14
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17
Appendix

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This is the questionnaire paper to collect data from you about research on to ascertain data on
expectations and challenges of international African students toward their study at Beijing
Normal University in Beijing, China.
Section A
Put a tick ( ) to the answer applicable to you
Social demographic data
1. Age range
(a) 20-25 ( ), (b) 26-30 ( ), (c) 31-35 ( ),(d) 36-40 ( )

2. Gander
A. Male ( ) B. Female ( )
What is your level of study in BNU?
A. Undergraduate ( ) B. Postgraduate ( ) C. PhD ( )

Section B
Tick ( ) the applicable to you
3. What attracted you to select China as your study destination?
A) Scholarship
B) Quality of education
C) English courses
D) Understanding chinnese culture

28

Expectations
Tick ( ) the applicable to you

4. What is your motive for studying in change?

A) To improve chinese language ( )
B) To understand Chinese culture ( )
C) Status of china universities is high than my home country ( )
D) To prepare to get job ( )
E) Easier to enter university more than home country ( )

5. What do you plan to do after your current program?

a) Work in china ( )
b) Work in my home country ( )
c) Pursue further education in china ( )
d) Pursue further education in home country ( )

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Reason for your answer above _______________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Any more plans ___________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Challenges

6. What is the challenge you living in china?

a) Difficulty in communication adjustment ( )
b) Difficulty environment adjustment ( )
c) Difficult in cognition adjustment ( )
Other challenge(s) ________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________

29

Term Paper

Course name:-

Education Systems, Policy and Management in China

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 Instructor of course:-

Dr. LI Jiayong

Dr. SANG Guoyuan

Title of Paper

Chinese higher education enrollment policy: Fairness of system for

students’ choice of university

Student ID: - 2013229010017

Faculty of education

Beijing Normal University

2014-01-09

Introduction

China is eagerly spearheading a massive expansion of higher education in a very radical way in
recent years, enrolment has doubled in just 3 years and the participation rate has reached 17%.
(Chen, 2004).The total enrolments have been doubled over just 3 years, reaching 16-odd million
in 2003, and its participation rate has jumped more than 4% over 1998, to more than 17%,

liv | P a g e
reaching the stage of mass higher education. According to a survey made by the Beijing
municipal education commission earlier 2002, all 50 colleges and universities surveyed are
adopting a cautious attitude towards enrolment (Hua, 2002). Among those surveyed, 63.8% hold
a positive attitude to enrolment expansion.

College admissions in China are centralized processes via standardized tests. This centralized
process was established in 1952 by the NationalMinistry of Education after years of
decentralized examinations and admissions. Prior to 1950, each college organized its own
entrance examination and admission system to admit students. Like other decentralized
processes, these college admissions systems suffered from a coordination problem: Some famous
HEIs could not recruit enough students even after many times of examinations and enrollment.
As many good students took man many times of examination and got approval for admission
from several HEIs, they would forgo the admission offers from some HEIs; as a result, the final
rate of enrollment is some HEIs was very low. In some HEIs the rate of enrollment was lower
than 20%.(Yang, 2010,p 148). To fix this problem, 73 colleges formed three regional alliances in
1950, and each alliance implemented a centralized process for admissions. Subsequently, the
Ministry of Education decided to organize the first National College Entrance Examination and
to assign students via national centralized processes

Each province has a student placement office that assigns high school graduates to colleges slots.
(Zhu, 2013).This office organizes a National College Entrance Examination for students
planning to attend the colleges and ranks the students according to test scores. Students are also
asked to report a list indicating preferences over colleges. Given the ranking of students via test
scores and students' reported preferences over colleges, the student placement office assigns
students to college slots under a specific system.

The college admission process in China begins with a college application. As of 2010, in Beijing,
Shanghai, and Tianjin, students must file a college application before taking the CEE; in Shanxi,
Liaoning, Jiangxi, Tibet, and Xinjiang, students file an application after they have taken the exam
but before they know their score; in the remaining provinces 1 students file an application after
1
Including Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Shandong, Henan, Hubei,Hunan,
Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan,Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, and Ningxia

lv | P a g e
receiving the CEE score reports2.
This research paper will main focused on the students’ choice of universities in different
provinces of china. As different provinces has different policy for students to choose their desired
universities for higher education and this different system creates imbalance between students
from different provinces. College admissions in China proceed sequentially in tiers. Colleges are
categorized into different tiers in decreasing prestige: Key colleges (i.e., National 985 and 211
universities) belong to the first tier and admit students first; ordinal colleges belong to the second
tier; and vocational training colleges are included in the third tier. Only when assignments in the
first tier are finalized, admissions in the second tier start, and so on.

During the whole process, a certain system of enrollment is used across tiers which are
predetermined by each province (Ma, 2013). In each tier, the system of enrolment and choice of
universities works as follows: in the first round, all students compete for their first choice
colleges; in the second round, students rejected in the first round compete for their second choice
colleges, if those colleges have available slots, and so forth, until all chosen colleges are
considered for unassigned students or there is no available college slot in the current tier. For a
given college, slots are allocated among students who rank it the same in their preference lists,
but students who rank it highly in the preference list have strict priority over those who do not.

This system of enrollment has been criticized by the public for years for some serious
deficiencies. The main criticism is the unfair enrollments for students from different provinces.
For instance, it is possible for students with higher test scores to receive worse assignments than
those with lower test scores.(Ruoling, 2010). This creates questions for the fairness of enrollment
system. Each year, many stories can be found in the news after the end of college admissions,
like the following story published on online news website, parents shared their son’s story of
taking CEE but couldn’t enroll in university even his marks was more than the required marks
for first tier universities.

“My son took this year's college admissions. His test score was 658, which is higher than the merit score
for the previous years of his first choice college. However, this year's merit score for his first choice
college was 660, so he was rejected by his first choice college. As other choice colleges are filled and not
2
Data source: gaokao.eol.cn, http://gaokao.eol.cn/kuai_xun_3075/20100610/t20100610_484751.shtml.

lvi | P a g e
accepted him, in the end, my son failed to be admitted by any good college although his test score is high
enough for admission. He was so frustrated that he decided to quit it 3.

2. Research Framework

The research framework for this paper has taken from Guang Yu Tan’s article 4 which is built
upon Martin Trow’s theory. Trow (2007) suggests the transformation of higher education goes
through three phases 1) elite--shaping the mind and character of ruling class in preparation for
elite roles; 2) mass--transmission of skills and preparation for a broader range of technical and
economic elite roles; and 3) universal--adaptation of the “whole population” to rapid social and
technological change (p.243). This transition from elite to mass needs changes in all their
structure and functions. This is beyond the scope of this research paper to cover all the aspects of
this transition so this paper will only focus on the enrollment policy for chinese HEIs in terms of
choice of university before CEE, after CEE but before knowing the score and after knowing the
score of CEE

Different researchers have found the inequalities in enrollment policy for chinese higher
education. According to Bai, C., et (2013) al Each year, under the guidance of the Ministry of
Education, each college and university sets the target number of examinees to be admitted from
each province. Universities and colleges begin their admission in the following order: first,
special colleges; second, the first-tier universities; third, the second-tier universities; and finally,
junior colleges. Each university and college selects applicants based on the applicants' CEE score
from the highest to the lowest until the admission quota is reached. By the end of the admission
process, each student gets one offer. A student can choose not to go to the offered school. In such
case, the student will need to re-take the CEE next year and go through the application and
admission procedure again.

Chinese provinces have different population and different educational developments including
the number and type of universities. Chinese Higher Education Institutions accept about 99% of
their students based on the CEE. As a result students spend a great amount of time preparing for
3
See http://learning.sohu.com/20070918/n252207517.shtml, posted on 2007/09/18 and retrieved on 2014/1/5
4
Tan, G. Y. (2013). HIGHER EDUCATION REFORMS IN CHINA: FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE?. International Education, 43(1)

lvii | P a g e
the exam. Nevertheless, not all of the students score the desirable mark to join universities. And
they have to choose university where they want to continue their higher education after taking
CEE. As different provinces adopted different system for choosing university, therefore there are
different disparities between the provinces.

3. Research methodology

This section is focused on sample size and sampling strategy, methods of data collection,
significance, scope and limitations of the study and data analysis

3.1 Sample Size and Sampling Strategy

Undergraduate students of first tier university located in Beijing, who are enrolled through three
different systems (i.e. choosing university before taking CEE, after CEE but before result and
after announcing the result) will be used as a sample for collecting data. The case school is
selected for sampling because of researcher live in this school and it’s easy and convenient for
researcher to find time for sampling. and another reason is that this university enrolls more than
two thousand new students every year from all provinces of China. Moreover, undergraduate
students are selected deliberately because they have been enrolled in this university recently.

The total sample size of respondents will be 9 students and these students will be selected from
Sample Universityusing convenience sampling. These 9 students come from different province
of china.a quota sampling were used which is of 3 students from province where they choose
university before taking CEE, 3 students from province where they choose university after taking
CEE but before announcing result and 3 students from province where they choose universities
after taking CEE and announcing the result.

3.2 Methods of Data Collection

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All the collected data is qualitative investigate fairness of choosing universities in enrollment
system for higher education. Method of data collection will be face to face, semi structured
interview. This is because semi-structured interview is helpful in getting enough information by
making the questions flexible and allows asking additional questions based on what an
interviewee responds (Alan, 2008).

The purpose of the study has been explained to the students. Students’ participation for sampling
to the study will be voluntary.

3.3 Significance, Scope and Limitations of the Study

Investigating the fairness of choosing universities in enrollment system will help all other
prospective examinee to learn from the experience of the previous students. The study may also
be applied to other enrollment policy like high school or primary school. Moreover, the research
can be used as a base for further studies on the factors that determine students ‘challenges in
current enrollment policy.

However, due to financial and time limitations, the study has confined only in one university.
Besides, lack of adequate data specially data from parents, high school teachers and other
stakeholders that would help in expanding the study has made the study to depend on students’
responses. Therefore, this research is far from claiming that the study has completed enough to
be generalized.

3.4Data Analysis

Qualitative data analysis has been used to present and analyze the collected data. The finding of
the interview is analyzed by using descriptive and explanatory methods, with a continuous
reference to the literature and previous empirical studies. Some finding will also be analyzed
thematically.

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 4. Research Findings

According to the literature review and interview findings, research findings has been divided into
three different categories, and these categories are according to the system of choosing university
by students. These all findings are very important and as Gu (2011) cited in “Spatial recruiting
competition in Chinese higher education system” from Marginson(2006)
“Every year, colleges and universities set their different admission score levels to different
provinces according to different factors such as regional student quality, regional education
development level, and local enrollment competition. The process of setting regional admission
score level for every university is complex and dynamic because there are strategic interactions
between competitive universities in each target region. Such strategic interactions between
competitive universities mean dynamic competition in higher education enrollment
field(Marginson 2006).
Theinterviewees were from different provinces, so research findings will be referenced with their
provinces to avoid the conflict with policies from other provinces in china.

4.1 Choosing university before taking CEE

Students who take CEE in Beijing has to fill the application form for applying university before
taking the CEE, and they have to choose three universities according to their choice in three
ranks of choice (i.e. first choice university, second and third choice university). They will be
enrolled by their first choice university if their score match with first choice university, but if it
doesn’t match, they have to wait for second choice university’s decision, if couldn’t get enroll
into second choice then wait for third choice university’s decision. If still couldn’t get enroll then
they have to take CEE again next year and same rule will apply next year too. As one of the
interviewee showed her fear of choosing university,
“Filling the form for choosing university before exam is not good, because I always had fear of
wasting my one year if I couldn’t enroll my first choice university. We can make better choice of
university and our future career if we know our score before choosing the university”.
When students make their choice of universities, they have to consider the choice of major also
with regard of universities, as different universities are specialized in different majors and

lx | P a g e
different merit list applied for different majors inside every university. So students have to
compete with two merit lists, one is which for university and second is for major. One
interviewee reflected herself like this,
“it was my dream to study in Peking University, and I really worked very hard, but I was afraid
of competition as every student wants to study in this university, so I chose another university as
my first choice, but when I got my CEE score, I was very sad and disappointed because my score
was very higher than the merit list of Peking university, but I couldn’t enroll myself there and
students with lower score than me were enrolled in there”
Students consult it with their parentsin making the choice of universities, and mostly they choose
the university which their parents thinks better for them and which is near to their home. But
they also consult it with their teachers and friends about choice of university. As one interviewee
had to change his choice of university because of her mother,
“I wanted to study in Zhejiang University becauseI like it and it is one of best universities in
china, but my mother didn’t allow me because she thinks it’s too far from our hometown so I
chose university in Beijing which is near to my home”

4.2 choosing university after taking CEE but before knowing their score of CEE

Students who take CEE in Shanxi has to fill the application form for applying university after
taking the CEE but before announcing the result. They can choose three choices of universities
with same criteria as students in Beijing but different number of universities in each choice and
it’s different in different province. If there score cannot match with their first choice university,
they have to wait for second choice university, if couldn’t enroll in second choice university then
wait for third choice. They have to wait for next year and take another CEE next year if they
couldn’t enroll by any university of their choice on application form. One interviewee reflected
his thoughts about this experience as,
“After taking CEE, my next step was making a choice of university, and it was really difficult for
me as there are many universities and every university has different merit list. I had to make sure
that I can get high score for merit list of my choice of university and finally I got admission in my
first choice university. It was great relief for me and my family”.
When students fill the form after taking CEE, they also have to consider the second merit list for

lxi | P a g e
majors, because different universities have different merits for different majors.
These students also consult it with their parents, teachers and friends before making choice of
universities, but parents play more effective role and they choose university for their children as
they think they know better what is good for their children.

4.3 choosing university after taking CEE and knowing score of CEE

Students who take CEE in Hebei, province has to fill the application form for applying university
after taking the CEE and announcing the result. they can match their score in CEE with different
universities according to universities’ merit list for Hebei province, and fill the application form
with same criteria like Beijing and Shandong which is choose three choice of universities and
wait for universities’ decision for student’s enrollment. As one student told his experience,
“I always wanted to go to top ranked universities like Peking University or Tsinghua University, and my
first year CEE score was not on these universities’ merit list so I decided to take another CEE next year,
my score was again lower than these universities’ merit list but it was good enough to enroll in another
top ranked university.it was my choice of wasting my year and time and I’m happy with that” .
When students fill the form after knowing their CEE score, they have to check university’s merit
list and also merit list for major in same university. But they knew their score before choosing
university which makes their choice easy. One interviewee said,
“As everyone knows their score and everyone want to go to best universities, so students with
higher score in CEE can only go to top ranked universities”

Another interviewee shared an example of their province,

“Thisyear (2013) from my province (Hebei), one hundred and four students were enrolled in
Peking University and TsinghuaUniversity graduated from only one school. So there was no
chance for students from other schools to enroll into these universities.”
These students also consult their choice of university with their parents, teachers and friends, but
again parents play more effective role and they prefer to choose university for their children.

5. Discussion

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Analysis of strategic interaction between universities has recently become a major focus of
administering authority of government and social scientists (Gu 2011 cited from McMillen et al.
2007; Millimetand Rangaprasad 2007a; Ghosh 2010). Such interaction in enrollment competition
field of higher education includes students’ choice of universities for their higher education.
This study investigates the effects of different systems of choosing university on students’ career
and how much fair is this system to students. Students experience with choosing universities for
higher education is great of value. They have to go through different systems from different
provinces to enroll even in one university. for example, for applying Beijing normal university,
student’s from Beijing will choose it their first choice before taking CEE, students from Shanxi
will choose it their first choice after taking CEE but without knowing their CEE score and
students from Hebei province will choose it their first choice after taking CEE and knowing their
CEE score.
These three different systems inside one centralized system create an imbalance of opportunities
and disparities among students from different provinces. Gu (2011) stated in his research on
higher education in china that the enrollment competitive behavior of higher education institutes
in China can be influenced by the size of neighborhood competitors. This competition can be
seen among students trying themselves to enroll in china’s best universities.
First, the students who choose university before taking exam are on high risk. (Zhu, 2013). they
choose their university on their ability to get score in the CEE, as every student has dream to go
to top universities of china, so they want to choose top university but they are afraid of choosing
because if they can’t get the merit list score for their choice of university, they have to take CEE
again next year and waste of their one year.

Once these students choose their university, they start preparing CEE to get enroll in their first
choice of university. It becomes their goal to get higher score than the merit list of that university.
Empirical evidence further illustrates the severity of the problem: For example, in 2005, over 800
students failed to beadmitted by first-tier colleges in Gansu province (Nie, 2007).
But there is another fact, there are many students who get very high score in CEE which is good
enough to enter into top ranked universities like Peking University or Tsinghua University, but
they can’t enroll themselves there because they didn’t chose these universities as their first
choice.

lxiii | P a g e
By this choice, students also take a risk in listing their first choices. If a student is rejected by her
firstchoice college, she is very likely to be rejected by the next choice colleges as these colleges
are filled with students who list themhigher in their preference lists. This gives students a strong
incentive to manipulate their true preferences, carefully choosing safecolleges as the first choice
and thus ensuring a higher chance of being admitted. Consequently, students are forced to play
acomplicated admission game induced by the choice of universities, and usually it is beneficial
for them to manipulate theirtrue preferences. This point has also been advocated by some
researchers working on college admissions reform5
The system of choice of universities emphasizes the choices students make. Whether they are
accepted by colleges does notonly depend on students' own test scores, but also on how other
students make choices

Second, the student who make their choice of university after taking CEE are also on risk but
less than those who choose before taking CEE. As Zhu (2013) argue that students are always at
risk when they make choice of university. These students have an idea how much score they can
get in CEE and they make their choice based on their CEE experience. But they are always at
risk because they don’t know how much exact score they can get and how many students applied
for the same university.

The Ministry of education also provides some advice on how to strategize in the sequential
choice algorithm on its official website forcollege admissions6
Students should carefully make their first choices, choosing colleges for which their test scores
are above the average of thepast year's admission scores if the colleges have had stable
admission scores in the past three years, and in the upper boundof the past year's admission
scores if the colleges have had unstable admission scores in the past three years.

Students should have safe colleges for their second choices. The second choice colleges should
be among those that hadavailable slots in the second rounds in the previous years, so that
students still have a chance of being admitted by theirsecond choice colleges even if rejected by
5
See http://gaokao.chsi.com.cn/gkxx/zjsd/201003/20100311/65908711.html, retrieved on 2014-01-02
6
See http://gaokao.chsi.com.cn/gkxx/zytb/201106/20110616/214533410-2.html, retrieved on 2014-01-04.

lxiv | P a g e
their first choice colleges.

Third, the students who make their choice of university after knowing their CEE score. It makes
things very easy for these students as they can match their score with all universities which they
want to study. As one interviewee said,
“It was very easy for me to make my choice for university, because I knew my score in CEE and
I knew the average score for merit of universities so I could choose any university matched with
my CEE score”.
And these students don’t have any fear of waste of year if they couldn’t get merit list score of
their choice of university as they already know their score before making choice of university.
And it will be students’ own choice if they want to repeat CEE to get higher score for better
university if their score was lower than their desired university’s merit list. Butthere is another
fact of this choice system which students showed in interview as top schools, top students
dominate top universities.

Fourth, other factors which effects on students’’ choice for universities like parents, family,
friends, teachers etc. Family characteristics that influence students’ education include family
income, parental education, family structure, religion, ethnicity, caste, and parental engagement
(Chudgar and Shafiq, 2010).Parents play an important role in students’ academic career and their
choice of university as well.

This shows that students’ choice depends on their parents’ choice as well. Giordano, Phelps,
Manning and Longmore (2008) explain that parents’ academic attainment has a major effect on
the success of students. One interviewee even didn’t fill his form as his father did everything for
him,
“I didn’t know my first choice of university till the day when Ireceived offer from that university
as my father filled the form and he chose university for me”

6. Conclusion

Theenrollment system in HEIs and making choice of university has gone throughseveral phases,

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and a lot of reforms have already been done to bring the fair system among admission policy.
Ministry of education and other education departments at provincial and county levels have
changed their policies in recent years to give more benefits to students. But three different
systems of making choice of university for students from different provinces create a question of
fairness. To remove unfairness and students' incentive in this system, the educationdepartment in
Hunan province became the first, in 2003, to replace the singlechoice of university system with a
new parallel choice system. Later in 2005 and in 2007, this parallel choice was also introduced
separately in Jiangsu province andZhejiang province. Parallel choicemeans that students can list
several “parallel” colleges in decreasing desirability for each choice. In this way, each college
slot is sequentially allocated from the student with the highest test score tothe student with the
lowest test score.
As students from different provinces under different system of choosing university, choose the
same university, it creates imbalance when those students sit in same classroom but came to this
university through different systems. Ministry of education and provincial education departments
should need to adopt a central enrollment policy which gives equal opportunities for all students
from all over the country and which can save their one year of going through retaking
CEE.There should be equal opportunities for all students to enroll into universities.
Chinesegovernment should put their focus on the equality of opportunities for students. HEIs
role should also be discussed in all this procedure and corrections should be made to overcome
the disparities between students and universities.

References

Bai, C. E., Chi, W., &Qian, X. (2013). Do college entrance examination scores predict undergraduate GPAs?
A tale of two universities.China Economic Review.
Chen, D. Y. (2004). China’s mass higher education: Problem, analysis, and solutions. Asia Pacific
Education Review, 5(1), 23-33.

lxvi | P a g e
Chudgar, A., &Shafiq, M. N. (2010).Family, community, and educational outcomes in South
Asia.Prospects, 40(4), 517-534.
Francis, A. M., &Tannuri-Pianto, M. (2012). The redistributive equity of affirmative action: Exploring the role
of race, socioeconomic status, and gender in college admissions. Economics of Education Review, 31(1), 45-
55.
Gu, J. (2012). Spatial recruiting competition in Chinese higher education system.Higher Education, 63(2),
165-185.
Harman, G. (1994). Student selection and admission to higher education: Policies and practices in the Asian
region. Higher Education, 27(3), 313-339.
Jacob, W. J. (2006). Social Justice and Gender in Chinese Higher Education: Regional Issues of Equity and
Access. In Education and Social Justice (pp. 139-159). Springer Netherlands.
Li, M. (2012).On the Fairness of the Higher Education in China.Higher Education Studies, 2(2), p163.
Liu, H., & Wu, Q. (2006). Consequences of college entrance exams in China and the reform challenges. KEDI
Journal of Educational Policy, 3(1), 7-21.
Ma, H. (2013).Science Teachers’ Understanding of the College Entrance Examination in a Climate of National
Curriculum Reform in China. In Valuing Assessment in Science Education: Pedagogy, Curriculum, Policy (pp.
183-205). Springer Netherlands.
Meyer, H. D. (2013). Reasoning about Fairness in Access to Higher Education.In Fairness in Access to Higher
Education in a Global Perspective (pp. 15-40).SensePublishers.
Neumann, M., Trautwein, U., & Nagy, G. (2011). Do central examinations lead to greater grading
comparability? A study of frame-of-reference effects on the University entrance qualification in
Germany.Studies in Educational Evaluation, 37(4), 206-217.
Ruoling, Z. (2010). On the Rationality of the College Entrance Examination.Chinese Education & Society,
43(4), 11-21.
Tan, G. Y. (2013). HIGHER EDUCATION REFORMS IN CHINA: FOR BETTER OR FOR
WORSE?.International Education, 43(1).
Wang, L., Huang, X., & Schnell, J. (2013).Using Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad to Interpret Chinese “Gao-Kao”
High Stakes Testing and Stressing− Paralleled Testing in the US as Cross-Cultural Context.
Yang, M. (2010).Educational System in China.Zhejiang University Press.
Zhong, H. (2011). Returns to higher education in China: What is the role of college quality?.China Economic
Review, 22(2), 260-275.
Zhu, M. (2013). College admissions in China: A mechanism design perspective. China Economic Review.

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A Preliminary Observation to an Appropriate Aggregate Size
of
Chinese Higher Education
(A Non-Chinese Perspective)

(201339010006)

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the course

“Chinese History and Culture”
(Education Systems, Policy and Management in China)

10 January 2014

Course Instructors
Associate Professor Li Jiayong and Associate Professor Sang Guoyuan

lxviii | P a g e
 List of Abbreviations
CPC Communist Party of China
CPRC Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution
GER Gross Enrollment Ratio
HEI Higher Education Institution
OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization

Table of Contents
Table of Contents Page
List of Abbreviations...........................................................................................................................lxxiii
Table of Contents................................................................................................................................lxxiii
Abstract.................................................................................................................................................lxxv
1. Introduction: A challenge faced by educational planners...............................................................i
2. State of the art: Educational planning and an optimal aggregate size of higher education........iii
3. Study framework and methodology...............................................................................................vii
4. Historical overview and trends of higher education enrollment in China.....................................x
5. Challenges and dilemmas over size of higher education in China...............................................xv
6. Conclusion......................................................................................................................................xxv
References............................................................................................................................................xxvii

lxix | P a g e
 Abstract
This current study was inspired by the “two-line struggle” between the radical and the moderate
factions of the CPC since the 1949 over a policy dilemma related to an appropriate aggregate size of
the Chinese higher education and day-to-day news reporting unemployment of Bachelor’s degree
graduates. Preliminarily observed from an eye of a foreigner, the study analyzed relevant documents
published in English. It found that majority of the scholars demonstrated pessimistic views towards
the massification in China in the last decade.
However, the current study believes that higher education should not be only reserved for
the well-trained elites but it should be diversified so that it can accommodate various needs of the
masses. The appropriate aggregate size of higher education should be determined mainly by
teaching capacity of HEIs, not merely by the demand of the labor market and economic returns.
Previous research obviously showed that the over expansion of the Chinese higher education put
pressures on teaching quality so that higher education cannot generate sufficient human capital. The
evidences to shed light on manpower requirement and returns to higher education are still
inconclusive. Due to the resource constraints of HEIs, the study contended that the government’s
decision to lowerthe growth rate to only around 5 percent since 2007 is a right decision.

lxx | P a g e
(6,414 words in main texts)

lxxi | P a g e
 A Preliminary Observation to

an Appropriate Aggregate Size of Chinese

Higher Education

1. Introduction: A challenge faced by

educational planners
This article deals with one of the extremely challenging but unavoidable tasks of policy makers
and educational planners that is to specifyan appropriate aggregate size of higher education in a
particular country.The worldwide expansion of higher education has been aroused by the slogan
“Learning is earning” (Brown & Lauder, 2006, p. 325). It additionally creates opportunities for
fraudulent providers of higher education and results in backwash effects such as “degree mill”
(UNESCO, 2009). When further complicated by fierce competition for limited professional jobs,
policy makers, scholars and stakeholders might perceive negatively towards such massification.
However, manpowerrequirement has for several decades become merely one aspect of
educational planning and it cannot be prioritized over other goals(Anderson & Bowman, 1967).
According to Confucius, the role of education is manifold and complex. It roles is to transform
both the self and the State (Gu et al., 2009).Since educationis not market goods, it is difficult to
pinpoint exact criteria applied to measure the adequacy of an educational system. Each
approach to educational planning also bears both itsmerits and limitations while it is undeniable
that educational development cannot be managed on an ad hoc basis (Bereday et al., 2006).

In China, the “two-line struggle” between the radical and the moderate factions of the
Communist Party of China (CPC) during the post-1949 periods has led to widely oscillating
policies for national development and education. As Tsang (2000) pointed out, the CPChas been
sharply divided over various enduring policy dilemmas, including education for the masses
versus education preparing well-trained elite.Since the 1980s, different views have emerged.
One view have favored a slow rate of higher education expansion and believed that China has
already been able to produce enough high-skilled personnel for the national economy. Rapid
expansion may lead to widespread unemployment of graduates that subsequently might lead to
social and even political unrest. On the other hand, the opponents have positively believed that

i
the growing national economy could absorb more graduates.
Theslower-growth view had prevailed during the 1990s before the State Council set a
large increase in new entrants into regular higher education in 1999 despite concerns regarding
the potential negative impact on quality. The dominant motivation for this large increase was
mainly economic. During the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the government considered inducing
additional private consumption on higher education instead of other sectors as a means to boost
China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth (ibid.). Nowadays, thistroublesome question
become more complicated, especially when higher education qualificationsbring few guarantees
to the newly graduates (http://world.time.com/2013/07/04/in-china-higher-education-brings-few-
guarantees/,Retrieved September 30, 2013). The government started to control the excessive
growth of enrollment in 2006 (Gu et al., 2009); however, pursuing higher education has already
become a norms for the Chinese middle classasa way to avoid low-prospect jobs (Ding, 2004).
Notwithstanding complexity of the issue, this article is determined to shed light on what
should be an appropriate aggregate size of higher education in China in the present and
in the next ten years.This aim can be achieved by looking at the two-fold objectives; consisting
of, (i) to explore historical overview and trends of higher education enrollment in China
since the reform and opening-up to the outside world in 1978; and(ii) to explore
difficulties/dilemmas created by the fact that higher education must simultaneously
satisfy economic, social, political and educational goals.Sincethe Chinese higher education
system represents one of the world’s biggest experiments in massification, it is hoped that the
findings will be also useful to other countries encountering dilemmas created by massification of
higher education.

2. State of the art: Educational planning

and an optimal aggregate size of higher
education
Sidorkin (2012) recently reminded us a simple truth that the masses want and need higher
education. The innovative discourses should therefore focus on solving the numerous problems
that arise from massification rather than trying to reverse the trend. However, since development
impact of education might opposite to expectation due to oversupply of educated workforce and
low quality of education (Pritchett, 2001), behind the current pursuit of quality and excellence,
quantitative planning is still always mandatory.
Defining an appropriate aggregate size of higher educationcovers a diverse range of

ii
theoretical and empirical considerations on massification of higher education and educational
planning.The most widely-referenced model of development phase in higher education was
introduced by Martin Trow. Trow (1973)’s three phases of higher education development are
determined based on the ratio of students in higher education institutions (HEIs) among the
same age population.The elite stage, the mass stage, and the universal stage, cater the
enrollment ratio of less than 15 percent, 15-50 percent, and greater than 50 percent of the age
group, respectively. This model was a development of his well-known article on “The
democratization of higher education in America”, which he saw various effects and uncertainties
of the rapid expansion on individuals, institutions, and society (Silver, 2009).

There have beenapproximately 190publicationson massification of higher education

published in English during 1990-2013 by international recognized publishers according to the
EBSCO Host (Retrieved November 28, 2013) and a considerable number in other databases.
Most researches refer to Trow’s model as a means to identify the stage of higher education
expansion.However, the shift from the mass stage through the universal stage does not always
occur with a steady expansion as happened in Japan. In terms of part-ways, while the United
States moved towards massification by “publicization”, Japan relied on “privatization” or
expansion of lower-ranked HEIs i.e. technical and vocational HEIs (Huang, 2012).
Beyond individual and social benefitsclaimed by the Human Capital Theory, Mount &
Bélanger (2004)’ research in Canada argued that massification/universalization encouraged HEIs
to increase industry-supported research and provide measurable results.In the United Kingdom,
these changes have promoted an increased sense of accountability, to principle, stakeholders,
the government, the taxpayer, and students themselves (Rodgers, 2011). Soen & Davidovitch
(2004) further demonstrated that, in Israel, the massification reduced social selection in higher
education and enhanced opportunities for individuals to attain access to the most desirable fields
of study.
Unfortunately, similar to research findings and debates several decades agosuch as the
“Diploma Disease” (Dore,1976), recent set of research in Taiwan still posted several challenges
created by rapid higher education massification; these are, (i) social class reproduction due to
hierarchicalranks of HEIs (Chen-Dorothy, 2012; Chou & Wang, 2012);(ii) a dilemma between
equality versus excellence (Wang, H. H., 2012); (iii) unsatisfactory educational quality (Chang &
Chao-Chi, 2012);(iv) oversupply and poor quality of graduates (Mok et al., 2013); as well as(v)
equity of access among different social groups (Liu &Cheng, 2012; Wang, R.J., 2012).
The inequity of access wasalso raised by Fahmi (2007)in Indonesia and Louis (2012)in
Tanzania and Ghana.The impacts on social class reproduction was confirmed by Craven (2012)
in the United Kingdom and Walker (2007) in Japan.Altbach et al. (2010)’ review of worldwide
trends also emphasized these social justice issues. Recently, Misaroet al. (2013)’s research in

iii
Kenya confirmed that massification deteriorates quality and relevance of higher education.
Nowadays, the worldwide massification of higher education has been a response to the
human rights, the rise of knowledge society, the explosion in populations, and globalization
(Brenda, 2010).As suggested by Guri-Rosenblit et al. (2007), the most crucial issues to which
policy makers should address when decide to expand their higher education system consist of:(i)
external and internal boundaries of higher education;(ii) top-down and bottom-up forces;(iii)
globalization and supra-national trends;(iv) flexibility;and (v) public and private sectors.
With reference to the size of higher education, Bereday et al. (2006) summarized three types
of educational planning and suggested thateducational planners should not think of any one of
the three separately. First of all, the “social-demand approach” attempts to forecast the future
demand for places by taking into account of demographic and social trends.A splendid example
is the British Robbins Report in the 1960s which explicitly stated that higher education courses
should be available for all those who are qualified and wish to pursue them. This approach
provides permissive social climate because it is difficult to force young people to study subjects
in which they are not interested and it is exceedingly hard to forecast in advance what kinds of
training will be needed in a rapidly changing economy. On the contrary, the “manpower-
requirement approach” involves limitation of personal choice with the belief that the fast growth of
total production needs educated workers trained in the right skills. However, this approach fails to
realize that formal education is only one of the dimension spectrums of skill attainment. The
“cost-benefit approach” then came as the third alternative. This approach works out the costs of
various types of education and compares them with the returns, both to individual and to society.
The sectors with best pay-off are the sector that should be developed.
As reviewed by Misaroet al. (2013), there was atrend in the 1990s to prioritize basic
education over higher education in developing countries because the international donors argued
that the economic return from the former were far greater than from the latter.In Europe,
expansion of higher education had been a controversial issue. Critiques tended to point out
deterioration of quality and mismatches in the labor market. It was only since about 1985 that the
public became in favor of highly-expanded tertiary education with the widespread hopes that it
would reduce inequalities of educational achievement. Before that, the oil shock of 1973 led to a
pessimistic view that some of the growing number of graduates will be the winners and others
the losers in their subsequent careers. However, other areas of the world later provided Europe
with a set of hypothesis that expansion of student enrollment is desirable (Teichler, 2008).
This year the 1970s’s concern comes back. The “Education at a Glance” report 2013 by
the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) comes at a time when
youth unemployment keeps policy makers awake at night (OECD, 2013).This report offered
insights for policy responses. In the OECD countries, the private returns on investment in tertiary
education are substantial and the public benefits in the form of greater tax revenues and social

iv
contributions. Unfortunately, delving into the actual content of qualifications; for example,in the
United States, unemployment rate of higher education graduates from the high-paying field
ofcomputer and information systems (5.3 percent) was higher than that for relatively low-paying
secondary teaching program (2.4 percent) (ibid., p. 14).Recently, President Obama put efforts to
expand college graduation attainment rates due to a need to be competitive with other nations
which have a larger proportion of adults with college degrees. However, a study by Vedder et al.
(2010) argued that this policy is misdirected as evidence showed that more than one-third of
college graduates hold jobs that require less than a college degree.
In this regard, literatures have not yet established clear patterns about the relationship
between expansion, graduate employment and wage rates, and the developmental stage of a
country (Levin & Xu, 2005). Coombs (1967) also suggested several decades ago that
educational planning is more sociological, psychological, political and pedagogical in character
than it is economic. The lack of job opportunities for newly graduates may seem mainly economic
on the surface but in fact is far deeper and broader. To him, it seems ridiculous to view a country
as being “over-educated” when large fractions of its people are still illiterate and poor. If
education sparks new aspirations and new initiatives in people, it may have consequences that
better or worse reach far beyond the statistics of unemployment. Will his hypothesis hold true in
China?

3. Study frameworkand methodology

The term “appropriate aggregate size” as used by Tsang (2000: 20) and in this study, concerns
policy regarding the role of higher education in national development and who should be enrolled
in higher education. It can be proxied by the total number of students especially number of
undergraduate students since number of graduate students is relatively small. However, due to a
complex and multi-level feature of higher education in China, thisstudy merely deals with the
formal system of higher education in Mainland China with a particular focus on universities. In
view of the aim and objectives of the current study and the state of the art presented earlier, this
study develops its study framework as presented in the Figure 1 below.

Figure 1 Study framework

v
 Globalization and supra-
national trends

Educational planning
National challenges and Chinese higher education Chinese higher education
Transformation process New driving forces
priorities Stage A Transformation contexts Stage B

Educational challenges and

priorities

The term “non-Chinese perspective” as presented in the title is significant because this
study is built on English literatures and the author is not a Chinese. Although most of the
literatures employed in this study are written by the Chinese scholars, the author analyzed this
Chinese case from the international and comparative perspectives.
This study is a preliminary observation in nature. The author did not aim toemploy any
econometric models to forecast demand and supply of higher education graduates in the next
ten years. However, the novelty of the study is that it attempts to identify the appropriate
aggregate size of higher education in China from a holistic perspective. It takes into account
equally the social-demand approach, the manpower-requirement approach, and the cost-benefit
approach for an educational planning. Besides, it realizes that higher education must
simultaneously satisfy economic, social, political and educational objectives at the same time.
For the sake of objectivity, the study systematically selected the documents and statistics
for the secondary analysis. To facilitate international comparison, the statistics were retrieved
from the online database of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. As for the documents, they were
searched from EBSCO Host, ProQuestresearch library, and open resources of UNESCO and the
World Bank, covering all kinds of document in these databases e.g. scholarly journals, reports,
and booksthat are published during 1978-2013. In addition to qualitative content analysis, these
documents were analyzed quantitatively in order to answer whether majority of the scholars held
pessimistic or optimistic viewpoints about massification of higher education in China.
Last but not least, the current study starts its study time frame from 1978 due to dramatic
change in Chinese higher education at that time. The third Plenary Session of the 11 th Central
Committee of the CCP was held in that year in order to set off policies of reform and opening-up

vi
to the outside world, including a renewal of Chinese higher education (Gu et al., 2009).

4. Historical overview and trends of higher

education enrollment in China
The policy regarding expansion of higher education in China has been fluctuated during the past
six decades. In line with the social-demand approach, Chairman Mao set a policy of rapid higher
education expansion in September 1958. Within 15 years, the national experiment towards
communism was determined to provide access to higher education to all determined individuals
who are qualified. This great leap forward had recruited more students into HEIs than secondary
school graduates for several consecutive years before the CPC realized the necessity to set a
national enrollment limit in 1961. Nevertheless, the extremely downward swing in aggregate size
came later during the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution (GPCT) (1966-1976) when higher
education had discontinued admission during its first half (Tsang, 2000; Yang, 2005).
A significant upward trend of student enrollment had resumed during the Open Door
period (1978-1988). As shown in Table 1, although Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) to primary
education since the 1978 has been more than 100 percent, the corresponding figure for tertiary
education in that year was less than one percent. While Europe and many parts of the world had
been skeptical about rapid expansion of higher education due to scarcity of jobs during the oil
crisis, China had worked very hard to increase the enrollment due to inadequacy of high-skilled
personal for her rapidly growing economy. Noting that only 0.5 percent of the adult population in
China received higher education credentials in the early 1980s, the Chinese government then
endorsed the World Bank report calling for more higher education. The report proposed that
China should have increasedthe enrollment from 2.3 million in 1983 to 11 million in 2000
(Jacobson, 1986). However, the expansion had been later slowed down since 1988; as
mentioned earlier, because the slower-growth view had prevailed (Tsang, 2000).

Table 1Gross enrollment ratio to school and adult literacy rate in China, 1978-2010
Unit: Percent

Year 1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010
Gross enrolment ratio 115.159 113.873 125.289 128.528 109.895 102.869 108.447 118.7661 128.8551
Primary education 50 80 30 80 90 00 00 00 00
Gross enrolment ratio
78.4766
Lower secondary ... ... ... ... ... ...
6
90.02220 99.77997
education
Gross enrolment ratio
35.1936
Upper secondary ... ... ... ... ... ...
1
47.62529 69.06736
education
Gross enrolment ratio
12.4198
Tertiary education 0.72553 ... 3.02037 3.09806 3.70609 6.09553
1
19.51878 23.32153
(ISCED 5 and 6)

vii
 65.5050 77.7850
Adult (15+) literacy rate ...
9
...
6
... ... ... ... 95.12448

Source: http://stats.uis.unesco.org, Retrieved December 29, 2013.

Note:
1. Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) is number of pupils or students enrolled in a given level of education, regardless of age,
expressed as a percentage of the official school-age population corresponding to the same level of education. For the
tertiary level, the population used is the 5-year age group starting from the official secondary school graduation age.
2. The latest available data can be traced back in 2010.
3. … No data available.

In the early 1990s, Chinese higher education began to be driven by market forces. In
October 1992, the goals of higher education reform were set as “larger size, higher quality,
optimized structure and improved effectiveness” (Hao & Long, 2000, p. 480 cited by Gu et al.,
2009, p. 14). In 1993, the “Outlines of Educational Reform and Development” highlighted quality-
oriented and deeper systematic reform that provided greater institutional autonomy to HEIs (Gu
et al., 2009). In other words, quantitative expansion and qualitative enhancement were the two
focuses of higher education reform since the 1990s (Huang, 2005).
Unfortunately, as demonstrated in Table 2, the total enrollment in tertiary education in
China in the late 1990s (6.1 percent in 1998) still lagged behind the world average (17.3 percent)
and the average of other regions including the East Asia and the Pacific (13.4 percent) where
China is located and even South and West Asia (7.2 percent). Much earlier, the United States
was the first country to achieve mass higher education since the 1960s. Western Europe and
Japan experienced rapid growth in the 1980s, followed by East Asia and Latin America (Altbach
et al., 2010). However, in the 2000s, the GER to tertiary education of China had been almost
able to catch up Arab States and Central Asia, and had already surpassed South and West Asia.
As reviewed by Postiglione (2005), as of July 2003, China started to have the highest number of
university students in the world, followed by the United States, India, Russia, and Japan.

Table 2Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) to tertiary education (ISCED 5 and 6) in China and other
world regions, 1978-2012.
Unit: Percent

Year
1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2012
Country/Region
19.3817 21.1551
Arab States ... ... ... ... ... 16.65329
9 2
23.44792 ...

Central and Eastern ... ... ... ... ... 37.65425

50.3001 60.2055
67.87522 ...
Europe 9 2
24.3115 26.2463
Central Asia ... ... ... ... ... 20.39730
5 2
24.30172 ...

East Asia and the ... ... ... ... ... 13.41443
18.9803 24.3413
29.07819 ...
Pacific 8 7
12.4198 19.5187
China 0.72553 ... 3.02037 3.09806 3.70609 6.09553
1 8
23.32153 ...

China, Hong Kong

Special ... 9.95360 ... ...
21.5213
... ...
32.9846
57.83573
60.1254
Administrative 8 4 0
Region
China, Macao ... ... ... 29.4555 24.4393 ... 62.3460 62.4172 61.79196 ...
5 6 4 6
Special

viii
 Administrative
Region
Latin America and ... ... ... ... ... 20.30035
26.1678 32.4209
41.16512 ...
the Caribbean 7 6
North America and ... ... ... ... ... 59.33088
66.1683 69.7045
76.47819 ...
Western Europe 2 6
South and West ... ... ... ... ... 7.15040 9.30526
11.0445
17.11446 ...
Asia 5

Sub-Saharan Africa ... ... ... ... ... 3.80878 4.87896 5.87777 7.28684 ...
21.5172 24.8922
World ... ... ... ... ... 17.28242
5 6
29.55838 ...

Source: http://stats.uis.unesco.org, Retrieved December 29, 2013.

Note:
1. Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER), Tertiary (ISCED 5 and 6) is the total enrollment in tertiary education (ISCED 5 and 6),
regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the total population of the five-year age group following on from
secondary school leaving.
2. ISCED 5 is the first stage of tertiary education. It consists of tertiary programs having an educational content more
advanced than those offered at levels 3 and 4. Entry to these programs normally requires the successful completion of
ISCED level 3A or 3B or a similar qualification at ISCED level 4A.
3. ISCED 6 is the second stage of tertiary education. This level is reserved for tertiary programs which lead to the award of
an advanced research qualification. The programs are therefore devoted to advanced study and original research and are
not based on course-work only.
4. The latest available data can be traced back in 2012.
5. …means no data available.

At the crossroad towards the mass stage, a diversified higher education system had
taken shape in China with a wide range of HEIs from public to private institutions covering
regular, adult, television and radio institutions, and examination-based self-study higher
education (Yang, 2005). However, the rapid expansion in the 2000s mainly relied on the fast
growth of enrollment in the regular higher education (about 70 percent of the total enrollment in
2008), the local HEIs which were transferred from the ministries of the central governments,the
two-year programs, and the Minban colleges and second-tier independent colleges. Humanities
and social sciences programs expanded faster than natural science and engineering, although
engineering programs still enrolled the largest percentage of students in 2008 (Wang & Liu,
2011).
Various factors contributed to the rapid growth in the last decade. The most immediate
factor was the Keynesian economic motivation. Previous studies (cf. Tsang, 2000; Qiang, 2009)
pointed out the government’s intention to boost GDP growth during the Asian financial crisis of
1997 by inducingprivate consumption on higher education and energizing the development of
education-related industries.This hidden agenda was translated into the “1999 Action Plan for
Vitalizing Education for the 21st Century”,which aimed to raise the enrollment rate to 11 percent
by 2000 and be close to 15 percent by 2010. Although China could not achieve the 2000’s target,
the GER reached the massification stage according to Trow (1973) before time set in the plan.
Other factors leading to this unprecedented expansionconsist of: (i) the labor market’s
demand for highly-educated workers; (ii) the rising academic requirements by employers; (iii) the

ix
demand from individuals and families perceiving higher education as an investment; (iv) the
Confucian tradition believing that receiving advanced education is a noble endeavor; (v) shortage
of decent jobs in the labor market that stimulated individuals to prolong their study; (vi) the
growth of higher education-age populationthat would have encouraged rapid expansion even if
the scale of enrollment had grown at a fairly rapid pace; (vii) the relaxing admission quotas by the
governmentregarding students’ age limits and HEIs’ freedom to take in more students; and (viii)
the pressure of global trends, especiallythe knowledge economy and the rise of enrollment in
other countries (Ding, 2004; Li et al., 2008; Qiang, 2009; Xie, 2007; Wang & Liu, 2011).
All in all, concurring with Brenda (2010), Coombs (1967), and Guri-Rosenblit et al.
(2007), it is witnessed that Chinese higher education had expanded under various pressures, not
only economic, and underboth top-down and bottom-up forces from both within and outside the
Chinese higher education system. These factors subsequently led to considerable challenges
and dilemmas for policy makers and educational planners as presented in the next section.

5. Challenges and dilemmas over size of

higher education in China
Retrieved from four databases as mentioned in Section 3, the arguments in this section are
drawn from relevant 53 publications in English covering 42scholarly journal articles, twobooks,
six research reports and working papers, and three dissertations. Among the journal articles, five
of them were published in the “Frontiers of Education in China”, five articles in the “Chinese
Education and Society”, three articles in the “Harvard China Review”, two articles in the “Journal
of Contemporary China”, and other two articles in the “Higher education: The International
Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning”. The remaining 25 articles were
published in other different journals. Most of the authors of these publications are Chinese
although some publications are the research reports and working papers of the World Bank and
dissertations of the universities in the United States and Canada.
This study aims to cover publications published during 1978-2013; however, most of the
relevant publications had been published during 2005-2009 (26 publications), followed by during
2010-2013 (21 publications). The six other publications are published in 2004. It is possible that
the issues related to size, enrollment, expansion and massification of higher education in China
have started to be attracted by the Chinese and international scholars after 2003 when China
higher education system reached the mass stage and became the largest in the world.
By analyzing the latent meaning within texts, the current study found that majority of the
authors (19 publications, 35.85 percent of the relevant 53 publications) showed pessimistic views

x
towards rapid expansion of higher education in the 2000s while nine publications (16.98 percent)
held optimistic views. The other 16 publications (30.19 percent) demonstrated balanced views
while the tones of the rest nine publications (16.98 percent) cannot be inferred.Although those
various opinions were not always directly related to the size of higher education per se, they
provided invaluable insights for policy makers and educational planners whether China should
continue to enlarge her higher education system, and if so, China should do at which pace.

The pessimistic views

Several salient points were raised by the opponents of the expansion. The fast growth of
enrollment put pressures on funding, student loans, staff, and learning facilities (Gong, 2007; Ma,
2010; Mooney, 2007; Wan, 2006; Xie & Huang, 2005; Yao et al., 2010). Insufficient resources
subsequently affected quality of instruction (Ding, 2004; Jen, 2005; Mooney, 2007; Wan, 2006;
Zhang & An, 2010) and posted dilemmas to the elite HEIs as they need to play key roles in the
revolutionary expansion process on the one hand, and change Chinese top HEIs to the world-
class universities on the other hand (Gong & Lee, 2010).Drawing on data of China, the United
States, and Japan, Xie & Huang (2005, p. 158)’s econometric analysis proposed that rational
range GER to tertiary education in China during 2000-2010 should have been between-10 to 10
percent. If it had reached over 20 percent, it would have been in danger. The annual growth rates
between 2003 and 2020 should average from 2 to 3 percent in order to keep pace with the
teaching capacity of HEIs, economic growth, and demographic contexts. Unfortunately, China
had exceeded these limits both in terms of GER and growth rate.
Their arguments additionally encompassed employment issues (Bai, 2006; Gereffi et al.,
2008; Gong, 2007; Ma, 2010; Ngok & Lee, 2009; Wang et al., 2012; Wang & Liu, 2011; Yang &
Mayston, 2012).It was not merely due to over-supply. Many graduates including engineering
graduates faced the prospect of substantial unemployment, despite high corporate demand for
their services. Quality of recent graduates isthen in doubt (Gereffi et al, 2008).Moreover, the
mounting unemployment is jeopardizing while evidences are still inconclusive whether the
expansion policy has revitalized the economy as expected or not in the short term(Wang & Liu,
2011). Giles et al. (2008) warned that the government should not be misguided by over-
estimated private returns and expand higher education than it would be warranted. High private
returns to higher education in China are not an indication of the scarcity of graduates. They are
on the contrary determined by selection effects associated with the entrance examination.
Since the massive expansion had been occurred in line with commercialization and
decentralization of higher education, key themes i.e. inequality, inequity and social injustice were
pointed out (Ding, 2004; Jacob, 2006; Ngok & Lee, 2009; Wan, 2006; Yao et al., 2010). Driven by
economic considerations, HEIs went after high fees and regarded higher education as a cash

xi
cow (Ding, 2004). The poorest provinces did not benefit much from the redistribution of higher
education resources. Students from more affluent provinces had more chance of being accepted
by key national universities due to a strong bias in recruitment policy. Since welfare of the poor
declined, high tuition fees became a critical deterrent for low income students seeking access to
higher education (Yao et al., 2010). Furthermore, HEIs were chasing after students by greatly
sugaring up and exaggerating what they can provide. Deceived by false claims, Shi &Wang
(2004) insisted that applicants did not receive equitable treatment because the market
mechanisms did not deal with each person equally.

The optimistic views

The proponent of expansion similarly looked at the above-mentioned aspects but

believed more in opportunities created by expansion in the last decades than its
backwash effects. They also tended to lean towards the social-demanded approach
of educational planning more than their pessimistic counterparts. Cheng (2004)
praised for a report entitled “Stride from a Country of Tremendous Population to a
Country of Profound Human Resources” published in 2003. This was perhaps the
first time in China’s policy deliberations where social aspirations or demands of
learning from the people were included as a target goal parallel to collective goals
such as economic growth, technological advancement and global competition. This
scholar supported the expansion and promoted lifelong learning.Although the
expansion had aroused controversies in quality, narrow entrance to higher education
had also created difficulties in reforming school education at the lower levels.
Besides, the expansion had encouraged the reform of curriculum. One major reform
was to reduce the Soviet Model’s influence or the number of specializations from
over 800 specializations to slightly above 200 during 2000-2005. Zhao & Zha (2010)
added that only when the government launched a program of higher education
massification did key science and technology universities develop their own unique
reform strategies in a move to become more comprehensive and more research
oriented.

As to labor-market perspectives, Li et al. (2008) were optimistic to the future

economy and believed that the unemployment and over-education are essentially
temporary. Individuals and labor market will finally be able to adjust themselves.
They also pointed out that percentage of highly-educated workers in China is still low
xii
compared to China’s competitors. Moreover, empirical evidences showed a steady
increase of the private rate of returns to higher education in China. These evidences
were widely acclaimed by other supporters as higher education is a key determinant
of successful labor market outcomes for the Chinese (Di Gropello & Sakellariou,
2010; Liang & Chen, 2013; Maurer-Fazio, 2006; Maurer-Fazio & Dinh, 2004).
Recently, Liang & Chen (2013) suggested that the government should continue to expand
higher education. Across China, the share of primary sector employment has dropped by 32
percentage points from 1980 (69 percent) to 2010 (37 percent), while the share of tertiary sector
employment has more than doubled from 13 percent to 34 percent within the last three
decades(p. 21). Expansion of basic education also leads to rising qualifications required for
particular jobs. Bachelor’s degrees are awarded in the job market at increasingly higher rates
over associate higher education degrees and secondary education degrees. Furthermore,
increased openness to trade and foreign investment have driven up demand for high-skilled
workers. These trends sent a strong signal that the government should continue to expand
higher education. However, public financing should focus more on equity. In this regard, Gu
(2012) proved that the expansion of higher education intensified spatial interaction among
provinces which facilitated narrowing gap among provinces. Loyalka (2009)’s case study in one
province in China further confirmed that the expansion promoted more equity in the Chinese
society.

The balanced views

With reference to the balanced views, they analyzed both pros and cons of the expansion
but did not imply any policy recommendations related to the future size and expansion of higher
education.Up to 13 out of 16 publications in this group mentioned inconclusive status of equity,
equality, justice, and disparities in the Chinese higher education after the massification (Ding,
2007; Hu et al.,2004; Jia, 2013; Levin & Xu, 2005; Li, 2007; Morgan & Wu, 2011; Postiglione,
2005; Shi & Xing, 2010; Tan, 2013; Wang, 2011; Yang, 2005; Yeung, 2013; Zha, 2011).
Six of them raised questions regarding financial and resource constraints of HEIs (Hu et al,
2004; Levin & Xu, 2005; Min & Ding, 2005; Morgan & Wu, 2011; World Bank, 2006; Yang, 2005).
Nevertheless, the massification encouraged various reforms of higher education finance such as
the cost sharing and cost recovery system (Min & Ding, 2005).
Besides, scholars were concerned about employability of graduates (Hu et al., 2004; Morgan
& Wu, 2011; Postiglione, 2005; Levin & Xu, 2005; Yeung, 2013). Zeng & Wang (2007) believed
that the mushrooming of private HEIs might promote more relevanceto the labor market and
considered this as strength in their SWOT analysis. However, a weakness is that quality of
graduates is not enough to compete in the international labor market. This concern was also

xiii
shared by Hu et al (2004) and Yang (2005). Fortunately, poor quality led to accountability and
quality assurance reform (Postiglione, 2005).

The cannot be inferred

Nine of the 53 relevant publications provided crucial facts but they neither left
any hints about their judgment nor evaluated whether those facts are advantages or
disadvantages of the massification. Although some of the facts can be interpreted as
challenges during massification, the opinions of the authors towards massification
and size itselfwere difficult to be captured.

Altbach (2009) suggested China to address anticipated challenges on quality

and fundingbased on his international experiences. Kirby (2008) compared China to
the Unites States and Europe and contended that China moved towards mass higher
education with an elitist element. Liu (2011) found that policies regarding educational
equality in post 1949and after the recent expansion had swung between two poles:
elitism and populism. Zhao & Postiglione (2008) introduced that the rapid expansion
is bringing together two phenomena: internationalization and multi-culturalism. Shen
(2004) tried to prove effects of increased fees after 1999 while Wei & Wang (2009)
studied on student loans during massification. Dong & Han (2010) paid attention to
confusion of students between awareness of employment, learning, morality, and
their own behavior and societal requirements during massification. Lai et al. (2011)
additionally showed difference in employment capability between the pool of
students in urban and rural regions. Lastly, Zhang (2007) recommended thatChina
should pay attention to four issues during the massification: (i) the prime cause of the
expansion; (ii) how to reinforce liberal education; (iii) how to balance between
equality and excellence; and (iv) the relationship between university, the
government, and the market.

Equality vs. excellence and economic vs. well-rounded development

In general, no matter the 53 relevant publications were categorized as the

pessimistic, the optimistic, the balanced, or cannot be inferred, they shared similar
observations on inputs (e.g. funding, staff, learning facilities, student loans),

xiv
processes (e.g. teaching quality, curriculum, quality assurance system, and
accountability), and outcomes (e.g. employability of graduates and rate of returns to
higher education) of the Chinese higher education after massification. Those
empirical evidences and opinions are consistent with the worldwide trends as
mentioned in Section 2. Their egalitarian perspectives encompassed equality of
access, equality of treatment, and equality of outcomes. They also looked at other
related concepts i.e. equity, social justice, and disparities. Employment issues were
widely discussed.The scholars believed that higher education is important for human
capital development of China in this highly competitive world. However, it is still
ambiguous to pinpoint whether now China has inadequate, adequate, or over-supply
of higher education graduates. It is also difficult to forecast future demand for higher
education graduates as the roles of higher education is not only for serving economic
goals.

These challenges posted two important policy dilemmas: (i) equality versus
excellence and (ii) higher education for economic development versus higher
education for well-rounded development of individuals and the country. The first one
has been endured since the 1949 as pointed out by Tsang (2000) and Liu (2011).
With the limited resources, China has needed to rely on market mechanisms to
expand her higher education system. Therefore, education for the masseswas
achieved while equality, equity and social justice continue to persist. It is crucial to
aware that these inequalities were not the results of the bigger size but were more
the results of how China accomplished such bigger size. At least, the massification
offered more chances for people to attend higher education.

The real problem due to the bigger size is unsatisfactory educational

quality.Although the government reformed higher education finances and established
cost-sharing systems, the resources are still not enough to evenly facilitate high-
quality education for all. The massification also raises questions of quality of
students enrolling higher education. In the mass stage, not all those who enroll in
higher education are qualified and ready to enter higher education. Although
hierarchical ranks of HEIs help to preserve excellence of the best, the successful
minority alone cannot bring prosperity and sustainable development to China if the

xv
majority is not equipped with sufficient skills to encounter their life challenges and
compete with the others. Therefore, policy makers need to decide whether higher
education should be reserved for the well-trained elites or should be also open to the
lower-competent students. If they decide to assume that all individuals have ability to
learn, the next questions to be answered is whether HEIs have enough capacity and
resources to help all admitted students to reach their full potentials.

The second dilemma is equally of the greatest importance. Noting that GER to
tertiary education in China is still much lower than other more developed countries,
the rapid expansion should have been viewed as an achievement because China
reached the quantitative target of 15 percent GER seven years ahead of time set in
the plan.Unfortunately, unemployment of the Bachelor’s degree graduates is also
prevalent. Although researches proved that private rate of returns to higher
education are constantly high, these returns are not an indication of the scarcity of
graduates (Giles et al., 2008). Furthermore, no evidences showed that rapid
economic growth in the last decade can be attributed to higher education expansion
(Wang & Liu, 2011).

Nevertheless, policy makers and educational planners should not allow these
economic aspects alone to lower the pace of the popularization of higher education.
Taking into account historical background of higher education expansion in China as
presented in Section 4, rapid growth of enrollment has been a respond of various
demands from both individuals and society from both within and outside China.It
should be also noted that higher education is a human right and an aspiration for
social mobility. Although labor market cannot well absorb this big pool of graduates,
contemporary Human Capital Theory suggested that quality education can contribute
to various kinds of human well-being, not only economic well-being. In this regards,

the current media campaign on the “Civilized ways of life” (文明) by the Chinese
government might be an indication to pinpoint that China needs more and more
highly-educated people.

xvi
6. Conclusion
This current study was inspired by the “two-line struggle” between the radical and the moderate
factions of the CPC since the 1949 over a policy dilemma related to an appropriate aggregate
size of the Chinese higher education and day-to-day news reporting unemployment of Bachelor’s
degree graduates. Preliminarily observed from an eye of a foreigner, the study quantitatively and
qualitatively analyzed relevant documents. It found that majority of the scholars demonstrated
pessimistic views towards the massification in the last decade. However, this does not lead the
current study to conclude that China should not continue to enlarge her higher education system.
China should continue to do so as far as HEIs can ensure their teaching quality.
Backwash effects of massification as discovered by previous studies were not the results
of such bigger size per se. They were more determined by commercialization of higher education
during the massification process and the too-fast growth. Besides, no evidences proved that a
developing country with limited professional jobs available should not continue to expand its
higher education system. However, the government should regulate the rate of growth. The
government’s decision to lower it from the double-digit growth to only around 5 percent since
2007 is a right decisionalthough this figure is still higher than the 2 to 3 percent growth during
2003-2020 as suggested by Xie & Huang (2005, p. 158).
This conclusion might not so much deviate from the public’s common senses before the
study; however, the supporting reasons are not totally similar. Based on the social-demand
approach of educational planning, the current study believes that higher education should not be
only reserved for the well-trained elites but it should be diversified and flexible so that it can
accommodate various needs of the masses. The appropriate size of higher education should be
determined mainly by teaching capacity of HEIs, not merely by the demand of labor market and
economic returns. Previous research obviously showed that the over expansion of Chinese
higher education put pressures on funding and teaching quality that finally produced graduates
with insufficient human capital. The evidences to shed light on manpower requirement and public
and private rate of returns to higher education are still inconclusive.

*******************************

xvii
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https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/7088

Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University

Course: Education Systems, Policy and Management in China

Student Name:
Student ID No: 201339010005

Instructors:
Dr. LI Jiayong, Associate Professor
Dr. SANG Guoyuan, Associate Professor

Fall Term, 2013

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Internationalization of Higher Education in
China: What are the Rationales behind it?
Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the rationales behind the internationalization of
higher education in China. The Jane Knight‘s (2012) typological Framework of existing and
emerging rationales for internationalization of higher education were adopted in this study.
The study used a qualitative design and semi-structured interviews. Eight (8) key informants
were selected by purposive sampling technique because of their potential positions and
experience in informing the research. The qualitative data gathered from interviews were
analyzed and categorized according to patterns and themes. Four categories of rationales
were identified namely economic, academic, political and socio-cultural overlapping in both
institutional and national levels. Although its contours are unclear, internationalization of
higher education has been the driving force in higher education reforms for the past two to
three decades in China.

Key Words: Internationalization, higher education, globalization, international education,

international students, and universities

Introduction

Internationalization of higher education (hereafter IHE) has received growing interest in

recent years as more and more students choose to study abroad, enroll in foreign educational
programmes and institutions in their home country, or simply use the Internet to take courses
at colleges or universities abroad. Due to this increased attention on the cross-border higher
education, many governments and higher education institutions (hereafter HEIs) have
embarked on reform to orient their higher education system to align with this global demand.
Although its contours are unclear, internationalization has remained the driving force for
change and reforms in higher education over the past few decades (Knight, 2007; Bjorn,
2010; Steir, 2004). Higher education is constantly being transformed through the process of
internationalization. Its potential growth is witnessed in various forms like mobility of

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students and faculty members; research collaboration; curriculum harmonization;
development projects; development of twinning programs and establishment of branch
campuses; across borders.
At the same time, as Wit (2002) argues, the IHE is still a phenomenon with a lot of question
marks regarding its historical dimension; its meaning, concepts, rationales, and strategic
aspects; its relationship to developments in society and higher education in general, in
particular the movement to globalization and regionalization; and regarding its status as an
area of study and analysis.
Some scholars have related internationalization to globalization by arguing that IHE is one of
the ways through which a country can respond to globalization impacts while respecting the
individuality of the nation, (Knight, 1996, 2010; Byun and Kim, 2010; Saglamer, n.d).
Undoubtedly, higher education in the world has now become part of the globalization process
and therefore can no longer be firmly viewed from a national context. For that reason, this
study adopted a transformationalist's perspective on globalization which views globalization
as the ―central driving force behind the rapid social, political and economic changes that are
reshaping modern societies and world order, (Held et al. 1999). Undeniably, globalization has
challenged traditional notions of space, time, and power affecting multiple areas of social
interaction including higher education.

Knight (1999) argued that globalization is a multifaceted process that affects each country
differently because of its "individual history, traditions, culture and priorities”. Similarly,
HEIs react differently to globalization while seeking to fulfill their core functions of teaching,
research, and public service. Since globalization is the economic, political, and societal forces
pushing the 21st century higher education toward greater international involvement (Altbach
and Knight, 2007); therefore, internationalization is the way through which HEIs responds to
the forces of globalizations. Succinctly, globalization is the catalyst for internationalization;
internationalization is the way through which HEIs react to globalization; and globalization is
an agent for internationalization and vice versa, (Knight, 2010)

More than a decade ago, Ulrich Teichler (as cited in Wit, 2002) posed important questions;
why is internationalization a rising phenomenon? Why are institutions of higher education,
national governments, international bodies, and increasing the private sector so actively
involved in international education activities? Today, these fundamental questions still holds

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relevance in our societies as IHE is still a rising phenomenon with multiple actors with varied
rationales get more involved. Unfortunately, there is no single and universal answer for these
questions. This is because internationalization mean different things to different people and it
is becoming a catch- all phrase for anything remotely related to international, inter-cultural or
global, (Knight, 2010).

The question “Why” and attempts to answer it are present in a lot of studies, but only in
general and not in an explicit and structured way especially in the Chinese context (see Wit,
2002). Few researches, published in English, have been done to analyze the rationales for
internationalization process of higher education in China, (Yang, 2008).With the exception of
a few studies, most of extant analyses of internationalization are of the developed world
(Anthony Welch in Yang, 2002). Thus, these set of factors molded the fundamental reasons
for undertaking this study.

The purpose of this study was, therefore, to identify the rationales behind the
internationalization of higher education in China. Rationales are the driving force for why an
institution (or any other actor) wants to address and invest in internationalization. Rationales
are reflected in the policies and programs that are developed and eventually implemented.
Rationales dictate the kind of benefits or expected outcomes. Without a clear set of rationales
accompanied by a set of objectives or policy statements, a plan and a monitoring/evaluation
system the process of internationalization is often an ad hoc reactive and fragmented response
to the overwhelming number of new international opportunities available (Knight, 2004).

Rationale for IHE: A Review of Literatures

Practitioners of internationalization approaches the activities with varied motives that in most
time tend to overlap. As Knight (2010) noted that internationalization mean different things to
different people, similarly the rationales for involvement in the process are different between
and among stakeholders. Wit (1998) and Knight and Wit (1999) distinguishes four groups of
rationales: academic, social/cultural, political and economic rationales. Having different
rationales imply different means and ends to internationalization. When analyzing the
rationales, Wit (1998) emphasized the consideration of the diversity of stakeholders’ groups
in higher education: the government sector, the private sector and the educational sector. He
further asserted that within the last group, one have to distinguish between three subgroups:

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the institutional level, the academics and their departments, and the students.

OECD’s policy brief (2004) pointed out four different rationales that have for years
dominated the involvement of HEIs and different nations in the higher education international
activities. These policy rationales and approaches were skilled migration, revenue generation,
capacity building and mutual understanding. The first three are argued to have been emerged
in 1990s, while mutual understanding owes a long history, (OECD, 2004). On the other hand,
the International Association of Universities (hereafter IAU)’s 2003 survey of 176 HEIs from
66 different countries found that mobility of students and teachers were considered to be the
most important reason for making internationalization an institutional priority and it was
identified as the fastest growing aspect of internationalization, (Knight, 2003).

However, the later IAU’s surveys (2005 and 2009) indicated changed rationale priorities. The
top rationale for surveys was preparing students to be interculturally competent and more
knowledgeable about international issues in a more g1obalized world, (Knight, 2012).
Strengthening research and knowledge capacity dropped from second place in 2005 to fourth
place in 2009, which was a surprise being cognizant of the emergence of the knowledge
society and economy in recent years, (ibid). Both institutional reputation and profile
rationales still ranked third, (ibid).

To be actively involved in the internationalization particularly at the institutional level is

viewed as the way of responding to global influences. Botha (2010) argued that there is no
university that could isolate itself from international influences, and, considering the nature of
modern society, none is likely to want to be isolated. She identified the institutional and
national level rationales for South Africa’s higher education. At the institutional level, she
pointed out different rationales for students, academics, institution and country. On the other
hand, at the national level, human resource development, strategic alliances, commercial
trade, nation building, social, and cultural development were dominant rationales for
international students’ recruitments, (Botha, 2010). Furthermore, similar author identified
emerging institutional level rationales as international branding and profile; income
generation; student and staff development; and knowledge production.

Almost similar rationales were also observed in the Cudmore’s (2005) study in Canada.
Cudmore pointed out top three rationales that institutions gave for participating in the

xxviii
recruitment of international students in Canadian colleges as; the opportunity to generate
revenue, the opportunity to bring foreign perspectives to the local student body, and the
opportunity to foster international trade links. He further argued that foreign students become
ambassadors for Canadian trade and political interests abroad; and international education is a
good vehicle to promote the sale of Canadian goods and services abroad.

Despite the fact that, Cudmore’s arguments are based on empirical studies done in Canada
they can be applied to other parts of the world. The increased government underfunding to
higher education institutions has triggered the institutions to opt for international students-
especially fee paying students- as sources of funds in many countries. This has changed the
landscape of international students’ recruitment from the long existed humanitarian motives
to the revenue and export earnings, (Cudmore, 2005).

Moreover, the literatures suggest the idea that the presence of international students in
campuses is vital in fostering institutional reputation. In Cudmore (2005) views, international
students are vital for the quality and relevance of higher education as their presence partly
assists in building a stronger international and intercultural dimension to teaching and
research as well as ‘branding’ country’s higher education once they return to their home
countries.

Chinese Higher Education in the Internationalization Movements

As an impact of the open-door policy, economic reforms and challenges from globalization
and global competition, as well as efforts to realize massification of higher education since
1978, the IHE in China has experienced a change from activities concerning traditional
outflows of international scholars, faculty members, and students before 1992 to those
relating to trans-national higher education and internationalization of curricula, (Huang,
2003; Cai, 2011; Cai & Holtta, forthcoming).

The major motivation according to Cai (2011) for China to incorporate an international
dimension into higher education lies in its desire to increase the quality of higher education
and improve its international reputation. This argument coincide with many studies from
different countries such as Knight & Wit (1995), Blumental et al (1996), Wit (2002), Knight
(2004) and Altbach & Knight (2006). The government expects that an internationalized
higher education will increase China’s competitiveness in the global economy. Thus, the IHE

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is not only an inevitable result of globalization, but also a high priority in China’s
development strategies, (Cai, 2011).

Kuang (2010) asserts that the rationale for internationalization of higher education in post
1992 have changed from manpower training to more political, economic, socio-cultural and
academic ones. According to him internationalization is aimed at building national profile
and international status that could leap to a powerful country of higher education.

Through the efforts of the past three decades, internationalization has had a significant impact
on Chinese higher education development, in terms of the influx of high calibre international
education resources, the import of advanced education and training models, and the
development of a skilled labour force addressing the need for economic development. As a
result, a number of Chinese higher education institutions have enhanced their visibility and
recognition within the international community.

What the government and HEIs are currently doing signifies their intent to integrate Chinese
higher education with the international community, as part of their strategy to build “world-
class” Chinese universities and strengthen national economic competitiveness, (Cai, 2011).
During the process, academic patterns from Europe, Asia, and the Pacific region as well as
from America have significantly affected Chinese higher education, (Huang, 2003).
Moreover, in China, internationalization has never been a one-way process; rather it
comprises attempts to realize mutual communication or exchange, largely oriented and
regulated by the government.

Conceptual Framework of the Study

“A conceptual framework explains, either graphically or in narrative form, the main things to
be studied—the key factors, constructs, or variables—and the presumed relationships among
them” (Lizarraga, 2011). The conceptual framework guided this investigation of the
rationales behind the IHE in China was informed by literatures on IHE and its rationales, and
globalization. The study adopted the Jane Knight‘s (2012) typology of existing and emerging
rationales for internationalization. In the typological framework, Knight categorized four
rationales namely academic, economic, political and socio-cultural that can be analyzed at
two different levels; institutional and national, (See Figure 1). With these categories and
levels, IHE in China has been analyzed. The framework was useful to assess the

xxx
understanding of the rationales from the experts and students point of views. It was
imperative as argued earlier in this paper that motivations and realities driving
internationalization are undergoing fundamental changes (Knight, 2012) and the prime
motivators differ from one country or/and institution to another as well as from one
stakeholder to another.

xxxi
A
R
rN
u
-C
ltS
P
n
o
iE
m
e
d
a
c
s Internationalization

Institutional Rationales

Figure 3: Rationales Driving Internationalization: a Typological Framework Adopted

from Knight (2012)

Research Methodology

Qualitative methodologies were used in both data collection and analysis. Data collection
consisted of; Semi-structured face to face interview with three Chinese experts working in
Chinese HEIs who are holding various leadership/administrative posts within their
universities; Semi-structured online interview (Skype) with two international experts, one
Chinese by nationality currently working in European university and the other is a European
working on European Union-China relation in higher education; and Semi-structured
interview (Focus group) with three graduate students from Beijing Normal University.
These key informants were selected by purposive sampling technique because of their
potential positions and experience in informing the research. Writers on sampling in

xxxii
qualitative research based on interviews recommend purposive sampling to strategically
establish correspondence between research questions and sampling, (Bryman, 2008).
Therefore, the types of research design and topic necessitated the researcher taking a decision
about the individual participants who would be most likely to contribute appropriate data,
both in terms of relevance and depth, (Victor, 2006).
The qualitative data gathered from interviews were analyzed and categorized according to
patterns and themes, described by McNabb (2008) as data reduction. Thematic analysis,
which emphasize on what is said rather than how it is said were a dominant strategy in this
study (Bryman, 2008).

Research Findings

The findings presented in this section illustrate the rationales behind the IHE in China from
the participants’ point of views and their experience in different capacities. Quotations are
used to support and/or highlight explanation of the findings. Besides, quotations plus italics
are rendered verbatim except where square brackets are used.
Increasing Chinese soft power emerged as one of the important rationale behind the IHE in
the country. As China aspiring to be the world super power in the coming years, they wished
to improve their soft power mainly by replicating what the United States did in the second
half of the last century.
“I think [the rationale] is to improve the soft power of the government and the
soft power of the university… I think it will be a big benefit to China and that
why it is gaining more popularity”, (A Chinese expert in higher education).
“…but you can look at American [the United States] policy; what did they do
in the 1960’s, 1970’s? Their government has a global perspective to attract
international students with the idea that in the coming years they will be
important and strategic people in their governments... Therefore, they will be
friendly... they will support the United States....that was the basis of the policy
for the United States and now for China”, (A Chinese expert in higher
education).
“…I think is the good chance for world to have a better understanding of
China”, (A Chinese student).
“We also want to send more scholars abroad... sometimes when we send

xxxiii
 scholars abroad they can spread ideas of the Chinese and the Chineses
government... they can share with others their reasearch, their findings and let
others know that Chinese are now doing something.... because we are part of
the world”, (A Chinese expert in higher education).

Increasing international competitiveness of Chinese higher education also emerged

as rationale from the interview. China has been striving to be competitive in the
world; therefore, education was thought to be an important tool for the purpose.

“[In China]…the government expects that an internationalized higher

education will boost China’s competitiveness in the global economy….
internationalization is an expected result of globalization processes,
well, but also a priority part of higher education system in China”, (A
Chinese expert in higher education working in European University).

Building “World Class” universities is the official target of Chinese government. Top
class universities according to varied rankings they have highly internationalized
their education systems. Therefore attention was/is paid on what they do so that
China can also learn to materialize the dream of having “world class” universities.

“China pays attention to global academic rankings and what can be learnt
from leading developed countries’ top-ranked universities…..government
officials invite professors to talk about tendencies and challenges of other
countries’ higher education. How do other countries foster and promote
internationalization? Compare findings and see possible alternatives for
China”, (A Chinese expert in higher education).
Changing nature of Chinese economy necessitated the promulgation and implementation of
higher education reforms towards internationalization. China like many parts of the world,
they realized the need to build the knowledge society and knowledge-based economy. And
higher education is at the strategic point for the purpose.
“….as you know many countries, especially the developed ones, they have
been moving toward knowledge based-economy that focuses on quality and
innovation. And higher education system is a big player especially in
innovation... by internationalizing our education; we foster innovation as well

xxxiv
 as creating knowledge”, (A Chinese expert in higher education).
This can be linked with the idea of training talents for global markets. This has been
happening by either importing international educational resources in China or sending
Chinese students and scholars abroad.
“It was thought to be very important to train talents for the global market.
Our people should be able to produce goods and services of the global
standards, for global markets...we must send Chinese students
abroad...especially to the leading countries in science and technology.. it’s
very important. We also encourange some important universities to start their
branches here, invite some impotant figures in different fields to do research
and teaching here”, (A Chinese expert in higher education).
“…the government should attract more international students to come to
China… it is a good chance for us to be international”, (A Chinese student).
Improving the standards and reputation of universities was also discovered to be the rationale
behind the IHE in China. Participants identified the factor as being more dominant in most
Chinese HEIs. Currently there is an exponential increase in international students’
recruitments almost all over Chinese HEIs.
“It can improve the academic status of Chinese universities by recruiting more
international students and scholars”, (A Chinese expert in higher education).
“… [In China] the motivation lies in its aspiration to raise the quality of higher
education and improve its international repute…, (A Chinese expert in higher
education working in European University).
Internationalization agenda was put in the forefront to provide new forms of collaboration in
HEIs so as to avail opportunity for students and faculty members to expand their horizon
especially when they collaborate with world’s top universities.
“…nowadays, we have a two way mode of doing things, apart from inviting
famous professors to come and give lectures, we also send our professors
abroad to other universities as key note speakers. For example in recent years
our faculty members have been participating in the AERA [American
Educational Research Association] conferences. ...we also co-sponsor several
conferences that give our faculty members an opportunity to share with their
counterparts from other countries”, (A Chinese expert in higher education).
On international influences on internationalization policies, although it’s a global trend, but

xxxv
Chinese government and related institutions are still maintaining they way of doing things. In
other words, internationalization process has not been purely liberalized; still there are
bureaucratic procedures to be adhered in almost all forms of internationalization.
“They really go their own way. They are doing an effort but there isn’t any
influence from outside. They try to set up cooperation but they really focus on
their own way of doing this and might do some efforts to approach others but
mainly follow their own policies. The Chinese government does not really get
influenced by others”, (A European expert working on EU-China cooperation
in higher education).
However, the Chinese expert argued that as we are in the globalised world, China has to learn
from other countries especially in policy implementation and challenges in the
internationalization. There is a need to know what others are doing. Therefore, admitting that
China has adopted internationalization models from other countries like the United States.
“...now we are in the age of globalization, we are living in a global
village...and internationalization is an important trend in higher education
development and reforms...and in this context China must look at the
challenges and the policy of other countries”, (A Chinese expert in higher
education).
“What others are doing? They encourage people to go abroad to study with
scholarships, especially to the United States”, (A Chinese expert in higher
education).
This indicates the discrepancy existing between the outsider and insider views of the
systems and practices in many contexts, China not being an exceptional.

Discussion

Basing on the four categories of rationales introduced in the conceptual framework, it is

plausible to claim that academic rationales have highly influenced the IHE reforms in China.
Most participants argued for factors such as “world class” universities, international
dimension in teaching and research, university reputation, international rankings, and
expanding horizon of both faculty members and students. These findings are similar with the
Altbach & Knight’s (2007) report which declared that developing countries host a significant
number of international students to their universities to improve the quality and cultural

xxxvi
composition of the student body, gain prestige. Cudmore’s (2005) study in Canada also
reported similar results.

Economic rationales were also evident in the study as many respondents related the
internationalization process taking place in Chinese HEIs to global economy. Factors such as
boosting competitiveness, facilitating economic growth, building knowledge-based economy
and cultivating talents for global markets were dominant responses from the participants.
This was also observed by de Wit (1998) who argued that the economic rationale can be
expressed in several ways. It is not all about revenue generation and financial incentives.
Byun and Kim (2010) also reported on how economic rationales shaped South Korean higher
education reforms in favor of internationalization in the 1990’s.

Many political and socio-cultural motives were less prioritized by the participants although
the soft power and mutual understanding rationales was put forward my many. China is
striving to raise its soft power influences by exponentially increasing scholarships for
students to study in China as well as establishing Confucius Institutes in different countries.
This is coupled with the country’s strategy to increase international influences. Nye (2004)
argued that the country’s soft power rests primarily on three resources: its culture, its political
values and its foreign policies. Therefore, higher education, as part of country’s culture, has
the potential to educate foreigners and eventually increase country’s ability to get what they
want without coercion or payments.
Moreover, both institutional and national level rationales have been found in this study. At the
former level, students and staff development; knowledge production (through international
research collaboration); and international branding and profiling universities were discovered
in the study. At the national level, developing human resources with global competitive
knowledge and skills as well as increasing China’s soft power and socio-cultural influence
dominated the responses. Generally, institutional and national levels findings are supported
by Cudmore’s (2005) and Botha’s (2010) findings in Canada and South Africa respectively.
The unique case with this study is that, the revenue generation rationale were never aired and
agreed by the participants. This is in line with the IAU survey result that indicated revenue
generation by universities was the least rated rationale (Knight, 2012). This rationale is still
dominant in few countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and
New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, (Cudmore, 2005; Wit, 1998; Knight & Wit, 1999;

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OECD, 2004; Knight, 2003, 2012; Altbach & Knight, 2007; Botha, 2010).

Conclusion

Although its contours are unclear, IHE has been the driving force in higher education reforms
for the past two to three decades in many countries including China. The term
internationalization has been used as catch-all phrase to anything related to international,
multi-cultural or global in higher education. As noted in this paper, internationalization may
mean different things to different stakeholders. Therefore, even the rationales for involvement
in the internationalization may vary between and among stakeholders. This study has found
similar rationales available in many other countries but with varied levels of importance
between them. Academic and international reputations of the country as well as HEIs
rationales are still very strong driving motives for internationalization.
Moreover, the internationalization- globalization link has been evident in this study.
Participants in one way or another linked these two controversial issues confirming that there
is very thin line of demarcation between the two as it has been highly debated in the
literatures.
However, the result from this study lacks generalisability because of the small sample used.
The findings are “suggestive” and therefore more appropriate for eliciting curiosity and
desires for more comprehensive study in the topic.

References

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and realities. In the NEA 2006 almanac of higher education (pp. 1-11). Washington
DC: National Education Association.
Altbach, P.G. and Knight, J. (2007). The Internationalization of Higher Education:
Motivations and Realities. Journal of Studies in International Education 2007 11:
290. DOI: 10.1177/1028315307303542. Sage Publications
Bjorn, P. (2010). Internationalization of Higher Education. [Power Point Slides]. Annual
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changing world. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

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Botha, M.M. (2010). Compatibility between Internationalizing and Africanizing Higher
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Bryman, A. (2008).Social Research Methods, 3rd Ed, New York, Oxford University Press
Byun, K and Kim, M. (2010). Shifting Patterns of the Government Policies for the
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Kohtamaki (Eds), Transformation of higher education in innovation systems in China
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 Retrieved November 6, 2013 from http://www.anienetwork.org
Knight, J. (2012). Concepts, rationales, and interpretive frameworks in the
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conference "The International Universities: Global and Local roles", April 3-5, 1998,
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2011 from http://www.ipv.pt/millenium/wit11.htm
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Greenwood Press, Westport.
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concerns, Australian Journal of Education, Vol. 52, No. 3.

Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University

Course: Education Systems, Policy and Management in China

Student ID No: 201339010005

Instructors:
Dr. LI Jiayong, Associate Professor
Dr. SANG Guoyuan, Associate Professor

Fall Term, 2013

xli
Internationalization of Higher Education in
China: What are the Rationales behind it?
Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the rationales behind the internationalization of
higher education in China. The Jane Knight‘s (2012) typological framework of existing and
emerging rationales for internationalization of higher education were adopted in this study.
The study used a qualitative design and semi-structured interviews. Eight (8) key informants
were selected by purposive sampling technique because of their potential positions and
experience in informing the research. The qualitative data gathered from interviews were
analyzed and categorized according to patterns and themes. Four categories of rationales
were identified namely economic, academic, political and socio-cultural overlapping in both
institutional and national levels. Although its contours are unclear, internationalization of
higher education has been the driving force in higher education reforms for the past two to
three decades in China.

Key Words: Internationalization, higher education, globalization, international education,

international students, and universities

Introduction

Internationalization of higher education (hereafter IHE) has received growing interest in

recent years as more and more students choose to study abroad, enroll in foreign educational
programmes and institutions in their home country, or simply use the Internet to take courses
at colleges or universities abroad. Due to this increased attention on the cross-border higher
education, many governments and higher education institutions (hereafter HEIs) have
embarked on reform to orient their higher education system to align with this global trend.
Internationalization has remained the driving force for change and reforms in higher
education over the past few decades (Knight, 2007; Bjorn, 2010; Steir, 2004). Higher
education is constantly being transformed through the process of internationalization. Its
potential growth is witnessed in various forms like mobility of students and faculty members;

xlii
research collaboration; curriculum harmonization; development projects; development of
twinning programs and establishment of branch campuses; across borders.
At the same time, as Wit (2002) argues, the IHE is still a phenomenon with a lot of question
marks regarding its historical dimension; its meaning, concepts, rationales, and strategic
aspects; its relationship to developments in society and higher education in general, in
particular the movement to globalization and regionalization; and regarding its status as an
area of study and analysis.
Some scholars have related internationalization to globalization by arguing that IHE is one of
the ways through which a country can respond to globalization impacts while respecting the
individuality of the nation, (Knight, 1996, 2010; Byun and Kim, 2010; Saglamer, n.d).
Undoubtedly, higher education in the world has now become part of the globalization process
and therefore can no longer be firmly viewed from a national context. For that reason, this
study adopted a transformationalist's perspective on globalization which views globalization
as the ―central driving force behind the rapid social, political and economic changes that are
reshaping modern societies and world order, (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, & Perraton, 1999).
Undeniably, globalization has challenged traditional notions of space, time, and power
affecting multiple areas of social interaction including higher education.

Knight (1999) argued that globalization is a multifaceted process that affects each country
differently because of its individual history, traditions, culture and priorities. Similarly, HEIs
react differently to globalization while seeking to fulfill their core functions of teaching,
research, and public service. Since globalization is the economic, political, and societal forces
pushing the 21st century higher education toward greater international involvement (Altbach
and Knight, 2007); therefore, internationalization is the way through which HEIs responds to
the forces of globalizations. Succinctly, the author agrees with Knight (2010) who argued that
globalization is the catalyst for internationalization; internationalization is the way through
which HEIs react to globalization; and globalization is an agent for internationalization and
vice versa.

More than a decade ago, Ulrich Teichler (as cited in Wit, 2002) posed important questions;
why is internationalization a rising phenomenon? Why are institutions of higher education,
national governments, international bodies, and increasing the private sector so actively
involved in international education activities? Today, these fundamental questions still holds

xliii
relevance in our societies as IHE is still a rising phenomenon with multiple actors with varied
rationales get more involved. Unfortunately, there is no single and universal answer for these
questions. This is because internationalization mean different things to different people and it
is becoming a catch- all phrase for anything remotely related to international, inter-cultural or
global, (Knight, 2010).

The question “Why” and attempts to answer it are present in a lot of studies, but only in
general and not in an explicit and structured way especially in the Chinese context (Wit,
2002). Few researches, published in English, have been done to analyze the rationales for
internationalization process of higher education in China, (Yang, 2008).With the exception of
a few studies, most of extant analyses of internationalization are of the developed world
(Anthony Welch in Yang, 2002). Thus, these set of factors molded the fundamental reasons
for undertaking this study.

The purpose of this study was, therefore, to identify the rationales behind the
internationalization of higher education in China from the experts and students’ perspectives.
Rationales are the driving force for why an institution (or any other actor) wants to address
and invest in internationalization. Rationales are reflected in the policies and programs that
are developed and eventually implemented. Rationales dictate the kind of benefits or
expected outcomes. Without a clear set of rationales accompanied by a set of objectives or
policy statements, a plan and a monitoring/evaluation system the process of
internationalization is often an ad hoc reactive and fragmented response to the overwhelming
number of new international opportunities available, (Knight, 2004).

Rationale for IHE: A Review of Literature

Practitioners of internationalization approaches the activities with varied motives that in most
time tend to overlap. As Knight (2010) noted that internationalization mean different things to
different people, similarly the rationales for involvement in the process are different between
and among stakeholders. Wit (1998) and Knight & Wit (1999) distinguishes four groups of
rationales: academic, social/cultural, political and economic rationales. That means having
different rationales imply different means and ends to internationalization. When analyzing
the rationales, Wit (1998) emphasized the consideration of the diversity of stakeholders’
groups in higher education: the government sector, the private sector and the educational

xliv
sector. He further asserted that within the last group, one have to distinguish between three
subgroups: the institutional level, the academics and their departments, and the students.

OECD’s policy brief (2004) pointed out four different rationales that have for years
dominated the involvement of HEIs and different nations in the higher education international
activities. These policy rationales and approaches were skilled migration, revenue generation,
capacity building and mutual understanding. The first three are argued to have been emerged
in 1990s, while mutual understanding owes a long history, (OECD, 2004). On the other hand,
the International Association of Universities (hereafter IAU)’s 2003 survey of 176 HEIs from
66 different countries found that mobility of students and teachers were considered to be the
most important reason for making internationalization an institutional priority and it was
identified as the fastest growing aspect of internationalization, (Knight, 2003).

However, the later IAU’s surveys (2005 and 2009) indicated changed rationale priorities. The
top rationales in these surveys were preparing students to be interculturally competent and
more knowledgeable about international issues in a more g1obalized world, (Knight, 2012).
Strengthening research and knowledge capacity dropped from second place in 2005 to fourth
place in 2009, which was a surprise being cognizant of the emergence of the knowledge
society and economy in recent years. Both institutional reputation and profile rationales still
ranked third, (ibid).

To be actively involved in the internationalization particularly at the institutional level is

viewed as the way of responding to global influences. Botha (2010) argued that there is no
university that could isolate itself from international influences, and, considering the nature of
modern society, none is likely to want to be isolated. She identified the institutional and
national level rationales for South Africa’s higher education. At the institutional level, she
pointed out different rationales for students, academics, institution and country. On the other
hand, at the national level, human resource development, strategic alliances, commercial
trade, nation building, social, and cultural development were dominant rationales for
international students’ recruitments, (Botha, 2010). Furthermore, similar author identified
emerging institutional level rationales as international branding and profile; income
generation; student and staff development; and knowledge production.

Almost similar rationales were also observed in the Cudmore’s (2005) study in Canada.

xlv
Cudmore pointed out top three rationales that institutions gave for participating in the
recruitment of international students in Canadian colleges as; the opportunity to generate
revenue, the opportunity to bring foreign perspectives to the local student body, and the
opportunity to foster international trade links. He further argued that foreign students become
ambassadors for Canadian trade and political interests abroad; and international education is a
good vehicle to promote the sale of Canadian goods and services abroad.

Despite the fact that, Cudmore’s arguments are based on empirical studies done in Canada
they can be applied to other parts of the world. The increased government underfunding to
higher education institutions has triggered the institutions to opt for international students-
especially fee paying students- as sources of funds in many countries. This has changed the
landscape of international students’ recruitment from the long existed humanitarian motives
to the revenue and export earnings, (Cudmore, 2005).

Moreover, the literatures suggest the idea that the presence of international students in
campuses is vital in fostering institutional reputation. In Cudmore (2005) views, international
students are vital for the quality and relevance of higher education as their presence partly
assists in building a stronger international and intercultural dimension to teaching and
research as well as ‘branding’ country’s higher education once they return to their home
countries.

Chinese Higher Education in the Internationalization Movements

As an impact of the open-door policy, economic reforms and challenges from globalization
and global competition, as well as efforts to realize massification of higher education since
1978, the IHE in China has experienced a change from activities concerning traditional
outflows of international scholars, faculty members, and students before 1992 to those
relating to trans-national higher education and internationalization of curricula, (Huang,
2003; Cai, 2011; Cai & Holtta, forthcoming, 2014).

The major motivation according to Cai (2011) for China to incorporate an international
dimension into higher education lies in its desire to increase the quality of higher education
and improve its international reputation. This argument coincide with many studies from
different countries such as Knight & Wit (1995), Blumenthal, Goodwin, Smith & Teichler
(1996), Wit (2002), Knight (2004) and Altbach & Knight (2006). The government expects

xlvi
that an internationalized higher education will increase China’s competitiveness in the global
economy. Thus, the IHE is not only an inevitable result of globalization, but also a high
priority in China’s development strategies, (Cai, 2011).

Kuang (2010) asserts that the rationale for IHE in post 1992 China have changed from
manpower training to more political, economic, socio-cultural and academic ones. According
to him internationalization is aimed at building national profile and international status that
could leap to a powerful country of higher education.

Through the efforts of the past three decades, internationalization has had a significant impact
on Chinese higher education development, in terms of the influx of high calibre international
education resources, the import of advanced education and training models, and the
development of a skilled labour force addressing the need for economic development. As a
result, a number of Chinese higher education institutions have enhanced their visibility and
recognition within the international community.

What the government and HEIs are currently doing signifies their intent to integrate Chinese
higher education with the international community, as part of their strategy to build “world-
class” Chinese universities and strengthen national economic competitiveness, (Cai, 2011).
During the process, academic patterns from Europe, Asia, and the Pacific region as well as
from America have significantly affected Chinese higher education, (Huang, 2003).
Moreover, in China, internationalization has never been a one-way process; rather it
comprises attempts to realize mutual communication or exchange, largely oriented and
regulated by the government.

Conceptual Framework of the Study

“A conceptual framework explains, either graphically or in narrative form, the main things to
be studied—the key factors, constructs, or variables—and the presumed relationships among
them” (Lizarraga, 2011). The conceptual framework guided this investigation of the
rationales behind the IHE in China was informed by literature on IHE and its rationales, and
globalization. The study adopted the Jane Knight‘s (2012) typology of existing and emerging
rationales for internationalization. In the typological framework, Knight categorized four
rationales namely academic, economic, political and socio-cultural that can be analyzed at
two different levels; institutional and national, (See Figure 1). With these categories and

xlvii
A
R
N
r
u
C
-
ltS
P
n
o
iE
m
e
d
a
c
s
levels, IHE in China has been analyzed. The framework was useful to assess the
understanding of the rationales from the experts and students point of views. It was
imperative as argued earlier in this paper that

Internationalization

Institutional Rationales
motivations and realities driving
internationalization are undergoing fundamental changes (Knight, 2012) and the prime
motivators differ from one country or/and institution to another as well as from one
stakeholder to another.

Figure 4: Rationales driving internationalization: A typological framework adopted

from Knight (2012)

Research Methodology

Qualitative methodologies were used in both data collection and analysis. Data collection
consisted of; Semi-structured face to face interview with three Chinese experts working in
Chinese HEIs who are holding various leadership/administrative posts within their
universities; Semi-structured online interview (Skype) with two international experts, one
Chinese by nationality currently working in European university and the other is a European
working on European Union-China relation in higher education; and Semi-structured
interview (Focus group) with three graduate students from Beijing Normal University. Data
collection was done in November and December, 2013.
These key informants were selected by purposive sampling technique because of their

xlviii
potential positions and experience in informing the research. Writers on sampling in
qualitative research based on interviews recommend purposive sampling to strategically
establish correspondence between research questions and sampling, (Bryman, 2008).
Therefore, the types of research design and topic necessitated the researcher taking a decision
about the individual participants who would be most likely to contribute appropriate data,
both in terms of relevance and depth, (Victor, 2006).
The qualitative data gathered from interviews were analyzed and categorized according to
patterns and themes, described by McNabb (2008) as data reduction. Thematic analysis,
which emphasize on what is said rather than how it is said were a dominant strategy in this
study, (Bryman, 2008).

Research Findings

The findings presented in this section illustrate the rationales behind the IHE in China from
the participants’ point of views and their experiences in different capacities. Quotations are
used to support and/or highlight explanation of the findings. Besides, quotations plus italics
are rendered verbatim except where square brackets are used. In the quotations, Chinese
experts currently working in Chinese HEIs assume pseudonym of National Expert 1, 2 and 3
where as a Chinese expert working in European University is fictitiously named as Chinese
International Expert. An expert working on European Union-China relation in higher
education is nicknamed as International Expert. And finally, the three students are pen named
as student 1, 2 and 3.
Increasing Chinese soft power emerged as one of the important rationale behind the IHE in
the country. As China aspiring to be the world super power in the coming years, they wished
to improve their soft power mainly by replicating what the United States did in the second
half of the last century. The expert had the common view on this reason. Below was their
response;
“I think [the rationale] is to improve the soft power of the government and the
soft power of the university… I think it will be a big benefit to China and that
why it is gaining more popularity”, (Interview, Chinese International Expert).
“…but you can look at American [the United States] policy; what did they do
in the 1960’s, 1970’s? Their government has a global perspective to attract
international students with the idea that in the coming years they will be

xlix
 important and strategic people in their governments... Therefore, they will be
friendly... they will support the United States....that was the basis of the policy
for the United States and now for China”, (Interview, National Expert 1).
“We also want to send more scholars abroad... sometimes when we send
scholars abroad they can spread ideas of the Chinese and the Chineses
government... they can share with others their reasearch, their findings and let
others know that Chinese are now doing something.... because we are part of
the world”, (Interview, National Expert 2).
Students as well had the same view. One student insisted that;
“…I think is the good chance for world to have a better understanding of
China”, (Interview, Student 1).

Increasing international competitiveness of Chinese higher education also emerged

as rationale from the interview. China has been striving to be competitive in the
world; therefore, education was thought to be an important tool for the purpose. One
expert emphasized that;

“[In China]…the government expects that an internationalized higher

education will boost China’s competitiveness in the global economy….
internationalization is an expected result of globalization processes,
well, but also a priority part of higher education system in China”,
(Interview, Chinese International Expert).

Building “World Class” universities is the official target of Chinese government. Top
class universities according to varied rankings they have highly influenced the IHE in
the country. Therefore attention has been paid on what the so called “world class”
universities do so that China can also learn to materialize the dream of having “world
class” universities. One expert reiterated that;

“China pays attention to global academic rankings and what can be learnt
from leading developed countries’ top-ranked universities…..government
officials invite professors to talk about tendencies and challenges of other
countries’ higher education. How do other countries foster and promote
internationalization? Compare findings and see possible alternatives for

l
 China”, (Interview, National Expert 1).
Changing nature of Chinese economy necessitated the promulgation and implementation of
higher education reforms towards internationalization. China like many parts of the world,
they realized the need to build the knowledge society and knowledge-based economy. And
higher education is at the strategic point for the purpose as emphasized by one expert;
“….as you know many countries, especially the developed ones, they have
been moving toward knowledge based-economy that focuses on quality and
innovation. And higher education system is a big player especially in
innovation... by internationalizing our education; we foster innovation as well
as creating knowledge”, (Interview, National Expert 3).
This can be linked with the idea of training talents for global markets. This has been
happening by either importing international educational resources in China or sending
Chinese students and scholars abroad. Participants thought this as an important factor behind
IHE and one argued that;
“It was thought to be very important to train talents for the global market.
Our people should be able to produce goods and services of the global
standards, for global markets...we must send Chinese students
abroad...especially to the leading countries in science and technology.. it’s
very important. We also encourange some important universities to start their
branches here, invite some impotant figures in different fields to do research
and teaching here”, (Interview, National Expert 1).
In the same vein, students were in support of building talents for global markets. One
student argued that;
“…the government should attract more international students to come to
China… it is a good chance for us to be international”, (Interview, Student 3).
Improving the standards and reputation of universities was also discovered to be the rationale
behind the IHE in China. Participants identified the factor as being more dominant in most
Chinese HEIs. Currently there is an exponential increase in international students’
recruitments almost all over Chinese HEIs. In the same line of thinking, two experts insisted
that;
“It can improve the academic status of Chinese universities by recruiting more
international students and scholars”, (Interview, National Expert 3).
“… [In China] the motivation lies in its aspiration to raise the quality of higher

li
 education and improve its international repute…, (Interview, Chinese international
Expert).
Internationalization agenda was put in the forefront to provide new forms of collaboration in
HEIs so as to avail opportunity for students and faculty members to expand their academic
horizon especially when they collaborate with world’s top universities. One national expert
proclaimed that;
“…nowadays, we have a two way mode of doing things, apart from inviting
famous professors to come and give lectures, we also send our professors
abroad to other universities as key note speakers. For example in recent years
our faculty members have been participating in the AERA [American
Educational Research Association] conferences. ...we also co-sponsor several
conferences that give our faculty members an opportunity to share with their
counterparts from other countries”, (Interview, National Expert 2).
On international influences on internationalization policies, although it’s a global trend, but
Chinese government and related institutions are still maintaining they way of doing things. In
other words, internationalization process has not been purely liberalized; still there are
bureaucratic procedures to be adhered in almost all forms of internationalization. An
international expert insisted that;
“They really go their own way. They are doing an effort but there isn’t any
influence from outside. They try to set up cooperation but they really focus on
their own way of doing this and might do some efforts to approach others but
mainly follow their own policies. The Chinese government does not really get
influenced by others”, (Interview, International Expert).
However, the National Experts argued that as we are in the globalised world, China has to
learn from other countries especially in policy implementation and challenges in the
internationalization. And it has been doing so to know what others are doing. Therefore,
admitting that China has adopted internationalization models from other countries like the
United States.
“...now we are in the age of globalization, we are living in a global
village...and internationalization is an important trend in higher education
development and reforms...and in this context China must look at the
challenges and the policy of other countries”, (Interview, National Expert 1).
“What others are doing? They encourage people to go abroad to study with

lii
 scholarships, especially to the United States”, (Interview, National Expert 2).
This indicates the discrepancy existing between the outsider and insider views of the
systems and practices in many contexts, China not being an exceptional.
Discussion

Basing on the four categories of rationales introduced in the conceptual framework, it is

plausible to claim that academic rationales have highly influenced the IHE reforms in China
both at institutional and national levels. Most participants argued for factors such as “world
class” universities, international dimension in teaching and research, university reputation,
international university rankings, and expanding academic horizon of both faculty members
and students. These findings are similar with the Altbach & Knight’s (2007) report which
declared that developing countries host a significant number of international students to their
universities to improve the quality and cultural composition of the student body and gain
prestige. Cudmore’s (2005) study in Canada also reported similar results.

Economic rationales were also evident in the study as many respondents related the
internationalization process taking place in Chinese HEIs to global economy. Factors such as
boosting economic competitiveness, facilitating economic growth, building knowledge-based
economy and cultivating talents for global markets were dominant responses from the
participants. This was also observed by Wit (1998) who argued that the economic rationale
can be expressed in several ways. It is not all about revenue generation and financial
incentives popular in countries such as United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and
New Zealand, Canada. Byun and Kim (2010) also reported on how economic rationales
shaped South Korean higher education reforms in favor of internationalization in the 1990’s.

Many political and socio-cultural motives were less prioritized by the participants although
the soft power and mutual understanding rationales was put forward by many. China is
striving to raise its soft power influences by exponentially increasing scholarships for
students to study in China as well as establishing Confucius Institutes in different countries.
This is coupled with the country’s strategy to increase international influences and creating a
pool of ambassadors of political and cultural interests. Nye (2004) argued that the country’s
soft power rests primarily on three resources: its culture, its political values and its foreign
policies. Therefore, higher education, as part of country’s cultural activities, has the potential
to educate foreigners and eventually increase country’s ability to get what they want without

liii
coercion or payments.
Moreover, both institutional and national level rationales have been found in this study. At the
former level, students and staff development; knowledge production (through international
research collaboration); and international branding and profiling of universities were
discovered in the study. At the national level, developing human resources with global
competitive knowledge and skills as well as increasing China’s soft power and socio-cultural
influences dominated the responses. Generally, institutional and national levels findings are
supported by Cudmore’s (2005) and Botha’s (2010) findings in Canada and South Africa
respectively.
The unique case with this study is that, the revenue generation rationale were never aired and
agreed by the participants. This is in line with the IAU survey result that indicated revenue
generation by universities was the least rated rationale (Knight, 2012). This rationale is still
dominant in few countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and
New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, (Cudmore, 2005; Wit, 1998; Knight & Wit, 1999;
OECD, 2004; Knight, 2003, 2012; Altbach & Knight, 2007; Botha, 2010).
Both, institutional and national rationales for IHE tend to overlap. As this study intended to
discover the rationales from experts and students at the macro level, the findings found no
major discrepancy between the two levels. Table 1 summarizes the rationales of both levels
as observed in this study.
Table 1: Summary of the findings: Rationales for IHE in China

Institutional and National Rationales for IHE in China

Academic Economic Political Socio-Cultural
 ‘World Class” Universities  Boosting  Soft power  Increasing socio-
 International dimension of Economic  Mutual cultural
teaching and research competitiveness understating influences
 Knowledge production  Facilitating
 University reputation Economic
 International and regional growth
university rankings  Building
 Expanding academic horizon Knowledge-
of staff and students based economy
 Cultivating
talents for global
markets

Conclusion

Although its contours are unclear, IHE has been the driving force in higher education reforms
for the past two to three decades in many countries including China. The term

liv
internationalization has been used as catch-all phrase to anything related to international,
multi-cultural or global in higher education. As noted in this paper, internationalization may
mean different things to different stakeholders. Therefore, even the rationales for involvement
in the internationalization may vary between and among stakeholders. This study has found
similar rationales available in many other countries but with varied levels of importance
between them. Academic and international reputations of the country as well as HEIs
rationales are still very strong driving motives for internationalization in China.
Moreover, the internationalization- globalization link has been evident in this study.
Participants in one way or another linked these two controversial issues confirming that there
is very thin line of demarcation between the two as it has been highly debated in the
literature.
However, the result from this study lacks generalisability because of the small sample used.
The findings are “suggestive” and therefore more appropriate for eliciting curiosity and
desires for more comprehensive study in the topic.

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 Term Paper
Course name:-
Education Systems, Policy and Management in China

Instructor of course:-
Dr. LI Jiayong
Dr. SANG Guoyuan

Title of Paper
Chinese higher education enrollment policy: Fairness of system for
students’ choice of university

By:-
Student ID: - 2013229010017

Faculty of education
Beijing Normal University
2014-01-24

1. Introduction

China is eagerly spearheading a massive expansion of higher education in a very radical way
in recent years, enrolment has been doubled in just 3 years and the participation rate has
reached 17% (Chen, 2004). This double enrolments has reached 16-odd million in 2003, with
a massive increased from 3% in 1991 to 27% in 2010. It is projected that gross enrolment rate
in higher education will increase to 40% by 2020 7 (MOE, 2010). Higher Education
Institutions (HEIs) have shown positive response in the enrollment ration of student.
According to a survey made by the Beijing Municipal Education Commission in 2002, all 50
colleges and universities surveyed are adopting a cautious attitude towards enrolment (Hua,
2002). Among those surveyed, 63.8% hold a positive attitude to enrolment expansion.
7
Data source: Ministry of Education, China (MOE) website. retrieved on 2014-01-04
fromhttp://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s4668/201008/93785.html

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College admissions in China are centralized processes via standardized tests. This centralized
process was established in 1952 by the National Ministry of Education after years of
decentralized examinations and admissions. Prior to 1950, each college organized its own
entrance examination and admission system to admit students. Like other decentralized
processes, these college admissions systems suffered from a coordination problem: Some
famous HEIs could not recruit enough students even after many times of examinations and
enrollments. As many good students took many times of examination and received admission
offers from several HEIs, they would forgo the admission offers from some HEIs; as a result,
the final rate of enrollment in some HEIs was very low. In some HEIs the rate of enrollment
was lower than 20% (Yang, 2010). To fix this problem, 73 colleges formed three regional
alliances in 1950; each alliance implemented a centralized process for admissions.
Subsequently, the Ministry of Education decided to organize the first National College
Entrance Examination (NCCE), to assign students via national centralized processes.

Each province has a Student Placement Office which is responsible to assign high school
graduates to colleges slots (Zhu, 2013). This office organizes a NCCE for students who
planning to attend colleges and ranks students according to their test scores. Students are also
asked to report a list indicating preferences among colleges. Given the ranking of students via
test scores and students' reported preferences, the Student Placement Office assigns students
to college slots under a specific system.
The college admission process in China begins with a college application. As of 2010, in
Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin, students must file a college application before taking the
NCEE; in Shanxi, Liaoning, Jiangxi, Tibet, and Xinjiang, students file an application after
they take the exam but before they know their scores; in the remaining provinces 8 students
file an application after receiving the NCEE score reports9.

This research paper mainly focuses on students’ choice of universities in different provinces
of china. As different provinces have different policies for students to choose their desired
universities for higher education and this different policy system creates unfairness and
imbalance among students from different provinces.
8
Including Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Shandong, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong,
Guangxi, Hainan, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, and Ningxia
9
Data source: gaokao.eol.cn,http://gaokao.eol.cn/kuai_xun_3075/20100610/t20100610_484751.shtml.

lix
College admissions in China proceed sequentially in tiers. Colleges are categorized into
different tiers in decreasing prestige: Key colleges (i.e., National 985 and 211 universities)
belong to the first tier and admit students first; ordinal colleges belong to the second tier; and
vocational training colleges are included in the third tier. Only when assignments in the first
tier are finalized, admissions in the second tier start and so on.

During the whole process, a certain system of enrollment is used across tiers which are
predetermined by each province (Ma, 2013). In each tier, the system of enrolment and choice
of universities works as follows: in the first round, all students compete for their first choice
colleges; in the second round, students rejected in the first round compete for their second
choice colleges, if those colleges have available slots, and so forth, until all chosen colleges
are considered for unassigned students or there is no available college slot in the current tier.
For a given college, slots are allocated among students who rank it the same in their
preference lists, but students who rank it highly in the preference list have strict priority over
those who do not.

This system of enrollment has been criticized by the public for years for some serious
deficiencies. The main criticism is the unfair enrollments for students from different
provinces. For instance, it is possible for students with higher test scores to receive worse
assignments than those with lower test scores (Ruoling, 2010). This creates questions for the
fairness of enrollment system. Each year, many stories can be found in the news after
finishing university enrollments, like the following story published on online news website,
parents shared their son’s story of taking NCEE but couldn’t enroll in university even his
marks was more than the required marks for first tier universities.

“My son took this year's college admissions. His test score was 658, which is higher than
the merit score for the previous years of his first choice college. However, this year's merit
score for his first choice college was 660, so he was rejected by his first choice college. As
other choice colleges are filled and not accepted him, in the end, my son failed to be
admitted by any good college although his test score is high enough for admission. He was
so disappointed that he decided to quit it10.”

10
See http://learning.sohu.com/20070918/n252207517.shtml, posted on 2007/09/18 and retrieved on 2014/1/5

lx
 2. Research Framework

The research framework for this paper has taken from Guang Yu Tan’s article 11which is built
upon Martin Trow’s theory. Trow (2007) suggests the transformation of higher education
goes through three phases 1) elite--shaping the mind and character of ruling class in
preparation for elite roles; 2) mass--transmission of skills and preparation for a broader range
of technical and economic elite roles; and 3) universal--adaptation of the “whole population”
to rapid social and technological change (p,243). This transition from elite to mass needs
changes in all their structure and functions. This is beyond the scope of this research paper to
cover all the aspects of this transition so this paper will only focus on the enrollment policy
for Chinese HEIs in terms of choice of universities before NCEE, after NCEE but before
knowing the score and after knowing the score of their NCEE.

Different researchers have found inequalities in enrollment policy for Chinese higher
education. According to Bai, C., et al (2013) in each year, under the guidance of the Ministry
of Education, each college and university sets the target number of examinees to be admitted
from each province. Universities and colleges begin their admission in the following order:
first, special colleges; second, the first-tier universities; third, the second-tier universities; and
finally, junior colleges. Each university and college selects applicants based on applicants'
NCEE score from the highest to the lowest until the admission quota is reached. By the end
of the admission process, each student gets one offer. A student can choose not to go to the
offered school. In such case, the student will need to re-take the NCEE next year and go
through the application and admission procedure again.

Chinese provinces have different population and different educational developments

including the number and type of universities. Chinese Higher Education Institutions accept
about 99% of their students based on the NCEE. As a result students spend a great amount of
time preparing for the exam. Nevertheless, not all of students score the desirable mark to join
universities. And they have to choose different number of universities where they want to
continue their higher education after taking NCEE. As different provinces adopted different
system for choosing university, therefore there are different disparities among the provinces.

11
Tan, G. Y. (2013). HIGHER EDUCATION REFORMS IN CHINA: FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE?. International Education, 43(1)

lxi
 3. Research Methodology

This section is focused on sample size and sampling strategy, methods of data collection,
significance, scope and limitations of the study and data analysis.

3.1 Sample Size and Sampling Strategy

Undergraduate students of first tier university located in Beijing, who are enrolled through
three different systems (i.e. choosing university before taking NCEE, after NCEE but before
result and after announcing the result) will be used as a sample for collecting data. The case
school is selected for sampling because of researcher live in this school and it’s easy and
convenient for researcher to find time for sampling. And another reason is that this university
is first tier university which enrolls more than two thousand new students every year from all
provinces of China. Moreover, undergraduate students are selected deliberately because they
have been enrolled in this university recently.

The total sample size of respondents is 9 students and these students will be selected from
sample university using convenience sampling. These 9 students come from different
province in China. A quota sampling has been used which is of 3 students from those
provinces where they choose university before taking NCEE, 3 students from those provinces
where they choose university after taking NCEE but before announcing result and rest of 3
students from those provinces where they choose universities after taking NCEE and
announcing the result.

3.2 Methods of Data Collection

All the collected data is qualitative and used to investigate fairness of choosing universities in
enrollment system for higher education. Method of data collection is face to face, semi
structured interview. This is because semi-structured interview is helpful in getting enough
information by making questions flexible and allowing the researcher to ask additional
questions based on what an interviewee responds (Alan, 2008).

lxii
The purpose of the study has been explained to the interviewee students and their
participation for sampling to this study is voluntary.

3.3 Significance, Scope and Limitations of the Study

Investigating the fairness of choosing universities in enrollment system will help all other
prospective examinees to learn from experience of the previous students. The study may also
be applied to enrollment policies in other education institutes like high school or primary
school. Moreover, the research can be used as a base for further studies on the factors that
determine students ‘challenges in current enrollment policy.
However, due to financial and time limitations, the study has confined only in one university.
Besides, lack of adequate data especially from parents, high school teachers and other
stakeholders that would help in expanding the study has made the study to depend on
students’ responses. Therefore, this research is far from claiming that the study has completed
enough to be generalized.

3.4 Data Analysis

Qualitative data analysis has been used to present and analyze the collected data. The finding
of the interviews is analyzed by using descriptive and explanatory methods, with a
continuous reference to the literature and previous empirical studies. Some finding are also be
analyzed thematically.

4. Research Findings

According to the literature review and interview findings, research findings have been
divided into three different categories, and these categories are according to the system of
choosing university by students. These all findings are very important and as Gu (2011) cited
in “Spatial recruiting competition in Chinese higher education system” from Marginson
(2006)

lxiii
Every year, colleges and universities set their different admission score levels to different
provinces according to different factors such as regional student quality, regional education
development level, and local enrollment competition. The process of setting regional
admission score level for every university is complex and dynamic because there are strategic
interactions between competitive universities in each target region. Such strategic interactions
between competitive universities mean dynamic competition in higher education enrollment
field (Marginson 2006).

The interviewees are from different provinces, so research findings are referenced with their
provinces to avoid the conflict with policies from other provinces in china.

4.1 Choosing University before Taking NCEE

Students who take NCEE in Beijing has to fill the application form for applying university
before taking the NCEE, and they have to choose three universities according to their choice
in three ranks of choices (i.e. first choice university, second and third choice university). They
will be enrolled by their first choice university if their score match with first choice
university, but if it doesn’t match, they have to wait for their second choice university’s
decision, if they couldn’t get enroll into second choice then wait for their third choice
university’s decision. At the end, if they couldn’t get offer from all their three choice
universities, they have to take NCEE again next year. As one of the interviewee showed her
fear of choosing university,

“Filling the form for choosing university before exam is not good, because I always had
fear of wasting my one year if I couldn’t enroll into my first choice university. We can make
better choice of university and our future career if we know our score before choosing the
university”.

When students make their choice of universities, they have to consider the choice of major
also with regard of universities, as different universities are specialized in different majors
and different merit list applied for different majors inside every university. So students have
to compete with two merit lists, one is for university selection and another is for major
selection. One interviewee reflected herself like this,

lxiv
 “it was my dream to study in Peking University, and I really worked very hard, but I was
afraid of competition as every student wants to study in this university, so I chose another
university as my first choice, but when I got my NCEE score, I was very sad and
disappointed because my score was much higher than the merit list of Peking university,
but I couldn’t enroll myself there and students with lower score than me were enrolled
there”

Students consult with their parents in making the choice of universities, and mostly they
choose the university which their parents Believe it’s better for their career development in
the future or which university is closer to their home. But they also consult with their teachers
and friends about choice of university. As one interviewee had to change his choice of
university because of her mother,

“I wanted to study in Zhejiang University because I like it and it is one of best universities
in china, but my mother didn’t allow me because she thinks it’s too far from our hometown
so I chose university in Beijing which is near to my home.”

4.2 Choosing University after Taking NCEE but Before Knowing Their NCEE Score

Students who take NCEE in Shanxi has to fill the application form for applying university
after taking the NCEE but before announcing the result. They can choose three choices of
universities with same criteria as students in Beijing but different number of universities in
each choice and it’s different in different province. If there score cannot match with their first
choice university, they have to wait for second choice university, if couldn’t enroll in second
choice university then wait for third choice. They have to wait for next year and take another
NCEE next year if they couldn’t enroll by any university of their choice on application form.
One interviewee reflected his thoughts about this experience as,

“After taking NCEE, my next step was making a choice of university, and it was really
difficult for me as there are many universities and every university has different merit list. I
had to make sure that I can get high score for merit list of my choice of university and
finally I got admission in my first choice university. It was great relief for me and my

lxv
 family”.

When students fill the form after taking NCEE, they also have to consider the second merit
list for majors, because different universities have different merits for different majors.

These students also consult it with their parents, teachers and friends before making choice of
universities, but parents play more effective role and they choose university for their children
as they think they know better what is good for their children.

4.3 Choosing University after Taking NCEE and Knowing NCEE score

Students who take NCEE in Hebei, province are allowed to fill the application form for
applying university after taking the NCEE and announcing the result. they can match their
score in NCEE with different universities according to universities’ merit list for Hebei
province, and fill the application form with same criteria like Beijing and Shandong which is
choose three choice of universities and wait for universities’ decision for student’s
enrollment. As one student told his experience,

“I always wanted to go to top ranked universities like Peking University or Tsinghua

University, and my first year NCEE score was below the score levels of those top
universities so I decided to take another NCEE next year, my score was again lower than
these universities’ merit list but it was good enough to enroll in another top ranked
university.it was my choice of wasting my one year’s time and I’m happy with that”.

When students fill the form after knowing their NCEE score, they have to check university’s
merit list and also merit list for different majors in the same university. But they knew their
score before choosing university which makes their choice easy. But it creates a difference
among students’ with different NCCE score and from different schools. One interviewee said,

“As everyone knows their score and everyone want to go to best universities, so students
with higher score in NCEE can only go to top ranked universities”

Another interviewee shared an example of their province,

lxvi
 “This year (2013) from my province (Hebei), one hundred and four students were enrolled
in Peking University and Tsinghua University graduated from only one school. So there
was no chance for students from other schools to enroll into these universities.”

These students also consult their choice of university with their parents, teachers and friends,
but again parents play more dominant role and they prefer to choose university for their
children.

5. Discussion

Analysis of strategic interaction between universities has recently become a major focus of
administering authority of government and social scientists (Gu 2011 cited from McMillen et
al. 2007; Millimet and Rangaprasad 2007a; Ghosh 2010). Such interaction in enrollment
competition field of higher education includes students’ choice of universities for their higher
education.

This study investigates the effects of different systems of choosing university on students’
career and how much fairness is in this system for students. Students’ experience of choosing
universities for higher education has great of value. They have to go through different
systems from different provinces to enroll even in one university. for example, for applying
Beijing normal university, student’s from Beijing choose it their first choice before taking
NCEE, students from Shanxi choose it as their first choice after taking NCEE but without
knowing their NCEE score and students from Hebei province choose it as their first choice
after taking NCEE and knowing their NCEE score.

These three different systems inside one centralized system create an imbalance of
opportunities and disparities among students from different provinces. Gu (2011) stated in his
research on higher education in china that the enrollment competitive behavior of higher
education institutes in China can be influenced by the size of neighborhood competitors. This
competition can be seen among students trying themselves to be enrolled in china’s best
universities.

lxvii
First, the students who choose university before taking exam are on high risk (Zhu, 2013).
they choose their university on their abilities to get score in the NCEE, as every student
dreams to go to top universities of china, so they want to choose top university but they are
afraid of choosing because if they can’t get the merit list score for their choice of university,
they have to take NCEE again next year and waste of their one year.

Once these students choose their university, they start preparing NCEE to get enrolled into
their first choice of university. It becomes their goal to get higher score than the merit list of
that university. Empirical evidence further illustrates the severity of the problem: For
example, in 2005, over 800 students failed to be admitted by first-tier colleges in Gansu
province (Nie, 2007).

But there is another fact, there are many students who get very high score in CEE which is
good enough to enter into top ranked universities like Peking University or Tsinghua
University, but they can’t get enrolled into those top universities only because they didn’t
choose these universities as their first choice. This fact creates a question on the rationality of
CEE (Ruoling, 2010) that who should be admitted by top ranked universities, the students
who got high marks in CEE or the ones who choose top ranked universities at their first
choice with low CEE score? And all these phenomena create the issue on the fairness
(Meyer, 2013) of higher education system where students with low scores are admitted in
universities and with lower scores left out.

By this choice, students also take a risk in listing their first choices. If students are rejected by
their first choice college, they are very likely to be rejected by the next choice colleges as
these colleges are filled with students who list them higher in their preference lists. This gives
students a strong incentive to manipulate their true preferences, carefully choosing safe
colleges as the first choice and thus ensuring a higher chance of being admitted.
Consequently, students are forced to play a complicated admission game induced by the
choice of universities, and usually it is beneficial for them to manipulate their true
preferences. This point has also been advocated by some researchers working on college
admissions reform12
12
See http://gaokao.chsi.com.cn/gkxx/zjsd/201003/20100311/65908711.html, retrieved on 2014-01-02

lxviii
The system of choice of universities emphasizes the choices students make. Whether they are
accepted by colleges does not only depend on students' own test scores, but also on how other
students make choices.

Second, the student who make their choice of university after taking NCEE are also at risk
but less than those who choose before taking NCEE. As Zhu (2013) argue that students are
always at risk when they make choice of university. These students have an idea how much
score they can get in NCEE and they make their choice based on their NCEE experience. But
they are always at risk because they don’t know how much exact score they can get and how
many students applied for the same university.
The Ministry of Education also provides some advice on how to strategize in the sequential
choice algorithm on its official website for college admissions13

“Students should carefully make their first choice, choosing colleges for which their test
scores are above the average of the past year's admission scores if the colleges have had
stable admission scores in the past three years, and in the upper bound of the past year's
admission scores if the colleges have had unstable admission scores in the past three
years.”

“Students should have safe colleges for their second choice. The second choice colleges
should be among those that had available slots in the second round in previous years, so
that students still have a chance of being admitted by their second choice colleges even if
rejected by their first choice colleges.”

Third, the students who make their choice of university after knowing their NCEE score. It
makes things very easy for these students as they can match their score with all universities
which they want to study. As one interviewee said,

“It was very easy for me to make my choice for university, because I knew my score in
NCEE and I knew the average score for merit of universities so I could choose any
university matched with my NCEE score”.

13
See http://gaokao.chsi.com.cn/gkxx/zytb/201106/20110616/214533410-2.html, retrieved on 2014-01-04.

lxix
And these students don’t have any fear of wasting their one year if they couldn’t get merit list
score of their selected universities as they already know their score before making choice of
university. And it will be students’ own choice if they want to repeat NCEE to get higher
score for a better university if their score was lower than their desired university’s merit list.
But there is another fact of this choice system: students showed in interview as top schools
dominate top universities. The example from Hebei province told by the interviewee again
illustrates the issue on fairness of this system.

Fourth, other factors which effects on students’’ choice for universities like parents, family,
friends, teachers etc. Family characteristics that influence students’ education include family
income, parental education, family structure, religion, ethnicity, caste, and parental
engagement (Chudgar and Shafiq, 2010). Parents play an important role in students’
academic career and their choice of university as well. This shows that students’ choice
depends on not only their own choice but on parents’ choice as well. Giordano, Phelps,
Manning and Longmore (2008) explain that parents’ academic attainment has a major effect
on the success of students. One interviewee even didn’t fill his form as his father did
everything for him,

“I didn’t know my first choice of university till the day when I received offer from that
university as my father filled the form and he chose university for me.”

6. Conclusion

The enrollment system in HEIs and making choice of university has gone through several
phases, and a lot of reforms have already been done to bring the fair system among different
admission policies. Ministry of education and other education departments at provincial and
county levels have changed their policies in recent years to give more benefits to students to
bring fairness in the system. But three different systems of making choice of university for
students from different provinces create issue of fairness. To remove unfairness and students'
incentive in this system, the education department in Hunan province became the first, in
2003, to replace the single choice of university system with a new parallel choice system.
Later in 2005 and in 2007, this parallel choice was also introduced separately in Jiangsu

lxx
province and Zhejiang province. Parallel choice means that students can list several “parallel”
colleges in decreasing desirability for each choice. In this way, each college slot is
sequentially allocated for students with the highest test score to those who with the lowest
test score.

Imbalance would be created by students sitting in the same classroom but coming to the same
university from different entrance admission systems. Ministry of education and provincial
education departments should need to adopt a central enrollment policy which gives equal
opportunities for all students from all over the country. This could help student save one year
of going through and retaking the NCEE. There should be equal opportunities for all students
to enroll into universities.

Chinese government should focus more on the equality of opportunities for all students in the
country. The role of HEIs should be also discussed to help make the admission procedure and
overcome the disparities between students and universities.

References

1. Bai, C. E., Chi, W., &Qian, X. (2013). Do college entrance examination scores predict undergraduate
GPAs? A tale of two universities. China Economic Review.
2. Chen, D. Y. (2004). China’s mass higher education: Problem, analysis, and solutions. Asia Pacific
Education Review, 5(1), 23-33.
3. Chudgar, A., &Shafiq, M. N. (2010). Family, community, and educational outcomes in South Asia.
Prospects, 40(4), 517-534.
4. Francis, A. M., &Tannuri-Pianto, M. (2012). The redistributive equity of affirmative action: Exploring the
role of race, socioeconomic status, and gender in college admissions. Economics of Education Review,
31(1), 45-55.
5. Gu, J. (2012). Spatial recruiting competition in Chinese higher education system. Higher Education, 63(2),
165-185.
6. Harman, G. (1994). Student selection and admission to higher education: Policies and practices in the
Asian region. Higher Education, 27(3), 313-339.
7. Jacob, W. J. (2006). Social Justice and Gender in Chinese Higher Education: Regional Issues of Equity and
Access. In Education and Social Justice (pp. 139-159). Springer Netherlands.
8. Li, M. (2012). On the Fairness of the Higher Education in China. Higher Education Studies, 2(2), p163.

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9. Liu, H., & Wu, Q. (2006). Consequences of college entrance exams in China and the reform challenges.
KEDI Journal of Educational Policy, 3(1), 7-21.
10. Ma, H. (2013). Science Teachers’ Understanding of the College Entrance Examination in a Climate of
National Curriculum Reform in China. In Valuing Assessment in Science Education: Pedagogy,
Curriculum, Policy (pp. 183-205). Springer Netherlands.
11. Meyer, H. D. (2013). Reasoning about Fairness in Access to Higher Education. In Fairness in Access to
Higher Education in a Global Perspective (pp. 15-40). SensePublishers.
12. Neumann, M., Trautwein, U., & Nagy, G. (2011). Do central examinations lead to greater grading
comparability? A study of frame-of-reference effects on the University entrance qualification in Germany.
Studies in Educational Evaluation, 37(4), 206-217.
13. Ruoling, Z. (2010). On the Rationality of the College Entrance Examination. Chinese Education & Society,
43(4), 11-21.
14. Tan, G. Y. (2013). HIGHER EDUCATION REFORMS IN CHINA: FOR BETTER OR FOR
WORSE?.International Education, 43(1).
15. Wang, L., Huang, X., & Schnell, J. (2013). Using Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad to Interpret Chinese “Gao-
Kao” High Stakes Testing and Stressing− Paralleled Testing in the US as Cross-Cultural Context.
16. Yang, M. (2010). Educational System in China. Zhejiang University Press.
17. Zhong, H. (2011). Returns to higher education in China: What is the role of college quality?.China
Economic Review, 22(2), 260-275.
18. Zhu, M. (2013). College admissions in China: A mechanism design perspective. China Economic Review.

lxxii
Is Merger a Success? Exploring the Outcomes and Challenges of Mergers
of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in China.

ID 201629010053
Masters Students.
version one.

ABSTRACT
This paper examined the merger of Chinese higher education institution in
1990s with the purpose to understand the outcomes and challenges of merger.
The paper used document review method to review twenty (20) journal
articles. The articles were retrieved using key phrases such as " merger of
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)" " merger of HEIs in China" and
"mergers in HEIs" "Challenges of mergers in HEIs in China" and "Outcomes
of HEIs in China" from Beijing Normal Universities (BNU) library and
JSTOR searches. Overall, the findings of this review indicates that merger of
HEIs in China succeeded in aspects of efficiency and effectiveness, improved
services, post-merger comprehensiveness, students' enrollments and course
choices and fragmentation. However, there were challenges such as
difficulties to solve cultural differences, power struggles, naming of new
institutions, long distances between campus, and lack of common shared
vision and purpose on part of staff. Recommendations for futures merger
intentions and research is provided.

INTRODUCTION

Merger of higher education in university have been part and parcel to some of the university
in the past years in different countries (Harman, 2002; Harman & Meek, 2002 & Schweiger
& DeNisi, 1991). This has happened both in public and government universities with the
different purpose ( Wan & Peterson, 2007). This is also the experience of other universities in
different counties apart from china. For example, in United Kingdom, United State, Australia,
Norway, Denmark, Finland, South Africa, Russia (Harman & Meek; 2002, Skodvin; 2014,

lxxiii
Wan & Peterson, 2007) all these have used merger as an instruments to restructure their
higher education systems. Some of the higher education institution were considered to be one
of the weak education institutions, therefore, had to merge with large and strong education
institution which have strong management system in order to benefit from of administrative
resources available ( Yang, 2015). In other words, to form comprehensive universities out of
smaller, single-site, and specialized campuses (Ahmadvand, Heidari, Hosseini, & Majdzadeh,
2012).

Merge of higher education institutions has been done to achieve different goals in education
with the main focus on the restructuring of higher education institution. In other words,
merger has been thought to solve institutional problems such as fragmentation within and
among institutions, lack of financial support, low efficiency and quality of the education
provided (Kyvik, 2002). Private institutions also are part of merger of institution in higher
education as they also faces the financial problem and highly in competition on students and
other need (Harman, 2003).

Restructuring of higher education through merger has never been without challenges .
According to Wan & Peterson ( 2007), the challenges that have given rise to merger are in
both public and private sectors . Mostly these challenges are related to the combination of
different entities that originally had different goals and visions, cultures, priorities, resource
and geographical contexts and the like (Harman, 2002; Harman & Meek, 2002; AASCU,
2012; Kyvik, 2002; Ahmadvand, Heidari, Hosseini, & Majdzadeh, 2012 & Li, 2009). For
example, AASCU, (2012) , argues that blending of universities that had different cultures
results to challenges such as creating a new organization culture that will be accepted by all
parties. Other challenges include national and state level politics where the merger process
may either be opposed or supported for political reasons especially when merger involve
public universities (AASCU, 2012; Kyvik,2002; Sehoole, 2005 & Wan & Peterson, 2007).
Legal issues related to the reorganization of physical assets (AASCU, 2012). Decisions such
as what should be the name of post-merger institution (Wan & Peterson, 2007). According to
Kyvik (2002), the findings shows that the merging of university in Norway was considered
as a "forced merger process" as staff were reluctance to accept the idea of merger process
and its reforms. Sehoole (2005), presents the challenges of merger of higher education in the
case of South Africa that some of the universities resist on merger of higher education despite

lxxiv
knowing the evidence on benefits of merger of educational institution. In other parts where
mergers took place, reluctance of the staff member on merger process was also one of the
challenge of the merger process (Moja, 2008).

This paper is an attempt to review literature on higher education mergers in China with the
purpose to understand what were the outcomes of mergers and the challenges that were
involved during and after merging. By referring to the intended goals of merger, the review
will answer the following questions:
1. What were the outcomes of merger of universities in China?
2. What were the challenges of merger of universities in China?
The finding of this review will help policy makers to understand the outcomes and challenges
for university merger and , therefore, use them for future restructuring of universities in
China and elsewhere. The finding will also add knowledge to the literature of higher
education on the ways to improve merger processes and mitigating the problems of merger
before it begin.

LITERATURE REVIEW.
The concept and goals of merger
Merger, sometimes referred as amalgamation, has been defined differently by different
scholars. Li, (2009 . p.4 ) define merger using "five unification" which include one Banzi
(leaders group), one Jiguo (organization), one Zhidu (administrative system), one Caiwu
(financial administration), and one Fazhang Guihua ( development planning) . Some have
related merger in higher education with cooperate merger done in other non-academic
organization. For the purpose of this work, merger in higher education will be considered as
Harman, (2002) defined:

...an amalgamation of two or more separate that surrender their legally

and culturally independent identities in favor of a new joint identity under
the control of a sing governing body. All assets, liabilities and
responsibilities of the former institutions, including the human elements,
are transferred to a single new institution (Harman, 2002, p. 94).

Merger in higher education has been influenced by mergers in business firms where

lxxv
companies have historically merged to form bigger ones with the goal of improving
efficiency, productivity and enhance management. Merger in higher universities has different
goals in depending on the context where merger is taking place. However, there has been
some common similarities in the reasons why merger is thought as a solution for restructuring
universities. Goals such as enhancing efficiency and effectiveness (Chow & Fung, 2012; Li,
2009; Harman & Meek, 2002; Huang, 1999; Yang, 2015 & Ahmadvand, Heidari, Hosseini, &
Majdzadeh, 2012), improving quality of services (Huang, 1999, & Yang, 2015), increase
students access ( Chen, 2004; Kyvik, 2002; Yang, 2015, & Wan & Peterson, 2007), and
harnessing resources and improving cost effectiveness (Huang, 1999; Eastman & Lang, 2001;
Kyvik, 2002; AASCU, 2012; Li, 2009 & Wan & Peterson, 2007 ), redressing past
inequalities, serving a new social order, responding to the new global economy and matching
with the changes in order to meet the pressing needs, responding to new realities and
opportunities in higher education ( Chipunza, C., & Gwarinda, S.A, 2010) . These are
frequently considered as the main goals of merger in higher education. There are other goals
depending on the context. According to Kyvik, (2002, p. 55), the 1994 merger on non-
university colleges in Norway was indented to create universities that are large and stronger,
establish and improve collaboration of staff from different programs, "create a common
educational culture in new colleges...offer students possibilities to combine subjects in new
ways", create conditions that will improve adaptation to the demands of changing global
demands on higher education and to improve libraries and ICT services. AASCU, (2012) ,
considered lowering of tuition fees and as an important goal of mergers in the United States.

China is one of the large and highly populated countries with more than 2000 higher learning
institutions. It is among the countries that have undergone massive changes of higher
education in recent years. The changes were evident at all levels that is; national, local and
institutional level. According to Yang (2015) , restructuring of Chinese higher institution
aimed at improving the structure, distribution, and provision of quality and efficiency of
Chinese higher education. For the structuring of its higher education institution five
restructuring strategies were involved and this were joint construction, cooperative
administration of institutions, institutional amalgamation, transfer of jurisdiction and
participation of other social sector in institutional operation. One of the main intentions of
these changes is to upgrade HEIs into world class universities. In 1952 China restructured its
education system and encouraged most on merging of universities and this was done under

lxxvi
the influence of the government, institutional and provisional level. According to Wan (2003),
merger of higher education was used as a tool to restructure higher education system
whenever there was challenge in higher education.

According to Cai (2007), during this period merge of higher education restructures the
education institution by integrating the departmental and faculties of different education
institution which were formally smaller and weaker to form one strong university. For
example the institution with automobile specialization were annexed by Tsinghua University
along the line of specialization, Shanghai architecture departments were connected to Jiao
tong university and few multidisciplinary university were retained for the purpose of
cultivating professionals on respective field of study.

For higher education institution to integrate with other institution number of different model
and mechanics have been used to achieve the restructuring strategies that were made by the
referred country to meet their goals. There's no clear way to state the goals of each country
and institution but rather the purpose towards this provide a linked to one another. According
to Yang (2015 ), the overall restructuring of the education policy was to improve and
increase the structure, distribution, quality, and efficiency of the higher education institution
with regard to the rapid increase of number of students, faculties, and staff members which in
turn brings new changes on the demands of the institution and increase China universities to
be well known globally.

Challenges of mergers
Literature in higher education highlights different challenges of mergers in higher education.
These challenges are most of the time grouped as those during and after merger process.
According to Harman (2002), the post-merger period in Australia has been usually very
painful and unpredictable to merged institutions to the point that one of them decided to
separate again and retain their former status. He argues that merging institution with "un-
complementary campus cultures" (p. 97) may hinder organizational change which may result
to stagnation of post-merger institution instead of progress. This is because it is very hard and
takes longtime for campuses that formally had completely different cultures to be integrated.
Communication of the goals and changes that will occur after merging is another challenge.

lxxvii
Employees can get shock and are always resist to change if they are not well informed and
involved during the negotiation period (Moja, 2008; Schweiger & DeNisi, 1991). In a
longitudinal study that involved 147 employees (75 experimental group, 72 control group)
from two plants, Scheweiger & DeNisi (1991), found that employees were more likely to
quickly adapt the post-merger period if their managers communicated to them about the
changes that would happen after merging. According to Ahmadvand, Heidari, Hosseini, &
Majdzadeh (2012), integration of the staff members is also a challenge at individual
institution and worse after merger.

Kyvik (2002, p.58) describes that lack of clear and consistent goals is also a challenge. For
example the ministry release two objectives simultaneously both " increasing local flexibility
and universal national standard" this has been difficult to achieve at once. Since this has
bring a challenge in implementation of the objectives setup it is also hard to meet the
expectations of reform of higher learning institutions . This create an image that the reforms
were made under false assumptions. According to Kyvik, (2002), amalgamation in Norway
was not accepted everywhere. Some of the colleges didn't accept it and they clearly work
hard to avoid it and this was due to different reasons. Some argued that the administrative
centre and the new state colleges will be far from each other. Others feared of losing their
ambitions to be granted university status.

Other challenges are geographical such as distance and location issues. Kyvik, (2002),
analyze that some of the institution fail to cooperate and collaborate since the distance
between the institution is very large and fail to bring all the programs into single centre. As
far as geographical challenges of merger as concerned, AASCU (2012) raises questions such
as;

...which campus will be the "new" physical main campus? Will property
on one or both campuses be sold or renovated? Will one campus become
the satellite of the other? Where will laboratories and classroom-not to
mention faculty and administrative office, including student service
office-be moved and/ or consolidated? will renovations be necessary as a
result? Will existing residence halls be relocated or need significant
renovation to accommodate more students? How far will commuter

lxxviii
 students have to drive to get to a new, merged campus? How much
parking for students, faculty and staff will be available on the new
campus? will the campus community have to pay more for parking? What
will the new campus foot and vehicular traffic patterns look like?
( AASCU, 2012, p.3)
The location and distances of new campuses must be well considered so that
they will not affect post-merger operations and comfort on part of students and
staff.

METHODOLOGY

This paper used document review method to review twenty-two (22) materials (16 journal
articles, 3 presentations, 2 book chapters). The articles were retrieved using key phrases such
as " merger of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)" " merger of HEIs in China" and
"mergers in HEIs" "Challenges of mergers in HEIs in China" and "Outcomes of HEIs in
China" from Beijing Normal Universities (BNU) library and JSTOR searches. Papers
reviewed covered the period from 1991 to 2015 so as to captures the period when merger of
HEIs began in China. This study covered two main research questions (a) What were the
outcomes of merger of higher education institution in china? (b) What were the challenges of
merger of Higher educational institution in china?. These questions guided the search of
materials by reading abstracts and tittles that were related to these questions to get the 22
materials out of thousands search results. Research questions guided the extraction of
information from the materials where information such as background information, goals of
mergers , outcomes and challenges of mergers were extracted. Findings are organized in
terms of research questions.

The researcher decided to open the finding section with the background and examples of
mergers in China to set a clear setting for the discussion of the findings by drawing on
examples provided.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Merger of HEIs in China

lxxix
In the 1990s China experienced a massive merger of higher institution. Restructuring of the
universities started in terms of managements system so as to insure the good utilization of the
funds provided in the education institution with the intention of providing quality education,
share of the available resources and improve efficiency of higher education institutions. This
plan have had effects on private institution as it attracts institutions which are at the same
geographical location to form one of the comprehensive educational institution. It is also
believed that merger creates a university with a very strong academic programs, enough
resources and infrastructure that will attract more students to join (Kyvik, 2002 &
Ahmadvand, Heidari, Hosseini, & Majdzadeh, 2012 ). Restructuring of higher education
aimed at improving the structure, distribution, quality and efficiency of Chinese higher
education. Structuring strategies were promoted , namely joint construction, cooperative
administration of institutions, institutional amalgamation, transfer of jurisdiction and
participation of other social sectors in institutional operation. All these have been done with
the aim of preparing the China first world class university (Yang, 2015).

Merger of higher educational institution in China was in two waves. The first waves was in
1950s where faculties and departments of the same field from different education institution
were regrouped to create one university so as to reduce needless duplication of the resources
and most of the higher learning institution were developed along their zone of specialization
and few multi-disciplinary university were retained (Cai, 2013 &Yang, 2015). The second
wave of merge of university was in 1990s ,this time the main aim was to achieve economic
scale and aim at creating comprehensive universities and this was done from 1990-1997, and
during 1998-2006 there was upgrading of the institutional level with the aim of creating
world or first class universities and being able to adopt the dramatic enrolment expansion
(Cai, 2013).

Merging of educational institutional had some significant decrease in the overall number of
china higher education institution where by in 1996, about 103 institution emerged into 42
and the total number of institution were reduced from 1,080 in 1994 to 1,032 in 1996.(Yang,
2015). A number of universities and colleges undergone merger process in China with each
case representing a unique process. Here are few examples. In 1993 Jiangxi University was
merged with Jiangxi university of technology to form Jiangxi University in 1994 Shanghai
university merged with other four education institution two of them being Shanghai

lxxx
Industrial University and Shanghai Science and Technology University. In early1996 Hebei
Normal University (HNU) was merged from four universities (Hebei Normal institute, Hebei
education college, Hebei professional Technology Normal college and itself. 1998 the
Zhejiang project was established on the basis of the merger of Zhejiang University, Hangzhou
University, Zhejiang Agricultural University, Zhejiang Medical University. As a
comprehensive university, programs of the merged university covers arts, humanity,
education, economics, management, law, agriculture, sciences, engineering and medicine.

Also (Yang, 2015, & Luras, Georghiou, Casenga, & Polak ,2015) provide examples of
university that were part of the merge of the university as in September 1997 Shanghai local
college of preschool teacher training was taken over by East China Normal University under
the ministry of education. Also in November 1999 local college of economics and technology
in Hefei merged into University of science and Technology of China under the Chinese
academy of science. The merge of small institution both national and provisional were
swallowed by the flagship universities in 2000 and witnessed by (Yang, 2015, & Luras et al,
2015). Some of this institution are Beijing Medical University into Perking University, Xi'an
Institute of finance and Xi'an Medical University into Xi'an Jiao Tong University, Shanghai
Railway University into Tongji University, Nanjing Railway medical university and Nanjing
vocational college of transport into Southwest university, Changchun college of post and
telecommunication into Jilin university.

Outcomes
Merger of higher education institutional is evident at the national and provincial levels, and
this was clearly done with free love from the universities, sometimes the government push it
and also the alumni was part of it. The main aim is to prepare china world class university.

The outcomes of merger of HEIs cannot easily be measured as it takes a long time for the
institution and staff members to integrate. For one to see the success and failure of merger it
takes up to ten the years since when cooperation and integration began (Harman & Meek,
2002; Kyvik, 2002; Mao, Du & Liu, 2009 & Wang, 1999) . In addition, the outcomes of
merge of HEIs can be measured differently, it depends on the referred context. Outcome of
merger of HEIs in China can be measured differently at the national, provincial and
institution level.

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Yang (2015) wrote on the Institutional Merger in Chinese Higher Education and observe that
merger of higher education institution has led to the creation of strong and comprehensive
universities, and lead the way for cross and multi-disciplinary teaching and research and
create more knowledge to the students. In addition, Yang (2015), citing Chen (2006), has
reported that overall, merger of HEIs in China has successfully minimized duplication and
fragmentation of institutions as were in pre- merger situations. This observation is in line with
the goals of mergers: to reduce institutional fragmentation and duplication as suggested in
literature (Kyvik, 2002).

Merger of HEIs have created an increase of new academic programs from single specialized
institution to form more courses and this has brought an increase number of students
enrollment. In case of Fudan University after merged with Shanghai University to form one
comprehensive university enrolment increase at the rate of 20% postgraduate, 10%
undergraduate in 2000, and the number of postgraduate to undergraduate students continued
to increased with the proportional number from 46% in 1998 to 62% in 2001 (Yang, 2015).
He also argues that the Improvement of students quality in education, merger of HEIs
contributed a lot to the growth of research productivity and funding. The number of published
journals and articles were increased in social science and humanities with the rate of 33.9%
and 9.1% and in science and technology publication ere maintained. Also, Wan & Peterson
(2007) found that merger of Sichuan University (SU) in 1994 resulted to improved breadth
and students' choices through increased courses.

Merger of educational institutional in China has lead to the increase of more financial
support of the HEIs from government and other institution (Eastman & Land, 2001; Huang,
1999; Mok, 2005; Harman & Meek, 2002; Duan, 2003; Yang & Welch, 2012; Nyeu, 2006
& Yang, 2015) . According Yang (2015), this has been possible as the university number has
been reduced and there's improvement of the institutional running cost with the good
management and the resources available are well utilized. In his paper on college and
university mergers specifically on impacts on academic libraries in china, Huang (1999)
observes that merger process results to small institutes benefits from the large and strong
institutes libraries. This is because of the allocation of more funds that will be provided on
this libraries than before as small educational institution were not provided with the funding

lxxxii
that used to be granted only on large research libraries , and a acquisition of expertise from
the large libraries .There will be sharing of the materials among the institution and this will
create and increase the efficiency of this libraries in collection of materials, improving of
quality and competence of staff members among the librarians. There will be an improvement
on the service provided as teaching and research programs provided are well improved.
Reforms of HEIs had a purpose of improving the management of the universities in all the
levels so as to develop closer links between the higher education sector and the market.

Others have documented the negative and unforeseen outcomes of mergers of HEIs.
According to Mok (2005), mergers in China has led to unintended outcomes such as long
distances that students and staff had to travel between campuses and increase cost of
travelling, increased administrative challenges and deteriorating efficiency and effectiveness.
Despite these negative outcomes, merger of universities in China has, in one way, influenced
the change of governance style of management. Mok , (2005) describes how the merger of
universities in China has resulted to more decentralization of power where provinces and
university started to have some levels of autonomy in governing universities. This can
sometimes be a good thing because in long run it many improve efficiency and effectiveness.
In a case study that explored the motivation, process and outcomes of merger of Hebei
Normal University (HNU), Li (2009) found that, instead of serving cost as it is suggested in
literature (Huang, 1999; Eastman & Lang, 2001; Kyvik, 2002; AASCU, 2012 &Wan &
Peterson, 2007), merger in HNU resulted to increased costs due to increased number of
faculties, and divisions. On the contrary, Yang, (2015), argued that mergers of HEIs in China
have contributed to cost effectiveness through improved utilization of financial and human
resources. This is in line with the goal of mergers to reduce costs through sharing and
mobilization of resources.

Challenges
Yang, ( 2015), addressed some of the challenges that were part of merge of HEIs process.
Merger of HEIs process its overall approach as a nationwide adjustment or restructuring
process. This has brought a lot of challenges as it involves all government department in
different regions, it dismantled the separation by regions, sectors and professions, and
establish a more coherent higher education governance system of central ( Ministry of
Education) and provincial government, with the later playing an important role. Such a

lxxxiii
reform was expected to have profound implication for the future development of Chinas
higher education.( Yang, 2015).

Harman & Meek, 2002, & Yang, 2015) address complexity of the merger process as another
challenge as it cover most of the things related to the aspects of higher education. Integration
of different educational institution which have different organizational structure, disciplinary
restructuring, campus planning, and the change of the name of the institution after the merger
process this have imposed a lot of challenge as well as brought about the psychological
dimension to the students and staff members as they move from one educational institution
to another. Huang (1999) observed the merger process and its challenges in libraries. Each
individual library before the merge had its own administration system. Merge of HEIs has
effects on library administrators some of them lost their position as they merged and this rise
some conflicts of interest between the individual and newly merged library. In another case
study (using interviews, document analysis, and observations) which involved the merger
Sichuan University (SU) and Chengdu University of Science and Technology (CUST) in
1994, Wan & Peterson, (2007), found that fully integrations of institution after merger was
one of the difficulty things to achieve. For example, they argue that boundaries between
departments and staff remained visible and perceived by the staff even more than ten years
after merger.

Some of the merger challenges relate to geographical location. The long distance between the
university create a big challenge on the administrative departments, students, and staff
members as they are suppose to travel for some minutes compared to when the studies were
conducted in same campus Yang (2015).

Merger of HEIs has another challenge in administration position. The integration of

university bring some changes in administration, some of the positions which were existing in
each institution before merger had to be combined and some of the position were eliminated
as they come together. This cause resistance on the staff members, anxiety, administrators of
different areas in universities had passive reactions towards the changes (Huang,1999). This
also appear to support the claims made by Li, (2009), that merger of HEIs results anxiety
among the staff and administrators since they may not accept well the changes that may result
after merger. In a case study of Hebei Normal university (HNU) from Hebei Normal

lxxxiv
university (HNUo), Hebei Normal Institute (HNI), Hebei Education College (HEC) and
Hebei Professional Technology Normal College (HPTNC), Li (2009), found that struggle for
power affected merger efficiency and effectiveness of university management. This
contradicts with the very goals of merger of HEIs: to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
According to Li (2009), struggle for power was influenced by power balance especially the
decision of who among the leaders from the four institution should occupy which roles in the
new formed institution. In a case study of Sichuan University (merger of two institutions),
Wan & Peterson (2007), also found that power balance was a challenge during merger
process because universities struggled to make sure that the weaker institutions is not
dominated by the stronger institution. As a result, the tendency and overemphasis on the
balance of positions between the two institutions elevated a number of unqualified
candidates for some of the positions.

Another challenge is related to stakeholders' misunderstandings on the goals, details and

benefits of mergers. For example, some of the institutions were neither aware of the merger
process and its outcomes nor interested of in joining into process. Some of the institution
were only interested with the short-term benefits that were offered by the government in
terms of financial support or land-grant (Yang, 2015). The merger process was not given time
to be thought of its long term plan and its shortcomings this on the other hand resulted to
limited impacts to the institution. Centralized and top-down management style in China
contributed to this challenge. Li (2009) has argued that top-down decision making process in
China resulted to staff in lower rakings not to be fully involved in decisions about mergers
which caused resistance during the implementation stage.

Conclusion and recommendations

This study used a document review to understand the outcomes and challenges of merger of
HEIs in China. This review found that overall, merger of HEIs was successfully in China
with more than 424 mergers achieved within the period from 1990 to 2005 (Wan & Peterson,
2007). The increase of new academic programs paved the way to the increasing number of
students enrollment and program choices for students in different universities. Also a group
number of comprehensive university were increased as well as increasing number of
research and publications. Merger of HEIs in China also improved effectiveness and
efficiency. However, merger of HEIs was not without challenges, some of the universities

lxxxv
fail to merge as result of the distance between the institutions, conflict of interest among the
staff members, post-merger cultural integration, and naming of the new institution. From this
review, it can be recommended that merge of HEIs has to involve stakeholders in decision
making process before integrating to improve a sense of shared vision and commitment. In
relation to this, psychological preparations should be considered during early stages of
merger process. Institutions should not be forced to be involved in merger by the
government, instead provinces and institutions should be allowed to decide what is possible
in their context . With regard to power struggles, administrators should balance between
individual and national interest so as to create a good management team becomes a priority
over individual struggle for positions. Although this will be difficult because of the
psychological nature of humans, it helps to reduce tensions among the leaders of
organizations.

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lxxxviii
 BEIJING NORMAL
UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
INTERNATIONAL MA PROGRAM IN EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND
POLICY
COMPARATIVE EDUCATION

TOPIC:
MAJOR FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS MOBILTY IN
AND OUT OF CHINA

201629010056

CHAPTER ONE

lxxxix
 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Education is seen to be the key to development nation regardless of national wealth (Borge, 2015).
Education has become a global commodity making it unlimited to national boundaries. The notion of
education as an internationally traded commodity is not a new phenomenon. In the past decades many
student have been crossing borders to study in a foreign land all in the name of internationalization of
education (Armitage, 2008). Higher education is now open to the multitude, particularly the growing
middle classes now found on every continent. And especially in countries lacking higher education
capacity, students are looking for opportunities to study abroad (ICEF). Between 2000 and 2007, numbers
of international students across the world had more than doubled (UNESCO, 2009). During these periods,
international students’ destinations were directed towards New Zealand, Korea, Netherlands, Greece,
Spain, Italy and Ireland (UNESCO, 2009). UNESCO predicted that there may be as many as 7 million
international students in higher education by the year 2020 (UNESCO, 2009). Concurrently demand from
Asia as an emerging market has led to the shift of global mobility of international students, thus making
enrollment more widely distributed among a larger field of destinations, including a growing number of
non-English-speaking countries. Take, for example, the ascendance of China into the top ten most powerful
economies in the world is clearly explains how China is becoming a compelling destination for
international students (ICEF, 2015).
In recent years China has launched several international cooperation and exchanges to promote
bilateral cooperation in the field of education. China’s higher education has gone through various reforms
all geared at developing an educational system which will lead to the development of the nation. And as
part of Chinese educational reforms to expand the openness to the outside world and to liberalized its
education sector, have permitted more students from outside China to enter the Chinese educational
system. (Gu et al., 2009).
Internationalization has led to the movement of students from their mainland to other country for
certain reason known to them. Students over the years have been seen to be moving from one country to
another for further studies for their own betterment. Mobility of students has increased reaching as high as
about 65% after 2000. Studies have shown that many of the students have conditions or criteria for the
selection of the destined country that they will like to further their education. Others also have reasons for
choosing to study outside their home country. In a nut shell many students move outside their home
country because of high employment. This is possible as it is often perceived that these students have
gained a lot of experiences and exposures which will help the student do well on the job. Some on the
other hand are being noted to travel outside of their country because they want to have international
experiences (Novak, Slatinšek & Devetak, 2013).
China has taken advantage of the benefits of globalization to improve its economic activities. This is
seen in the country attaining the second-largest economy in the world and now considering eliminating

xc
poverty by the year 2020. Not only is the country willing to do well in their economy but also to develop
its educational system to suit the international market in order to attract more consumers. The country is
not relenting on its efforts in the development of internationalization since it has been viewed as a
salvation movement which will integrate western education into the system and make the nation stronger
(Gu, Li, & Wang, 2009). According to the statistics of the Chinese Ministry of Education (MoE, ),
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Institute for International Education (IIE) show the
improvement China is making in terms of the number of students moving outside to go and study and
students moving to China for further studies.
According to the Chinese Ministry of Education, 523,700 Chinese students went abroad to study in
the year 2015. Among the countries that Chinese students visit, the Ministry recorded many of them going
to the USA, UK and Australia representing 31, 20 and 27 percent of all the international students in these
nations. The higher number of Chinese students in the USA can be attributed to the Presidents of the
Nation increasing the number of visas for Chinese students and visitors in the year 2014 (Zhang &
Neubauer, ). Including all those who have departed in previous years from China to study abroad, the
Institute of International students recorded 700,000 international Chinese students in the year 2014. This
means that China’s goal of having a massive movement towards internationalization is an effective one
which needs much recommendation. China over the years has become an attractive destination for more
international students. This can be attributed to the massive development of China’s economy, the high
quality of higher education, the higher employment prospects in the country and the scholarship that the
government of China and other statutory bodies gives out to students who come to study (UNESCO,
2013). By the end of 2009, UNESCO recorded a total of 238,184 students coming from 190 countries to
China to study. Among these students, 35,876 were from Europe accounting for 15.1 per cent; 25,557 from
America accounting for 10.7 per cent; 12,436 from Africa accounting for 5.2 per cent; and 2,710 from
other Oceania accounting for 1.1 per cent (UNESCO, 2013). In the year 2015, the Ministry of Education
recorded a total of 397635 international students in China representing about 6% increase from 2014. This
is a clear reflection of China’s aim of reaching a total number of 500000 international students by the year
2020.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Over the years, China is seen to be an emerging economy in the global market. The country is now
recognized in all aspect, be it trade, health, education but to mention a few. Over the years, statistics shows
that, China tops the list of highly mobile student in higher education. The outbound mobility of Chinese
students is argued to be a combination of demand and supply factors. On the one hand, the capacity to
afford foreign education has increased, leading to a rapid expansion of the education pipeline. On the other
side, the efforts by universities and the strategy adopted in recruiting supports the mobility of Chinese
students. China is seen to be the destination of many international students especially after the economy
started booming. The government has been offering scholarships to international students, students

xci
engaging in exchange programs suffix is to say there is an increasing influx of foreign students in Chinese
higher education. The country is not relenting on its efforts in the development of internationalization since
it has been viewed as a salvation movement which will integrate western education into the system and
make the nation stronger (Gu, Li, & Wang, 2009). Whiles students have been known to trooping into the
higher institutions in China, Chinese students have also been seen to be going outside of the country to
study (Bodycott, 2009).This contrasting pattern becomes extremely important in view of the trends in the
outbound mobility patterns of Chinese student and inbound of international students. In the light of this,
this research seeks to find out and review the major reasons why international students choose to study in
China mainland as well as why Chinese students leave the country to go outside to study.

1.3 Research Objectives

The main objective of this study is to review the major reasons why students choose China as
their study destinations. Similarly the study will also review the major reasons why Chinese students
leave China to study in other countries.

Specific objectives will be to find out:

 The major reasons why students choose China as their study destinations

 The major reasons why Chinese students leave China to study in other countries.

1.4 Research Questions

To be specific, the following questions will help to answer the main concern raised.
 What are the major reasons why international students come to China to study?
 What are the major reasons why Chinese students leave to China to study outside?

1.5 Significance of the study

This study will add to existing knowledge and literature about the internationalization of Chinese
higher education. This review will also help in understanding the contributing factors to the outbound and
the inbound of students in Chinese higher education. Recommendations will also be made to policy makers
on how to help develop the system based on the perception of its consumers.

xcii
 CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE

2.1 Overview of Chinese Higher Education

The history of Chinese higher education can be traced to the establishment of the Classical higher
educational institutions which trained officials for the government and teachers for schools. The Classical
higher educational institutions also trained individuals so that they can pass the imperial civil examinations
which were made up of the County examinations, Provincial examinations, Capital and the Emperor
examinations. Among the institutions that were established included the Xingtan Academy which was the
institution of the popular educationist Confucius (551 – 479 B.C) who had 3000 disciples. Jixiaxuegong
was also founded during 356-321 B.C, Taixue (124 B.C) and Shuyuan (900 A.D) were among these classic
higher education institutions.
Modern system of higher education in China came to replace the Qing Dynasty traditional higher
education which sought to introduce western systems of education into the education of China. Modern
colleges and universities became necessary as officials saw the need to produce individuals with technical
knowledge to provide labor force for the society and also educate people in various disciplines. To achieve
modernization, western education was integrated into the system which made the people of China accept
western foreign language and western technical knowledge. The Imperial College was established in the
year 1862 to train translators in English, Russian, French and other foreign languages which in forty (40)
years later developed into a university (now Peking University). Between 1862 and 1898, forty-four (44)
modern colleges consisting of 22 military colleges, 9 colleges of foreign language, and 13 Science and
Technology colleges were established in China. Furthermore, three major universities were established in
Tianjin, Shanghai and Beijing during the reform movements in the 1890. These established universities run
courses like foreign language, Science and Technology, Engineering, Politics, Economics, Law,
Agriculture, Business, Medicine, Literature and other equally important Western disciplines. By the year

xciii
1909, China could proudly boast of 3 public universities, 24 provincial colleges and 127 specialized
colleges with a total of 26938 students in them. The number of Public Universities and other specialized
colleges continued to rise in 1925 as the country had various amendments and reforms.

2.1.1 Reforms and developments in Chinese higher education

Massive developments have taken place since the formation of the People’s Republic of China in the
year 1949. Under this regime, China witnessed the rebuilding for socialism and the overall socialism
construction which were transitional movements for the nation. Private institutions were taken over by the
government whiles other foreign sponsored institutions were either re-organized or cancelled by the
government. At this time, the Soviet Union’s educational policy was adopted by the government. In 1993,
the government issued the Outline of Educational Reform and Development which emphasized quality-
oriented development of higher education and deeper systemic reform of higher education (Gu, Li &
Wang, 2009). The government opted to be the overall supervisor of the educational system through the
Ministry of Education with little authority given then to the local and the provinces to manage their
educational system with the aim of directly meeting the societal needs of the communities. The popular
Chinese 211 project was implemented in 1995 with 100 universities sponsored by the government to reach
the world-class standards. In 2007, a total of 107 institutions were enrolled on this project to benefit from
this initiative which included Peking University, Tsinghua University. In order to enrich the development
of the world-class universities, the 985 initiative was implemented which led to the Ministry of Education
signing a consent with the provincial governments to be partners in supporting the initiative. The number
of universities was reduced to 33 for the betterment of the project and the goal.

2.1.2 Innovations in Chinese higher education

The Chinese government attaches great importance to the strategic role that science and innovation
play in improving society’s productivity and comprehensive national power. China has invested heavily on
strengthening scientific capacity and infrastructure in universities, research institutes, large-scale
enterprises, and science parks, and it has selected a batch of research universities to conduct fundamental
research (Yan, 2009). Further development of the innovation system is the enhancement in the capacity of
basic research in universities by expanding the participation of science and research, accelerating the
process of knowledge transfer and the partnership between technological higher education institutions and
enterprises in China to improve technology transfer and advancement in the society
These developments in Chinese Higher Education have helped in achieving tremendous results over
the years. In the year 2014, China had 3623 higher institutions out of which 2824 were public institutions
and 799 of them private. The number of students in these institutions was 48325390. Currently, the total
number of Chinese national higher education institutions is2845 including National General Colleges and
Universities and 292 Adult Higher Education.

xciv
2.1.3 Internationalization of Chinese Higher Education

Internationalization has been defined by many researchers from various dimensions and perspectives.
Some researchers see it as a process whiles others see it as a goal or an outcome (Li, 2016). Jane Knight
who has done much work in internationalization defines it as “the process of integrating an international /
intercultural dimension into the teaching, research and service functions of the institution” (Knight, 1997,
p.8). This is seen in the implementation of the 985 and 211 projects just to create the world class
universities as means of ensuring developments in the higher education system. The Peoples Republic of
China is also seen in aiming at reaching a satisfactory stage in internationalization as they seek to be
reaching a maximum of 500,000 international students coming to the country to study (Outline of Chinas
National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development 2010-2020).
Internationalization can take the form of the movement of students and staff, institutional collaboration and
the movement of ideas from one country to another (Scott, 1998 as cited in Li, 2016). Internationalization
is as a result of globalization where societies have been networked which has resulted to the easily
movement of information and people from one place to another. According to Kellner (2002), globalization
has resulted in creating social relations among national which can be seen in the movements of capital,
technology, ideas, culture, and people across national boundaries via a global networked society. Though
this is mostly seen in economic activities across the world boarders, education is no exception.
Educational systems are almost getting homogenized and there is a great competition among educators to
enjoy the best kind of education from all over the world. Governments and policy makers of various
countries are framing good policies to improve their educational system to attract students from all over
the world.

2.2 Factors affecting mobility patterns in Chinese higher education

Globalization of education and research systems associated with policies aimed at attracting talent
appears to have contributed to student mobility. Student mobility has often been framed as competitive
manner in which many countries and universities strive to pull students (Van Der Velde, 2015). Most
countries have implemented policies to encourage the mobility of highly skilled individuals more
generally, with policies that range from economic such as scholarships, incentives to encourage inflows,
immigration-oriented assistance, procedures for recognizing foreign qualifications and support for research
abroad (OECD, 2008 & 2014b). For example, the European Union launched a scheme where international
students in the field of Science and Technology could stay in the European countries after their studies and
help develop the Science and Technology of the European countries. Similarly, Scotland also initiated a
scheme where students could stay in the country for a maximum of two years (Novak, Slatinšek &
Devetak, 2013). The government of China is also investing immensely in the internationalization of higher
education. Over the years, the government of the People’s Republic of China has funded more international
students in order to attract more students into the country. Recently, more than 40,000 scholarships are

xcv
being offered in the country in about 277 institutions. In 2015 about 40 percent of all the international
students who came to study in China gained scholarship from the government in order to further their
education (Times Higher Education, 2016). There is also the establishment of world class universities
offering international friendly and recognized courses which attracts students from all over the word. In
short countries and institutions engage in internationalization for commercial advantage, gaining from
international and intercultural methods of teaching and learning as well benefitting from research and
knowledge acquisition (Altbach, 2004; Knight, 2006 as cited in Bodytcott, 2009 ).

2.2.1 Outbound factors

A. Employments opportunities
Study-abroad program enjoy a prestige mainly because they enhance one’s academic credentials, offer
better-paid employment opportunities and provide entry to influential professional networks. It is more
difficult to come across an unemployed foreign degree holder even when the unemployment rate is very
high in the country of origin. The advantages (employment and prestige) are higher in developing countries
than in the developed countries (Harzing & Christensen 2004). Students in institutions abroad are
perceived to have higher employments prospects in their home country because of experiences they have
gained outside of their mainland and the type of knowledge acquired (Bodycott, 2009). Alternatively,
international students sometimes stay after their graduation in countries where they schooled and fill
positions where their services are needed. According to Gray (2003), Australia is currently noted to as a
benefactor of the skills of students, who have opted to stay in the country to work in the fields of
information and communication technology as well as the field of engineering (Colebatch, as cited in
Andrade, 2006).According to the immigration authorities, the country in the next five years is predicted to
have more jobs than the residents in the country (Verbik & Lasanowki, 2007). This again is seen as a great
advantage for international students in the country to utilize it in order to secure jobs for themselves.
Similarly in China, according to the Article 14 of the Outline of Educational Reform and Development in
China, students who study abroad are valuable assets to the country and should be accorded the needed
respect since they contribute to the development of the nation. These students who study abroad have the
chance of returning to their country into the field of banking, insurance, industries and other sectors of the
economy to embark on research projects which will help improve the economic status of the country.
These students are given great incentives and salaries for their services which their counterparts who
studied in the mainland China are not privy to (Xu & Mei, 2009)

B. Academic superiority of host institutions

Students seeking cross-border higher education in general move from countries where the education
system is less developed to countries where universities are more developed. This is one of the reasons
why mobility within a region has been increasing. Many countries are therefore putting in strategies in
order to become attractive to students. Many Chinese students are seen to be studying in United States,

xcvi
Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and France since these countries are developing their
educational systems and universities to suit the international market (Verbik & Lasanowki, 2007). A study
by Li and Bray (2006) shows that the main reason why students from mainland China seek higher
education in Hong Kong was because academic institutions in Hong Kong provides better quality
education. Similarly in a study conducted by Bodycott (2009) parents mentioned that universities in China
are not sufficient for the large number of Chinese students. In addition to these, students who partook in
the study mentioned that the quality of education outside is of high quality compared to that in the country.
However, over the years, massive improvement is going on which is aimed at improving the quality of
education in the country. Students who studied in Hong Kong and Macau also perceived that studying
outside of mainland China was advantageous since it will help them in the development of their abilities
For example, the government of Hong Kong has in its policy the initiative of recruiting mainland Chinese
students in order to attract talents and improve competition and knowledge globally. The government has
therefore relaxed the visa requirements, permitted foreign students to seek for employments, doubled the
quota for the non-local research postgraduate’s students increasing from 20% to 33% (Bray& Li, 2007).
However, since 2002 through to 2009, the rate of entrance for higher education has been increasing
steadily from 15 percent through to 24.2 percent (UNESCO, 2013). The number of universities in the
country according to UNESCO is recorded to be reaching more than 20 million making the country to
prevail over the United States as the country with the largest higher education sector.

2.2.2 Inbound factors.

With the increased standing of Chinese universities in international rankings, there has been a
corresponding increase in students moving to study in China. The population of international students in
China’s HE continues to rise annually due to a number of factors.

A. Acquisition of foreign language and culture

While political affiliation may be an important and ongoing motive, language proficiency is equally
an important factor when selecting a host country for a foreign degree. This may explain why regional
flows continue to be high. Even though English courses are increasingly provided by Chinese universities,
proficiency in Chinese is obviously a contributing factor for the growth in number of international
students. A survey of former Erasmus students (Maiworm, 2001) on the benefits of the program indicated
that the students valued highest linguistic competency and cultural familiarity they experienced during
studying abroad. The Institute of International Education in the year 2014 had a goal of sending about
100,000 American students to China for study. The reason was to have more American students in China
learning the Chinese language as part of their studies in order to have more Chinese-speaking Americans.
This program was initiated and sponsored by President Barak Obama during his term of office (University
World News, 2013).

xcvii
B. A favorable Academic Immigration and the Scholarship Policy Factor
Generally speaking, it is much easier to get a student’s visa to study in China compared to EU and US
student’s visas. For instance, it is very easy for foreign students on a Chinese Government scholarship to
get a Chinese student visa upon enrollment. The host university generously assists students in filling the
visa application and the scholarship application. Also the China’s Government’s “open door policy” which
was launched in the 1980s has increasingly opened China’s borders to attract many foreign students from
all over the world. The Chinese scholarship incentive is also a key factor in making China attractive
destination for African students. Support from the Ministry of Education and the Chinese government as
part of the plan in expanding internationalization of education in China has contributed to the massive
movement of students to China. In the year 2009, the total number of international students found in China
was 238,184 from 190 countries, studying in 619 higher education institutions (UNESO, 2013). Among
these foreign students, the Ministry of Education offered Chinese Government Scholarship to 174
countries and 18245 students were admitted on the scholarship.

C. Cost of education
Among the factors influencing the country of choice for a foreign degree is cost of education.
Studying abroad is expensive and the expenses used to be borne by bilateral governments or funding
agencies (Varghese 2008). The cost of and return to education have become important elements in deciding
which foreign country to study. An observatory report on borderless Higher Education revealed that the
cost of education is a motivating factor which informs students’ decision in choosing their destination
countries. Higher cost of education deters students from applying to certain countries whiles other
countries are able to attract these students due to relatively cheap education. The cost of studying in china
is comparatively lower than many countries in the world Tuition fees are comparatively low, and quality
education is guaranteed at affordable price. This is very important, and it is one of the factors that make
China a very attractive option for international students (Xiang & Shen, 2009). With the high quality of
education combined with lower tuition fees, it’s clear why so many people decide to study abroad in China
instead of other destinations (Verbik & Lasanowski 2007). Conversely, many students are attracted to
Chinese Higher Education for their Degree, Masters and Doctorate education because of the relatively low
cost of education compared to other countries.

D. Quality of Education
Among emerging countries like Malaysia and Singapore, many students now troop to China to study.
Whiles countries like the UK, USA and Australia are seen to be higher contenders for international
students, many students are now shifting their focus from these countries to other emerging countries like
Malaysia, Singapore and China (Verbik & Lasanowki, 2007). These countries have now gained much
superiority in the international market due to the development establishment of world-class institutions and
also development of their education system to suit international standards. Similarly, many disciplines
offered in China served as breeding ground which attracts many international students. In the area of

xcviii
Traditional Chinese Medicines many international students are also recorded to be enrolling it though
many of these students fund themselves during their stay (WENR, 2016). About 79 per cent of these
students come from Asia, 6 per cent come from Europe and North America, 7 per cent from Africa whiles
1 per cent come from South America. The high attractiveness of students to the TCM programs is due to
the efficiency of the Traditional Chinese Medicines on the international market (WENR, 2016). Many
students are also attracted to China to read courses like Education, Business and Economics, Literature,
Engineering, Science and Technology, Information Technology and other equally important courses which
were in former times recognized to be read best in other countries (China Education and Research
Networks, 2016).

CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

The primary goal of this study was to gain understanding on why Chinese students travel
outside China for higher education whiles foreign students are trooping into to china for
higher education. Based on the research questions, qualitative research method was chosen.
Various empirical studies done in this field of internationalization were reviewed together
with their findings in order to answer the research question guiding the study. This method is
well suited because it is unobtrusive and it provides a good source of background information

xcix
and other issues not noted by other means. This will give an insight into how the
phenomenon of outbound and inbound mobility of patterns in Chinese higher education has
occurred over time (University of Portsmouth 2012).

CHAPTER FOUR

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1 Introduction

This chapter presents the results and findings of studies conducting over time that are geared towards
answering the research questions;
1. What are the major reasons why international students come to China to study?
2. What are the major reasons why Chinese students leave to China to study outside?

The results are the findings of various researchers concerning the various outbound and inbound
factors that influence students’ decision to move from across their borders to study in another country.
Outbound and Inbound according to Mazzorol and Souttar (2001) are factors that are influenced by pull
and push factors. The pull factors are the influences in the host country that attracts students to that
particular country. Students’ preference for a particular educational institution and the incentives to be
enjoyed whiles studying can be regarded as some of the factors that pull students into another country. On
the other hand, push factors are those that send students out of the country. Mazzorol &Soutar (2001)
asserted that social and economic factors of the source country inform students’ decision to leave the
country.

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4.2 Outbound mobility

Looking at the number of reasons for the pulling out of Chinese student for an oversea education; one
factor is the university entrance examination. A study conducted by Bodycott (2009) revealed that,
Chinese students opt to go to other countries to study because they were not able to make it passing the
National University Entry examination and instead of giving up, they decided to seek for universities
outside to study. For example, Macau initiated a policy of recruiting average level Senior High Students
who were not able to get admission in their mainland countries to have their bachelor education. Others
also seek to study outside because of the prestige and the partly awareness that programs done outside the
mainland guarantees better opportunities in the home country. It is also believed that the quality of
instructions and academic staff are of good quality than the mainland. One of the factors that have raised
the demand for higher education in the China is the higher economic growth in the country.
The outcome of the research showed different results for Macau and Hong Kong. Whiles many of the
students who chose to go to Hong Kong rated academics as their first consideration followed by social,
culture and economic, students in Macau rated social, followed by cultural and then academic as their
important consideration.
In Hong Kong about 69.0% of the population that responded to the questionnaires mentioned that
they have academic advantage for studying in the country. In addition to this, social and cultural
experiences as well as economic income accounted for 63.3% and 51.7% respectively. The responses in
Macau as afore-mentioned showed different results. About economic income, 77.2% of the population
mentioned that to be their greatest consideration whiles that for gaining competitive ability in the labour
market showed 65.8%. Employment consideration in Macau recorded 42.1% whiles that of Hong Kong
was 45.2%.

Apart from the questionnaires, the researcher conducted an interview to have an in-depth
understanding of what informed the students’ decision in studying abroad. In the interview, Hong Kong
was commended for the well development their higher education and about 50% of the students consented
to having their education there because of this reason. Discussing issues concerning internationalization,
44.5% of the interviewees asserted that China mainland lacked internationalization whiles others
mentioned that, they did not get the disciplines that they desired to read (29.5%). To buttress this point, one
of the PhD students mentioned that Hong Kong is well known in the international employment market and
that finding an employment opportunity in any institution wouldn’t be difficult at all for him.
35.6% of the population also wanted to improve on the acquisition of foreign language which they
perceived to be difficult to learn in the mainland. Students in Macau also mentioned that, they couldn’t
gain admission to the Chinese schools (20.3%).
One other important reason why many students will like to school abroad is the higher educational
requirements needed to gain admission into the institution of various countries. Whiles university in Hong
Kong requires Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOFEL) for post graduate students, USA and

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Canada in addition to the TOFEL demands that students Graduate Management Admission Test. The
absence of these in both Macau and the limited requirements of these in Hong Kong as compared to other
countries make students to go in for further studies in these countries.
Whereas in the past, mainland China was considered poor and all mainland students were given
scholarships, economic growth has brought a sharp change and the ability to recruit fee-paying students. In
a significant step, HKU in 2002/03 recruited 51 full-fee undergraduates from Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang,
Jiangsu, Guangdong and Fujian.
These results can be compared with that which were obtained in Australia relating to students who
went to Australia to study. In a research conducted by Mazzarol and Soutar (2001), students were asked
reasons for choosing Australia as their destination to study. Students mentioned that institutional reputation
for quality, willingness to recognize previous qualification, and the provision of degrees that were
recognized by the employers were on the top of their decisions in considering Australia as a destination
country. Students in Hong Kong and Macau had similar responses as they also wanted the type of
education that was of higher quality than that in their mainland. This prompted some of them to even pay
higher amount of money for such type of education. Students over the years have looked out for countries
where they can have the best type of education with facilities and resources for research, higher level of
education, Science and technology, international exchanges, impacts and higher chances for scholarships
and higher quality of internationalization Zheng (2003, p. 225).

4.3 Inbound mobility

There are several reasons why international students go to China to study. A number of studies
conducted by (Bodomo, 2009; Sherry, Thomas, & Chui,.2010; Ferdjani, 2012; Larbi, 2015) revealed
several reasons.

4.3.1 Scholarships

A number of Scholarship schemes are available in the Peoples Republic of China in order sponsor
international students and educators to study various disciplines and undertake research. These
scholarships which are being administered by the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) comprises the
Chinese Government Scholarship Scheme, CHINA/UNESCO the Great Wall Fellowship Scheme,
Distinguished International Students Scholarship Scheme , HSK Winner Scholarship Scheme,
Chinese Cultural Research Fellowship Scheme, The short-term Scholarship Scheme for Teaching
Chinese as a Second Language (Ministry of Education, 2015). According to the CSC report in the
year 2009, the Ministry of education provided a total 16062 scholarships to foreign students. Among
this number, the total number of 7649 of them was awardees of the Chinese Government Scholarship
who were already in China whiles the rest of the masses were new students. With an enrollment rate
of 96.77% from 162 countries, the CSC recorded total of 8141 new students. Many of these

cii
scholarship students were Asians (3988), followed by Africans (1647), Europeans (1549), Americans
(753) and Oceania (157). Similarly in 2015, the total number of international students rose from
377,054 in 2014 to 397,635 in 2015 strengthening the country’s position as the third most popular
destination for international students. Out of the total number, governments’ scholarships were
given to 40% of these students received to further their studies (Business Wire, 2016). Larbi, 2015 in
looking at Chinese educational aids toward the development of Africa found out that: most student study in
China because of the Chinese scholarships. Most students asserted that the scholarship was one of the
highest influential factors towards their study in China. He further added that “it is more convenient and
interesting to study in China with the scholarship because you focus on your study without worry about
financial constraints” (Pg., 40). In support of that VOA (2014) report that most students are attracted by the
scholarship and a dream of oversea education. The Chinese scholarship incentive is of key importance in
the growth of a large student population in China. Similarly in a research conducted by Chen (2016), ten
students from different countries were interviewed in order to solicit their motivations for coming to China
to learn. These students were Zimbabwe, Thailand, Indonesia, Italy, Ghana, Malaysia, South Korea and
Japan. In the study, three of the students mentioned that their motivation for choosing China as their
destination in studies was the low living expenses as well the low tuition fees. In addition to this, the
scholarship offered by the Chinese government was a pull factor into the country (Chen, 2016)

4.3.2 Language and culture

China has become one of the most popular study abroad destinations for international students
because of its long history and exciting language and culture. The uniqueness of Chinese language,
calligraphy, martial arts and other cultural subjects serves as the major factors that attracting foreign
students (CUCAS ,2012). Reviewing some of the literatures it was found out that most student opt to come
to Chinese purpose of the Chinese language that is gaining recognition in the global world. Since the
establishment of Confucius institutions in different part many students taking Chinese language in their
home universities prefer to study in China to experience the language much more in a natural setting ( Yu,
2010; CUCAS,2012; Ferdjani, 2012, Larbi, 2014). Furthermore, in a studies conducted by Xiaojiong Ding
(2016), about 1,993 respondents responded to the questionnaires of the studies. Out of this number, the
Bachelors, Maters and Doctorate students were 20.0%, 7.7%% and 1.8% respectively. 76.6% of the
population answered yes when asked whether China was their first choice of study destination. Shanghai
which is located in China was selected by 82.2% of the students as a first choice of study destination. This
means that in total about 63% of the total international students population chose Shanghai and for that
matter Chiba as a study location. Many of the students rated the Learning of the Chinese language to be
the main factor in coming to China to since the country is emerging in terms of economic growth and
knowing the language will earn them more opportunities in the future. From this it can be concluded that
the economic growth of China which is making it internationally recognized has made the learning of the

ciii
language very significant and attractive to most international students. Similarly, Kang Chen (2016)
mentioned that, many of the students who come to China to study had interest learning the Chinese
language since they wanted to understand the citizens and their culture because of the rapid development
of the nation.

4.3.3 A favorable academic immigration policy

Immigration policies in the Western world have become stricter in the past decade. In the US, since
the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City on 11 September 2001, the immigration policies
are directly linked to Homeland Security concerns. As opposed to China that started opening its border in
the 1980’s the West began attracting foreigners earlier. There have therefore been numerous waves of
immigration since, and Africans have been consistently migrating to those countries, not least so the
former colonial ‘motherland’ as indicated above. Generally speaking and in stark comparison to EU or US
visa – a Chinese visa is usually easy to obtain. Since China’s government started its “open-door” policy in
the 1980’s, China has increasingly opened its borders and managed to attract foreigners from all over the
world. More specifically foreign students on a Chinese government scholarship obtain a visa easily upon
enrollment (Ferdjani, 2012). The university takes care of most of the visa application and the scholarship
format is sufficient evidence for the Ministry of immigration. In the study of Chen (2016) mentioned above
students who were included in the study did not have much difficulty coming to the China in terms of
applying to the institutions and for the visa. Sending the required materials was enough for the students to
be admitted in the various institutions for further studies. Furthermore in terms getting visa, the admission
documents that were sent to the students according to the students were just enough to be granted the
opportunity to enter China. The following were some of the comments for the students who were
interviewed.
“It was much easier than what I expect to get the Chinese Visa. What I did was just submitting the
essential documents to the consulate. Then less than one week later, I got the Visa. Totally, I think it was
not complicated” a comment by students J
“Actually, it is not difficult. There are guides and instructions on official website.
You just offer some documents as what it says, such as your admission letter, application form, etc. It
took me a few weeks to get it”

4.3.4 Quality of Education and Employment Opportunities

As already mentioned, among emerging countries like Malaysia and Singapore, many students now
troop to China to study. Whiles countries like the UK, USA and Australia are seen to be higher contenders
for international students, many students are now shifting their focus from these countries to other

civ
emerging countries like Malaysia, Singapore and China ((Verbik &Lasanowki, 2007). However, students
seeking cross-border higher education in general are noted to move from countries where the education
system is less developed to countries where universities are more developed. From studies, students are
also attracted pulled to countries where they will find the desired course to read so as to be opened to a lot
of employment opportunities. These above mentioned statements agree with the explorative studies by
Ferdjani (2012) on the motivations for the increasing number of African Students in Beijing which is the
Capital of the Peoples’ Republic of China. In a study conducted, to understand the dynamics of the African
students’ migrating into China, the quantitative approach was first used to assess the trend of the student’s
mobility into China. In order to have an in-depth understanding of the students’ motivation for students’
choosing China as their destination for their studies, the qualitative approach was also adopted for the
study. Using Beijing as a point of reference, a total number of 100 African students were selected
consisting of individuals from different countries in Africa. This was done in order to get diverse views
and perceptions for the research. From the study it was discovered that, the number of students who move
abroad to study has increased substantially from 284,762 in 2005 to 326,597 in 2009. This increase was
attributed to the geographical growth and developments in the education in Africa. Whiles countries like
France, the United States and the United Kingdom was the most preferred destination for most
international students, the trend is seen to be changing as many students are now open to many options
now. For example, the study recorded an annual increase of about 20% of Africa students coming to China
to have further studies. Furthermore, apart from China recorded 40 % increase (2,757 to 3,737) of African
students coming to China from 2005 to 2006, the ministry of education recorded about 12,436 African
students in the year 2009.
As already mentioned, in order to know the perceptions of the students the researchers conducted
an interview on a group of 20 students. The questions were opened-ended so as to give the
interviewees the opportunity the liberty to talk about other important issues. Results of the study
revealed that among the twenty interviewees that were used in the research, whiles seven of them
chose Beijing and probably China due to the quality of the universities in the country, 50% of them
also chose the country since they could find their choice of course to study with the required content.
Many of the interviewees who chose Beijing read courses in Science (39 %,) Economics (40%),
Political and Social Sciences (19) and lastly Chinese language (2%). These students desired to read
these courses and were able to find them in China. However, upon arrival they had satisfaction in
reading them. Moreover, four of these interviewees were attracted by the Scholarship granted by the
government of China to international students to come to study in the country. They were easily
attracted since they saw themselves meeting the criteria without any complications.
Taking about opportunities that abound after studying in China, they mentioned that the education in
the country gives one the required knowledge which develops the individual to be an expert in the
field of studies. In one of the interviews, a student from West Africa who studied Finance mentioned
that,

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 “I did not really have a choice. My father traveled to Beijing for business and when he
witnessed what was happening there, he came back and said: ‘my son is going to China!’ I was
upset at first because I wanted to play basketball at an American college, but looking back on it
today, I think it was the right path. The environment is quite good and there are a lot of business
opportunities” (pg. 23)
Similarly, a group of students who studied Electrical Engineering at the Bachelors level with the
expertise they have gotten came together to startup their own business with it being registered in
Hong Kong. They mentioned that the environment in Beijing together with their education gotten had
opened their minds to be entrepreneurs. Another student mentioned that,
“I was in New-York, with a degree in Health and Society in my pocket, and very few options
available in the U.S. My friend who was studying at Tsinghua, kept telling me that it was the
perfect time to come to Beijing and that I could even find a job before going back to school for
my graduate studies. So I followed his advice, came, and found a teaching job at Beijing
Language and Culture University (BLCU). And one year after that, I applied at Tsinghua
and got in” (Pg. 25)

4.4 Similarities and Differences in the Factors that Affecting Students’ Mobility

Comparatively, international students who come to China and Chinese students who leave the country
seem to have similar influences that affect their decisions. In all the movement of students from one
country to another is a result of globalization which has led to a network of the societies thereby
weakening of the world borders and integration of the cultures, technologies, capital, ideas and people
around the globe (Kellner, 2009). People move from one country to another in order to have an extensive
view of the world system in order to learn from one another. People will love to learn the love to learn
languages and cultures of different countries especially when it is seen that the nation is emerging in terms
of economic improvements. From the study, this is seen to inform the decision of both the Chinese students
and international students. In the study of Boycott (2009), Chinese students left the country because they
wanted to acquire foreign language which they alleged to be difficult learning it in the mainland China.
Similarly, international students because of the splendid growth of the economy of China thought it wise to
learn the Chinese language since it can guarantee them many opportunities (Ferdjani, 2012; Chen (2016).
Easy admission and visa requirements as well as high tendencies of gaining employment after studying
abroad was a major consideration for both group of students. They were of the view that, certificates
obtained outside their mainland are deemed to be of much quality. Moreover, students who study outside
of their mainland are seen to be having much experience which puts them on top of their colleagues when
it comes to seeking for employment. Whiles the prestige of the institution informed the decision of both
students, the quality of education was also a common factor. However, whereas the cost of education was a

cvi
contributing factor for international students who come to China to study, Chinese students did not so
much consider it when opting to study abroad (Zheng ,2003). They will pay huge amount of money to
study outside because of the quality of education and qualifications that they will like to get. However
students who come to China consideration of cost of education can be attributed to the vast number of
scholarship opportunities in China.

4.5 Conclusion

The specific purpose of this review was to compare the major factors that influence the movement of
international students into China and also Chinese students out of the country. This review was necessary
since it will help in the understanding of what researchers have investigated about the topic. From the
study, it can be seen many of the decisions of students are influenced by economic, cultural, political as
well as social factors. Thus, students look at the opportunities that are to be enjoyed after schooling abroad
before making decisions. It was also seen that many opportunities are available to students to make choices
from. For example, many scholarships opportunities are available in China from which students utilize.
Admission and visa requirements are low and this is making China the destination for most of the
international students. With more improvements in the educational sector of China, it can be speculated
that China might be leading in terms of being the destination of most of the international students.

4.6 Recommendation

In the studies that were reviewed, various recommendations were made by the students. These
recommendations were made based on what they think can be done in order to improve the educational
system both in their countries and also in China. The following provides a list of some of them.
 International Students should be given the opportunity to gain experience whiles studying in the
various institutions. They suggested this can be done through Chinese Universities working co-
operatively with the companies so that they can provide internship or other opportunities that will
help students to gain experience about what is being learnt.
 Countries are also to pay critical attention to their policies relating to gaining admission, visa and
financial support into their higher education since this significantly affect students’ mobility
decisions.

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Andrade, M. S. (2006). International students in English-speaking universities: Adjustment

factors. Journal of Research in International education, 5(2), 131-154.
Bodomo, A. (2009). Africa-China Relations: Symmetry, Soft Power and South Africa. China Review,
169-178.
Bodycott, P. (2009). Choosing a higher education study abroad destination, what mainland Chinese
parents and students rate as important. Journal of research in Internationaleducation, 8(3), 349-
373.
Bowen, G. A. (2009). Document analysis as a qualitative research method.Qualitative research
journal, 9(2), 27-40.
Chen, Kang, "International Student Mobility in Higher Education in China: Tensions between
Policies and Practices" (2016). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 3985.
http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/3985
China Scholarship Council annual report 2009
China, People’s Republic of, (2003b). Education Statistics Report 2003. Beijing: China
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Ferdjani, H. (2012). African students in China: an exploration of increasing numbers and their

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Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. Handbook of
qualitative research, 2(163-194), 105.
Knight, J. (2004) Internationalization of Higher Education: Practices and Priorities, 2003 IAU
Li, M., & Bray, M. (2007). Cross-border flows of students for higher education: Push–pull
factors and motivations of mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong and Macau. Higher
education, 53(6), 791-818.
Macao, Government Information Bureau, (2004). Macao Yearbook 2004. Macao: Government
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Mazzarol, T. and Soutar, G.N. (2001). The Global Market for Higher Education: Sustainable Competitive
Strategies for the New Millennium. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Neubauer, D., & Jiangxin, Z. (2015). The Internationalization of Chinese Higher Education.
Phang, S. L. (2013). Factors influencing international students’ study destination decision abroad.
Sherry, M., Thomas, P., & Chui, W. H. (2010). International students: A vulnerable student population.
Higher education, 60(1), 33-46 Survey Report, Paris: IAU.
Unesco, national report. ( 2009). The International Mobility of students in Asia and the Pacific:
Verbik, L., & Lasanowski, V. (2007). International student mobility: Patterns and trends. World
Education News and Reviews, 20(10), 1-16.
Wang. Y (, 2008) Internationalization in Higher Education in China: A Practitioner’s Reflection Higher
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www.palgrave-journals.com/hep
Xiang, B., & Shen, W. (2009).International student migration and social stratification in
China. International Journal of Educational Development, 29(5), 513-522.
Yu, B. (2010). Learning Chinese abroad: The role of language attitudes and motivation in the adaptation
of international students in China. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 31(3), 301-
321.
Zheng, X.H. (2003). An Analysis on Study Abroad of Graduates of Undergraduate in Tsinghua
University, in Tian, L. (ed.), Research on China’s Foreign Cultural Exchange in Higher Education.
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Other Online Resource

http://v.csc.edu.cn/uploads/20101008140653820.pdf
http://wenr.wes.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/WENR-1216-TCM-8-1.png
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912005582/en/Record-Numbers-Students-Choosing-
China-Study-Student.com
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20131022125122189

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 Beijing Normal University
Faculty of Education.

Research Title: Inequality of Higher Education Admission System: A Review Paper

University in China

PRESENTED BY: CANDIDATE OF MASTER IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION

SUBMITTED TO: DR. SANG GUOYUAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, INSTITUTE OF

TEACHER EDUCATION

PROGRAM: EDUCATION SYSTEMS, POLICY AND MANAGEMENT IN CHINA

Introduction
In the past few decades, the Higher Education (HE) sector in china has undergone significant
reform. Yet the access for HE education among many Chinese is still beyond the individual
and instead one of family. This is mainly due to the influence of traditional Confucian values
(Cummings, 1996). Due to a special important attach to HE education in China, access is at

cx
the center of far reaching debates on the market reform. It is clear that most Chinese student
get admitted into universities by mean of the College Entrance Examination (CEE). Since the
establishment of the CEE in the 1950, there is a long traditional of standardized national
examination which can be traces up to 1400-year ago history of Civil Service Examination in
the imperial era. A recent predecessor of CEE was the joint college entrance examination
adopted by the Kuomintang (KTM) government, which was designed to strengthen the
ideological controls over intellectuals through the centralized mechanism (chen, 2007). The
Chinese Communist Party succeeded in adapting the KMT’s system to the CEE system since
the establishment of the People Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, bringing examination to
become a nationwide system for HE admission. From 1966 to 1977, the system was
interrupted by the outbreak of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and shortly resumed
after the ending of the political turbulence in 1978.
Currently, CEE is a set of national joint examinations taken by high school graduates giving
five selected subjects that can be administer within three days. Among these five selected
subjects, mathematics, Chinese and foreign languages (i.e. usually English) are compulsory.
The other two can be chosen from either the science track, including physics and chemistry,
or the liberal arts track with politics and history (Zhang, 2008). The CEE system was highly
centralized and all examination was conducted by the Ministry of Education until 2000. It can
be record that the system has recently been decentralized for the promotion of diversity
across all regions. In 2000, Beijing and Shanghai was allowed to design their own CEE
syllabuses. Following five year later, another 12 province were allowed to design part or all
of the examination syllabuses on their own. Despite the attempts to provide more flexibility,
about half of the provinces or regions at provincial level meaning that a significant minority,
approximately one third of students, are currently sitting standardized entrance examinations
developed by the MOE (Yuan and Yang, 2008).
However, since the market reform may have threatened the merit based admission system, the
growth demand of HE is generated by economic success and associated social development.
This is due to the state not been able to respond to the growing demand of High Education on
its own. This created adaptation by the Chinese government to the policies of
decentralization, marketazation and privatization in order to be able to cope with the big
financial commitment to the expansion of Higher education. Consequently, funding of HE
have been reallocated between central and local governments, as well as between the public
and the private sector.

cxi
Meanwhile, the changes in the financing system, such as adoption of the user-pay principle
and localization of public funding, are challenging the merit-based admission system and
education equity in many aspects (Wang, 2008). According to Liu Jingling in 1979 when
college entrance examination resumed in China, factor such as social class background,
personal occupational status, the streaming and tracking of senior high schools, the rank order
of a city, and the biological sex have demonstrated substantial differentiating effects on the
higher education entrance opportunities.
Liu’s further when on by saying, since the higher education expansion in 1998, the impact of
the social class background has been seen in the shift of the educational investment by the
children of the privileged strata from the second-tier in higher education to the formal college
Bachelor-degree programs. Meanwhile, well-educated children of manual laborers have all
been able to maintain and continue to expand their bettered opportunities in various forms of
higher education. Based on the GSS 2003 data, the current study employed the Cox
proportional hazard model in its technical analysis. Having giving a brief introduction on
Higher Education Admission process in China and the way it has been control by the
Ministry of Education and Looking at all of the factors surrounding the admission process,
this studies wish to investigate the various factors and come out with a comprehensive
findings for discussion on the Inequality of Higher Education Admission System with a case
study of University in China.

Literature Review
Inequality in higher education access in China
Higher education (HE) in China was free until the mid 1980s. The state even subsidized
students’ living cost so HE was affordable to all qualified students and few were denied due
to financial constraints (Qu, 2008). Starting from admitting a small portion of self-funded
students into universities, the market principles have been gradually adopted in tertiary
education since the market reforms. In 1985, the Central Committee of (CCP) China

cxii
Communist Party promulgated the Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party (CCCCP) on the Reform of Educational Structure, which allowed a small
number of students to be admitted into H.E exceeding the quota of the state plan on condition
that they paid a certain amount of education cost.
Meanwhile, the majority of HE students who were in the state plan still enjoyed free
education. A shift in 1994 led to the initiation of whole scale reforms on the tuition fee
system. Consequently, the double standards on the tuition fee for students within and outside
the state plan were abandoned and students were charged against the same criterion except
for several particular academic disciplines. In 1996, according to Suggestions on Promoting
Unification of Higher Education Admission System in 1996, about half of higher education
institutions (HEIs) in the country adopted a unified admission system (Bing Gui Zhao Sheng)
(MOE, 1996). Therefore, user-pay principle has been widely adopted and the tuition fees
have been increased significantly since 1997.While the central government deliberately
devolved the financing responsibility to governments at lower levels and individuals,
government expenditure on HE shrank sharply from 93.5% of all HE income in 1990 to
42.6% in 2006 (NBSC, 2008). Meanwhile, encouragement on multi-methods and multi-
channel of provision and funding strategies directly led to the increase of the tuition fees
(Mok, 1997).

The growing prominence of ‘‘privatizes’’ since the adoption of open-door policy and market
Economy has generated the tension between the merit-based selection mechanism and
financial criteria within the context of co modification of education. China Youth and
Children Research Center (2007) reported that tuition fees have increased by 25 times from
200 yuan (USD 30) in 1989 to over 5000 yuan (USD 700) in 2007, while during the same
period of time, inhabitant income for urban and rural residents increased only by 9 and 6
times, respectively (NBSC, 2008). Moreover, a report by National Development and Reform
Commission recently estimated that in the last decade, each student needed to spend over
10,000yuan (USD 1400), including tuition fees and accommodation cost for their
undergraduate study in public universities every year, and much more in private institutions
(National Development and Reform Commission, 2007). In contrast, the disposable income
(per capita annual) of urban households and rural households in 2007 were 13,785.8 Yuan
(USD 1969.4) and 4140.4 Yuan (USD 591.5), respectively (NBSC, 2008).

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Due to the limited access to the existing student loan/grant system, family support has been
the primary source for university cost (Liu and Xia, 2007). This means that HE has become
unaffordable to many low and middle income families in China (Wang, 2008; Zhou, 2008).
This is echoed by a survey conducted by 21st Century Education Development College,
indicating that about 80% of the correspondents thought the tuition fee was unreasonably
high. In absolute terms, tuition fees in China are much lower in China than in many other
countries such as the UK (i.e. £3225 or USD 6450 in 2009) (BBC, 2009). However, the
tuition fees accounts for approximately 60% of average household disposable income (per
capita annual) in China compared to 22% in the UK (Office for National Statistics, 2010).

China adopted an expansion policy of H.E in the late 1990s. As a result of the decentralized
funding policy which was mentioned earlier, the amount of funding a university can generate
is closely related to the economic development of the region it is located in. In general terms,
governments, social organizations and individuals in the prosperous coastal areas1 are much
more generous in funding universities than their inland counterparts. With 41.4% of the
whole population, the coastal region received 55.8% of the education budget and raised
67.2% of the non-government education income2 of the whole nation in 2004 (Mok and Lo,
2007). In 2006, the educational income from public and non-public resources of three highly
developed provinces in China, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang accounted for one fourth of
the national educational funding, while the three least developed provinces,
Qinghai, Tibet and Ningxia, only gained 1% of the national figure (Table 2). Apart from the
inequality in allocation of HE funding, the distribution of quality universities among regions
is also highly uneven. Good universities concentrated in the developed costal area with 7 out
of the top 10 universities located in this region (cuaa.net et. 2009).
Although most students are admitted into HE through taking CEE, the requirements for
admission vary from province to province. Among all provinces, students from five minority
autonomous regions, including Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Tibet, Xinjiang and two
municipalities at province level, namely, Beijing and Shanghai, have the privilege of being
enrolled by top universities with lower requirements. In fact, differentiated admission criteria
among provinces have existed for many years. It is interesting to notice that the admission
requirements are much lower in not only underdeveloped areas, like Tibet and Qinghai, but
well-developed regions, such as Beijing and Shanghai3. In 2009, the yibenxian (minimum
requirements for admission into key universities in China) for examinees on the area of

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science in Shanghai was 455, while in Shandong and Hebei it was 586 and 569, respectively
(Figs. 1 and 2).To solve this problem, the CEE system was reformed in 2002.Decentralization
practices were adopted for a better fit of the CEE into local situations. Accordingly, some
provinces were allowed to decide parts of, or even the whole set, of the CEE papers.
However, this reform has had limited effects on overcoming regional disparity in admission
because it does not touch on the key factor leading to the different requirements – the uneven
allocation of university places (Zhou, 2006).

The annual amount of degree places in the country is decided by the central ministry and the
places are assigned to provinces. After this, provincial education bureaus are responsible for
allocating the admission quotas to individual HEIs in the territory. Based on the number of
degree places assigned, individual institutions develop their own admission plan and decide
how many students they would recruit from different provinces. For example, Peking
University and Tsinghua University, two prestigious universities in China, recruited 286 and
270 students in Beijing in 2009. These numbers were approximately 5 times the number in
Henan province, whereas the population in Henan was 6 times as large as that in Beijing.
Similarly, Fudan University, a top university in Shanghai, recruited 1259 students from the
city, while only 57students from Shangdong were enrolled by the university in 2004 (Higher
Education Enrolment, 2004, 2009; Zhou, 2006). (Mok, 2005). Due to the large number of
good universities in the cities, the admission requirements for students in Beijing and
Shanghai are much lower than in other provinces (Higher Education Enrolment, 2004, 2009;
Zhou, 2006).
The passive exclusion is embedded in the sharp urban rural divide in China. Historical
reasons together with the current political and economic arrangement have divided the urban
and rural regions into two economies and two societies. The difference between urban and
rural regions is even written into law’’ (Harvey, 2005, p. 142). Urban residents enjoy a clear
advantage on income, social services, and social security (Knight and Song, 1999). Even
though people prefer to live in cities, choices are limited for rural
dwellers to move to cities and enjoy the same social welfare as their urban counterparts as
restricted by the Hukou system (Chan and Zhang, 1999). The higher income of urban
households, which is three times more than that of rural households (per capita, 2008),
attracts people move to cities when they have the choice, especially when they are educated

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and seeking to better themselves. This, however, is a vicious cycle – well educated people go
to cities leaving no one behind who can follow through the good education in rural area.
Therefore, the urban–rural divide has sharpened the urban–rural disparity in education. It has
been observed that education for urban students is better than that for rural students in terms
of quality and opportunity for further studies (Bao, 2006). First of all, the governments
provided less funding for education in rural regions than in China’s cities. This directly
resulted in lower education quality in rural schools. In 2006, public funding for secondary
schools in rural areas was 69.5 billion Yuan (USD 9.2 billion), which was only half of the
total expenditure on urban secondary schools (126.7 billion Yuan, or USD 18.1 billion), but
the population in rural areas was 1.3 times larger than that in urban regions in the same
reporting year (NBSC, 2008). The underdevelopment of school education in rural areas
seriously undermines successful progress from school to university and therefore challenges
the equal access to HE for rural students. Another important indicator of education quality is
the quality
of teaching staff. It is recognized that the general quality of teachers in rural region is lower
than that in cities. For instance, there are less full-time teachers in rural compulsory
education, whose educational attainment is also lower than their urban counterparts. In
addition, the rate of aged teachers in rural regions is high (Bao, 2006).

Confronted with the fierce competition in the CEE, students and families try every means to
take advantage of the admission system to increase their chances of going to a good
university (Waters, 2006). Several alternatives to the normal admission competition are
introduced below with a discussion on their unintended consequences “CEE migrants’’ The
differentiated admission requirements have resulted in the emergence of the ‘CEE migrants’
(gao kao yi min), who originally study in provinces with high admission requirements but
seek for student-registration in places with lower admission criteria (Yin, 2006). The
‘migrants’ usually move to the provinces with low requirements in their final year of high
school and take the CEE there. In doing so, they take advantage of the differences in
admission requirements between provinces using this spatial strategy. Realizing there is much
less competition to be admitted to top universities for overseas students, some Chinese
families even try every means, legal or illegal, to get their children a passport from another
country and therefore, get the status of overseas student. Having obtained their new passports
they would come back to China to apply for the best universities as overseas students and be

cxvi
enrolled into top universities more easily (Xinhua net, 2009b). In summary, this study tries to
examine research question by referring several literature reviews related to the inequality to
China higher education admission system.
Although all these literature have given a lot of facts relating to inequality in higher education
admission in China none of the literature has specifically address the inequality of higher
education admission system of universities in China. Based on the available literature
reviewed, it can be concluded that research into inequality of higher education admission
system in the field of education has not been carried out adequately. Therefore the current
study meant to identify the sources of inequality in higher education admission system in
China. Specifically the study wants to answer the question of what are the sources of
inequality of higher education admission system in China.
This study contributes in the building of new ideas and knowledge to the existing literature
about inequality of higher education admission system especially of university in China.

Research Methodology

This study used literature review. The focus was on scholarly articles from peer-reviewed
journals. Articles and books reviewed were found using search terms on Inequality, Higher
Education, and Admission System. This paper starts with the Introduction and addresses the
literature review concerning Higher Education so that to get the gap in the inequality of
higher education system in China, next to that finding s-of the underpinning issues on the
inequality of Higher Education Admission System in China was discussed. The last section
focuses on the discussion about the findings associated with the literature review and
conclusion. In the work the search engine used to search for material was search directly from
Google Scholars and BNU library.
Research Findings
Findings in this study point out four key issues on the HE enrolment and admission system in
China which can be describe as; Economic handicap, Alternatives to the normal admission
system, Region disparities and the divide system among the urban-rural.

Economic handicap: This findings, clearly describe the situation to be called Economic
handicap because students from poor families background were deprived the access to higher
education, mainly because of financial hardship and they were also deprived of the freedom

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to attend universities of their choices, because of the high cost of tuition fees and the lack of
inclusive support such student loan. According to Qu (2008) even though government
subsidized students’ living cost so HE was affordable to all qualified students and few were
denied due to financial constraints.
In contrast, the disposable income (per capita annual) of urban households and rural
households in 2007 were 13,785.8 Yuan (USD 1969.4) and 4140.4 Yuan (USD 591.5),
Respectively, (NBSC, 2008) Summarized that due to the limited access to the existing student
loan/grant system, family support has been the primary source for university cost.
Regional disparities: This study finds disparities among regions due to the fact that some
region was give high budget than the others. According to (cuaa.net, Da , Ji & Bao, 2009)
apart from the inequality in allocation of HE, the distribution of quality universities among
regions is also highly uneven. In this study, finding has be suggested that more opportunities
had been given to the coastal regions like Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, shanghai,
Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong, Guangdon, Guangxi and Hainan. It was analysis by
Mok and lo, (2007) with the total population of 41.4%, the coastal areas received 55.8% of
the education budget and raised 67.2% of the non-governmental education income that gives
the coastal areas more input of financial resources than their inland counterpart.

According to the literature reviewed it was also found out that CEE process of admission
varies from province to province. Students from five minority autonomous regions, including
Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Tibet, Xinjiang and two municipalities at province level,
Beijing and Shanghai have the privilege of being enrolled by top universities with low
requirements.
In 2002, the CEE system was reformed to adopt a decentralization practice that could better
fit the CEE into the local situation. However, according to Zhou (2006) the reform has had a
limited effect on overcoming regional disparity in admission, because it does not touch on the
key factor leading to the different requirement such as the uneven allocation of university
places.
Example given by Higher Education enrollment (2004, 2009; Zhou, 2006) indicating Peking
University and Tsinghua University which are recognized to be the two prestigious
universities in China, recruited 286 and 270 students in Beijing 2009. These number are
approximately time the number in Henan province, whereas the population in Henan was 6
times as large as that in Beijing. In short it was finalized that the Hukou (Household

cxviii
registration) system had made the system China has made the situation even worse. It stops
the free movement among regions. It restrict student admission to the provinces they were
born. Which give the vast majority of the students’ unequal opportunities to access quality
HEIs. When giving the facts that top Universities are concentrated in big cities such as
Beijing and Shanghai.

Urban-Rural divides. Finding in this study is giving that the urban and rural areas is divide.
According to (Harvey, 2005) it is because of some historical reason together with the current
political and economic arrangement. Knight and Song (1999) look at the advantage the urban
resident and the way they enjoy on income, social services and social security. The Hukou
system is mention by chan and Zhang (1999) because it restricts the rural people from their
urban counterpart.
Boa (2006) find out that the urban cities have better opportunities in term of quality and
opportunities for further studies. He further describes his findings into looking at the
educational budget of the rural area which was in total of (69.5) billion Yuan equivalent to
(USD 9.2 billion). He finds out that this budget is only half of the expenditure on urban
secondary schools (126.7billion Yuan or USD 18.1 billion) giving that the population of the
rural areas was 1.3 time large that the urban areas (NBSC, 2008). The writer also find out that
due to the underdevelopment of education in the rural area, there is serious challenge that
undermines the successful progress of students from school to universities level.

Alternative to admission: These findings suggested that there were an alternative way to the
normal admission process, be it illegal or legal. According to Waters (2006) families try
every means to take advantage of the admission system to increase their chances of going to
good Universities.
Due to the fact that it were a getting admitted to the top universities and there were less
competition for oversees students, (Xinhua net, 200b) find out that some Chinese families
even try every means, legal or illegal to get their children a passport from another country
and therefore, get the status of overseas student.
Having obtained their new passports they would come back to China to apply for the best
Universities as overseas students and be enrolled into top universities more easily. The
process migration brought more challenge to education equity, because family will no

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financial capability and no social networks are less advantageous and do not have the
opportunities to migrate.

Discussion
Handicap economic. The finding showed that handicap economic was a source of inequality
in public higher learning institutions in China. Qu (2008) explained that higher education in
China was affordable to qualified students and few were denied due to financial constraint.
Rationally, I believe the Chinese government love its citizen and wish the best for them, but
where in the case, the country have to be put first. I cannot conclude that affordable education
opportunities were only given to the urban cities due to the fact that both cities pay tuition
even though the statistics of (NBSC, 2008) shows that urban and the rural household tuition
payment fees that were not equally distributed. The urban households pay the amount of (4,
140.4 Yuan) which is equivalent to $USD5, 915 and the rural households pay the amount of
(13,785.8 Yuan) equivalent to $USD1, 969.4, which have disparities of about (9,645.4yuan)
that give a very wide margin in tuition fees between urban and rural communities. From this
analysis a point of this discussion is on why did the Chinese government allow student in the
rural areas to pay high tuition fees than those student in the urban areas? Comparing the
affordability of higher education in rural cities, the urban cities can be described as much
more affordable than the rural cities; therefore there must be a reason for the rural cities to
carry a high cost of tuitions payment that we may wish to discuss.
These findings can be associated with Lui and Xia (2007) described that limited access to the
existing students loan/grant system, family support has been the primary source for university
cost. This brings inequality because higher education has become unaffordable to many low
and middle income families in China. For example, It was clearly stated in the literature that
students from five minority autonomous regions, including Guangxi, Inner Mongolia,
Ningxia, Tibet, Xinjing and two municipalities at province level Beijing and Shanghai, the
students from Beijing and Shanghai were more privilege to enrolled at the top universities
with minimal requirement.

Regional disparities: The findings have also shown that regional disparities were a source of
inequality in higher learning institution in China. Let look at regional disparities, according to

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(cuaa,2009) who describe allocation to be uneven, and (Mok and Lo, 2007) explain the
budget by looking at input of some non-governmental entities and private entrepreneurs to
the educational system of urban cities, the rural cities still pay more tuition fees than the
urban cities.

Why knowing that the urban cities have other means of income from private entities and they
still get the higher education budget and receive little amount of student(Higher Education
Enrolment, 2004,2009; Zhou, 2006). What was the mean reason for the Hukou system?

This finding was similar to the study done by Chan and Zhoug (1999) revealed the
establishment of Hukou system as a means to divide the rural people from their urban
counterpart. But from my point of view, I belief there are much more ways abroad and
naturalized and come back to attend top universities in urban cities. My argument is on the
case nationality, because even if a person is naturalized the place of birth still remains the
same and that should also be the concern of the Hukou system if its restriction of movement
was for every rural dweller. My reason of saying this is, assuming that if the Hukou system,
which is considered as the code to describe the Hukou system.

Urban- Rural divides. The findings revealed that urban-rural disparities were a source for
inequality in universities and the alternative ways of Chinese students from rural cities to
enter into higher education in urban cities. Linhua net, (2006) stated that Chinese will travel
to the inequality of HE admission process was effective, it would not allow rural people with
financial strength to naturalize their children in other to attend urban universities. The result
reveal that the entire process of Hukou system was to restrict poor rural student from coming
to acquired quality education in the city and not rural people in total because rural parent with
financial capability children were allow in top universities.

Instrumental deprivation. The findings revealed that this is the alternatives to the normal
admission system which still bring inequalities to public universities. Yin (2006) states that
some Chinese family gets their children a passport from another country to get a status of
overseas student. This make them to come and enrolled into top universities more easily. This
leads to educational equity, because families with less advantageous backgrounds, such as
financial ability and social network are not able to migrate.

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Conclusion
Access to education has been widely seen as the right that everyone is entitled to. Under the
call for universal education, nation in the world are devoted to promote mass education and
combat educational inequality, especially given that education is an important means to
promote social cohesion. The above analysis shows that there are different sources of
inequalities of universities in china. In addressing all aspects of inequality a bottom-up
process is equally important, with families, associations and other educational stakeholders
contributing to combat inequality in higher education in China.

Recommendation
Through a careful revision of China higher education admission system, it can be
recommended that preferences be given to brilliant and qualified students from all provinces
in China. Opportunities for students attending top universities should not only focus on the
urban cities. Like the example provided in the discussion, where you find students from
minority provinces had been denied opportunities to attend top universities with students
from Beijing and Shanghai.
This kind of practice is not a good practice and must not continue in China that is considered
as one of countries in the world that is prioritizing quality and standardize education for
students for all around the globe. I believe the best way to balance the educational system for
equal opportunities giving to all students to allow students attend any universities of their
choice.
Though in most developing countries, top universities are mostly found in the urban cities.
For this reason, students always move from the rural areas to the urban cities to acquire
quality education. Therefore, considering the large population of China, the process of
movement of rural students to top universities can be limited to brilliant students who are
ready to take the country to the top.

Happy Holiday day!

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References

Bao, C., (2006). Policies for compulsory education disparity between urban and rural areas in
China. Frontier of Education in China 1, 40-55
BBC, (2009). Q & A: student fees. Available from
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National Statistics 2010.Satistical Bulletin: Regional GDHI, Newport.
Chan, K.W.,Zhang, L.,(1999). The Hukou system and rural –urban migration in China:
process and changes. China Quaterly 160, 818-855.
Chen, B.L., (2007). Historical review of the evolvement of college entrance exams in China.
Journal of Shanxi Normal University 34 (1).
Cummings, W., (1996). Asian values, education admission and development. Compare 26(3),
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Cuua.net,Da Xue Journal,21 Shi Ji Ren Cia Bao, (2009). Report on Evaluation of Universities
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 Harvey, D., (2005). A brief History of Noeliberalism. Oxford University Press, Oford. He,
Y.H., 2007. Institution analysis on extra score policy.Journal of Xiangtan Normal
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Higher Education Enrolment, (2002-2009). Nationwide Admission Requirements for Higher

Education by Major. China Higher Education Enrolment Press, Beijing (2002-2009
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Li, S. and R. Zhao (2006): “Market Reform and Income Inequality”. Hongfan Review, 3 (2).

Lui,M., Xia,C,Z.,(2007). Current situation of student loans in China and suggestions (wo guo
zhu xue dai kuan xian zhuang diao chao ji dui ce jian yi).China Finance 19,73-74.

Ministry of Education (MOE), (1996). Big issues in 1996 in education. Available from: http://
www.moe.edu.cn/edoas/website18/info5006.htm (accessed 18.06.07)

Mok, H.K., (2005). Globalization and educational restructuring: university merging and
changing governance in China. Higher Education 50,57-88.

MoK, K., (1997). Privatization or marketization: educational development in Post-Mao

China. International Review of Education 43(5), 547-567

Mok, K.H.,Lo,Y.W., (2007). Embracing the market: the impacts of neo-liberalism on China’s
higher education. Journal for Critical Studies of Education 5(1). Available from:
http://www.jceps.com/index.php?pageID=article&articleID=93 (accessed 11.07.07)

National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBSC), (2008). China Statistic Yearbook 2008.
China’s Statistic Press, Beijing.
Qu,Y.,(2008).Reflections on the issue of student s from extremely poor families in higher
education. Heilongjiang Science and Technology Information 23,182.
Wang, L., (2008). Education inequality in China: problems of policies on access to higher
education. Journal of Asian Public Policy 1(1), 115-123.

Waters, J.L., (2006). Emergent geographies of international education and social exclusion.
Antipode 38, 1046-1086(Blackwell, Oxford)

Xiuhua net, (2009).Overseas CEE migrants: change nationality is just a matter of money? Available
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Yin, L., (2006). Education equity from the perspective of ‘CEE Migrant’ (cong goa kao yi
min tou shi jiao yu gong ping). Journal of Xi’an Institute of Posts and Tele
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Education Systems, Policy and Management in China

Assignment Topic:

The Influence of Current Economic Growth on Higher Education in China

Presented to : Dr. Sang Guoyuan (Associate Professor)

Presented by : [201629010083]

Beijing Normal University

January 2017

cxxv
 Abstract
One of the things that has always fascinated me is how the economy of a country act as a
determinant of a successful education system.China, for example, has witnessed a
tremendous economic boost over the past two decades or more. I am, therefore, intrigued to
investigate how this economic blossom has affected the higher education sector of the
country. This essay discusses the issues of quality, enrollment and infrastructure development
in relation to higher education. Apart from these three areas, this paper has also looked at how
China finances higher education operations and research

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 Introduction
China is in the process of changing from a populous, industry-based country to a resources,
knowledge-based country, and educational investment has not been ignored as a strategy in
achieving this since education has an immeasurable impact on economic growth (Fengqin,
1978). China has the largest population in the world and according the World Bank, it
recently became the second largest economy in the world. Its GDP growth has averaged
nearly 10 percent a year – the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history
(www.worldbank.org).
Economic growth has been the central theme in China since the 1990s and educational
policies, without exception, were made to serve this central need. According to Wan (2006),
the economic approach has dominated the debates about higher education expansion and both
proponents and opponents of expansion acknowledge the positive correlation between higher
education and economic growth. The most talked about justification for the expansion was
that it would contribute to the economic growth by stimulating domestic consumption.

Review of Literature

cxxvii
The brief background of the relationship between economic growth and education
In the traditional theory of economic growth, investment in physical capital was said to be
more effective than investment in education for promoting economic development (Fengqin,
1978). Fengqin continues to say that education was said to be a consumer business and
education investment was a kind of economic consumption, which couldn’t make large or
obvious benefits at all. However, with the continuous development of society, people have
become skeptical of the traditional economic growth theory and gradually recognized that
education played a very important role in the growth of country’s economy. History has
shown that the emergence of world-class universities in any country will drive economic
growth and national prosperity (Heath, 2013). Looking back at the twentieth century reveals
that education provided the momentum for economic growth and social development in both
developing and developed countries(Haiyan & Yuan, 2011). Haiyan and Yuan predict that the
twenty-first century is more likely to be dominated by the knowledge-based economy, and the
most important sources of economic growth will turn out to be the production, processing,
dissemination, and application of knowledge. There are numerous studies that have been
conducted in order to investigate the existing relationship between education and economic
growth. Findings point out the fact that there is a positive and significant relationship
between education and economic growth, which has also a positive impact on education.
Increasing the level of education of the work force explains the large part of the growth in
both developing and developed countries and that there is nexus between national income and
literacy rate.Therefore, education will play a prominent and basic role both in knowledge
creation and dissemination, and human development.
The emergence of the knowledge economy has resulted in an increased connection between
economic prosperity and higher education. Thus, higher education reform has explicitly tied
higher education to economic development and attempted to transform economic structures
by turning the labor force into a highly skilled, technologically competent, educated work
force capable of competing in a global economy(Choi, 2010).
In light of this, China’s higher education has undergone significant changes (Heath, 2013)
and huge investment into the system have been made in an effort to achieve its long term goal
of accumulating human capital. Key changes such as creating 100 world-class universities,
popularly known as the 211 Project and the Central Government’s decision at the National
Education Working Conference in 1999 to expand the enrolment are just some of the
measures that China took to significantly meet and satisfy the strong demands and challenges

cxxviii
of the 21st century.The implementation of such key projects, including Project 985, has
played an important role in building a group of world-class universities and disciplines; they
have greatly promoted the development and improved the quality of higher education in
China (Heath, 2013). China has made great achievements in building world-class and high-
level universities by narrowing the gap between Chinese universities and world-class
universities. It is worth mentioning that changes in higher education in China are taking place
rapidly in terms of both the organization of the higher education industry and expansion of
student enrolments, faculty and staff, and facilities (Levin & Xu, 2005).
According to Heath (2013), during the second decade of the twenty-first century, great
changes in the fields of science, technology, economics, and culture will occur continuously:
The spread of Information Technology and globalization will continue, competition and
integration will intensify. Human resources will increasingly become strategic resources
in the promotion of social-economic development. The quality of education, especially
higher education, has become an important factor reflecting comprehensive national
strength and international competitiveness. With China’s recent socio-economic
development, people will have a stronger desire for higher education and a greater need
for diversified and top-quality higher education. (p. 139)
According to the plans the Chinese government had, and still have, is that by the year 2020
the structure of higher education be more reasonable and distinctive, and improve the level of
professional training, scientific research, and innovation. China is looking towards
establishing a good number of world-class universities which would be internationally
renowned.
Methodology
This research paper has used document analysis method through literature search to collect
the necessary information.
A total of 16 articles and documents were analyzed according to codes/categories as follows:
Code/Category Number of Articles
Expansion of higher education in China 4
Enrolment in higher education in China 6
Infrastructure development in higher education in China 2
Investment in higher education in China 5
Quality of higher education in China 4
Future of higher education in China 3

Document analysis is a form of qualitative research in which documents are interpreted by

cxxix
the researcher to give voice and meaning around an assessment topic (Voice, 2010).Bowen
(2009) defines document analysis as a systematic procedure for reviewing or evaluating
documents – both in printed and electronic (computer-based and Internet-transmitted)
material. According to Blundell(2010), document analysis is a valid research strategy with
considerable merit for collecting qualitative data. Like other analytical methods in qualitative
research, document analysis requires that data be examined and interpreted in order to elicit
meaning, gain understanding, and develop empirical knowledge.
The analysis in this paper has identified andcoded the content into six key themes extracted
from journal articles and book sections in relation to the topic assessment being discussed.
The themes extracted are general in nature other than specific, and the analysis is purely
qualitative.The themes coded in this paper included four “pre-set codes” of expansion of
higher education in China, enrolment in higher education, infrastructure development and
investment in higher education.Quality of higher education in China and the future of higher
education in China came up as “emergent codes”. The two were a result of the refining
process which the researcher felt the need to expand on them because there was a
considerable amount of information discussed under these themes related to this paper.
Using literature search, a structured approach was used to determine the source or publisher
of the material being reviewed. Relevant sources were identified using key words in search
engines and databases. The peer-reviewed literature was the main source of information and
most of the information was obtained from journal articles from databases such as Springer
and Science Direct, which are a well-known online publishing firms. The Bing search engine
was also used to conduct more general searches in the area of higher education and economic
development. Some articles were obtained from the class hand-outs and books. Key criteria
were used to make the decision for the selection of articles for inclusion/exclusion in the
literature search. The “inclusion criteria” included documents that discussed related
categorical information about higher education and economic growth in China. Some
documents, but very few, that only discussed economic growth without focusing on China
were also included. The “exclusion criteria” included documents written in Chinese and some
documents on economic growth in China but not focusing on education. Some documents
were excluded based on their date of publication, especially those published a long time ago.
Some published articles were reviewed for the purpose of getting important references that
had been missed in the online searches but were presented in the reference lists of some key
journal articles. Researchers call this “go backwards approach” which basically means

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reviewing citations for selected articles to consider prior articles. Through reading of
abstracts, full articles relevant to the criteria which were worthy of further exploration were
accessed where possible. Due to wide variations in some article sources, minor modifications
were made when applying the developed methodology, but these were quite a few.
Some advantages of using document analysis as methodology for this paper and in general
include (1) efficiency – less time-consuming as it requires data selection other than data
collection; (2) availability – most of the documents are in the public domain; (3) cost-
effective – no need for travel arrangements to collect data; (4) documents are unobtrusive and
non-reactive –that is they are unaffected by the research process hence stable; (5) have a wide
coverage.
The researcher was unable to access recent publications – irretrievability – most accessible
publications were published by the year 2009 and below. Most of the recent publications
required purchase, which the researcher was not obliged to. The recent publications would
have given a clear understanding of what is the stand in Chinese higher education as of now.
As a result, the analyses provided might somehow be not as exactly reflect the current
situation.
Other potential flaws of document analysis in general include insufficient detail – documents
are produced for some other purposes other than my research, they are independent of a
researcher’s research agenda (Bowen, 2009), and biased selectivity – an incomplete selection
of relevant documents.
Discussion and findings
Expansion of higher education in China
During the last half of the twentieth century, higher education has expanded in most advanced
societies and in many developing ones, and China is no exception to this trend. The initial
expansion of higher education in China can be traced back to the early 1990s. On his
Southern inspection trip in 1992, Deng Xiaoping asserted that education, science and
technology should play a leading role in the country’s economic growth (Hayhoe, Li, Lin, &
Zha, 2012). In the very same year, China’s second national working conference on education
included on its agenda a discussion of expanding the higher education system.Hayhoeet al
say that the 1993 milestone policy paper Outline for Educational Reform and Development in
China clearly set expansion as a goal for the 1990s by stipulating:
In the 1990s, higher education must meet the needs of accelerating reform and
[economic] opening up, and of the modernization drive, actively explore a new path of

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 development, in order to achieve a bigger growth in size, better rationalization in
structure, and a visible improvement in quality and efficiency. – p.26
Faced with the challenge to adapt to the needs of the market economy, an unprecedented
expansion in opportunities for higher education has been taking place in China since 1998
(Wan, 2006). The year 1999 witnessed an abrupt jump in new enrollments, with 1.59 million
new students, up from 1.08 million in the previous year, or an annual increase of 47.2%
(Hayhoe et al., 2012). They continue to report that the fast expansion continued until 2004,
when higher education enrollment at all levels reached 20 million, literally double that of
1998. The number of regular higher education institutions also increased dramatically over
the same period of time from 1,022 in 1998 to 2,263 in 2008.
In fact, higher education in China has expanded rapidly since the latter half of the 1970s. For
example, student enrollment in higher education institutions grew by 18.6 per cent per year
during 1975-80 and by 9.3 per cent per year during 1981-85 (Tsang & Min, 1992). Such
growth rates were much higher than those in other countries in the same periods (Unesco
1989). Up to date, China’s higher education has continued to expand to meet the educational
demands of the large population there. Even during the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98,
China was still able to capitalize on the crisis by expanding higher education when job
markets weakened but household savings and family values were substantial enough to
support enrollment fees (Postiglione, 2011). Postiglione continues to say that while expansion
occurred largely in the state sector, China also encouraged private colleges to expand, thus
providing more opportunities to those from previously underserved populations. This
included consolidation of resources to attain economies of scale, introduction of reforms in
personnel administration, strengthening assessment procedures for high quality instruction,
and still managed to support the development of world class universities (p.792).
With the growth of the world economy in 2001 showing signs of slowdowns and various
developed nation-states plunging into economic recessions or economic downturns, China
was still able to maintain a 7.3 per cent growth. By this time, China had exceeded all other
countries compared in economic growth and it remained steady for the next 10 years or more.
Chinese household income, measured by purchasing power parity, had increased substantially
by 1998, and through private saving China managed use some of the savings for education
(Rui, 2005). Once Chinese households have achieved relatively comfortable standards of
living, expansion of higher education sector could be easily justified. According to Rui
(2005), this reduced the immerse pressure caused by young people’s demand for further

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education on the one hand, and provided the society with educated manpower, especially
scientists and engineers on the other hand.
Come the global recession in 2008, an emerging Chinese economy was partly affected in
some way. Even in China, where government stimulus measures have been effective in casing
of the recession, up to 41 million workers lost their jobs (40% of total global lay-offs), and 23
million remained out of work as of October 2009 (Postiglione, 2011). Postiglione further
indicates that despite all this:
China adhered to its human resource blueprint (that by 2020 young people will average
12.8 years of education), which meant that enrollment in higher education was no cut
back (with 6 million being admitted in 2010), despite the fact that expansion has resulted
in increased unemployment among college and university graduates. By July 2009, 68%
of 6.11 million university graduates had found jobs, leaving nearly two million still
unemployed. (p. 19)
Since then measures have been put in place to expand opportunities and find jobs for
graduates.
Economic growth has been the central theme in China since the 1990s and educational
policies, without exception, were made to serve this central need (Wan, 2006). According to
Wan, the economic approach has dominated the debates about higher education expansion
and both proponents and opponents of expansion acknowledge the positive correlation
between higher education and economic growth. The most talked about justification for the
expansion was that it would contribute to the economic growth by stimulating domestic
consumption.
Cost-sharing has changed the rules of access to higher education. While in the past, high test
scores were considered the only requirement for students to be accepted into universities, the
family financial capability also became an important algorithm that affected students’
choices(Wan, 2006). This, eventually, brought the issues to do with access and equity.
According to Wan’s analysis, enrollment expansion had widened the gaps between students
from the advantaged and the disadvantaged groups in terms of access to higher education,
types and quality of higher education they receive, and opportunities for graduate education.
Critically looking at this trend, one would tell that this is contrary to the human capitalist
theory which advocates that educational expansion as a way to equalizing life and social
opportunities.
In a word, the economic growth in China have provided its higher education sector with both

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a huge demand and solid basis for expansion. The most direct result of the expansion was that
millions of young people were able to receive higher education, otherwise it would be
assumed impossible for them to attend higher education. This, according to Wan, had to some
extent broken the bottleneck that existed between secondary and tertiary education and
relaxed the pressure on elementary and secondary schools. Eventually, higher education had
to re-adjust its structures as well in order to adapt to the rapid growing enrollment.
Enrollment in higher education in China over the past two decades
While the expansion has proceeded at a slower rate in the past years by 1992, the relative size
of the higher education system in China (in terms of gross enrollment ratio) was still small
compared industrialized countries and many developing countries (Tsang & Min, 1992).
There would be continued pressure to expand enrollment in Chinese higher education
because of demographic and economic-development factors in which a key policy issue in
higher education in China was determined to solve the puzzle as to how could the expansion
be achieved in the long run (Zhou, 1990, as cited in Tsang & Min). According to Tsang and
Min, two alternative expansions can be distinguished: institutional enlargement and
institutional multiplication. Expansion through institutional enlargement refers to expansion
by increasing the number of new entrants in existing institutions; and expansion through
institutional multiplication is characterized by the addition of new institutions to
accommodate the increase in the number of new entrants.
Since the transition to a market economy which began in China in 1979, this stimulated
changes in higher education and one of the consequences of this transition has been a
remarkable expansion of higher education (Choi, 2010). Choi and Heath continue to stipulate
that in 1990, enrollment in HE was a mere 3.4%, but by 2006, less than two decades later,
enrollment in postsecondary institutions had reached 22%, securing China’s entry into the era
of mass higher education. As cited in Choi, Zhao and Sheng (2008) claim that China had
experienced a thirteen-fold increase in student enrollment.Wan (2006) argues that a variety of
factors have led to the enrollment expansion, including the expectation to stimulate domestic
consumption and to ease the immediate pressure on the labor market, the high public interest
in and demand for higher education in Chinese society, and the political will of the Chinese
government to develop higher education. (p.1)
Wang and Liu (2011) indicate that China had witnessed an unprecedented expansion in its
higher education, with gross enrollment rate jumping from 9.8% in 1998 to 24.2% in 2009.
This represented an average increase in enrollment rate of 1.44% per year for over a decade,

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which could be regarded as a remarkable achievement by most commentators. There were
29.79 million students enrolled in postsecondary institutions by 2009(X. Wang & Liu, 2011),
and the figure rose to 31.05 million the following year (Heath, 2013), making China’s higher
education system as the largest in the world.
Wang and Liu continue to report that this wave of radical growth in enrollment began in
dramatic fashion in June 1999, when the central government made the decision to expand the
higher education system in China. The Ministry of Education was required to amend its
annual recruitment plan for the fall of 1999 to accept more students. According to Wang and
Liu (2011):
“The rationales for this sudden move by the Chinese government included: (1) easing the
immediate pressure of secondary school graduates on the labor market, (2) meeting the
consistently high public demand for higher education in Chinese society, (3) the political
will of the government to develop higher education under the pressure of global trends,
especially the move of the nearby developing countries in that direction, and most
importantly, (4) accumulating human capital for future development endeavors” (p. 214).
However, the most immediate intention that led to this radical move to stimulate consumption
after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. According to Xinhua (2008), as cited in Wang and
Liu, in December of 1998, Dr. Min Tang from the Asian Development Bank submitted a
proposal entitled Some Thoughts on Revitalizing the Chinese Economy: Double Enrollment
in Higher Education to the central government. He proposed that higher education
institutions should double their enrollment in 3–4 years from that time and charge full cost
tuition fees to the new students. Thus, higher education expansion in enrollment would create
a demand in infrastructure construction and students’ consumption of educational resources
would spur China’s economic growth, and bring the economy out of stagnation in the short
term. Since the central government was keen to stimulate domestic consumption, it
immediately accepted the proposal and tentatively planned to increase recruitment by 22% in
1999.
Infrastructure development in China’s higher education system
As indicated earlier in this volume, the other model of expansion was by institutional
multiplication which literally transcends to building new universities and colleges in order to
accommodate the huge number of new entrants in higher education in China. During the
1977 to 1989 period, the number of institutions increased from 404 to 1,075, with an average
annual growth rate of 8.7 per cent (Tsang & Min, 1992). Tsang and Min continue to say that

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the large increase in enrolment during this period was achieved mostly by increasing the
number of new institutions. Expansion of higher education was largely based on the
institutional multiplication model. Rapid institutional multiplication was associated with the
establishment of a large number of small institutions and thus a small average size for higher
education institutions. Little information is available as to the actual number of higher
education institutions currently but effort have been made by the Chinese government to
increase the number to meet the demand. It is argued that by expanding the size of existing
institutions and building more in addition, per student cost could be reduced by the pooling of
resources thereby improving on access and equity (Levin & Xu, 2005). Building of new
institutions is seen to be costlier but it is inevitable for the Chinese government to avoid if it
is to satisfy the demand.

Investing in higher education in China

A look back at the twentieth century reveals that education provides the platform and
momentum for economic growth and social development in both developing and developed
countries.Earlier on, in the traditional theory of economic growth, investment in physical
capital was regarded as more effective than investment in education for promoting economic
development(Fengqin, 1978). However, with the continuous development of society, people
began to doubt the traditional economic growth theory and gradually recognized that
education played a very important role in economic growth. The twenty-first century is likely
to be dominated by the knowledge-based economy, and the most important sources of
economic growth will turn out to be the production, processing, dissemination, and
application of knowledge (Haiyan & Yuan, 2011). Realizing this potential that investment in
education has an immeasurable impact on economic growth, China began the process of
changing a populous, industry-based country to a resources, knowledge-based country.
Education is seen to play a prominent and basic role both in knowledge creation and
dissemination, and human resource development in the Chinese society.
It is well known that the Chinese society places high value on education, and with its strong
cultural preference for education. China accumulates more human capital, which is conducive
for innovation and economic growth (Chu, Furukawa, & Zhu, 2016). In China’s Song
Dynasty, Emperor Zhenzong (968-1022) wrote his famous Urge to Study poem in which an
often quoted verse is “in books one finds golden mansions and maidens as beautiful as jade”
and a poet, Wang Zhu, wrote in his famous Child Prodigy poem “all pursuits are of low

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value; only studying the books is high.” China’s emphasis on education can be traced so
many centuries back to Confucianism which emphasizes the importance of education. A cited
in Chu et al (2016), Kipnis noted that education “invokes a system of prestige in which those
with educational accomplishments are marked as superior to the non-educated.” Haiyan and
Yuan (2011) write:
“With the reform of the education system, universities have become an important actor in
the Chinese National Innovation System (NIS), and play a necessary role in talent
training, scientific research, and technology transfer.” (p.1)
In 1990s, with the rapid expansion of the higher education taking place, the state realized this
had a profound impact on financing the higher education system. By then there were only 1,
075 state-run universities and colleges which were funded through two sources: state
appropriation, which accounted for 90 per cent of the expenditure, and revenues generated by
higher education institutions themselves (Weifang, 1991). Total expenditure on higher in
China had increased at a higher rate than that of the government revenue(Tsang & Min, 1992)
Public funding has remained the most important source of finance for public higher education
institutions in China (Wang, 2009). However, public funding has shown signs of declining
recently and a diversified higher education financing system is being established. According
to Wang, the share of public expenditure to the total expenditure decreased from 91.81 per
cent in 1993 to 67.24 per cent in 1999, then to 42.77 per cent in 2005. At the same time, the
contribution of tuition and fees to the total expenditure increased from 6.18 in 1993 to 23.35
in 1999 and 31.05 in 2005 (p. 2).
Quality of higher education in China
Education is the most basic role of universities, and universities are a base of talent training
in China. Besides regular higher education, Chinese universities also provide continuous
higher education through correspondence, spare-time schools and short-cycle courses, etc.
(Haiyan & Yuan, 2011). However, along with the recent fast expansion of Chinese
universities, since 1999 the quality of higher education has declined. According to Haiyan
and Yuan, a survey among the undergraduates in Guangdong Province shows that only 2.7
per cent students were satisfied with the educational quality of their university, while 77%
were not satisfied. Another survey among 12,398 undergraduates indicate the 79 per cent
students believed that they could not acquire useful knowledge in universities, 77 per cent
thought that what they learnt was not relevant to the practice, and 80% students are not
satisfied with the courses and content (Lin, 2001).

cxxxvii
Haiyan & Yuan continue to shed more light on quality of higher education in China by saying
that the quality of postgraduate education has become the focus of the society:
With the expansion of university, the enrollment number of postgraduates has been
increasing rapidly, from 65,000 in the year 2000 to 324,940 in the year 2005. However,
the number of tutors increased more slowly. Many tutors need to supervise about 10
postgraduate or doctoral students, some even have more than 30 students. Many students
complain that they did not have the chance to consult their tutor frequently and that they
must do everything by themselves. On the other hand, tutors also complained about the
poor quality of postgraduate students. A survey conducted by a project team at Beijing
University among more than 1,000 tutors in 97 universities showed that 56.9 per cent
tutors of postgraduate and 47.8 per cent tutors of doctoral students thought that the quality
of students was dropping (p. 161-2).
So, how to improve the quality of higher education remained a challenge forChinese
universities and China began establishing a professional accrediting system. In
2002, the Ministry of Education introduced a new quality assurance policy,which
would focus mainly on the assessment of undergraduate teaching at higher
education institutionsvia a four-level gradation scheme for results: they would either
be rated excellent, good, fairly good, or failing(Haiyan & Yuan, 2011). According to
official statistics, by the end of 2004, 116 higher education institutions across China
had been assessed under the new regime. In August 2004, a semi-governmental
national quality assurance agency called the National Higher Education Evaluation
Center (NHEEC) was founded to monitor the implementation of higher education
assessment in the country (Wang, 2006).. However, further efforts to ensure the
accrediting system are more relevant and effective.
The government’s eleventh 5-year plan (2006–2010) on education lists “improving
teaching quality” as a goal. In May 2006, the State Council restricted enrollment to
control the rapid growth of students, in order to improve their teaching quality.
However, college education will continue to expand in line with the national
development in a more rational, stable, and sustainable way. The restriction is a
mixed blessing to the public. Parents of would-be applicants still believe increased
growth in enrollment could provide better chances for their children, while
undergraduates are concerned that the expansion would exert more pressure on the
employment market.

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The future and international appeal of China’s higher education
China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) had been hailed as the biggest
coming-out party in the history of capitalism as Rui writes:
WTO supports predicted that its membership would eventually contribute to higher
standards of living for its citizens and increased growth for its economy. At the same
time, China realized that it should prepare itself well in science and technology, especially
by pioneering frontiers of advanced and emerging technology. According to a timetable
released by the Chinese Minister of Science and Technology at the annual national
conference on science and technology in January 2002, China planned to launch research
into key technologies in a fight against foreign competitors’ monopoly in strategic
advanced technologies. This included setting patent management and the establishment of
technical standards to cope with the increasing world competition in science and
technology(Rui, 2005, p. 336).
By then, China’s competitiveness in science and technology was still not strong enough to
cater for the keen international competition. The Global Competitiveness Report of the
International Institute for Management Development (April 2002) had ranked China’s
competitiveness in the world as 31st in 2002 (Rui, 2005). This was due to relatively small
amount of funds made available for research and development, which somehow made it
subdued to compete on a global scale.
However, since the reopening to the world, China’s representation in the international
scientific community has grown rapidly up to date. As Heath (2013) emphasizes:
From 2000 to 2010, the rapid development of scientific research in Chinese higher
education played an important role in the all-round rejuvenation of the country through
science and education, and catered to the strategy of enhancing national strength through
the nurturing of talents and professionals. This move positively intensified the
development of scientific research so as to meet socioeconomic development needs,
strengthened the advancement of science and technology and promoted the development
and reform of China’s higher education (p. 104).
The number of papers by China’s scholars that appeared in prestigious mainstream journals
in sciences and social sciences has kept on climbing. These encouraging achievements of
Chinese researchers are closely related to China’s recent economic growth and the increasing
investment on science, technology and education. As of today, China has started sending
astronauts to space for scientific explorations in the outer-space, as the country is working

cxxxix
towards setting up its own space station. Rui emphasizes that the Chinese government is
aware that knowledge accumulation is been one of the major factors in economic
development and is increasing at the core of China’s competitive advantage. The weapons in
this new war of global economic competition are that of cutting-edge technology and human
skill. Higher education institutions are therefore in the frontline.
Within this period, the total number of research and development (R&D) personnel in
Chinese higher education institutions had shown signs of tremendous growth. Heath reports
that according to compiled statistical information from 2000 to 2010, in the higher education
institutions specialized in science, engineering, agriculture, and medical sciences, the number
of scientists and engineers engaged in scientific and technological activities increased from
223, 200 to 322, 900, representing an upward adjustment of 44.7 per cent. And also, internal
expenditures for science and technology in higher education institutions was significantly
increased, rising from the initial RMB 11.35 billion to a staggering RMB 73.395 billion,
recording an annual growth of 20.6% (Heath, 2013, p. 105).
Other projects include the construction of National Key Laboratories, and major national
science and technological infrastructure construction projects in which, from 2000 to 2010, 4
National Laboratories and 165 National Key Laboratories were established and so many other
major constructions of engineering and technology research centers. Due to their autonomous
state, higher education institutions are a huge force in promoting national scientific and
technological infrastructure projects in China. On top of that, year after year, outstanding
higher education institutions in science and technology are recognized by the government
through State Preeminent Science and Technology Awards.
Conclusion
So looking at all this literature, one can tell that China has put so much effort in revamping its
higher education system. However, this could practically be impossible to achieve if the
economy is so frail. China has used its economic blossomy to evidently improve the Chinese
higher education through adequate funding and inception of knowledge-based way of doing
most of its business. R&Ds have been established in higher education institutions in order for
China to be part of the evolving technological and scientific world. Space exploration
missions have been reported on media in China and elsewhere, which gives the impression
that scientific knowledge is at an advanced stage in the country.
Students from across the globe have also taken this opportunity to be part of the emerging
education system. Chinese scholarships for international students have been introduced to

cxl
oversees populations in order for them to harness the opportunities offered by this evolution
in China’s higher education system. International instructors and/or lectures have been
incorporated into the system and to maintain them it costs a lot of money. It shows that the
Chinese higher education system is growing and at almost the same pace as its economy. To
be able to fund the few mentioned projects is something that shows how determined the
Chinese government is on improving the standards of higher education, and the welfare of the
people within and outside China.
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 Organizational Culture and Its Influence on the Performance of Chinese Higher
Education Institutions: The Case of a State University in Beijing

Abstract
This research aims to examine organizational culture and its influence on organizational
performance. It focuses on these six elements: environment, mission, leadership, information,
strategy and socialization. The authors interviewed students and faculty members at one
higher education institution. The analyses confirmed the existence of congruence between the
responses of faculty members and students in some particular areas. They also revealed that
most of the elements of organizational culture are encouraging. Further, they showed that all
elements of culture have strong influence on individual’s performance which in turn could
contribute to the overall performance of the university.
Key words: organization culture; culture; higher education; China; performance

Introduction

Before the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, there were 205 Higher
Education Institutions (HEIs) including public, private and foreign funding universities (Yu,
1994 as cited in Gu, Li & Wang, 2009). China’s higher education has been experiencing
transformational stages during the reform period, and it is still transforming (Li & Xing,
2010). The number of Chinese HEIs is increasing considerably. According to the professional
services Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG) Company (2010), the number of future
HEIs students in China is targeted to be thirty six million in 2020. This governmental
commitment is promising; however, it is important to consider the administration of higher
education in China. According to Gu, Li and Wang (2009), models of higher education of
China have vacillated between centralization and decentralization. Since 1985, there has been
unified central leadership and shared administration between central and provincial
governments (MOE, 2006) as cited in Gu, Li & Wang, 2009). Moreover, Chinese higher
learning institutions got autonomy in 1999. To this end, the Higher Education Law of the
People's Republic of China, Article 37 states that higher learning institutions “independently
decide on the setting up and personnel employment of such internal organizational structures
as teaching, scientific research and administrative functional departments in the light of
actual requirements and in accordance with the principle of streamlining and efficiency…”

cxliii
(MOE, 1998, p. 8). In such an educational system where institutional autonomy is promoted,
organizational culture is more valued. For instance, Owoyemi and Ekwoaba (2014) reported
that when an organization is productive and its performance is increasing, organizational
culture should be encouraged then.
Organizational culture has emerged as a topic of central concern within the business
community for the last ten years (Tierney, 1988). Accordingly, the number of studies on
organizational culture is increasing. Fleury (2009) pointed out that culture is fairly a well-
known topic in the academic agenda, being discussed in day-to-day debates within
organizations. However, further studies are always needed as human beings are dynamic and
therefore their beliefs and experiences are changing and should be regularly studied
(Muthanna, 2011) accordingly. The study of an organization’s culture is important for the
implementation of an organization’s strategies (Bashir, Jianqiao, Abrar, & Ghazanfar, 2012).
Organizational culture is, most of the time, the element that drives the organization forward.
It creates an operational environment in which every employee strives to achieve the goal set
by the organization (Tănase, 2015). Some authors like Antić and Cerić (2008) mention that it
is almost impossible to analyze modern organizations without mentioning their organizational
cultures. However, various authors define ‘culture’ differently. As a result, organizational
culture faces many challenges and it is not an easy task to define this term (Antić & Cerić,
2008). Although organizational culture is a widely used term, it seems to give rise to a degree
of ambiguity in terms of assessing its effectiveness on changing variables in an organization
(O’Donnell & Boyle, 2008). To truly understand the term of 'culture', we need to understand
the beliefs of those organization's affiliates (Schein, 1999). Schein characterizes culture as the
learned values, beliefs, and assumptions that become shared and taken for granted as the
organization continues to be successful.
Understanding culture is important for the employees, the stakeholders, and the
organization in general. Desson and Clouthier (2010) stated that culture shapes what the
organization considers to pass a right decision; what employees consider behaving
appropriately and how they interact with one another; and the attitude of outside stakeholders
towards the organization. Moreover, understanding of culture will assist administrators in
spotting and resolving potential conflicts and in managing change more effectively and
efficiently (Tierney, 1998). Like other organizations, the importance of culture in higher
education institutions is critical. To this end, Tierney (1998) clarified that studying the
cultural dynamics of educational institutions and systems helps understand and, hopefully

cxliv
reduce adversarial relationships. Cognizant of these facts is pertinent to conducting research
on organizational culture and its influence on Chinese universities. Therefore, the main
leading questions for this study are the following:
1) How is the organizational culture experienced by Brown University faculty members
and students?

2) How do faculty members and students of Brown University describe the influence of
organizational culture on organizational performance?

Conceptualization of Organizational Culture

Many authors have attempted to give their own definitions of the term ‘culture’. The
common foci are the appearance of terms such as assumptions, beliefs, and values in those
definitions of culture. For understanding the organizational culture, it is essential to be
acquainted with all its components. There is no agreement among authors as to what
components should be considered in studying organizational culture (Wambugu, 2014). This
is to clarify that different researchers have used and proposed different conceptual
frameworks for studying organizational culture. For instance, Schein (1990) states that for
analyzing the culture of a particular group or organization, it is desirable to distinguish
between three fundamental levels: artifacts, values, and assumptions. Tierney (1998)
reported that researchers need to consider which cultural concepts to utilize when they study
a college or university. Tierney identifies environment, mission, leadership, information,
strategy and socialization as essential concepts of university or college culture.
Figure 1: Framework of the Study
Organizational Culture

.
Course and medium of instruction
China

In china the study subjects in curricula of teacher colleges and universities are
classified in three main categories; general education, subject knowledge and
pedagogy and teaching training. The study subjects provided in teachers
colleges are in four categories of theoretical subjects, education subjects,

cxlv
specialized subjects and physical education. The theoretical subjects include
philosophy, political economies etc, whereas in education subjects consists of
general pedagogy, psychology, pedagogy in specific subjects and specialized
subjects include major subjects that are concerned with basic
theories ,knowledge and skills in relevant specializations. In addition to the
above subjects the students in teachers colleges are required to learn one foreign
languages and do practice in classroom teaching and management as part of
the training programmes.Similarly in normal universities the subjects offered
mainly fall under the three main categories general subjects, foundation subjects
in education, specialized obligatory subjects, teaching practice and elective
subjects14.
Rwanda
Likewise china the study subjects offered in teacher training colleges and
universities are in four categories including general subjects, foundation
subjects in education, specialized obligatory subjects, teaching practice.
However contrary to china ,students in teacher training colleges and
universities are required to take all courses , there are no elective subjects and
the teaching is English as medium of instruction15.
Teacherqualification and Standards
China
Since 1993,Central government of China has promulgated Teachers Law (1993)
, Regulations for Qualifications of Teachers (1995) and implementation of
Regulations for Qualification of Teachers (2000) regulating the teachers
qualification process. According the above legal instruments, qualified teacher
status is awarded to candidates upon meeting certain moral, physical and
professional requirements and after to pass professional entrance examination.
The candidate who wants to become a qualified teacher in kindergarten, initially
14
Wang (2009).Basic Education in china
15
Higher Education Policy

cxlvi
needs to obtain at least a graduation certificate of normal schools , those who
want to become a primary-school teacher should have at least a secondary
teacherschool certificate. Those who want to teacher in junior secondary schools
need to have at least a Normal college certificate whereas those who want to
become a senior- school teacher should have a four-year bachelor’s degree or
above.
The entrant should also have passed the entrance examinations that
comprised of examination in general pedagogy and psychology, Chinese
language competence test and physical examination tests. Having satisfied the
previously described conditions, an entrant can apply for a qualified –teacher
16
certificate. However, since 1999 regulations governing who can apply for a
teaching certificate has been opened up to those who don’t have the above
mentioned education qualifications17.
The subjects , criteria and content outline of the teachers professional
entrance exams are subject to the approval of the Central education authority
while provincial education authorities hold the responsibility of coordination
and supervision of the recognition activities. County and upper –level
authorities are the recognition authorities of qualified teacher’s status and they
are responsible for the organization, supervision andimplementation activities in
their own areas. The format of the certificate awarded to the qualified teachers
is decided by the central education authority and awardee after acquiring this
certificate can apply for teaching positions in primary or secondary schools.
There is no unified employment and schools recruit teachers on their own.
Rwanda
In Rwanda, on contrary to China, the employment and qualification requirement
are the same. Though it was stipulated in teacher development and management
policy document that qualified teachers will be issued with licenses
16
MoE(1993).Law of teachers
17
MoE(2000)Regualtion on teachers Qualification

cxlvii
(MINEDUC, 2007:14) , this policy has never been implemented.
According the Law governing the organization and functioning of pre-primary,
primary and secondary education, those who want to teach in nursery schools
should have an A level general certificate of education. However ,this law is
open to those who don’t have this education qualification but who have
experience enabling them to educate and teach at this level may be
employed .The Law requires those who want to teach in junior secondary
should have graduation certificates from college of Education and those who
want to teach in senior secondary schools should have a four year bachelor’s
degree of education from any recognized university. However to upon
authorization , those who have A level general certificate may teach in junior
secondary and also those who have graduation certificates from colleges of
education may teach in senior secondary schools18.
Where as in China teachers are recruited by schools, local authorities at
District level are responsible for the process of recruitment and deployment of
teachers in public schools of their areas 19 and in private schools the
responsibility for recruitment of teachers lies in the hands of the owners20.
Teachers Continuing Education
China
In china, a teacher in his or her teaching career should take part in continuing
education and training, According to the regulations on the continuing
Education of primary and secondary school teachers 21,the central education
authority is responsible for the overall supervision of teachers continuing
education in the country. It sets out policies and guidelines and validates
training textbooks and establishes quality assurance systems. The provincial and
18
Law No 23/2012 of 15/06/2012 governing the organization and functioning of pre-primary ,primary
and secondary education
19
National Decentralization Policy
20
Law in Education or Policy
21
MoE(1999). Regulation on the continuing Education Education of primary and secondary schools
Teachers,MoE order (1997)No7,September 1999,Beijing

cxlviii
local authorities are responsible for planning and implementation of continuing
education in their areas.
The continuing is in the following area: political education and ethics of
teaching; specialty knowledge updating and expansion, modern education
theory and practice; study of teaching skills and modern educational
technologies.
New teachers are required to take training of not less than 120 periods in their
one year induction training on the educational policies and regulations, the
teaching environment and regular teaching training, and all teachers should take
teacher-job training of not less than 240 periods, every five years and advanced
training of promising teachers .Each period equals 45 minutes to one hour
learning time .Teachers also receive in-service education or training which
leads to the awarding of study certificates or higher degree and qualifications.
The purpose is to upgrade education and qualification level of qualified
teachers.
Teacher’s schools and colleges, normal colleges and universities are the
main providers of continuing education and training for teachers under the
leadership of local education authorities. With the approval of the local
authorities, non-governmental institutions are also allowed to provide
continuing education programmes for teachers if they meet the requirements set
by the government .
Furthermore Ministry of Education created country led strategies to
strengthen continuing teacher education and training and attracting talented
young students to join the teaching profession. In 2003 the Ministry of
Education introduced National Teacher Education Network Project. The
purpose of the project is to construct a learning society in general and a teachers
lifelong learning system in particular ,improve teachers professional capacity
and abilities, especially for teachers working in rural areas, promote the

cxlix
application of ICT in teacher education,and build a teacher education
information sharing system and an open ,flexible and integrated teacher
education system in the country (MoE,2003 as cited in Wang,2009:99) .
The key mission of the network is to provide a nationalplatform for
teachers continuing education through the integration of teacher education
institutions ,satellite TV network, and internet, so that member institutions and
organization can provide different kinds of continuing education programmes
for school teachers. The major activities of the network has been to utilize the
academic and distance education resources in National Normal universities and
other high level universities to provide undergraduate and postgraduate teacher
education programmes and advanced teaching training programs; make use of
the distance resources of china Central Radio and TV University to provide
common curriculum resources and service support for rural school teachers
taking qualification and non-qualification in-service training (MoE,2003 as
cited in Wang,2009:99) .
In 2005, The Ministry of Education started a national teacher capacity
building project to establish teacher training and examination systems in
education technology in order to increase teacher’s capacity in the application of
ICT in classroom teaching (MoE,2007 as cited in Wang,2009:104). Other
initiatives by the Ministry of Education include free Teacher Education Project
introduced in 2007 in order to attract the outstanding youngsters to enter into
the teaching profession and professional Master’s Degree in Education
introduced in 1996 in order to increase the quality and capacity of school
teachers and administrators (Wang,2009).
Rwanda
Similarly to China, teachers in Rwanda are encouraged to take continuing
education and Training to upgrade their level and skills. According MINEDUC
(2013), pre-service and in-service training of teachers focus on improving

cl
proficiency in the language of learning ,subject knowledge ,and teaching skills
and capacities particularly in the key areas of literacy and numeracy. The
continuing education and training are provided by the Government through the
Rwanda Education Board, Non-government organization for the non-degree
awarding trainings and short courses and teachers training colleges and
universities for teachers who want to upgrade their education qualification
(MINEDUC,2007: 19).
The Ministry of Education through Rwanda Education Board introduced a
school based mentoring which focus on training teacher in order to improve the
English language proficiency
(Muvunyi&Simpson,2013,MINEDUC,2014) .Further more Teacher also receive
ICT training on basic computer skills and learner-center teaching methodology.
However studies on continuing education and training has shown that on-job
training received are not well organized , coordinated and monitored
(Mukama&Andersson, 2007)..
Contrary to China, in Rwanda the continuing education and training is not
mandatory and the policy documents and laws does not stipulate the scope and
periods required for a continuing Education and training and most of the
trainings are provided by non-governmental organization in collaboration with
educational institutions.
4. Research findings and discussion
The findings from this analysis show that both The People’s Republic of China
and Rwanda acknowledge the value of teachers in education. Rwanda and
China pay special attention in teacher training and development. The
comaparison revealed that China and Rwanda have similar types of pre-service
teacher preparation that consist of teachers training colleges and universities
that award teaching certificates required to be allowed to teacher at different
levels of schools.

cli
The analysis revealed the difference in entry requirements to the teaching
profession. In china teachers are required to take national entrance examination
in order to have qualified teacher status and apply for job of teachings while in
Rwanda a certificate is only required to be qualified as teacher and to apply for
job in teaching.

Rwanda and China have implemented various initiatives in teacher training and
continuing education. China has a well-structured continuing education
monitored and coordinated from National Level to schools and teachers are
required to take obligatory induction training and on-job training. In Rwanda
there is no certification of teachers and induction training for new teachers. The
continuing education and training is not structured and remains basically
voluntary to teachers. China has established special scholarship for young
students to attract the young students to join the teaching profession while in
Rwanda students are equally treated in regard to the government scholarship.
5. Conclusion and recommendation
This paper compares the teacher training and development in China and
Rwanda. There are similarities and difference in teacher training and
development. However there are some best practices that one country can learn
from another.
 Rwanda should emulate the teacher certification to recognize teaching as
profession.
 The establishment of special scholarship would also attract and keep the
talented students in teaching profession.
 Coordination and monitoring of the continuing Education and training
should also be strengthened

clii
Reference

Muvunyi,E and Simpson,J (2013).teacher training in Rwanda and the

shift to English Medium Education. Commonwealth Education
Partnership 2012/2013 from
http://www.cedol.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Teacher-
training-in-Rwanda-Simpson-and-Muvunyi.pdf retrieved on
25/12/2015

Held.(1991). Political Theory Today. Stanford, Stanford University Press.

Morrow, R. A. (2006). Forward - Critical Theory, Globalization, and

Higher Education: Political Economy and the Cul-de-Sac of the
Postmodernist Cultural Turn. In R. Rhoads & C. Torres (Eds.),
The university, state, and market: The political economy of
globalization in the Americas (pp. xvii-xxxiii). Stanford: Stanford
Univ Press

Raja, R.S,(1991). Education for the twenty-first century: Asia-Pacific

perspective.

Bangkok, UNESCO.

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UNESCO(2015). EFA Global Monitoring report: Education for all 200-
2015:Achievement and Challenges,Paris,UNESCO.

MINEDUC(2013).Education Sector Strategic Plan 2013/2014-

2017/18.Kigali

MINEDUC(2014).Annual report:July2013-June2014

Mtahabwa, L. and Rao, N. 2010. Pre-primary education in Tanzania:

observations from urban and rural

classrooms. International Journal of Educational Development, Vol. 30,

No. 3, pp. 227-35.

Bowen,Glenn A.(2009).Document Analysis as a Qualitative Research

Method. Qualitative Research Journal,
Vol.9,No2.,pp.2740.DOI10.3316/QRJ0902027

Crotty,M.(1998).Foundations of Social Research. Meaning and perspective in the Research

process. SAGE Publications London Thousand Oaks New Delhi

Ministry of Education (2013).Education Sector Strategic Plan 2013/2014-

2017/2018.October ,Kigali

Mukama E. &Andersson S.B. (2007).Coping with change in ICT-based learning environments:

newly qualified Rwandan teachers’ reflections. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
(2008),24, 156–166 .

NISR(2014).Fourth Population and housing Census report.Kigali

Gu&Li&Wang (2009).Higher Education in China .New Jersey:Paramus

LibingWang(2009).Basic Education in China .Paramus .New jersey:USA

http://www.uis.unesco.org/DataCentre/Pages/countryprofile.aspx?
regioncode=40515&code=CHN accessed on 26/12/2015

cliv
 BEIJING NORMAL UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
INTERNATIONAL MA PROGRAM IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Final Paper:
Analyzing Free Teacher Education Policy in China;
looking into the life of three free teacher education
students.

clv
 Subject:
Education systems in China

Instructor:
Prof. Dr. SANG Guoyuan

BY

201629010067

Abstract:
This is a review paper that explores and analyzes free teacher education policy in China.
Formation and implementation of the free teacher education policy is explored in the sense of
their outcomes, reactions and weaknesses and then positive and negative impacts of these
aspects were investigated in the lives of three benefactors.
Introduction:
Teacher education has a long history in China. As part of the Chinese government efforts to
improve education quality, and the future development of China,the government reformed
teacher education through teacher preparation institution and curriculum and teaching norms
to provide qualify teaching force (Zhao;Zhou&Li, 2016). Teacher education is an important
part of the Chinese education systemand essential for providing quality education. In the past
years China has made efforts in providing skilled human resource for the teaching profession
because the government realized the role Teachers play in education.
Research question
As mentioned above that the FTEP has had positive and negatives impacts, I therefor raise
the question that:

clvi
How do students and scholars view and think of FTEP since its inception?
Purpose and methodology of this paper
This paper analyzed the FTEP in its drive in achieving its core objective of ensuring
quality of education in rural areas and China, as a whole. Specifically, empirical review was
the major approach and utilized affirm that the key intended purpose of this policy. Using a
critical analysis framework, secondary data were also used to appraise the context under
which the policy was formulated and implemented to unearth its strengths and limitations.
Finally, I interviewed three benefactors to understand their views and opinions on FTEP.
Based on this appraisal, this paper raised critical recommendation that could help
pragmatically promote improve the FTEP rural and other disadvantaged areas of China.

Literature Review:

Core Content of FTEP

In attracting top applicants into the FTEP the Ministry of Education, Ministry of
Finance, and Ministry of Human Resources provided several benefits to reduce the
cost and increase the value of university education for those wishing to become
teachers. These include four years of free tuition, free room and board, free
textbooks and class supplies, and a monthly stipend. However, to receive these
benefits, the students must sign a contract, which will commit them to teaching in a
rural area in their home province for a minimum of two years, and then continue to
work the remainder of their ten year commitment in education within the same
province. For the remaining eight years FTEP graduates may choose to teach in
urban areas within the province or may take an administrative position within the
education system.

In addition to the students who enroll in the FTEP when they first enter the
university, academically outstanding non-teaching students may be admitted into the
FTEP within their first two years, after which they will receive a reimbursement for
their tuition up to that point and will be paid any stipend they missed. Other unique
benefits of the FTEP are that students will experience a newly designed, student-
centered curriculum that emphasizes practical aspects of teaching and skills
development rather than the traditional lecture-style teacher-centered format
emphasizing education theory. And leading senior professors, not lecturers or

clvii
teaching assistants, will conduct these courses. Further, to provide additional
opportunities for students to develop their practical teaching skills, FTEP students
will experience a significantly extended student teaching assignment.

Regarding graduate school, FTEP students who passed the appropriate

entrance examinations may attend graduate school part-time as well as during
summers while they are fulfilling their teaching duties within their home province.
During the academic year they will attend classes either at a satellite branch campus
or building, or through the university‘s online courses. They may not enroll in a full-
time graduate program while completing their ten years of service. Finally, FTEP
students wanting to exit the program may do so at a cost of repaying all the tuition,
stipends, and other benefits they received before exiting. And if after graduation
FTEP students fail to complete their ten years of service in their home province, they
will be required to reimburse the government for all the education expenses and pay
a fine.

Background of the Free Teacher Education Policy

After the Cultural Revolution, China began to make a transition to a more

market-oriented economy a different agenda came to guide educational policy, as
leaders sought to promote market reforms and economic modernization (Hannum, et
al., 2007). Hannum et, al. established that one of the most critical changes that
accompanied market reforms, with important implications for poor, rural
communities, was soaring educational costs related, in part, to privatization. These
costs were a result of the government‘s decentralization of education finance, which
left the responsibility of supporting schools with the provinces, counties, townships,
and villages (Li, Park, & Wang, 2007) with the expectation that these more local
governmental bodies would find additional ways to finance their local universities,
high schools, middle schools, and primary schools. Decentralization during those
periods allowed new resources to be mobilized in support of schooling, as wealthier
and more entrepreneurial communities became capable of marshaling non-public
resources that were previously unavailable to them (Hannum et al., 2007, p. 6). But
not all communities or regions benefitted equally due to the market reforms. In fact,
as noted by Li et al. (2007), while a decentralized system improves incentives for

clviii
local governments to generate revenues and to be responsive to local needs, it can
hamper efforts to meet goals of distributional equity. Given overall budget scarcity, it
is not surprising that in China decentralization led to greater inequity in the provision
of public goods and services across regions. Many poor areas confronted a lack of
local government revenues or subsidies from upper levels of government, leading to
fiscal crises, which prevented local governments from even meeting their salary
obligations to government officials and teachers, let alone enabling them to finance
high quality public services (Park et al., 1996; Wong 1997). Decentralization,
Hannum et al. argue, increased regional disparities in funding for schools, and also
increased family educational expenditures required even for compulsory education,
especially in poor areas where revenue-starved local governments had no choice but
to pass the burden of educational expenditures onto rural households. In the 1990s
the central government began to attempt to correct some of these disparities among
regions and particularly poor rural areas.

By the mid-1990s, the government itself had recognized the policy importance of
26 reversing the trend of widening disparities, and began allocating targeted funds to
reduce inequities in the public financing of education. Major changes to the fiscal
system in 1994 led to increases in both the amount of revenues mobilized and
greater control by the [central government] over budgetary allocations, presumably
reducing budgetary pressures at all levels and increasing the [central government‘s]
ability to redistribute resources. (Li et al., 2007). Several scholars noted their
determined approach to overcoming the financial and education access challenges
experienced by the rural poor. For example, Hannum et al. (2010) cite that ensuring
basic educational access in poor rural areas is a focus of intense government activity
at present. During the Tenth National People‘s Congress, Premier Wen Jiabao
pledged to eliminate all charges on rural students receiving 9-year compulsory
education before the end of 2007. In one of his endnotes Whyte claims that the
leadership team of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao that took over in 2002-2003 has
voiced much more concern about inequality than that of its predecessors, Deng
Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, and it has begun implementing a number of new policy
initiatives to address the problem.

clix
 During the post-2003 Hu Jintao Wen Jiabao administration, there were shifts of
emphasis of the government toward greater solicitude, toward rural areas, and
toward regions and individuals left behind in the development process (Naughton,
2007). Expressions of good intentions were followed by significant policy changes
that, for example, reduction in the tax rate in rural areas, and eliminated some of the
unreasonable extra burdens that rural-to-urban migrants experience in cities. In
addition to the policy changes Naughton refers to above, the Hu Wen administration
initiated several policies aimed at reducing the education access gap for students in
the poorest rural areas. One of these is the new liangmianyibu subsidy (Chan and
Harrell, 2009) which eliminates textbook, boarding, and miscellaneous fees for
qualifying families (Hannum et al., 2007). This subsidy was designed to correct the
trend of requiring even the poorest rural families to pay for their children‘s education;
expenses that compelled some to keep their children from attending school (Hannum
et al., 2007).How all these policies were not in the best position solved the challenge
of providing more highly qualified, government-managed teachers for those poorest
rural areas where schools remain.

In September 2007 the government implemented the FTEP and it was designed
to have six of China‘s most prestigious normal universities train upwards of 12,000
new teachers to serve in the poorest rural areas. When Premier Wen announced the
FTEP in spring 2007, it joined several other policies and programs designed to
increase access to quality education and eliminate the financial burden of paying for
that access (Connelly and Zheng, 2007).

Implementation of FTEP

In March 5, 2010 Report on the Work of the Government Delivered at the Third
Session of the Eleventh national People‘s Congress, Wen Jiabao emphasized the
need to develop education at all levels and in the central and western regions. In this
this regards, reform in the management and admissions systems of institutions of
higher 30 learning were made. Teacher preparation institutions were given more
power to make decisions and to adjust their majors and curricula to meet
employment needs and the needs of economic and social development. Institutions
were required to inspire their teachers to concentrate on education and become

clx
high-level universities with their own distinctive features. Varieties of measures were
put in place to attract outstanding personnel to pursue careers in education and
devote their lives to it. Teacher preparing institution became more focused on
strengthening training for teachers and principals of rural compulsory education
schools, and encourage excellent teachers to teach in impoverished rural areas.
They were also required to intensify education to improve the professional ethics of
teachers, and enhance their sense of responsibility and mission. According to a
news report, The Ministry of Education came up with the rules of implementation of
the policy in May 2007 (Lu, 2007), and the first students to benefit from the free
tuition enrolled at the six FTEP universities in September 2007. To assist in the rapid
implementation of the policy the Central Government provided 500 million yuan
(roughly $73.2 million) for the first three years. Of this 500 million, the four
universities that are required to 31 enroll most of the FTEP students have received
100 million each, and the other two universities have each received 50 million. With
these funds the universities are each developing and piloting the use of new
teaching facilities, purchasing new textbooks, and redesigning teaching curriculum.
In addition, the universities will be reimbursed for the tuition waivers, stipends, and
room and board they provide for each of their FTEP students.

The FTEP universities have also been actively working out the teaching
practicum arrangements, which have not only dramatically increased in number, but
in duration from eight weeks to twenty weeks). The policy also indicates that the
Central Government will assist provincial governments in their collaboration with the
universities to accommodate the influx of new FTEP teachers.

Empirical studies on FTEP

Some scholars (e.g. Li & Wang, 2011; Liu, 2009; Wang & Wang, 2011; Xie, 2009)
have looked at the policy and they claimed that it was everyone’s right to receive
education and this FTE helped to ensure that as many people as possible could
receive the education they were entitled to by law.Hu, (2014) found that FTEP in a
way helped improve teachers’ quality in western and rural regions in China.However,
this policy caused some student teachers to lose motivation to study because they
feel that their future is already determined. Liu (2009) who analyzed the policy with

clxi
Bourdieu’s cultural reproduction theory12 concluded that this policy created inequity
to those who were admitted to this program, because they had to follow what were
arranged for them by the government due to their disadvantageous economic, social,
and cultural capital. At the same time Li and Wang (2011) echoed Liu (2009) claiming
that this policy in a way violated FTE student teachers’ freedom to choose their
future career. They maintained that this policy was an expedient one and could not
last for a long time. In general students in FTE program voiced their positive and
supportive attitudes towards this policy Literature on FTE seemed to have shown a
mixed picture. On one hand, it seemed that many people (researchers, educators,
and student teachers) held positive and supportive attitudes towards FTE policy. On
the other hand, empirical studies soliciting students’ views towards teaching
indicated that student teachers did not want to work in basic education.

In spite of lack of motives to teaching, students were positive towards their university
life and formed proper awareness in their future job (Fang & Qi, 2009; 2011).
However, research also found that students lacked motivations to study, because
they knew their destination already they were secured and had to work in one school
in their home province for ten years (Fang &Qi, 2009; 2011; Zhao, H. H. 2010). This
policy was greatly supported by those (e.g. Guo, 2011; Hu, 2009; Zhang, 2009) who
looked at it from social system viewpoints. Similar to those who looked at the policy
from legal and economic standpoints, they claimed that it could solve the problem of
educational imbalance among different regions in China. While Zhang (2009)
believed that this free policy was an inevitable result of historical advancement, Guo
(2011) argued that it could create a social environment in which teaching was a
respectful and respectable profession. Hu (2009) suggested implementing FTEP
across China and maintained that it was the only way to improve the quality of
education in the long run

Findings and Discussion

In this section some findings presented through analyzing data collected from interviews of
three benefactors of FTEP. I engaged in a verbal interchanges to explore their views and
opinions on the FTEP.The findings were presented according to the sequences of the
following; interview questions
1. What are the main reasons that encouraged you to apply?
2. How clear are the terms in which you are granted the scholarship?

clxii
3. What do you think of and feel about the FTEP?
4. How do you feel about the after-graduation terms and conditions?
5. How motivated do you feel about teaching in rural areas?
Reasons for applying for FTEP
The informants’ decision towards FTEP was based on their parents’ influences, personal
decisions and the opportunity offered them because of their provincial marginal positions.
Informants reveal that their school admits free normal students from their provinces’ and
admission requirements are not quite high for them in the application process.
Participant one
“Beijing Normal University only admits free normal student in Ningxia province so I
grab that opportunity to benefit from the FTEP”.
Participant two
“My parents and I decided it within a short period time about one or two week. After
realizing that my college entrance examination scores were not enough to qualify me
admission to the desire university I had intended consider this university. After all I can
only apply for this. And my parents and I also thought of the job security after
graduation which is a good choice for a girl”.
Participant Three
“My Parents suggested I apply. Actually, we knew that Beijing Normal University only
recruits free normal school students in QingHai province”.

Clarity and Students Perceptions of FTEP

From empirical review (Wang, 2011, Guanhua 2015) the terms and conditions governing
FTEP are very clear according to what is writing. However, only one out of the three
participants confidently said he knew 90% of what the policy entail. Other two knew of terms
and conditions as well. But looking at what the participants said that have been transcribed
below it seems that parents and students pay less attention to the terms and conditionality
during the decision making process. Student only come to realize the reality after entry.

Participant one
“Not much, only know that after graduation I must support education for ten years in my
hometown.The policy is good, as long as the government put a lot of attention to it.It is
for education. This policy can encourage more excellent students to be engaged in
education, so it is useful”.
Participant two
“I almost knew more than 95% of it, on all aspects of my welfare and due obligation. But
now it seems that this policy needn’t to be carried out. Because when you return to your
hometown as an excellent student, bureau of education is not willing to let you leave to
remote areas or rural areas. I don’t understand part is some more specific small points,
if I want to break the contact, what is consequence and so on.The FTEP policy is very
good for those who want to be good teachers. But on this policy alone, in fact, it is very
imperfect, many people hear the “free” word, will look at us with a special vision, it is
inexplicable for me. I think maybe some persons think we were admitted to with lower
score or said that later to be sent to the far and the poor border areas to teach, etc., we
really feel very upset about this misunderstanding.Policy in general is still useful, of
course, need to constantly be improved”.
Participant three
“I knew tuition fees were free and after graduation, we need to be a teacher.There are
advantages and disadvantages, more harm than good. We feel that our future has been

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 arranged and we lack of selectivity after graduation. So sometimes I feel that I have been
sold to the country and that is why many of us are less willing to work in the west region.
But the effect in general is less than ideal. I also think the policy does not pay much to
our welfare after graduation”.
As an important impulse on improving education quality and enhancing teacher team
construction, I agree with (Fu, Yang Lin 2015) that the policy tendency and reform path of
teacher policy is an important policy project and focus of teacher education. There were
different reasons why student teachers choose FTEP according to empirical review.Studies
found that the major motive for students’ application was of economic consideration. Though
quite a number of stakeholders thought highly of this policy thinking it was helpful in
improving educational inequality and development imbalance, some thought it was an unfair
policy that deprived student teachers especially those economically disadvantaged ones of
their freedom to choose.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Analysis from the empirical review shows that after many years of implementation, it is
unfortunately evident that FTEP may not achieve its key objective of improving rural
education. There are many reasons attributed to this drawback. But the most serious one is
that the government only emphasizes on providing teachers in rural areas without caring
about the general welfare and salary motivations that the rural teachers would get. Further,
there are no clear structures to ensure that students trained through the FTEP would
necessarily stay in rural areas. I therefore, recommend that multiple measures, with a holistic
view, should be taken so that the policy is supported to achieve its intended goal. All in all
free normal education is useful and it has contributed towards the teaching force and
improved the standards of education in the western regions. However it needs to be
constantly reviewed for improvements.In this regards, FTEP should device mechanism as
soon as possible, so that free-normal students can freely exit from free normal educational
system if they are indeed not interested in rural education and teaching profession through a
period of learning. This would eventually ensure that free-normal graduates are only those
willing to engage in education in rural areas.

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Teacher Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in China: A look into the unique
features and challenges in relation to Western models.
Abstract
This document review reports on the unique features and challenges of teacher
Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in China in relation to Western models.
Either by reading titles, abstracts and whole papers, the researcher was able to select
thirty (30) journal articles and one book review (1) used in this study from Beijing
Normal University library search. The constant comparative method was used to organize
findings into themes related to research questions. The findings of this review indicate
that overall, Chinese schools have made tremendous achievements in terms of PLC
features of shared personal practice, supportive leadership, collaborative culture and
shared vision and values. Features such as appraisal systems, writing for publications and
PLCs in remote areas add to the uniqueness of PLCs in Chinese schools. Challenges
related to excessive organizational guidelines and requirements, teachers’ autonomy, and
passive cultures will have to be worked out in order to strengthen these PLC features.
Introduction
It is almost universally agreed that teacher professional development is an important aspect of
teacher education (Vescio, Ross & Adams, 2016; Wong, 2012; Zhang & Yuan, 2016; Zhou,
2014). By its very nature, the teaching job demands that teachers are life-long learners who
should, not only strive to improve their practices, but also be ready to implement numerous
educational reforms that are placed before them. For example, current local and global
demands for teaching to move from traditional or teacher-centered approaches to more
student-centered approaches require teachers to assume new roles of learning facilitators
(Wong, 2012). Additionally, competition in the global economy exerts pressure on education
to prepare the work force that is skilled enough to meet its prescriptions such as creativity and
innovation. Teachers become the receiving end of these pressures in a sense that they must be
knowledgeable and skilled enough to prepare students for the challenges ahead. This pressure

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is further fueled by an increasing belief that teacher quality improves students’ outcomes.
The government of the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) recognizes the need for teacher
professional development as a means to improve teaching practices and effectively
implement educational reforms (Wong, 2012; Wong, 2014; Yan & He, 2011). To achieve
these goals teachers must be willing to change. However, teacher change has never been an
easy process. Zhang, Yuan & Yu (2016) have noted that many factors including teacher
beliefs hinder teachers’ willingness to change. The complexity nature of teacher change
challenges traditional models of teacher professional development such as workshops and
other trainings. In traditional models, educators hold the assumption that if teachers are
trained they will change in knowledge and beliefs, a chance that will lead to changes in
students’ outcomes. On the contrary, teacher change is possible when teacher learning time is
maximized and formal structures such as courses, workshops and other lecture-based teacher
training do guarantee that (Gu & Wang, 2006; Vescio, Ross & Adams, 2016; Wong, 2012).
On other words, such approached to teacher professional development are not enough to
enable teachers to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Basing from this
understanding, there has been a growing need for teachers to learn at work places. Avalos
(2011, p. 10) has argued that no single form of professional development can guarantee
teacher change and calls for teachers’ active and collective “involvement in the production of
curricular, the discussion of assessment data or the sharing of strategy” as part of their
professional learning. Such school-based learning platforms have been commonly referred to
as Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in western literature (Wong, 2010b; 2012).
China’s unique and long history of school-based teacher learning dating back from the 1950s
and its attempts to integrate western ideas of teacher Professional Learning Communities
(PLCs) into Chinese school-based professional development models have motivated and
influenced the framing of this review. This review, therefore, is an attempt to understand the
unique features and challenges of school-based teacher professional development in China in
relation to western models. Adopting a document review method, this review puts forward
the following questions:
1. What are the unique features of Chinese teacher professional learning communities
(PLCs) in relation to Western models?
2. What are the challenges facing PLCs in China?

It is thought that understanding the features and challenges of professional learning

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communities in China will offer practical lessons to practitioners and policy makers on the
ways to improve PLCs .This paper will also contribute to the literature in teacher professional
development and suggest areas for future research. This paper is also thought to extend the
debate of whether China should continue to integrate into Chinese PLCs the features of PLCs
adopted from the West or continue improving local school-based professional learning
models basing on local needs and contexts.
Literature review
The concept of PLCs
Synthesis from the literature suggests that there is no single agreed definition that accurately
captures the meaning of school-based teacher professional leaning. As such, the definitions of
school-based professional learning have been very contextual and largely dependent on the
features and activities that constitute a school-based professional learning situation. This has
made features, rather than naming, an important framework for studying school-based teacher
professional learning models. For example, in western literature it is commonly referred as
professional learning communities (PLCs) ( Avalos, 2011; Gu & Wang, 2006; Wong, 2010a;
Wong & Tsui, 2007; Zhang & Pang, 2016 & Zwart, Korthagen & Attema-Noordewier,
2015), school-based professional development is popular in the context of China (Qiao & Yu,
2016; Wong, 2010a), and community of practice (Cheng & Wu, 2016) in some other
literatures. However, these forms of school-based teacher learning share the same underlying
philosophy and assumptions. The main assumption is that learning is situated within teachers’
practices where teachers collectively and in collaborative manner learn and reflect from their
practice with the purpose of improving practice. Most of the learning activities take place at
the school and the main source of knowledge and learning experiences is the teaching
practice itself. Reflective practices such as collective lesson planning, discussion of students
work and problems, observing each other’s classrooms and share feedback, teacher-
researcher collaboration are examples of common activities taking place in PLCs. For the
purpose of this work the concept of PLCs will be used to represent different kinds of school-
based teacher professional learning models.
Features of PLCs
It is widely recognized that, if well developed, PLCs can have impacts on the successful
implementation of educational reforms as well as changes in teachers’ practices and students’
learning (Avalos, 2011; Cheng & Wu, 2016; Song, 2012; Wong, 2012; Yan & He, 2011). In a
survey that involved 1611 teachers from thirty two (32) high schools in three cities of

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mainland China, Song (2012) found that well developed PLCs can help teachers to have
positive attitudes toward educational reforms, improve teachers’ feelings of empowerment
and willingness to change. Sustainable teacher change, however, does not come from
vacuum. Many researcher of PLCs at least agree on the fact that how well PLCs are designed
and the nature of context in which they take place greatly influence their effectiveness (Gu &
Wang, 2006; Huang & Bao, 2006; Vescio, Ross & Adams, 2016; Wong, 2010b; Wong & Tsui,
2007). Avalos (2011), for instance, has noted that educational policy environments and school
culture have a great deal of influence on the success of PLCs.
Research on what constitute successful and well developed Professional Learning
Communities (PLCs) has resulted to a shared understanding of the features of PLCs (Owen,
2014). From the synthesis of literature across cultures, Owen (2014) have identified shared
vision and values, Collegiality, joint practical activities and students’ learning data, teacher
inquiry and leadership support and opportunities as important features of PLCs. To be
precise, Owen summarizes the list as follows:
All of these researchers characterise teacher PLCs as explicitly or implicitly
being about shared values and vision, a focus on student learning, taking an
inquiry stance, making teaching more public, sharing experiences and expertise,
willingness to experiment with alternative strategies, and engaging in reflective
dialogue. Having collective responsibility for pupil learning, attending to school
teaching-learning challenges, and having inclusive membership and mutual
respect and support for teachers were other PLC characteristics identified by
most of these researchers (Owen, 2014, p. 58)
Shared vision and values
By shared vision and values means that successful collaboration in PLCs demands teachers’
“shared sense of purpose” (Song, 2012, p. 82) and working towards common goals. The main
goal has been the improvement of students’ outcomes (Song, 2012 &Wong, 2010b).
According to Song (2012), the focus on students’ learning is not only a goal of PLCs but also
a main feature of PLCs in a sense that the success of PLCs will be measured in terms of its
impacts on students’ learning.
Collaborative culture
Collaboration is another important feature of professional learning communities (PLCs)
where teachers are expected to work together in achieving common goals. Literature in
teacher professional development discusses the aspect of collaboration in terms of

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collaborative culture (Avalos, 2011; Owen, 2014; Wong, 2010a, 2012, 2014). In relation to
the idea of collaborative culture, Vangrieken, Meredith, Packer & Kyndt (2017) consider
“dynamics and group composition” (p. 54) as important aspect of collaborative cultures. They
argue that good interpersonal relationships among teachers and between teachers and
facilitators are a key to successful collaboration. Wang (2015, p. 908) has distinguished
“genuine collegiality” from “contrived collegiality” as important aspects of collaborative
culture. “Contrived collegiality” is characterized by too much compliance to administrative
orders and structures (Lee, Chalmers, Chandra, Yeh & Nason, 2014; Wang, 2015 & Zhang,
Yuan & Yu, 2016).Such administrative orders and structures, according to Wang (2015) tend
to be inflexible and sometimes unrelated to the context of teachers’ collaboration. One of the
impacts of contrived collegiality is that it results to fake collaboration for the sake of pleasing
higher authorities which, in turn, limits critical thinking and risk taking. On the other hand
genuine collaboration ensures some levels of autonomy of teachers in collaborative groups
which enable teachers to take risks and responsibility of their own decisions. Closely related
to genuine collaboration is the notion of teacher autonomy. Hargreaves, Berry, Lai, Leung,
Scott & Stobart (2013, p. 19) have argued that teacher autonomy “in terms of taking
initiatives, acting independently and making critical inquiries” is essential for the successful
PLCs. It is noted that autonomy enhances teachers’ self-confidence, collaborative spirits and
commitment to improving practices (Cheng & Wu, 2016 & Hargreaves, Berry, Lai, Leung,
Scott & Stobart, 2013).
Respect and trust constitute other aspects of collaborative culture. Respect and trust among
group members in very essential for successful collaboration. Vangrieken, Meredith, Packer
& Kyndt (2017) have argued that trust and respect influences members’ willingness to share
with others, listening to others and attitudes toward community itself. Respecting other
peoples’ points of view sets a good atmosphere for group members to interact in a free and
productive ways (Wang, 2015). As with contrived collegiality, cultures of disrespect and
mistrust hinder teachers’ willingness to take risks and be responsible for their own decisions.
Supportive leadership
Supportive leadership is very important in ensuring a culture that support PLCs (Owen, 2014;
Vangrieken, Meredith, Packer & Kyndt, 2017 & Wang, 2016). Along with other features,
Owen (2014) argues that supportive leadership in aspects of the establishment of structures
for friendly communication, enough meeting time, “socialization and support for new
teachers” and “teacher empowerment is very essential for the success of PLCs. Supportive

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leadership ensures that PLCs remain committed to their goals and values and enhances
collaboration culture. In their analysis of PLCs features, Vangrieken, Meredith, Packer &
Kyndt (2017) have considered leadership support both at the school level (school heads) and
group level (facilitators). They argue that support is needed from both levels and that mutual
understanding and respect between both levels should be maintained for successful PLCs.
Supportive leadership is also a key for improving teachers’ senses of autonomy since the
ways school leaders interact with teachers in relation to organizational structures affects
teachers’ autonomous perceptions.
Shared personal practice
“Shared personal practice” is an important feature of professional learning communities that
calls on teachers’ commitment to sharing of knowledge and experiences in collaborative ways
(Zang & Pang, 2016). It involve teachers learning together by observing each others’ lessons,
collective lesson preparations and solving other problems related to improving practice and
students’ learning (Cheng & Wu, 2016; Song, 2012; Wong, 2012 & Zhang &Pang, 2016).
Shared personal practice centers on students’ leaning and what teachers do depend on what is
planned in groups and/or group facilitators. For example, teachers may plan a lesson together,
teach the lesson by observing each other and then revise the lesson. Teachers also may
involve in discussions of students’ work and assessment data in order to device strategies for
improving students’ performance through changes in teaching practice. Referring it as
“shared knowledge”, Wong (2012, p. 348) argues that shared personal practice depend on
other features such as respect and trust, supportive leadership and collaborative culture.

Methodology
This paper uses document analysis method - “a systematic procedure for reviewing or
evaluating documents” with the purpose eliciting “meaning, gain understanding and develop
empirical knowledge” (Bowen, 2009, p. 27). The researcher used Beijing Normal University
(BNU) library database to search for materials used in this review. Key phrases such as
“teacher professional development in China”, “professional development in China”, “Teacher
professional learning communities”, “School-based professional learning in China” and
“Teacher professional learning communities in China” were used in a search that produced
more than 4690 materials including dissertations, book reviews, journal articles and books.
The researcher had decided to give priority to journal articles (empirical preferred over
theoretical) published over the past ten years (2006- 2017) because of the purpose of this

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study. The review started with a guiding theme “understanding teacher professional
development in China” to search documents. Either by reading titles, abstracts or whole a
paper, the researcher was able to select and read the first three articles that guided the
selection of other articles (majority (80%) on the subject of teacher professional learning
communities in China). As new data emerged, the researcher refined the themes and sub-
themes until the two research questions (1. What are the unique features of Chinese teacher
professional learning communities (PLCs) in relation to Western models? 2. What are the
challenges facing PLCs in China?) were selected as final questions. The final selection
resulted to thirty-one (30) journal articles and one (1) book review. The researcher used Note
taking and abstracting studies forms (see appendix) to review and take note on key aspects
such as titles, research problem, research questions or hypotheses, data collection procedure,
results, strength and weakness and implication for future research. The researcher used
“constant comparative method” (Charmaz, 2010, p. 188) to look for differences, similarities,
and patterns between categories and data followed by constant refinement and redefinition of
categories until final themes related to research questions were formed. The final themes
were the core features of well developed PLCs from a Western perspective. While being open
to other themes, the four core features of shared personal practice, collaborative culture,
leadership support and shared vision and values were then used as a framework for analyzing
data and organizing findings of this study. That being the case, the unique features of Chinese
PLCs in relation to Western models was judged against these four core features (while being
open to new features that may emerged) and the challenges for realizing these core PLCs
features in Chinese contexts were analyzed on the same basis.

Findings and discussion

PLCs in China and the West: Similarities, differences and patterns
While a significant attention of research on teacher professional learning communities
(PLCs) in the west is associated with the mid-1990s (Wong, 2015), China has had a long
history of school-based teacher professional learning dating back from the 1950s (Gu &
Wang , 2006; Wong, 2010b &Wong, 2012). Although there is still debate about their quality
and potential to influence teacher change, Wang (2015) has argued that school-based teacher
professional learning is even common in remote areas. Sargent &Hannum (2009) also
support the uniqueness of China in terms collaborative features of PLCs in remote areas by
arguing that they have penetrated even in rural and poorly resourced locations. Introduced

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from the Soviet Union in the 1950s (Wong, 2010a), these school-based learning, geared
toward improving teacher competency, have been traditionally referred as Teaching Research
Groups (TRGs, jiayanzu). TRGs, which are institutionalized in Chinese schools as party of
daily practices by teachers, are subject-based and have the duty to organize learning
activities on weekly basis in a “fixed timeslot” (Huang & Bao, 2006; Wong, 2010b, 2012, p.
350; Wong & Tsui, 2007 & Zhang & Pang, 2016). According to Wong (2010b), within each
subject’s TRGs there are Collective Lesson Preparation Groups (CLPGs, beikezu) organized
according to grade levels. TRGs organized activities such as collective lesson planning
meetings, open lessons (gongkaike) and lesson observation. The central focus in these
groups, according to Wong (2012), is subject-matter and pedagogical-content knowledge.
Outside sources such as university researchers and teacher educators are sometimes invited to
bring in their expertise. The goal is to make sure that TRGs are kept in track through updating
teachers with new theoretical knowledge thereby bridging the gap between theory and
practice.

The evolution of PLCs in China

Adoption of some ideas and models of PLCs from the West has been a tradition in China.
According to Huang & Bao (2006), learning and adoption of some features of PLCs from
Western countries had some influence on the development of an overarching educational
program called Action Education “xingdong jiaoyu”- a school-based professional learning
approach that combines teacher professional learning and teaching research (Gu & Wang,
2006 & Wong, 2010b, p. 135). Action education operates as a form of action research in
which bridging theory and practice is seen as a primary goal. Lessons from the Qingpu
experiment (1977-1992), in which school-based research in China proved to have positive
and substantial effects on teachers’ change of knowledge and beliefs, have influenced the
popularization and spread of different kind of school-based research models in China. For
example, the national conferences on the “Construction of School-based Research and
Learning System” that took place in Shanghai in 2003 resulted to the launching of large scale
school-based research projects throughout China (Gu & Wang, 2006, p. 72). Gu & Wang
(2006) has summarized action education as starting with the school or teachers inviting a
researcher(s) who will work with teachers to discuss subject topics and later consider a
specific lesson of their choice in order to improve teachers’ knowledge of educational theory.

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Teachers and researchers participate in observation and revisions of lessons where the revised
lessons will be re-observed and re-revised through discussions. The cycle is repeated until
targeted skills have been mastered. Action education is similar to TRGs with added research
component. According to Huang & Bao (2006, p. 280) action education is also implemented
through Keli (Exemplary Lesson Development) where teachers and researchers in groups
(Keli groups) involve in a process of “lesson planning, lesson delivery and post-reflection,
and lesson-re- delivery”. Generally, review of school-based teacher professional learning in
China can be summarized using the above process.
Appraisal system is other area that is unique in China. Throughout mainland China the
central government, provinces and districts, through appraisal systems, recognize efforts
made by teachers (individually and in collective groups) in such areas as teaching, teaching
research and caring (Zhang & Ng, 2011). The appraisal results affect how teachers are
rewarded, ranked and promoted. According to Zhang & Ng (2011), the 2011 Ministry of
Education guidelines on the Reform of Curriculum in Basic Education emphasizes that the
appraisal systems should enhance teacher development. Also appraisal system’s components
such as teaching, teaching research and rewards on collective efforts are consistent with PLCs
features such as collaborative culture, shared personal practice and shared vision and values.
While these centralized directives and guidelines embedded in the appraisal systems improve
teachers’ extrinsic motivation to improve practice, they may equally hinder teachers’
creativity and autonomy as has been suggested in Western literature (Sargent &Hannum,
2009).
Related to appraisal systems, is the production of publications that, according to Wong (2014)
have contributed to school-based teacher professional development through teachers’
improved knowledge base and practice. According to Wong (2014), and from the literature
reviewed, writing for publications constitutes a unique (compared to western context) aspect
of school-based teacher professional development in Chinese schools. Teachers are
encouraged to write essays and cases which help in the dissemination of teachers’ knowledge
and practice. Good publication records affect teachers’ promotions (Sargent &Hannum, 2009
& Wong, 2014). The disseminations of knowledge enhance the sharing of knowledge and
practices between schools throughout the country.
Like in other countries, government support and priorities in education affects the importance
teachers attach to professional development. (Deng, 2012) for example, has noted that
China’s less attention paid to special education have had impacts on special education

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teachers’ motivation and interests on professional development. This also has implication for
other teachers in general because China also implements inclusive education reforms. Less
attention being given to special education in PLCs in China (which the reviewed papers seem
to indicate) may imply that students with special needs may continue to lag behind if majors
are not taken. Deng (2012) noted that western countries such as the United States and United
Kingdom have comparatively succeeded in integrating issues of special and inclusive
education in PLCs.
Challenges facing PLCs in China
Research on the challenges of teacher professional learning communities (PLCs) in China has
come with mixed results. Many of the challenges relate to collaborative cultures. In a survey
that involved 200 colleges, primary and secondary school teachers (only 93 turned in) from
different provinces in China, Zhao (2010) noted that less attention was paid to professional
development of teachers partly due to scarce resources needed for carrying out PLC
activities. His findings also shed light on teachers’ perceptions of professional development
and involvement in school-based research projects. For example, 87% of teachers believed
that professional training as the only means to achieve professional development and only
38% were actually involving in school-based research projects. In a study of PLCs using a
survey that involved 100 primary school teachers from 32 administrative divisions in China,
Lee, Chalmers, Chandra, Yeh, & Nason (2014) found that most of the teachers had less
tendencies to make their own decisions instead they, most of the time, opted to follow orders
from higher authorities. Connected to this, is Chinese teachers inclinations “to obey and
respect authority” (Wong, 2012, p. 358) and avoid unnecessary conflicts (Zhang & Pang,
2016)
Zhang, Yuan & Yu (2016) reports challenges such as teachers’ passiveness reflected in
teachers’ reluctance to change, isolated professional culture where, for example, teachers are
not willing either to expose their weakness or being perceived as embarrassing others by
sharing knowledge and feedback. These tendencies reflect the challenge of contrived
collegiality (Hargreaves, Berry, Lai, Leung, Scott & Stobart, 2013; Owen, 2014 & Wang,
2015) where the excessive organizational structures, directives and guidelines can have
adverse impacts on teachers’ autonomy, creativity, innovation and productive risk taking.
These observations also support Zhang & Pang (2016) findings who conducted a survey with
175 participants (coupled with some follow up interviews) from seven schools in Shanghai.
Their findings indicate that, while school leaders encourage and support teachers’

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collaborative activities, excessive school administrative requirements hindered teachers’
creativity and innovation. Overall, they found that these schools were performing well in
terms of PLCs characteristics of “collaboration learning, professional competency, facilitative
leadership, structural support” and cultural factors (p.19).
These findings reveal the complexity nature of teacher change. For example, it is well
established in literature that teacher beliefs are resistant to change (Avalos, 2011; Gu &
Wang, 2006; Huang & Bao, 2006; Wong, 2012) making it very hard for teachers to learn new
information that is not consistent with their pre-conceived knowledge and beliefs. The bitter
truth is that for teachers to develop professionally they must be willing to change their
beliefs. For instance, the challenges to implement an “innovative curriculum” (Huang & Bao,
2006, p. 279) such as those in the National Mathematics Curriculum Standards (NMCS) and
the Chinese Ministry of Education (2010-2020) education reform, demand teachers’
willingness to change in beliefs and practices. These reforms emphasize pillars such as
developing students’ problem solving skills, innovation and creative tendencies (Huang &
Bao, 2006, Lee, Chalmers, Chandra, Yeh & Nason, 2014 & Wong, 2012). As in other parts in
the world, these reforms put teachers and school leaders on the pressure to teach in way that
are consistent with such pillars. However, teachers in China especially prior to 2000s were
used to more teacher-centered methods that are examination oriented (Wong, 2010a, 2012).
Basing from this understanding, teacher professional learning communities (PLCs) were seen
as convenient for achieving the objectives of skilling teachers with new approaches of
teaching (Song, 2012 & Wong, 2012). However, everything will depend on teachers’
willingness to change.
The review reveals exceptions for private, urban and high performing schools. In a qualitative
study (classroom observation, document review and in-depth interviews) that involved
twenty (20) respondents form two best-performing urban secondary schools in Northeast
China, Wang (2015) found that teacher learning communities in these schools practiced
genuine collegiality with visible culture of respect and mutual trust. Teachers expressed that
these PLCs contributed to the good performance of students in the schools. Also, in a study
that interviewed six (6) mathematics teachers from a private secondary school in Shanghai to
explore their views on their daily practice of school-based professional learning, Wong
(2010b) concluded that these teachers practiced very well the features of a “developing
PLCs” (shared goals and values, shared personal practice, collective inquiry, collaborative
culture, action experimentation) (p.133). These schools also do better in the aspect of

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supportive leadership. For example, in qualitative study that explored the link between
leadership and PLCs in two senior high schools in Northeast China, Wang (2015) found that
leaders had remarkable inclination toward the development and communication of shared
vision on part of school leaders.
These studies, however, do not suggest that urban schools in China do better in terms of
PLCs features compared to schools in rural areas. Chinese schools in rural and poorly
resourced areas have had a good record of school-based professional development partly
because Government’s efforts to institutionalize collaborative activities of teacher learning. In
a survey that compared PLCs practices in two cities (Shanghai and Mianyang) that are
significantly different in terms education, social, cultural and economic development,
surprisingly, Zhang & Pang (2016) found that schools Mianyang (a less developed city) had
more PLCs practices than those in Shanghai(a more developed city). This also appears to
support Sargent & Hannum (2009) findings in a survey that involved 646 teachers from 73
primary schools in 71 villages across Gansu. In this study Sargent & Hannum (2009) found
that schools in these rural and poor-resourced schools were practicing most of PLCs
activities. For example, 37% of teachers participated in peer lesson observation at least once a
week, 90% participated in the same activity once or twice a semester and 80% observed
exemplary lessons once or twice a semester. One would expect rural and poorly resourced
areas perform poorly in terms of PLCs but the case is different in China. According to
Sargent & Hannum (2009), this has been possible because of supportive school leadership,
government policy environments that supports teacher growth and self efforts by the teachers
themselves.
In relation to shared personal practice, Zhang, Yuan & Yu (2016) conducted a study using
interviews with six (6) leaders and twelve (12) teachers from three high schools in Shanghai
to explore their views on the challenges of PLCs and found that teachers and leaders had
differing views regarding the subject, except on the aspect of accountability policies. While
leaders mentioned external resources and financial constraints, teachers viewed limited
collaboration time as the main challenge of PLCs. All these challenges can have negative
impacts on shared personal practice feature of PLCs. For example, enough collaboration time
is needed for teachers to conduct classroom observations, collective lesson planning and
feedback meetings. According to Zhang, Yuan & Yu (2016), the challenge of collaboration
time is contributed by many factors including accountability policies that shift leaders’ and
teachers’ attention to competition on the basis of high stakes examinations. In the same study

clxxviii
leaders reported that schools in suburbs have less access to external support form university
researchers and educators hence lacking external expertise that would otherwise help in
improving professional development activities. However, the challenge of collaborative time
is not serous in China compared to the United States and the west in general. Sargent &
Hannum (2009) have concluded that Chinese schools have advantages compared to their
counterpart in the United States in terms of time, space and incentives for PLC activities.

Conclusion and recommendations

Overall, schools in China have made a tremendous progress in teacher Professional Learning
Communities (PLCs). Review from literature has shown that most schools, including those in
remote and poorly resourced locations participate in PLCs activities that embody PLCs
features of shared personal practice, collaborative culture, supportive leadership and shared
vision and values. These achievements are contributed by Chinese long history of school-
based teacher professional development, strong government support and commitments on the
part of teachers and school leaders. However, to add points on these achievements, the
researcher recommends that challenges such as excessive organizational guidelines and
requirements, teachers’ autonomy, and passive cultures will have to be worked out. Although
schools in rural areas have succeeded in integrating PLCs activities, more efforts are needed
to improve both financial and human resource contexts. This review has indicated that these
schools receive less support from external sources such as university researchers and teacher
educators. For equality to be fully realized, government efforts to improve rural education
should go hand in hand with the improvement of PLCs in these localities.

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596

Appendix
Taking Notes and Abstracting Studies

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Research Questions or Hypotheses:

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Data Collection Procedure:

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Results:
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Institution of International and Comparative Education

Beijing Normal University

clxxxiv
 Higher Vocational education reform : matching skills to markets in China

ID.No. 201739010028/PhD Student

August, 2018
Beijing, China
Introductions
The People’s Republic of China (hereafter “China”) is the world’s most populous country,
with a population of over 1.3 billion, covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometers.
In 1978, China was one of the poorest country in the world, although since the
implementation of economic reform and opening policies in 1978, China has become one of
the fastest-growing major economies (World Bank 2013). Nowadays, China is a upper
middle-income country. In 2010, it overtook Japan as the world’s second-largest economy
and overtook Germany as the world’s largest exporter, right next to U.S. (New York Times,
2010). This transition has major implications to China's educational system, particularly the
vocational education system. However, the fast economic and educational development did
not take place evenly. The living standard and educational level in rural areas and west China
still lags far behind the cities in the coastal region [but a number of people still live below
the domestic poverty line] (World Bank 2013).
Fastest growth has had a positive impact on poverty reduction, despite progress and economic
growth, inequalities and poverty persist in many parts of the world. Poverty is not merely
lack of money but lack of opportunities/choices to lead a full life. Too many people, in
particular women and disadvantaged groups, lack opportunities for skills development and

clxxxv
decent work (UNESCO, 2016). To respond to these challenges, many developing countries
including China are increasingly looking to education and training as an enabler for economic
growth and social well-being, as well as the one of the most effective ways to reduce poverty
(e.g., Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China [MoEPRC], 2000; Oketch et
al., 2009 & Atchoarena and Dullue, 2002).
As Samoff& Carrol, (2007) education is the developmental engine, the principal strategy for
eliminating poverty and closing to the gap between the most and least affluent countries.
Samoff& Carrol also stated that education is also the foundation for sustainable economic
development and modernization of a country. Without education, the future is dark for
mankind and the whole hope is a dream. Similarly, the most economists have a consensus
that the pace of economic and social development depends on its human resource rather than
its material resource (e.g., Mahmood, 2012). Anchored in human capital theory a vast number
of studies have shown that strong and robust economic growth and development will
necessarily have to rely on the country's human capital– education is the key factor in the
formation of human capital (e.g. Psacharopoulos, 1987; Keeley, 2007; Cohn & Gesk, 1990;
Schultz, 1981; Corazzini, 1967 and Miner, 1974). From studies of the development of the
American economy and the sources of growth of many countries around the world, it has
become evident that human capital—the skill of the population—plays a major role in the
productivity of nations. (Schultz, 1981), however, I heed with Tikly, (2013) argues that
human capital approaches emphasize the instrumental role of skills in relation to economic
growth they often lack a normative basis and do not take account of the environmental, social
or cultural dimensions of skills. The sustainable development approach, on the other hand,
has been in addressing some of these omissions through emphasizing the role of skills to
support economic, social and environmental sustainability (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2016).
Therefore, as exponents of sustainable development and of capability theory approaches also
argue, whilst economic growth is important it is not an end in itself and human-centered
development needs to be conceptualized more holistically than simply in terms of increases
in GDP and in a way that incorporates environmental, social and cultural factors (Sen, 1999)
and Nussbaum, 2000). Achieving an appropriate balance requires TVET to be located within
broader social, economic and labour market policies, and an expanded notion of citizenship
(Allais, 2011), which commits the international community to “Ensure inclusive and
equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (UNESCO,
2015: iii).

clxxxvi
Human capital theory distinguishes several types and means of education, among those:
primary, secondary, and higher levels education, informal education at home and at work,
different form of vocational education and training, on –the–job–training and cooperative
training (Cohn & Gesk, 1990; Schultz, 1981; Corazzini, 1967; Miner, 1974). However, global
financial institutions policies and a number of researches findings have shown that technical
and vocational education and training (TVET) is principally seen as an investment in human
capital and as a means for supporting economic growth (e.g. Tikly, 2013: 1). As
Psacharopoulos, (1987) has observed, general education creates general human capital and
technical and vocational education provides specific human capital. Similarly, strengthening
the importance TVET Sharma (2008) indicated education is considered as a key to
development whereas TVET is a master key because it has the ability to open all doors of the
lifelong learning, reduce unemployment and improve the quality of living. Furthermore, it
plays a crucial role in providing opportunities for people from all backgrounds, including
those who have been marginalised by the labour market (Oketch et al., 2009). In the same
way, TVET is an important part of the Chinese education system since economic reform and
opening policies TVET plays a significant role in the continuing growth of the Chinese
economy and human capital development. Chinese government policies also based on human
capital theories have sought to align vocational education with specific skills required for the
labour market (Heckman & Yi, 2012). However, the quick economic expansion has presented
new challenges and pressure on the vocational education system in China, which has turned
out to be barely able to catch up with the huge demand for better-skilled labor force. As a
result, the general quality of labor force is still low and the urbanization and industrialization
is accompanied with acute shortage for skilled workers (Dai, 1991).
In connection with above, in the dramatic transformation from planned economy to market-
oriented economy and new the booming industry and growing factory system puts great
pressure on the vocational education system in China to produce high skilful workers
(Cheung, 1996). Since then, Chinese central government frequently a wide range of reforms
have been introduced and implemented a radical expansion of higher vocational education in
response to the substantial increase in the demand for high-skill labor (Dai, 1991; Shi, &
Chen, 2012; Shi, 2012; Xinhua News Agency, 2014 & Stewart 2015), at the same time the
emphasis is on ensuring that vocational education qualifications are ‘relevant’ and prepare
people for the labour market (Shi, 2012). However, the several studies point out technical and
vocational education and training (TVET) in China, has not yet adequately responded in

clxxxvii
terms of skills supply (e.g. Klorer and Stepan, 2015; Shi, 2012; & Stewart 2015). Even if the
number of graduates from the country’s education system has rapidly expanded, but the
country’s education system has not produced enough graduates with requisite skills for
emerging industries, and employers find graduates poorly suited to new skills needs, leading
to the emergence of skills mismatch (Shi, & Chen, 2012; 2012; Shi 2012; MyCOS, 2014 &
Stewart 2015).
Skills mismatches have grown in China, at the same time, many vocational education
university graduates are having trouble finding any suitable jobs. Even those who managed to
find a job expressed their concerns of lack of job stability or satisfaction (Klorer and Stepan,
2015; OECD, 2012; & Stewart 2015) In supporting this, ILO, (2015) point out in both
developed and developing countries changing dynamics—economic, social, and
demographics—are creating a distinctive set of problems. Specifically, companies are failing
to find the high-skilled workers they need, while individuals find themselves ill-prepared for
the jobs that are available. The absence of a linkage between education and human capital
development makes it difficult for many people and their countries to realize their potential,
but closing skill gaps directly would improve productivity, employment, and enterprise
creation, whether in the formal or informal sector (Klorer and Stepan, 2015 & Stewart 2015).
Therefore, the aim of this study to examine the current constraints in the implementation of
the ongoing reform of the VET system: matching skills to job markets in China. Although
there is a lot of research on vocational education policy, strategies, implementations of
reform and invest in human capital in China, but have not fully addressed critical factors
which affect tertiary vocational education reform: matching skills to job markets in China
(e,g, Klorer and Stepan, 2015; Shi 2012; & Stewart 2015). This study, therefore, summarizes
previous investigations in order to enlighten the researchers on the state of current research
and find out the gap between existing researchers. So, as a whole, the study gives emphasis
on following review study question guided the inquiry: What are the critical factors that make
a mismatch between tertiary vocational education reform to the needs of the labour market?
This study may take away pressure that would help countries act more aggressively to link
their education and training system to current and future labor market needs and will
contribute for achieving sustainable development goals, and it is the subject of ‘Goal 4: "by
2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills,
including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship"
(UNESCO, 2015: iii). The study also will propose plausibly and concrete steps policymakers

clxxxviii
and educational leaders can take to address those challenges to ensure the VET system
prepares the human capital, which is necessary for the construction of a knowledge economy
as well as tackle poverty and unemployment.
Methodology
A desk review research approach was used to develop the in-depth analysis of factors that
affect of VET reform: matching skills to job markets in China. Silverman (2013) asserted that
desk review research approach means we collected, analyzed and synthesized information
available from the already published (secondary) sources – the internet is now the prime site
where documents are to be found. In light of this, the study utilized a targeted reviewed of
literature from a variety of references such as studies, research journals, electronic databases,
online newspapers, books, and articles, there are very few studies on the research topic
Title Searches, Articles, Research Documents, and Journals
Over 74 references were obtained from
 Websites, such as Pro-Quest, ERIC, Jstor, Taylor & Francis, Springer and others
 China government databases and websites, such as the Ministry of Education and
different government office websites;
 Other university and research centre websites, such as Beijing Normal University,
OECD, World Bank, Worldometers, UNESCO, and International Labour Office
(ILO), and others.

The Ministry of Education study from 1974 to 2016 were the main sources of information as
these organizations are responsible for the overall China VET system as well as VET reform:
matching skills to job markets by conducting research, providing guidelines, policies, legal
frameworks, labour market skills, etc. In a similar vein, OECD, World Bank, International
Labour Organization and UNESCO working global by providing financial support,
guidelines, report, manual, studies, etc. in all kinds of vocational training and labour market
skills.
The initial searches yielded 94 kinds of literature, with 20 excluded because of duplicate titles
and articles that were clearly outside the scope of this review. The remaining 74 kinds of
literature reviewed to identify challenges that affect HVE reform: matching skills to job
markets in China. The search keywords used are HVE reform, mismatching skills,
unemployment and employment skills, job market and TVET graduate skills, research
method, human capital development, and others from 1974 to 2016. I was analyzed and

clxxxix
synthesized/ summarizes the remaining 74 kinds of literature documents qualitatively in order
to enlighten the researchers on the state of current research and find out the gap between
existing researchers. By analyzing current situations, the study attempts to give constructive
suggestions on effective reform and sound development of China's vocational education.

Result
Overview of TVET System in China
As noted above, in 1978, China was one of the world’s poorest countries. In the last 30 years,
under its policy of opening up to the outside world, carrying out reforms and developing a
socialist market economy, China has made great advances in economic and social
development, and in people’s standards of living. In 2010, it overtook Japan as the world’s
second-largest economy and overtook Germany as the world’s largest exporter (World Bank,
2013). China’s economic rise is the stuff of countless newspaper articles. What is much less
well-known is that its educational growth has been equally spectacular. At the founding of the
People’s Republic of China in 1949, more than 80 percent of the population was illiterate
(Guo and Lamb 2010), but from the start of Deng Xiaoping’s “opening up and reform” or
“open door” policies, education has been a major focus (Dai, 1991; Topic Research Group,
1991). However, the fast economic and educational development did not take place evenly.
The living standard and educational level in rural areas and west China still lag far behind the
cities in the coastal region (Stewart 2015). China's education system, including multi-level
general education, vocational education and training system [VET], adult and continuing
education and special education (Klorer and Stepan, 2015; & Stewart 2015). However, VET
has been given more attention in the past years due to the crucial impact it has on enhancing
national employment and on training a qualified labour force than necessary to boost the
Chinese economy (Cheung, 1996). In China, VET is divided into three streams which take
place junior secondary, senior secondary and tertiary (China’s Vocational Education Law,
1996). It providing various programs such as pre-employment programs, job transfer
programs, apprenticeship programs, on-the-job training programs, and certificate programs
(China’s Vocational Education Law, 1996). However, this paper only focuses on the pre-
employment programs at tertiary/ higher vocational education.
Higher Vocational Education In China
As noted above, following the former leader Deng Xiaoping inspiration said, “Education

cxc
should be oriented towards modernization, the world and the future” and the booming
industry and growing factory system puts great pressure on the vocational education system
in China to produce high skillful workers (Cheung, 1996), frequently a wide range of reforms
have been introduced and implemented a radical expansion of higher vocational education
[HVE] in response to the substantial increase in the demand for high-skill labor (Dai, 1991;
Shi, & Chen, 2012 & Stewart 2015). Analysis and discussion of this section are unfolded
within a time frame of Xiong’s (2010) four historical stages of the development of higher
vocational education.
Stage one: 1980–1995, early exploration of HVE [higher vocational education]. At the
beginning of 1980, the first higher vocational education/ vocational University, but developed
mainly from the mid-1990s onward. According to UNESCO’s (2012) International Standard
Classification of Education (ISCED) 1997, higher vocational education is located at the
junior stage of post-secondary education (Level 5B) with programs focuses on the
preparation of specific occupational specific skills, rather than directly leading to advanced
research qualifications such as degrees. In China, public higher vocational education is the
major component of higher vocational education and comprises of various organizational
forms (Guo and Lamb 2010).
Stage two: 1996–1999, legislation for HVE. Vocational Education Law of the People ' s
Republic of China was approved and issued by the NPC in 1996. Which meant that the
higher vocational technical education became part of China’s education system by law. In
1996, the central education authority began to play a greater role in regulating the
management of higher vocational education institutions (Xue, 2001). In the National Meeting
of Educational Work in 1999, CPC Central Committee claimed that we need to strengthen the
development of higher vocational education ─ the government has adopted a series of
policies and measures to both further expand VET and try to improve its quality (Shi 2012).
After that, China’s HVE entered a historical stage of prosperity (Stewart 2015).
Stage three: 2000–2005, the rapid growth of HVE and Stage four: 2006–2007,
restructuring of HVE (Xiong’s 2010, p. ii). Following vocational Education Law In 1998
the Ministry of Education (MOE) issued a new policy to expand higher vocational education
beyond the vocational universities. Due to this, the tertiary/ higher vocational education
mainly delivered through vocational universities, colleges, or other higher institutions. Some
general universities or colleges also offered vocational training programs (Velde, 2009). Since
the implementation of the reform and development of higher education have made significant

cxci
achievements. Despite this, there were too many single disciplinary higher education and
professional higher education, With the establishment of disciplines over-lapped, the
efficiency and relevance of some HVE fell very low which in return hampered the
improvement of education quality. From 1998 to 2002, the number of the HVE institute was
reduced due to the reorganization of the higher education structure. Some HVE institutes
were merged into other regular institutions. Yet the enrollment has continued to grow (MOE,
2000). For example, in 1996, the gross enrollment rate of higher education in China
accounted for 6% of the total people. In 2002, it reached 15% of the total which was the
percentage reflects the critical point of elite education and popular education. What’s more, in
2005, it increased to 21 %. The average annual growth rate of it was 1.5% in a decade (Chen
& Guo, 2006).
Differentiating and appearing of higher vocational institutions (2006-to date). There are four
types of higher VET institutions: (a) Vocational technical colleges or polytechnic colleges
provide two- or three-year diploma courses; (b) Specialized junior colleges provide two- or
three-year diploma courses, mainly for capacity building rather than technical training; (c)
Technician colleges provide two or three-year certificate courses for state technician licenses;
(d) Adult higher educational institutions provide full-time and part-time certificate courses for
knowledge enrichment and self-improvement (Guo and Lamb 2010). There have been some
successes in reforming and improving the quality of vocational education institutions, yet
quality & skills shortage problems still remain (Stewart 2015). These issues highlight the
urgent need to transform TVET systems and processes to increase their effectiveness in
providing students with the knowledge, skills and competencies required for the rapidly
changing world of work.
Issues and Challenges in Developing HVE in China
Before the 1990s the focus in global development agenda and in national policies and plans
has been on creating more access to TVET. Since 1990, however, the issue of improving the
quality and relevance of education and training has been increasingly recognized globally as
an indispensable means for achieving sustainable development and TVET responsiveness to
the current and future the skills demands of the labour market (King, 2009, Tarabini, 2010).
As part of the international move towards the quality and relevance of education and training,
the Government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from 1996 to the present, the
Chinese government has adopted a series of policies and measures to both further expand

cxcii
HVE and try to improve its quality (Shi 2012; Xinhua News Agency. 2014). For example, in
2009, the policy Notice of Accelerating Higher Vocational Education Reform and Facilitating
Graduate Employment at Vocational and Technical Colleges was issued (Ministry of
Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2009), in 2010 PRC emphasizes in the National
Long-Term Strategy on Education Reform and Development, 2010–2020 it reflects an
important paradigm shift of recent years which places quality and relevance of TVET as its
priority (China Development Gateway, 2011; Xinhua News Agency. 2014). Despite these
positive indications, still, the higher vocational education graduates in China have been
reported to be poorly prepared for work in recent years. This has implications on the
relevance of higher vocational education, the employability and productivity of higher
vocational education graduates. One of the reasons suggested for this condition by previous
studies was skill mismatch ─ it means there is a difference between the skills acquired by
students in higher vocational education and the actual skills required in the labor market, due
to this many HVE graduates are having trouble finding jobs and some unemployment (e.g.
Klorer and Stepan, 2015; Li & Wang, 2015; Pellizzari, and Fichen, 2013 & Stewart 2015;
MyCOS, 2014).
Moreover, a failure to link the skills taught in TVET to those required in the labour market
has long-term implications, not only for learners’ transitions but also for countries’ economic
competitiveness (Sun, 2012 & ILO, 2015). According to Stewart (2015, p. 34) "it is estimated
that 30 per cent of Chinese products cannot pass quality tests. Many advanced equipment
lines can’t operate at full capacity due to lack of qualified technicians or maintenance
workers. In fact, “Made in China” has become almost synonymous with the low quality
compared with “Made in Japan, Korea or Germany". This distortion, manifested as the
discrepancy between supply and demand for labour ultimately results in decreasing relevance
of labour and inadequate use of the most important manufacturing factor. The economy thus
faces the problem of inefficient utilization of its fundamental resource – human capital.
Finally, such situation disrupts a long-term trend of GDP and overall economic growth (ILO,
2015).
On the other hand, many employers report difficulties in finding suitably skilled workers. For
example, 65 per of employers cent in Hong Kong report difficulties finding adequately
skilled workers to fill job vacancies (Manpower Group, 2015), the American Chamber of
Commerce in China (AmCham), in its 2014 16th annual Business Climate Survey said that
human resources are the biggest challenge to American businesses operating in China. In the

cxciii
same way, as AHK Business Confidence Survey 2015 also mentioned that the skills shortage
is one of the biggest challenges for German companies in China.
What is the reason for the shortage of highly skilled talents and skills
mismatch in China?
A lot of literature has illustrated analysis on the reason and countermeasures of the shortage
of highly skilled talents and skills mismatch in China. For example, Lingyan Hua (2011) &
Xiaohua Wang (2012) point out that influence factors of high skill talent shortage are the
main social concept, personal, enterprise short-sighted, HVE institute and the market
dislocation, national and economic development. However, as discussed below the present
study also found many factors for shortage of high skilled talents and skills mismatch in
China, but mainly seven such as effects of globalization, demographic change, curriculum,
inadequate qualified teacher, poor connections with industry, expanding quickly in an
unbalanced manner, and poor perception & recognition of HVE. The outcome can negatively
affect labour market outcomes, worker productivity, enterprise competitiveness and economic
growth.
Effects of Globalization.
Salmi (2009) described globalization as a complex integration of capital, technology, and
information across national borders. Workforces in the labour market are becoming more and
more competitive in the global economy. Investments in human capital development are
therefore needed to prepare workers for their new role in a technologically advancing and
progressively knowledge-based economy. As a number of studies show that the Chinese
Government has recently implemented policies to address key constraints that prevent TVET
institutions from adapting to technological change and integrating ICT in teaching and
learning ( e.g. Li-Kai, Mourshed and Grant, 2013 & Stewart 2015). Despite these positive
indications, some challenges remain ─ different provinces are currently at very different
stages in terms of their adoption of new technologies and the rapid change of technology is an
obstacle for updating TVET according to new labour market needs because of employers’
adoption of new technologies/work models has generated new skills needs (Yang & Yan,
2012). As Hinchcliff (2000) indicated that the impacts of globalization enhance the
challenges for vocational education and training systems. The evidence presented in this
section suggests that Chinese Government may require support to transform their TVET
systems and processes in line with the speed of rapidly changing technologies to new labour

cxciv
market needs.
Poor connections with industry/ Stakeholders
TVET responsiveness to the current and future the skills demands of the industry it is key
engaging the involvement of the private sector [trade unions, industry or company] partners
in planning/designing and implementing TVET policies, strategies and programmes (Smith,
2000). Similarly, China’s government has made significant progress in encouraging inter-
ministerial coordination and very few the private sector partnerships in TVET planning and
activities. For example, in 2013, the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of
China decided to accelerate the construction of modern vocational education system, deepen
the integration between industry and education, and strengthen cooperation between
enterprises and higher vocational education, in order to train high-quality labour force and
skilled talents. In 2014, the State Council and relevant ministries respectively issued the
Decision on Accelerating the Development of Modern Vocational Education and the Planning
for Building Modern Vocational Education System (2014-2020), which set forth the strategies
of building the framework and overall structure for a demand-based and integrated vocational
education system. Despite these positive indications, there are still challenges such as low
trade union involvement in TVET planning, design or implementation (Stewart 2015). Due to
this many students may never have the chance to obtain substantial hands-on training in a
real or simulated workplace environment (Comyn, 2007; Li & Wang, 2015; Pellizzari, and
Fichen, 2013)
Some of the studies also show that companies do not have much influence over course
content, some employers are sometimes excluded by the government and other employers are
often too busy and/ or not interested in participating in TVET systems and activities.
Insufficient planning to meet the labour-market needs (e.g. Stewart 2015 & Klorer and
Stepan, 2015). For this reason, the system lacks the flexibility needed to react to short-term
changing economic requirements. In light of the dramatic changes in economic structures,
China needs exactly this adaptability (Sun, 2012). However, international experience shows
that broad, well-designed and effectively coordinated partnerships are key to expanding the
capacity and improving the quality and relevance of TVET training (Marope, et al., 2015).
Therefore, increasing HVE responsiveness to current and future skills needs by engaging
private sector partners in planning/designing HVE policies and programmes; gathering
information on the current/future skills needs of employers and updating HVE training in line
with the findings, and offering training in line with occupational standards and/or

cxcv
competencies agreed with employers.
The curriculum design of HVE programs is narrow
Vocational education cannot contribute to developing individuals’ and society’s capacity
without it itself having the capacity to do so. This requires an appropriate curriculum and the
pedagogy and the resources to support high-quality teaching and learning (Gamble, 2013). In
China, many of the HVE programs that has focused primarily on the entry-level skills
students need for their first job and did not provide the depth and breadth of skills that would
be needed to move up in a career (e.g. Li & Wang, 2015; Stewart 2015) ─ a narrow, skills-
focused curriculum which has been widely criticised for not inducting students into the
knowledge and skills they need for citizenship or for work (Hall and Soskice, 2001; K.
Clarke, 2012; Wolf, 2011). Further, some studies show that curriculum development does not
design with the most advanced companies or leading edges of the economy in mind (e.g.
Xiong, 2010; InWEnt-Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung gGmbH, 2015). If the
skill demands of the industry are not taken into account in the HVE curricula, without quality
training standards, the trainees are not trained according to the requisite skills for the job
market (Ericsson, 2007), resulting in graduates with irrelevant skills and qualifications, which
make it difficult for them to find work (Ahmed and Rahman, 2013). Therefore, this paper
argue that HVE can prepare individuals for their careers within vocational streams which are
broad fields of practice rather than specific jobs, and to provide them with the knowledge and
skills they need to contribute to their field of practice, and to their families and communities
(Buchanan, Yu, Marginson and Wheelahan, 2009; Wheelahan, Buchanan and Yu, 2015)
Inadequate qualified teacher
Lastly, it is widely acknowledged that one of the key factors that contribute to poor-quality
learning and training [a failure to link the skills taught in TVET to those required in the
labour market] include teachers with inadequate qualification (UNESCO, 2012). As several
research findings have shown that most higher HVE teachers or trainers in China lack of
direct contact with industries and job market which does not enable them to keep up-to-date
their knowledge with the transforming market, technical and scientific advances in industry
for providing teaching relevant to the employment market (Stewart 2015; Li & Wang, 2015).
This is a result of a training system that long emphasized theoretical knowledge [often not
aligned with modern technology requirements], disregarding the importance of practical
skills and appreciation of the world of work (Xiong, 2010). A key argument here is that
developing strong and responsive vocational education requires well-resourced teachers who

cxcvi
are appropriately qualified teachers with enough time to devote to their students’ and their
own development [spend time in industry to update their practical work-related knowledge],
and facilities in which they and their students can work (ILO, 2015), as well as to find ways
of hiring a higher proportion of faculty with industry backgrounds.
Weak monitoring & evaluation
The monitoring and evaluation process is the main requirement to respond to the needs of the
job market. It is a process of informing policymakers about the strengths, weaknesses, and
suitability of a policy in HVE. It is a mechanism for notifying the HVE provider what is
necessary to provide a high-quality program, improving programs implementation,
identifying gaps, and measuring the effectiveness of training (Necesito, Santos & Fulgar,
2010). However, a number of HVE institutions in China seldom track the employment
destination of their graduates (Stewart 2015; UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2016a). Consequently, the
HVE institutions have not taken advantage feedback from past trainees on the quality of the
training they have received to improve their curricula and training packages. To sum up, the
implementation of outcome evaluation and tracer studies that can improve the market
responsiveness of training programs is still lacking (Pellizzari, and Fichen, 2013; Li & Wang,
2015 & InWEnt-Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung gGmbH, 2015). Therefore,
this is one of the causes of non-targeted skills development and loss of money which leads to
unemployment. This may be taken as a challenge for the HVE system of the country in
equipping youth with adaptive match skills for employment.
Poor perception & recognition of TVET
Several studies implied that TVET has been regarded as lower to academic education in
many countries. In the same way, in China, the influence of Confucianism and elite education
tradition, the status of vocational education is still regarded as inferior to the general college-
bound schooling (Munch & Risler, 1987). Velde, (2009) in his study point out that even at
the higher education level, vocational colleges were also perceived negatively and worthless
compared with academic universities and colleges. Many did not consider the HVE as higher
education since the traditional expectation was that higher education would lead to
advancement into higher official ranks (Stewart 2015 & Zhao & Lu, 2007, p. 56). Due to this,
HVE-based qualifications and careers are poorly perceived and recognized in any
workplaces. Some study also demonstrates that the perception by the public and by parents
especially, is that HVE programs are terminal and are not providing enough vertical mobility
for the graduates to progress. It is widely held that only those students who enter academic

cxcvii
universities can be called intelligent and successful; and vocational education is merely
perceived as the "dumping ground" for the unintelligent instead of an alternative path other
than academic universities to pursue ones' interest and value (Velde, 2009). This can be
largely ascribed to the bad reputation of vocational training in China due to this, both pupils
and parents continue to prefer university education to vocational education. As a result of that
shortage of high skilled talents in China from vocational steam (Stewart 2015; MyCOS, 2014
& Klorer and Stepan, 2015).
Geographical Changes
Vocational education’s employment purpose includes awarding qualifications which are well
recognized in the formal economy. This can support graduates’ movement from informal to
formal employment, from rural to urban areas and from one region to another. Marope,
Chakroun and Holmes (2015: 17) argue that this movement is important because
demographic change and different changes in employment demand results in geographic
mismatches between the supply and demand for skilled labour. Correspondingly, in China,
many rural workers were travelling to urban areas for employment opportunities. Jobs in
urban areas continue to be appealing because they often provide more benefits than rural
jobs. Urban workers are often provided with more mandatory benefits, and employers have
less latitude in determining wages, which are regulated by the state (Li, al et., 2015)
On the other hand, the HVE expansion is not balanced across regions. Higher vocational
education mainly enrolls graduates from general high schools and secondary vocational
schools, but as a number of researches shows that usually, vocational education institutes
could only recruit those students with the lowest grades. Higher vocational education sectors
were mainly established in the urban area where the industrialization and economics are more
developed than the rural area. As a result, the proportion of students in tertiary education who
are enrolled in vocational institutions varies substantially across provinces ( e.g. Velde, 2009).
For example, in 2010, the gross tertiary education enrollment rates in Shanghai, Beijing and
Tianjin had exceeded 59%, while the number for Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi was lower
than 20%. This is a clear indication of unbalanced higher education expansion and regional
differentiation which leads as Heckman & Yi, (2012) stated that rich provinces tend to
produce more human capital per capita than poor provinces, particularly hard hit in rural
areas and those in the West. In general, a region’s attractiveness to high-skill workers is
correlated with its economic structure and level of development. Compared with the eastern
provinces, skills are in particularly short supply in western China. Firms located in provinces

cxcviii
with a lower level of GDP per capita or with a smaller service sector as a proportion of GDP
tend to find it more difficult to find high-skill workers (Li, al et., 2015; Stewart 2015; Klorer
and Stepan, 2015).
Conclusion
Following the former leader Deng Xiaoping inspiration said, “Education should be oriented
towards modernization, the world and the future” and the booming industry and growing
factory system puts great pressure on the vocational education system in China to produce
high skillful workers, the Government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) frequently a
wide range of reforms have been introduced and implemented a radical expansion of higher
vocational education [HVE] from 1980 in response to the substantial increase in the demand
for high-skill labor. Despite these positive indications, still, there is a shortage of highly
skilled talents and skills mismatch in China due to the effects of globalization, demographic
change, curriculum, inadequate qualified teacher, weak monitoring & evaluation, poor
connections with industry, expanding quickly in an unbalanced manner, and poor perception
& recognition of HVE. As result of this, many college graduates are having trouble finding
jobs; the increase in college graduates has outpaced the growth in jobs requiring college
degrees. A failure to link the skills taught in TVET to those required in the labour market has
long-term implications, not only for learners’ transitions but also for countries’ economic
competitiveness and many employers report difficulties in finding suitably skilled workers.
Therefore, these issues highlight that the Government of the People’s Republic of China
(PRC) the urgent need to transform TVET systems and processes to increase their
effectiveness in providing students with the knowledge, skills and competencies required for
the rapidly changing world of work.
HVE cannot contribute to developing individuals’ and society’s capacity without it itself
having the capacity to do so. This requires appropriate curricula and teaching methods and
resources to support high-quality teaching and learning. These resources include
appropriately qualified teachers who have sufficient time to invest in their students and their
own development, as well as the facilities they and their students can work with. In additions
to this, vocational education particularly needs to collaborate and coordinate with other
sectors to facilitate vocational education and work responding to their changing conditions,
and to contribute to active labour market policies. Its interconnectedness to the labour market
and broader social and economic policies, the role of social partners, how it is delivered, and
the types of institutions that are needed to support it

cxcix
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Factors underlying the demand for private tutoring: A

case study of China

Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, China

Email: bayezid1984@gmail.com

1. Introduction

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Private tutoring, widely known as shadow education, has emerged as a parallel to the formal
schooling around the world (Baker et al., 2001; Bray, 1999). The term ‘‘shadow education’’
or ‘‘private tutoring’’ can be defined as informal learning activities that provides extra lessons
in academic subjects with additional fees before or after school hours to enhance the students’
formal school career (Stevenson & Baker, 1992; Bray, 1999; Baker & LeTendre, 2005; Silova
et al., 2006; Baker et al., 2001). Shadow education is familiar with different names in
different settings like ‘Juku’ in Japan (Dierkes, 2010; Cook, 2013; Matsuoka, 2015),
‘hakwon’ in Korea and ‘buxiban’ in Taiwan (Dawson, 2010; Kim & Park, 2010).
Private tutoring has been globally expanded over the past few decades (Foondun, 2002;
Bray, 2009; Dang & Rogers, 2008; Silova, 2010; Dawson, 2010). Private tutoring is not only
found in deep-rooted examination oriented Asian settings, but also in Western contexts as
they increasingly focus on high-stakes assessments. Although private tutoring is visible
around the globe, but it has become more prevalent in East Asian societies like Japan, Korea,
Singapore, Malaysia, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (Baker et al.,2001; Zhan et
al., 2013; Bray, 1999, 2003).
Leading international studies indicated that private tutoring has both positive and
negative implications on education, society and culture (Bray, 2007; Foondun, 2002; Nath,
2008). The purpose behind using private tutoring is to enhance students’ academic
achievement (e.g. Bray, 1999; Dang & Rogers, 2008) and their future career (Bray, 1999).
However, the dramatic use of private tutoring causing several problems such as heavy
financial burden to parents, students’ low engagement in classroom teaching, students’
overwhelming workloads, their dependency on shadow education (Lee, 2005), negative
impact on public schooling, and the educational inequality (Baker et al., 2001; Bray, 2009).
Private tutoring has been scholarly studied since the early 1990s (Bray, 2010; Mori &
Baker, 2010; Stevenson & Baker, 1992; Bray et al., 2015) due to the significant growth of
related practices as well as the high implications of education and economy (Dang & Rogers,
2008: Bray, 2009). However, the nature of private tutoring is different in different settings.
Despite long history of private tutoring consumption, the factors affected private tutoring has
scarcely been studied from the context of China.
In China, private tutoring is being practiced at an alarming scale with huge beneficial
and negative impacts. Private tutoring has positive correlation with students’ academic
achievement. At the same time, the practices of private tutoring disrupt the formal schooling,
create social inequalities, increase economic burden of parents, and deprive students of their

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recreation time, creates overwhelming workloads for the students and ethically weaken the
teaching professionalism. In China, shadow education has emerged as a tension between
mainstream schooling and policymakers as well. Therefore, prior to formulating policy
measures to reduce the consumption of private tutoring, it is highly needed to identify the
factors affecting the demand for private tutoring.

2. Literature Review
The determinants of private tutoring differ from one context to another. The prior studies
identified key factors that influence the demand for private tutoring. These factors can be
categorized into four different levels- individual, family, school, and societal.

2.1 Student-level factors

The student factors underlying the demand for private tutoring are gender, age, grade level,
immigrant status, educational motivation, and other scholastic characteristics (Bray, 1999;
Dang, 2007). Student’s gender significantly influences on the demand for private tutoring.
Stevenson & Baker (1992) showed that Japanese male students have the highest participation
rate in tutoring than the female students. Buchmann et al. (2010), by contrast, found that
female students showed a significantly higher demand for private tutoring than their male
counterparts in United States. However, Hamid et al., (2009) in Bangladesh didn’t find any
significant differences between male and female students on demand for private tutoring.
Prior studies reveled that tutoring demand are closely related to the students’ grade level.
Especially, the tutoring participation is significantly increased during grade level transition.
The third-year middle school students in Japan are more likely to participate in private
tutoring, because they need to prepare themselves for high school entrance examination
(Mori & Baker, 2010). The students of diploma-granting years have a significantly higher
likelihood of using private tutoring in Vietnam (Dang, 2007). By contrast, the influence of
grade levels on tutoring demand does not appear in some settings, such as Kenya (Buchmann,
2002). Some scholars identified students’ age as determinant of private tutoring. Students’
age had significant positive effect on the probability of receiving private tutoring in Egypt
(Elbadawy et al., 2007).
Peer effects is one of the drivers of demand for private tutoring (Baker et al., 2001; Bray
& Kwok, 2003). Students who receiving private tutoring can attract their peer attention who
do not receive it (Baker et al., 2001). Under peer pressure, parents feel that if they don’t

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arrange tutoring facilities for their children, they will be left behind from the process of
socialization and learning (Bray & Kwok, 2003). Hence, the parents purchase private tutoring
so that their children can acquire higher education and finally climb up the social ladder after
graduation (Kwok, 2004).
Students’ academic achievement also determine the demand for private tutoring. Private
tutoring is considered either for remedial or enrichment purposes. The lower-achieving
students used private tutoring as a remedial strategy in many countries (Baker et al., 2001).
On the other hand, the high academic performers who aimed to supplement their learning and
skills used private tutoring as an enriching strategy (Baker & LeTendre, 2005). Higher-
achieving students preferred and received private tutoring in many East Asian societies like
Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong (Bray & Kwok, 2003; Stevenson & Baker, 1992), while lower-
achieving students in certain contexts, especially in the United States. Sung & Kim (2010)
didn’t find any positive correlation between private tutoring and academic achievement rather
they observed a negative influence.

2.2 Family-level factors

The parental factors are more dominant in determining the demand for private tutoring
(Bregvadze & Jokić, 2013). Prior studies identified key parental factors such as parental
occupation, education (Stevenson & Baker, 1999), income (Dang & Rogers, 2008), family
structure (Kwok, 2004), number of siblings (Kim & Lee, 2010; Dang, 2007), location,
ethnicity (Mahmud, 2016), and the family size (Castro & Guzman, 2010; Liu, 2012).
Parent’s socioeconomic status (SES) typically include occupation, education, and
income. Several studies revealed that parent’s SES background is significantly and positively
correlated with students’ use of private tutoring (Stevenson & Baker, 1999; Southgate, 2009).
The students from higher-SES families have the highest probability of receiving private
tutoring (Bray & Kwok, 2003).
The educational background might affect the demand for private tutoring (Xue & Ding,
2009; Kenayathulla, 2013; Tansel & Bircan, 2006). Davies (2004) claimed that parents with
higher level of education are more likely to purchase private tutoring for their children in
Canada. It is also found that parental education level positively impacted on the demand for
private tutoring among the students in China (Liu & Bray, 2017), and South Korea (Park &
Sang, 2013).
Some researchers found a positive correlation between family income and the

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probability of receiving private tutoring (Bray et al., 2014; Dang & Rogers, 2008). Jo & Lee
(2005) claimed that students from high-income families consume greater amounts of private
tutoring than those from low-income families in Korea.
Limited studies (e.g. Xu, 2012; Kim & Lee, 2010; Zhu, 2012) examined the factor of
parental occupation. Kim & Lee (2010) and Zhu (2012) didn’t found any significant
correlation between the parental occupation and the demand for private tutoring. By contrast,
Xu (2012) showed that children whose parents were civil servants or teachers are more likely
to purchase private tutoring than the children of rural migrant workers in Shanghai.
Besides SES background, parental attitude is another important driver that pushes them
towards private tutoring. The parents those are anxious and concern about their children’s
social mobility are more likely to purchase private tutoring (Aurini & Davies, 2013). In
Chinese context, Chu (2009) examined the influence of parental attitude on the demand of
private tutoring. He found that parents invest in private tutoring as it can meet their
expectations and satisfaction on children’s academic achievement. Park (2012) clearly
showed that Korean mothers are highly dependent on private tutoring because of their
dissatisfaction with mainstream schooling.
The another two factors such as parental ‘‘role-construction’’ and ‘‘self-efficacy’’
contribute in determining the demand for private tutoring. Parents who plays active role-
construction for children’s education may receive more tutoring (Kazimzade & Jokić, 2013).
Seeking private tutoring is considered by many Canadian parents as a strategy of ‘‘intensive
parenting’’ (Davies, 2004). Due to the same reason, a section of the Chinese parents are more
likely to seek private tutoring for their children. Many Honk Kong parents are pushed to
purchase private tutoring because of their low self-efficacy as they have no adequate time and
ability (Bray & Kobakhidze, 2015).
Other parental factors include family size and structure, number of siblings, and the
location. Several studies reveled that the family structure effects on the tutoring expenditures
per head (Kwok, 2004; Dang & Rogers, 2009; Castro & Guzman, 2010; Liu, 2012). Bray &
Kwok (2003) argued that the nuclear families had higher probabilities of taking private
tutoring than others. The studies found a negative relationship between the number of sibling
in household and private tutoring expenditures (Kim & Lee, 2010; Tansel & Bircan, 2006;
Dang, 2007). Tansel & Bircan (2006) confirmed that when the number of siblings increased,
the parents expenditures on private tutoring reduced in Turkey. Similarly, Byun (2010) and
Kim & Lee (2001) showed that the number of siblings negatively affected the private tutoring

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expenditures in Korea. Bray et.al. (2014) indicated that the parents of single-child spent more
on private tutoring than the parents of two-child (Bray et.al., 2014). Jelani & Tan (2012)
observed no significant relationship between the number of sibling and private tutoring
participation. Whether parents reside in urban or rural area is also determinant of private
tutoring. Tansel & Fatma (2006) showed that urban households are more likely to invest in
private tutoring in Turkey. Korean researchers have also found the similar patterns in their
country (Kim, 2004; Kim & Lee, 2010). They claimed that urban parents have a higher
probability of spending in private tutoring than the rural parents. Stevenson & Baker (1992)
found similar trend in Japan.
Family ethnicity is generally a significant factor influencing the private tutoring
participation. Mahmud (2016) claimed that Bengali majority families purchase more tutoring
than the ethnic minorities in Bangladesh. In Malaysian context, by contrast, Chinese
minorities families receive a higher percentage of tutoring compared to the Malays and
Indians (Bray & Lykins, 2012). The ethnicity differences factors also reported in Sri Lanka
(Pallegedera, 2011), and Vietnam (Dang, 2008; Bray et al., 2014).

2.3 School-level factors

The institutional characteristics, such as school type and school quality, are the dominant
factors that stimulate the demand for private tutoring. Prior studies proved that the students
from public schools are more likely to receive private tutoring than the students from private
schools (Nath, 2011). Bray (2014) claimed that school quality is significant determining the
demand for private tutoring compared to the school type. School quality depends on
sufficient resources and infrastructures, qualified and experienced teachers, adequate
facilities, and student-teacher ratio.
Several studies showed that low quality of public schooling lead to receiving the private
tutoring (Silova & Bray, 2006; Kim, 2004; Kim & Lee, 2010; Bray et.al, 2014; Kwok, 2004).
Students and parents found public schooling as unable to satisfy their needs (Kwo & Bray,
2014; Chan & Bray, 2014). Moreover, the non-academic workloads make the teachers
unavailable to assist the students in the school hours (Wang & Bray, 2016). Therefore, parents
and students find alternative ways like private tutoring to meet their learning desires (Castro
& Guzman, 2014; Kim, 2004). Hua (1996) claimed that many parents in Egypt send their
children to private tutoring because of their dissatisfaction with mainstream schooling.
Similarly, low teaching quality of public schooling is the cause of excessive participation rate

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of private tutoring in South Korea and Taiwan (Kim & Lee 2010).
Kim (2005) observed that when the school quality is decreased, the consumption of
private tutoring is significantly increased among the Korean students. Similarly, other studies
found that lower school quality indicates a high level of tutoring participation in Vietnam,
Philippines, and Romania (Song et al., 2013). However, Lee (2006) didn’t find any
significant correlation between the low quality of schooling and the private tutoring
consumption.
Bray (2013) claimed that class size partly led determining the demand for private
tutoring. Parents generally prefer quality education with smaller class size. Because, the big
class size makes the teachers unable to meet the individualized needs. Therefore, many
parents choose cramped classroom to secure individualized instruction (Bray & Lykins,
2012). The anxiety over academic results (Byun, 2014), the frequent examination pressure
(Bregvadze & Jokić, 2013), and overloaded homework (Mahmud, 2016) push the students to
receiving private tutoring. The private tutoring prepared the students for examination by
enhancing their skills.
The teacher quality is also a determinant of private tutoring. Dang (2007) justified that
when the teacher’s qualification is increased, then the private tutoring consumption is
significantly reduced in Vietnam. Lee et al. (2009) claimed that many of the teachers provide
‘‘teacher-centred’’ instruction instead of ‘‘student-centred’’ instruction in the school.
Moreover, there are few teachers who didn’t cover entire curriculum in school. They skip
some important portions for private lessons (Bray, 2009). Some teachers perform with their
best effort for tutoring sessions rather than formal class hours (Zhang, 2014). This kinds of
practices technically forced students to attend in the tutoring classes. The similar trends are
observed in Bangladesh (Hamid et al., 2009), and Sri Lanka (Bray & Lykins, 2012). The
student-teacher ratio is another determinant of private tutoring. Elbadawy et al.(2007)
highlighted that when the teacher-student ratio increased, the demand for private tutoring
would decreased.

2.4 Country-level factors

Private tutoring is emerged particularly based on the nature of the society. Bray & Lykins
(2012) claimed that culture is one of the influential factors for the development of private
tutoring. Academic background-oriented cultural trait emphasized on education to climb up
the social ladder (Song et al., 2013). This academic credential is considered as the

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explanation why private tutoring is prevalent in many countries (Bray & Kwok, 2003). The
societies where the school education is the only way for social mobility, there is extensive
demand for private tutoring (Bray, 1999, 2003).
The existence of private tutoring is a reflection of social competition (Bray &
Kobakhidze, 2014). Scholars argued that education is a major requirements for future career
development, social mobility, and social status. Thus, many parents from East Asian societies
pursue extensive private tutoring for their children despite having strong school systems.
Stevenson & Baker (1992) argued that private tutoring is more prevalent in this society where
successive competition are socially and financially rewarded. The advertising forces of the
tutoring centers are also considered as factors which can absorb many of students and parents
attention to receive private tutoring (Bray & Lykins, 2012; Chan & Bray, 2014).
Private tutoring is widespread in cultures that stress effort (Bray, 1999). Some scholars
found Confucian culture that emphasizes stress effort for future success, diligence, and
meritocracy rather than in-born abilities (Bray et al., 2014). The scholars arguably remarked
that private tutoring is particularly derived from Confucian cultural trait in East Asian
societies such as Japan, Korea, China, and Hong Kong (Foondun, 2002; Bray et al., 2014;
Bray & Kwok, 2003). However, Baker et al, (2001) didn’t find any correlations between
Confucian traditions and the rise of private tutoring. Bray (2010) argued that dissatisfaction
with educational quality makes private tutoring more prevalent in Eastern Europe and some
Southeast Asian societies (e.g., Cambodia). The common cultural factors were not the reasons
for the expansion of private tutoring in these settings.
The global transition to a market economy has significant relation to the expansion of
private tutoring (Dang & Rogers, 2008). For example, the shift of communist economic
system into market economy extensively reinforced the demand for private tutoring in
Vietnam, China and Eastern Europe (Bray, 1999). In the market economy, there is a tight
linkage between more education and future success in the labor market (Stevenson & Baker,
1992). The more education can be acquired by appearing through high-stakes examination
(Bray, 1999). Hence, students intensively receive private tutoring to prepare themselves for
university entrance examinations (Lin, 1983), and to get significant advantages in the labor
market (Stevenson & Baker, 1992). Lee (2003) argued that entry into high prestigious
universities determines their success in the labor market. The high-stakes formal examination
is often accounts as a driver of demand for private tutoring (Dore, 1976; Stevenson & Baker,
1992; Kwok, 2004). The students who attend tutoring classes are more likely to get high

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marks in the examination than their counterparts.
The education system itself increases the demand for private tutoring in the country. For
example, low funding for education is one of the reasons for growth of private tutoring
(Silova & Kazimzade, 2006). More specifically, the teacher’s low salary in the public
education system is highly correlated with the expansion of private tutoring market
(Kobakhidze, 2016; Silova & Bray, 2006; Bray, 2007). In former Soviet countries, private
tutoring activities were significantly increased when the teacher’s salary declined (Bray &
Lykins, 2012). Due to the poor salary structure, some teachers become interested to
supplement their incomes through private tutoring (Dang, 2007; Castro & Guzman, 2014). In
addition, the teachers are encouraged imposing students to take private lessons as the
monitoring system is very weak in public schooling (Silova & Bray, 2006). Educational
policy is one of the significant factors impacting the demand and supply of private tutoring.

3. Methodology
This study employed case study as methodology to explore private tutoring in a particular
social setting. A case study is defined as an investigation of ‘‘one setting’’, ‘‘a particular
event’’ (Bogdan & Biklen, 1982), ‘‘a bounded system’’ (McMillan & Schumacher, 2001), or
‘‘a specific phenomenon’’ (Merriam, 2009). The reasons behind choosing case study for this
study are: Firstly, private tutoring is definitely a poorly understood phenomenon in China.
Cepeda & Martin (2005) claimed that the case study is a right way to investigate a
phenomena, particularly where research studies are scarce. Secondly, the private tutoring has
another characteristic of a case study, as reflecting the uniqueness of the setting (Yin, 1994;
Merriam, 2009) within a localized boundary of space and time (Bassey, 1999; Bell, 1999). To
examine a specific case study, the secondary data have been used in this study. The data
have been collected from different sources such as books, scholars’ articles, research papers,
dissertation and the reports of institutions. The collected data were analyzed carefully and
presented in textual forms.

4. Results and discussion

Private tutoring has grown in parallel with the mainstream education in Mainland China.
Private tutoring in China has been expanding rapidly in past decades (Xue & Ding, 2009),
especially in urban areas. Based on data collected from urban areas in 12 provinces in 2004,
Xue & Ding (2009) reported that the participation rate of private tutoring is 73.8% among

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primary students, 65% among middle school students, and 53.5% among high school students
in China. These figures also reveal that a substantial proportion of students in urban China
actually begin their private tutoring experience quite early, at least as early as elementary
school, and the prevalence of private tutoring is higher at lower stages than at higher stages.
At the country level, the participation rate of private tutoring is much lower. The
corresponding figure, among students aged 10 to 15 years old, was around 25% nationwide in
2010 (Zhang & Xie, 2016).
Yu & Ding (2011) explained the nature of tutoring consumed by Chinese families and
found that Chinese parents tend to arrange tutoring for their children in order to obtain better
educational opportunities. Several studies explored the private tutoring phenomena from the
context of China (e.g. Xue & Ding, 2008; Zhang, 2011). The demand for private tutoring in
China is mainly driven by the factors including dramatic economic growth, high-stakes
examinations, and the traditions of a Confucian culture at the macro-level, and school
leadership and family incomes, at the micro-level (Xu, 2009). The factors are detailed in the
following subsections:

4.1 Economic growth and the one-child policy

China’s dramatic economic growth over the past few decades has given families greater
disposable income to invest in various forms of education, including tutoring (Lei & Zhong,
2003; Shen & Du, 2009). Every family tends to invest more in education ensuring their child
won’t be left behind because of family financial problem. As a result, since the 1990s, family
education expenditure has increased at an average rate of 29.3 percent every year. It is even
faster than the increase of family income, higher than the increases of other consumption
expenditure and also higher than the growth of China’s GDP (Li, 2010). Besides, comparing
with limited learning resource and unaffordability for education in parents’ generation, they
take it for granted that their children are now living without worries, there is no reason not to
study hard (by receiving private tutoring) or bring good scores back to prove their successes
(Li, 2010). The “one-child policy” has been adopted in China for over 30 years. It enables
parents to put their heart and soul to the only child. In return, for the child, it’s a heavy burden
to be academically successful in order to find a good paying job and compensate to the whole
family. The high expectation of academic achievement for securing a good job becomes the
main motivation for many students. As indicated by a research group focusing on “China's
one-child children’s personality development” in their report, a multiple-response survey

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question showed that 77 percent of the interviewed one-child children claimed that they learn
because they need to repay their parents (Li & Li, 2010). Therefore, various English private
tutoring has emerged to meet the parents’ will of “buying” a better future for children. Efforts
in studying have been regarded as key to academic success, which is closely associated with
upward social mobility (Bray & Lykins, 2012). This has led to intense academic competition,
which is especially fierce among English language learners. Also, the instrumental
philosophy of private tutoring meets the need of many students to seek quick success and
instant benefits in exams rather than developing communicative competence.

4.2 Cultural tradition

Bray and Lykins (2012) argued that many Asian cultures were influenced by Confucianism.
Educational researchers have also attempted to understand the distinct Confucian influence
on classroom policies and practices, as well as the attitudes and orientations of Chinese
learners. Confucianism, whose core value is hierarchy, harmony, and diligence, attaches great
importance to Chinese cultural traditions and values. In terms of hierarchy, Children are
supposed to show their parents respect and obedience and to be docile at school. This
suggests that students’ demand for private tutoring can be readily influenced by their parents
and teachers (Zhang, 2014). Then harmony, as the most important element in social relations
in China, affects the mutually beneficial relationship between teachers and families when it
comes to private tutoring. When a student’s parents turn to the teacher for extra tutoring, or
when a teacher suggests parents to send their child to private tutoring, both tend to maintain
harmony by accepting the request or suggestion. Families may find a tutor with the help of
social networks, while teachers may use them to channel the students’ demand for tutoring
(Zhang, 2014). Moreover, diligence is emphasized not only for students but also teachers, so
extra work on study and teaching are highly spoken of. The Confucian emphasis on
discipline, hard work, and testing performance has driven the demand for private tutoring.

4.3 Examination system

In ancient China, success on the imperial examination opened the door to a career as a
government official, and the legacy of this system may have influenced the current emphasis
on achievement in high-stakes examinations (Kwok, 2004). The formal schooling system in
China is basically a combination of two consecutive educational stages: compulsory and post-
compulsory. The compulsory stage consists of 6 years of elementary school and 3 years of

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middle school, and the post-compulsory stage starts from 3 years of high school and then
extends to 3 or 4 years of college and beyond. Since 2010, the compulsory schooling has
been free for all. To strive for equity, the government also keeps on executing the ‘nearby
enrollment’ principle, which limits parents’ ability to mobilize family resources in making
school choices (Wu, 2008; Zhang & Xie, 2016). However, after finishing middle school,
students must take a standardized and merit-based entrance examination to compete for
limited higher-level schooling opportunities. Today, there is one examination considered most
crucial for students: ‘‘Gaokao’’ (National College Entrance Examination). The Gaokao is an
extremely high-stakes examination set by the national authorities to select qualified high
school graduates for higher education (Zhang, 2014). English, like Chinese and Math,
occupies 20% score in the Gaokao, so English private tutoring is highly demanded in China.
Every year, around nine million students compete with great anxiety in the Gaokao, which
singularly determines one’s college placement and occupational prospect (Wu, 2008).
Currently, each student only has one chance to take the Gaokao when they graduate from
senior high schools in twelfth grade unless he/she studies in twelfth grade for one more year
to take Gaokao next year by improper means. The Gaokao constrains education reforms from
shortening school hours and reducing homework and classroom examinations because the
fewer drills conducted, the more anxiety parents, students, teachers and school leaders would
gain due to the high pressure from Gaokao. In addition, the new textbooks, which consist of
much more content and richer information after English curriculum reform, turn out to be a
heavier burden for both students and teachers, because only when they finish everything in
the textbooks can they feel safe attending Gaokao. Therefore, Gaokao enhances the demand
for private tutoring. Furthermore, high scores in examinations are the foremost priority of
students, parents, teachers, and school principals, because this is seen as the only equitable
way to assess their achievement because places in tertiary education are limited. Because of
the priority and pressure of getting high scores in Gaokao and the limited time and resource
at schools, students tend to come to English private tutoring for better preparation for
Gaokao.

4.4 School type and family income

School type is one of the strongest predictors of the students’ demand for private tutoring.
The influence of school type can be viewed as representing the impact of two factors:
geographic location and the quality of schools. Students in urban key schools were more

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likely to receive tutoring than those in town and village schools. The probabilities of
receiving tutoring among students in the urban ordinary and county schools were about twice
those of the students in the town and village schools. Students from ordinary and key schools
located in the city proper were more influenced by the competitive atmospheres (Xue &
Ding, 2009). Peer influences on parents and students were stronger in the urban areas and
many more tutoring companies promoted tutoring services in the urban areas. This pattern
indicates that the geographic location is more representative of the community characteristics
than the official residential status determined by place of origin, which had no significant
influence on the likelihood of tutoring participation. At the household level, the probability of
receiving tutoring was positively correlated with the family monthly income, mother’s
education, and father/guardian’s education (Zhang, 2013). The number of siblings had no
statistically significant impact on the private tutoring in China

5. Conclusion
Private tutoring has long been a part of the Chinese education system. Though private
tutoring has been widely studied in different settings around the globe (Zhang, 2013), it is
still a relatively under-researched area in China. Despite its wide spread nature and its
significant impact on Chinese education system, a little research has been done on this
phenomena with empirical evidence. Due to the lack of scholarly research, the nature and
scale of private tutoring is not very much clear. This study documented private tutoring
systematically and thoroughly by employing a case study of China from the holistic
perspective. As there is a lack of rigorous studies on private tutoring, the present study
becomes significant to fill the gap in knowledge on private tutoring in China. The prior
studies provided little insight on the implication of private tutoring in Chinese context. This
study provides better insight about what factors affect private tutoring. The findings of the
study contribute further educational planning by understanding the potential factors affecting
the demand for of private tutoring.
This study have practical significance for policy makers and practitioners, as it can serve
information and evidence to them regarding the private tutoring. More specifically, the
findings offer a careful diagnosis for policy makers to enact better policies and strategies to
solve the problems related to private tutoring. Moreover, this study allows international
scholars to have a glimpse of private tutoring climax in China. The findings are also helpful

ccxv
for further comparative researchers who wants to compare Chinese shadow education system
with other settings.

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 BEIJING NORMAL UNIVERSITY

P.R. CHINA

Course: EDUCATION SYSTEM, POLICY AND

MANAGEMENT

Instructor: Li Jiayong, PhD (lyj@bnu.cn) & Sang Guoyuan, PhD

(guoyuan.sang@bnu.edu.cn)

Registration number: 201729010062

Topic: Parent Involvement in Education: A Comparative Study in Tanzania and China

Date of submission: 31/07/2018

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Abstract

This paper will analyze the significance relationship between the parent involvements in their

children’ academic activities and academic achievement in Tanzaniaand China based from

Epstein’s (1995) framework of six types of parental involvement in their children’s academic

performance.Through reviewed and analyzed different studies that documented the

comprehensive benefits of parent involvement in children’s education, the study will compare

the two country’s parent involvement based from Epstein’s parent involvement model. The

study will focus on positiveeffects of parent involvement on children, families and school by

connecting with model for comprehensive parent involvement; parenting, communicating,

volunteering, learning at home, decision making and collaborating with the community. As to

improve the parent involvement also the study will analyze the barriers to parent involvement

in education and provide the solution on how to improve children outcomes.

Key words: Parents Involvement, Epstein’s model, Education and Children, Tanzania, China

Paper type: Review Articles (Systematic Review)

1. Introduction

“No matter how good the teacher, if the kid’s coming home from school, and

theparent isn’t checking to see if they are doing their homework or watching

TV, that’s going to be a problem.’’ (Obama, 2010)

Anguiano (2004) defined parents’ involvement is an umbrella term for different activities

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that depict the involvement of parents in nonacademic and academic activities that may

contribute to their children’s educational success (p.62). Through activities like supporting

student’s learning at home, maintaining communication between teachers and parents or

parents with school, helping activities, becoming involved of parents in school governance,

and advocacy noted as organized parent educational involvement and served as a catalyst for

children’s educational success (Epstein, 1986).

There are two strategies of parent involvement in their children’s education which are

traditional and non-traditional which recognize the value of any and efforts by parents to be

integrated in their children’s education. Traditional strategy of parent’s involvement gives

powers to schools to decide which help they need from parents and sometimes involves

donations, fundraising activities or helping out teachers and managing sports activities which

this require large amount of money and time for parents (Ignas & Corsini, 1981).

Non-traditional definitions of parental involvement have emerged over the last decade. These

tend to be more culturally and socially inclusive, and recognize school-and home-based

involvement, such as modeling, encouragement, communication of the value of education,

shared decision-making, and other non-dominant forms of involvement.For example, Chinese

mainland, in contrast, preferred a home-based type of involvement including, help with

homework, and weekend academic while in Tanzania parents prefers more both home-based

type and school-based type of parent’s involvement.

Parents have traditionally been on the receiving end of a variety of information from school.

There has been information about the school, such as what it offers to pupils and their

parents. There also been information about the progress and behavior of the pupils which has

been conveyed to parents by means of annual reports and parent-teacher meeting (Hornby,

2011).

2. Background.

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Parent involvement organizations started back to the early days, main educators were parents

to their children. By the mid-1800s, industrial and urban development separated families and

schools. In United States of America parent’s organization like The Parent Teacher

Associations (PTA) were developedto help bridge the increasing separation of families and

schools.

Parent’s involvement in education in Tanzania started took place and increased after the

Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM; in English: Party of the Revolutionary) which is the longest

reigning ruling party in Africa and the dominant ruling party in Tanzania. This party has

many wings and the wings which this paper willdiscuss here is Parent’s wing (Wazazi in

English; Parents). This political party was formed in 1977 after two political parties from

Tanganyika National Union (TANU) from mainland and the Afro-Shiraz Party (ASP) from

islands of Zanzibar.

Tanzania Parent Association (TAPA) was the association which involved all parents was in

Tanganyika National Party (TANU) now the association was taken and changed the name to

be called Revolutionary Association. The CCM-Parenting Community that owns various

economic and social projects has also invested in education sector where it has 54 schools

and one of Technical College.

Recently Presidents of Tanzania who also the Chairman of CCM asked the Revolutionary

Associations of the Relief Society to reimburse the secondary schools that have failed to

operate in order to improve and provide better education for students (www.jamiiforums.com).

In China the relationship of parents to education and particularly to their children as students

can only be understood in the context of traditional parent-child relationships and for more

than 2000 years, the family was the center of loyalty in China.

According to Yang (1959) suggested that “the family was determining factor in the total

pattern of social organization”. In 19th and 20th Chinese society began to change, the strength

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of family was also diminished and young people began to experience increased contacts

outside the family in a host of social, political, and economic associations and organizations.

Students have been encouraged to focus their attention and loyalty on role models other than

parents, and their parents have also increased their contact beyond the family and involved in

several mass organizations that occupy their time and attention, they have been gradually

acquiring sharing the overall process of “parenting”.

Chinese parent involvement based on the parenting values and childhood socialization

practices of families of Chinese heritage. From historical perspective, traditional values

related to Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist teachings thought to influence Chinese parent’

beliefs concerning parenting, child care, and education.

Confucius taught that purposeful effort is required to make the child competent individual;

parents have the responsibility to teach, and children have the responsibility to learn this is

the concept of Confucius. Ji & Kolinsky (2009) added, the concepts demonstrate respect,

nurturance, and unconditional obedience to parental wishes (p. 689).

3. Cultural Context of Education in China and Tanzania

According to Chen & Uttal (1988)conducted a research to examine how cultural values and

parents’ beliefs may influence the level of achievement of children in the cultures. They

found that, in developing personal advancement in China, education has always been an

extremely important means, from the 17th century until 1905 examination was used as the

criterion for selection of civil service (p. 353).

Cultural values have influence also to parental involvement, even though the model

developed by Epstein’s does not support this, only based on school cultures that are from

middle-class, European, American norms (Bower & Griffin, 2011).

Based from Chinese philosophy, Chinese beliefs believed in self-improvement relevant to

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educational achievement are a second cultural value which has emphasized to societal

improvement must begin with self-improvement. These beliefs persist even today was the

Confucian doctrine, was cultivate yourself, regulate your family, govern well your state, then

order well the kingdom (Chen & Uttal, 1988, p. 354).

Tanzania cultural values based on cultural and linguistic diversity among Tanzanians. There

are 120 ethnic groups, but all are united by the use of a common Language-Swahili and sense

of national identity. Tanzania parental involvement based on Epstein’s model which focus on

school cultures due to unknown and lack of some parents not to involve and left the role to

school only.

In Tanzania 80% of populations live in rural areas, they have expectations and believe in

education as the liberation for the future of their children’s, that’s why they involved in

education of their children’s. education in Tanzania affected by other factors but not cultural

values and beliefs even though some parts in Tanzania depend on the ethnic groups they don’t

believe about girl’s education and only they pay attention for boys and hence limit

opportunities for girls.

But this is different to Chinese parents who believed they are supposed to support their

children education and they know it is also depend on their children believing that improving

in academic performance is within their own even parents have the responsibility for that.

One of the traditions and norms towards education is respect of elders. Parents expectations

from their children’s is very high and through education is where they think they can develop

their respect to elders. Tanzania even in school parents involved in cultural issue to improve

their participation on how to education their children on respecting elders.

Tanzania culture, respect to elders is very important as it feels that elders are more

knowledgeable than you are. This is the same applied to China where children taught on how

to respect elders, teachers and other members of family. To be considered someone is

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educated also he or she should respect elders and treat them with high level of respect and

appreciation.

4. Overview Education System of Tanzania and China

The education system in Tanzania divided into three levels: Basic, Secondary and Tertiary

Levels. The basic level education consists of pre-primary which is two years, primary

education seven years,and non-formal education. The secondary education level includes the

Ordinary (four years of Junior Secondary) and Advanced levels (two years of Senior

Secondary) schooling, while the Tertiary level programs and courses are offered by higher

education institutions, including universities and teacher training collegesand students must

pass National Examination (NECTA) in order to enter Advanced secondary education or

higher institutions and teachers training college (Kivenule, 2015)

Tanzania government provides free education from primary to secondary education

where spent TShs. 28 billion each month after eliminate fees and other contributions for

public secondary schools. The most challenges of education system in Tanzania are the lack

of parents’ involvement in the education process because parents do not tend to participate in

the school lives of their children (Mwiyeria & Swarts, 2010)

While Chinese Education system is comprised six or sevenyears of primary education, three

years of junior secondary education (junior middle school) for ages 12 to 15), three years of

senior middle school which then complete the secondary education. Some province in China

may have five years for junior’s middle school and three years’ senior middle school.

All citizens mustattend school for at least nine-year compulsory education, which the

government funds. The budget of education in China is Yuan 137.8 billion in this year 2017.

Parent’s involvement is not a big issue because parents place very high value on education,

and make great personal sacrifice to send their children to school and university. Zhongkao

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and Gaokao used as Senior High school entrance examination and Higher Institutions

conducted each year respectively. No parents within the Chinese community who want to see

his or her child fail this university entrance examination, that the reason puts much pressure

on their children.Parents they have high expectations to their children, that expectations lead

students to study very hard in order to achieve the best score. Muthanna & Sang (2015) added

that, “the event of such a test could be seriously be the most critical one in the lives of the

Chinese youth and parents who care a lot about their children’s future (p.2)

China and Tanzania friendship came to bilateral relations in 1970 to 1975 when the most and

notable aid project was established by using Chinese funding, labor and technical assistance.

TAZARA Railway the 1,860 km railway connects landlocked Zambia and Tanzania (Dar Es

Salaam) and 56,000 workers sent by Chinese government and have continued to aid the

railway in the decade since and China provides scholarship and education support to many

students from Tanzania (Lönnqvist, 2008).

5. Why Parents Involvement is Important in Children’s Education.

In education, “parent involvement” is important topic now because the more parents involved

enhance that their children learn in the classroom and children do better. Not only parent

involvement has benefit on children alone but also beneficial for parents. Parents benefit from

their involvement in school of their children help them to take action early by the being first

to know the problems first through their involvement and being able to be in touch with other

parents, sharing useful information and to ensure their children get a quality and lifetime

education (Reynolds, 2015).

According to Epstein’s (1996, 2010) model which has a six typology one of the most

widely referenced strengths-based parent involvement model provides a framework that

schools can use in developing program to encourage relationships with parents and include;

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Parenting, Communication, Volunteering, learning at home, Decision making and

Collaboration of parents and community in education activities.

This paper will compare on parent’s involvement between these two nations using Epstein’s

models which validates efforts made by parents’ in home and educators in school, types of

home/school connections identified privilege the school’s role in determining ‘what counts’

as parent’s involvement (Milner & Lomotey, 2014).

5.1. Parenting: Parents expectations and attitudes regarding education of their

children’s helping families establish supportive home environments

Parenting or child rearing is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional,

social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood. Chen & Uttal

(1988;354) emphasized that, “in China, child achievement reflected by the effort of family

members, as well as members of the community in which a child lives, as assume the primary

responsibility for teaching and disciplining children”. In China the most parenting practiced

are authoritative and authoritarian parenting involvement in their children’s education. The

core Chinese value system are Confucianism and Taoism which provide a philosophical basis

and structure for Chinese parenting which determine in part the expectations and anticipated

reactions associated with parent-child interaction (Xu, Farver, Zhang, Zeng, Yu, & Cai,

2005).

These Chinese value systems adopted from Confucianism who concerned with fulfilling

social obligations, establishing interrelationships with others, conforming to norms,

respecting-parents and elders, and achieving family reputation through individual

achievement, whereas Taoism emphasized self-control and interpersonal harmony. Chinese

parents play a leading role in their children education by supporting them in everything they

want because they have high expectations from their children’s and they just want their

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children to have a good job in their future, so parents always compel children to have many

classes.

Tanzania parents use both authoritative, authoritarian, permissive and even this uninvolved

parenting style in their children’s education. The parenting involvement in children’s

education for Tanzania parents depends on several factors such as education levels and socio-

economic status such as working class, middle class and upper class families.

As noted from studies working –class children’s often grow up at disadvantage with

schooling, communities, and parental attention made available to them compare to middle-

class or upper-class upbringing (Jeynes, 2007). Majority of parents in Tanzania likely to use

positive reinforcement and infrequent use of punishment and this led many parents to have

medium responsiveness to their children education.

Also, parents set of rules and expectations but are not responsive to their children’s education

they liked to use punishment when the rules were not followed to make their children’s to

become obedience. Tanzania parents used sparking methods to reinforce their children’s to do

better in their education and they use this style of reinforcement which cause physical pain if

a child not doing well in education even at school’s teachers prefer this for misbehave boys

than girls.

In middle-class families they practice permissive parenting, a child freedom and autonomy

concerned and parents they don’t have too much expectation and they are responding to

anything a child need at a moment and they don’t discipline their children. On other hand

there are some children suffer in academic performance, psychological development and

problems behavior are those from absent parenting involvement which parents they don’t

have or they have little expectations from their children’s educations. Some of parents

especially in public schools they practiced this style of parenting involvement mostly single

and working parents experienced difficulty in their children educations.

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 5.2. Communication: Communication between home and child regarding school

program by designing effective school-to-home and home-to-school communications

Parents -Teachers’ communication designing effective school-to-home and home-to-school

communication. Parent’s communication between parents and school is very important for

children’s education. In china everything is done under the umbrella of technology,

communication between parents and schools/teachers prior done through WeChat app.

Due to the wide application of this app teachers/ schools needs to communicate with parents

first through this social media application if there are problems in school about his/her child.

In china it seems parents are very busy more than the parents in Tanzania. Due to the

implementation of one child policy in China, parental involvement in children’s affected by

their education levels, parenting stress, and source of social supports.

In Tanzania parents go to their class meetings, the teachers and parents have tendency to

discuss academics, the previous term’s performance by pupils, and the welfare of the school

such as water, maintenance of desks, classrooms and other structures within the school (Kimu

& Steyn, 2013).Parents -teachers’ communication enhancing a child academically and even

socially. In Tanzania parents especially those who sent their children in public schools they

don’t have tendency of communicating with teachers about the development of their children

in education but they prefer more to have discussion with teachers once they participated in

school parents meeting.

5.3. Volunteering: Recruiting and Organizing Parental help and support during school

events or activities (e.g. field trips, concerts, sports team).

In this level of parent involvement refers to the assistance provided by parents to teachers,

students, administrators, and other parents in classrooms or other areas of the schools (Ji

&Koblinsky, 2009). Due to lack of sureness of teachers to parents about involvement of

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parents in sports and cultural events this model of parental involvement seems involved

parents only in school’s activities which they are competent to do so. In china parent’s

volunteers in school activities is highly valuable because parent’s involvement used looked as

catalyst of influencing many children’s to involve themselves in sports, cultural, and social

activities.

As noted in the study of Ji & Koblinsky (2009) added, for example Chinese immigrant

parents have the tendency to attend the show performed by their children’s and they volunteer

to bring even Chinese dish (chao fen) and this makes everyone happy in the school. Chinese

parent’s volunteers even the classrooms but this is different from Tanzania where parents they

volunteer in other aspects like school board members, activities like graduations of their

children’s but not in the classroom even in the private schools not allowed. Parents volunteers

in the classroom activities depends also of teachers sometime parents faced difficult situation

like this happened to one Chinese immigrant who volunteers in the classroom and felt less

comfortable volunteering as she commented,

When I went to help in (child’s) classroom, I did not feel welcome. The teacher did not

talk to me when I came into the room, and I cannot follow what she wanted me to do.

So I feel like a burden. . . I did not go back. (Chinese Immigrant parent as quoted in Ji

&Koblinsky, 2009)

In his study Reaney et al. (2002 as noted in Kimu & Steyn, 2013) pointed out that when

parents involved in extracurricular and curricular activities have positively impacts to

children’s reading, general knowledge and mathematics knowledge and skills.

In Tanzania Community or Private Secondary Schools parent’s volunteers by involving in

construction activities in schools depend on what they have if they have skills in electronics,

architecture and even carpenter they are allowed to do so, they involved in desk

maintenances, doors and other school facilities. For example, in Tanzania many schools

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prefer having a tour to National parks, Ngoro Ngoro Crater or Mountain Kilimanjaro and

parents involved in supporting these tours by contributing amount of money as expenses for

their children’s but this depends on the family income because not all the children families

they afford to pay for tour study. Parents volunteers in school’s activities looked as a way of

encouragement and motivation to their children and this enhancing learning to their children’s

in education rather than those who are not participating in school activities (Kalinga, 2014).

5.4. Learning at Home: Monitoring and assisting with school related tasks (e.g.

homework; registration in extracurricular academic or arts programs)

According to Epstein’s in this level of parent’s involvement, parents monitoring and assisting

their children’s with school related tasks (e.g. homework relate); registration in

extracurricular academic or arts program. Chinese parents they supervising their children to

ensure they do their homework and ensure was completed and they are not helping on solving

homework problems.

In terms of learning environment studies (Ji & Koblinsky, 2009; Kimu & Steyn, 2013; and

Kapinga, 2014) showed that home environment either in Tanzania or China defined as a

determinant factor for children achievement in school. Chinese parents they know that their

children’s every year, every term, every month, every week (even every day at the end of

term) they have tests and examinations is the responsibility for parents at home to supervise

the children in learning at home.

However, Tanzania Parents knows that is their responsibility to support their children’s to do

homework and they supposed to provide books and other requirements, to assist adequately,

share with them, and encourage them to work hard in studies through experience of their

personal accounts when they were students and tell them respected scholars and academicians

in the world (Kapinga, 2014).

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Support for children’s learning at home also depends on level of education of parents,

educated parents they create supportive learning environment rather than uneducated parents.

In Tanzania due to some families affected by poverty makes difficulty for parents to provide

requirements for their children like books, pens, ink, pencils, lump and other school facilities

which are significant for learners.

Many families with low incomes, theirlearning environment at home for their children is

not supportive while this is different from children’s comes from high income. Learning at

home influence children’s learning when there is availability of learning materials and

resources like books, electricity, maps and models reinforce reading skills acquired at schools

and it is important for parents to create supportive learning environment for their children at

home.

5.5. Decision Making: Including parents in school decision and developing parent

leaders and representatives

In this model of parents involve in parent-teacher’s organization or higher level of

educational committee. In China, Chinese Parents have been involved in parent teacher-

administration committees, and often called upon to visit classrooms to serve as teacher

aides, instruct students in special skills, or simply to engage in political education by

discussing with students their life prior to 1945. Parent involvement in education recently has

been one important area of social concern, and this interest has been officially fostered by the

government (Hawkins contribution in Ignas & Corsin, 1981).

Parent’s participated in school decisions, governance, and advocacy through councils and

organizations for Chinese parents in China but Chinese immigrant in United State of America

the study revealed that due to communication barriers many Chinese immigrant parents are

not involved in school decisions and governance through school’s organization like Parents-

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Teachers association (PTA/PTO). On other hand in Tanzania parents are recruited and

involved in decision –making committees, attending school board meeting and even

sometimes schools meeting between parents and teacher’s parents are given a chance to

provide and recommends on how to improve a certain school.

Parents are not fully integrated and participating or allowed to make presentation in a

committee to review changes in a specific subject’s curriculum and even about teaching and

learning activities at school but now days they are fully integrated in issues like availability

of food at school for their children and they are allowed to have school parents’ committee

which responsible for food at school (Anguiano, 2004).

5.6. Schoolsand Parents Collaborations with Community: Identifying and integrating

resources and services from the community

In this Epstein’s final model of parent’s involvement, parents collaborating with the

community to integrate school and community services. In Tanzania schools and parent’s

collaboration with community is more valuable because many schools established through

the efforts of parents and communities. In 2000s and 2007 the Government of Tanzania

collaborated with parents and community in establishment of Community and Ward

Secondary Schools in each ward of Tanzania, and convincing parents and community to

contribute in order to make sure that every Tanzanian should acquire secondary education to

eradicate poverty, ignorance, and disease (Oluremi, 2013).

Decentralization of education in Tanzania enhancing collaboration between educational

leaders, school administrators and parents, most of district educational authorities encourage

parents to become part of their children’s learning and also school activities. Due to the

shortage of classrooms in many Public or Community Schools in Tanzania,community and

parents are encouraged to collaborate with social workers to promote the need to use parents

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and community collaboration in construction of more classrooms in order to provide

children’s secure learning environment without to forget to involve private sectors to support

the effort of parents and community (Mpiluka2014).

In China most of Chinese parents they prefer more home-based involvement than

school-based involvement due the reasons of many Chinese parents are very busy with work

and only siblings like grandmother and grandfather used to take care the children’s while

their parents are at work and this reduce their collaboration with school and community. For

immigrant mothers the study found if they are not working, they become the sole care givers

and reduce their participation in school and parental collaboration with community (Chen,

Sun, & Yu, 2017).

6. Challenges Facing Parental Involvement in Education of Tanzania and China

From home-based to school-based parent involvements facing many obstacles which

hindering their fully participation in their children’s education in school contexts fall into lack

of familiarity with the school system, parents facing challenging in communicating with staff

members in the schools, lack of knowledge on specific needs for parental involvement across

school settings, cultural differences, time and resource constraints (Hamlin & Flessa, 2016).

As noted in Kapinga (2014),“TheImpact of Parental Socioeconomic Status on Students”, one

students said that, “My parent is just a carpenter; I live in a house without electricity and

water. During night, I use kerosene lamp to revise and do homework. Due to low income of

my parents, they fail to buy kerosene for us. When it happens so, we just sleep without doing

homework or revision. On the other hand, lack of water poses another challenge to me at

home. Before doing homework, I walk to next houses so as to fetch water, that, it is done

usually”. Parent’s involvement in their children education at home learning affected also by

social economic status of the responding family as pointed earlier. Some of children are who

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under guardians, step parents, grandmother they lack influence from those who taking care of

schooling.

In Tanzania parents lack functional policy on parental involvement in schools, many parents’

illiteracy in educational matters also affecting parental involvement in schools, time and

parental work commitments all these limit parent’s involvementsin schools. Apart of

education there is bad attitudes to parents who think that educating girls is loosing of money

since in steady of bringing home good score she will bring home pregnancy and this still

dominated in some Africans culture and those parents who having this perspective will never

see them involve in their children’s education.For Chinese parents they limited to involve in

their children’s education due to circumstances of parent work commitment, time

constraintsthey are too busy and could not leave their place of work, and language barriers for

those Chinese immigrants in other countries like in USA.

Studies showed that many Chinese parents facing communications barriers when they want to

integrate in their children’s educations while in Tanzania most the parents are discouraged

also by educational background factors, social-economic status and they lack assistance from

teachers who also they don’t know on how to involve the parents to participate fully in their

children education (Xu et. al., 2005; Kimu & Steyn, 2013; Ji & Koblinsky, 2009; and

Kapinga, 2014).

7. Summary.

In Tanzania context, parents’ involvement in education of their children’s is divided into

two categories, school-based involvement and home-based involvement. Activities that occur

in the contact/meeting between the parent and the school this referred as school-based

involvement. In this category school meeting is dominant example of school-based

involvement where parents talking with teachers, attending school events and volunteering at

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school. On other hand, Home-based involvement, are those activities that occur outside the

school, for instance, discussing with child how well he or she is doing at school and/or

helping the youngster with his/her homework (Mpiluka,2014).

Many studies revealed that the level of parents’ education influenced students’ achievement

in school and pointed out that, those parents who reached secondary education or higher

education level they have capacity of integrating or involve themselves in their children

education by buying books, models and maps for their children. These studies found that

there is positive relationship between parents who reached a certain level of education they

have ability to support and assist children doing school given homework. “Our research has

found that quality parental involvement is not as simple as more is better or less is more at

any one point in a child’s life. It is far more complex than that, and there are many variables

that go into how parents interact with their children over time” (Ming-Te Wang).

8. Conclusions and Recommendations.

This paper was aimed to review, analyzed compare parental involvement in education in

Tanzania and China based on Epstein’s model (parenting, communication, volunteering,

learning at home, decision making and schools collaboration with community to improve

education) of parent’s involvement which referred as strengths-based parent’s involvement

model.

Tanzania parents practiced in both home-based to school-based parental involvement while

Chinese parents they prefer more home-based parental involvement due to some factors of

working hours’constraints and communication barriers for those who living outside of China

like in USA.

This paper recommends that, parents should be introduce to a variety of community

educational programs and proactive strategies should be used to empower parent’s

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involvement in order to improve academic achievement. Policy makers should require a

comprehensive policy on parent involvement and encourage even each school to have the

policy on involving and assisting parents to fully participate in their children’s education.

For the future direction in education for the 21st century skills, the policy maker and

curriculum designer they have to realize the significant role of parents in improving student’s

critical thinking, self-esteem, self-determination, and promote self-direct learning to meet the

current generation needs.

Therefore, the paradigm shift from traditional curriculumstyle to new form of engaged

pedagogy is becoming essential as to focus more about the student needs, preferences and

learning style and collaboration with parents is also need to take in consideration when they

practice parent involvement either in home-based or school-based parent involvement.

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kuzirejesha-shule-zake-serikalini.1366437/ 25/12/2017…11:09 pm

Maryam Nazir
SN 2014-39010010
Professor Sang (Faculty of Education)
Course: Chinese History and Culture

Chinese students’ attitude towards English Language learning

Introduction
Language is not mere list of words. It is the tool of communication between human
beings and makes sense of experiences. Language has a strong impact on shaping thoughts,

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emotions, and one’s perceptions. Through language one come to know about different
traditions and cultures of various nations, enhancing better knowledge to know each other.
The role of English language in globalizing people all over the world has become so
powerful and the influence is quite immense and diverse to define. It governs all other
languages. In fact, it is the second most spoken language in the world. It is considered as a
‘basic skill’ to be learned by everyone and has been become one crucial benchmark skills in
the professional world. Without English language, connection between nations would have
been impossible. The Economist in “The triumph of English, 2001” says, "[English] is the
language of globalization-of international business, politics... It is the language of computers
and the Internet... it is the dominant international language in communications, science,
aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy....”
In the last few years, governments across the world have embarked on ambitious
educational reforms which will assimilate English more deeply into curriculum. China is one
of them. There have seen a noteworthy explosion in academic institutions around the country
in the past few years. English is a major and first most foreign language to vast majority of
universities. While teaching and learning has been become an important in country by
making it compulsory subject since primary schools, it has now taken an important role in
education. Although, the significance of English language cannot be neglect but some
learners find this language difficult to write or speak. The very large difference between
Chinese and English such as word order and verb tenses makes this task extremely difficult
for non-native English speakers.
Statement of the problem
This is a Qualitative study and the data was gathered from Beijing Normal University.
The purpose of the study is to find out the attitudes of the Chinese students towards English
language. What are their opinions about current English policies and what are their attitudes
towards English Education in China?
Research questions
 What are the attitudes of Chinese college students toward English?
 What are their attitudes toward the current English education policies of national
government in China?
 What are the factors that affect students’ attitude towards English learning?

Review of literature

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 Attitudes
Different scholars define attitude in different ways. Some of the definitions are as follow:
"A learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner
with respect to a given object" (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975, p. 06). Lutz (1981) defined attitudes
as representing covert feelings of favorability or unfavorability toward an object, person,
issue, or behavior. People learn attitudes over time by being in contact with the object directly
(experience) or through receiving information about the object (p. 234). Baker (1992) define
attitude as “A hypothetical construct used to explain the direction and persistence of human
behavior” (p.10). Matsuda (2000) adopted the definition of Baker (1992) and interpreted the
construct with three components: cognitive, affective, and conative (readiness for action).
With regard to language attitudes, she explained that the cognitive component refers to the
thoughts, beliefs, and values about the language of learners; the affective component
concerns their feelings toward the language; and the cognitive component refers to a
behavioral intention of the plan of action (pp. 28-30).
The purpose of this study is to explore the attitudes of Chinese college students toward
the English language. Therefore, the theoretical framework of study consists of following
parts:
1. The proposition of English as an International Language (EIL).
2. Brief history of English education in China and studies on attitudes of Chinese
learners toward English.
3. Current status of English language in China.

English as an International Language

The status of English as an international language has been acknowledged for several
decades (Brown, 2002; Crystal, 1997; Kachru, 1992; Widdowson, 1994). Matsuda (2000)
argues that ―English as an international language is not one variety of English … but is an
umbrella term for different types of English which are used for the purpose of international
communication (p. 25). From this view, it is clear that most of the students learn English
language not only to interact with English Native-Speakers but also to have access
knowledge and information in English. Since World War II, the globalization has made
possible for English language to play a significant role as the world standard language.
Millions of students are learning English as the most important foreign language for
international communication all over the world. People of the world generally consider

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English as the most useful language for communication.
Global language and local culture
Several studies are done which inspect the political influence and interest of global ELT has
taken various focuses over the last quarter of a century. The allegory of ‘English as a Trojan
horse’ was first used by Cooke (1988), who argued that English operates around the world as
a language both of imperialism and of particular class interests. Earlier, Cooke and Judd
(1983) demonstrate attention to the moral and political implications of global English
teaching in terms of the asserted threat it poses to native languages and the often unjustified
role it plays as a gate keeper to better jobs in many societies. This idea was further developed
by Phillipson and Skutnabb- Kangas (1995) stated that the global spread of English causes a
complex disruption in linguistic ecologies, which has been accompanied by the number of
languages in the world falling at an ever- increasing speed. The spread of English, they argue,
is a form of cultural imperial- ism because it supports a global system of world trade which
advantages rich and powerful countries while disadvantaging poorer ones. According to
them, the spread of English around the globe predictably endorses Western cultural values,
and places local languages in a disadvantageous position. This has also been criticized that
global languages such as English play in trajectories of upward social mobility.
History of English language in china
English is the common language to communicate with people from other countries. The
roles of English language and English literature within China has a long and fascinating
history throughout the Chinese academy, where key issues related to foreign-language
learning and foreign literatures have had an vast socio-political significance since the eras of
opium wars, ‘unequal treaties’ , and ‘self-strengthening’ movements of the late nine-teeth
century.
Zhou and Tong (2002), considers English as a cultural formation as well as an
academic discipline in china at three different historical periods: from the late nineteenth to
the mid-twentieth century, from the early 1950s to 1970s and from the end of the cultural
revolution to the present time.
Scio-political approach
In early seventeenth century, the first English speakers arrived in southern China and
by late eighteen century varieties of pidgin English were been spoken in Guangzhou and
Macau (Adamson,2004) and the first missionary schools to teach English were established in
Macau in the 1630s. At that time, English language was influenced by a range of political and

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cultural concerns which reflected the anxieties of Qing dynasty China to the ‘strangers at the
gate’ whose imperialist objectives were identified as a main danger to the Qing government
and imperial Chinese society.
In the late Qing dynasty (1860-1911), a feudal, pre-modern and literate culture, which
had been intermittently the wonder of the west over at least three centuries, was increasingly
faced with the assault of Europe and America modernity in all its forms- economic, military,
technological religious and secular (Bolton, 2000).
Before the two opium wars (1893-42, 1856-60), the access to English within formal
educational institutions were strictly limited to small number of missionary schools and the
purpose was to ‘act act as a tool for the transfer of practical western knowledge’. After the
Second Opium war (1856-60) and the spread of ‘treaty-port’, coastal and inland, throughout
the china, the English language began to be widely taught in missionary schools and colleges
(Bolton, 2000). In 1860, after realizing the importance of English language, English access
was raised significantly in educational institutions. In response to increasing interaction
between China and Western countries, on the diplomatic front as well as in trade, the Chinese
government established schools of foreign languages including Tongwen Guan (the first
Chinese school of foreign language, Interpreter’s College) in Beijing (1861), Guang Fangyan
Guan (School for dispersing languages)in Shanghai (1863)and the Jiangnan Arsenal (1876)
also in Shanghai.
Later, the crucial moment for student radicalism in China occurred on May 4 th, 1919,
when Peking students protested against the term of Treaty of Versailles which handed
German holdings in Shantung to Japan. The ‘ May Forth Moment’ that arose out of these
protests marked the beginnings of the moments in politics, literature and creative writing that
would influence Chinese intellectuals across a number of political spectra (Tong and
Zhou,2002). Later, during the 1920’s, the nationalist government sought to regulate the
teaching of English within a school system that served the aims of government and limited
influence of missionary institutions. Throughout many of these years, the guiding principle
for state education was zhongxue weiti, xixue weiyong (studying china for essence, studying
the West for utility).
Sociolinguistic realities
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Russian was originally the
primary foreign language (Qu, Bo, 2007). During the time, English was condemned as
unpatriotic because of national campaign against American imperialism and British

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colonialism. Official records for 1957 showed that there were just 843 secondary school
teachers of English in the whole country. (Ministry of Education, 1984). English began to be
transitioned into the education system during the 1960s as a result of the Sino-Soviet split
because of the condemnation of the English language during the culture revolution. English
education did not return until Richard Nixon visited China in 1971. The only textbooks for
English instructions were translations of Mao Zedong's works until the Cultural Revolution
ended in 1976 and the Gaokao was restored in 1978 ((Ruan, Jiening and Cynthia, 2012).
Since the implementation of Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Open Door’ policy and the Four
Modernizations policy in early 1980s, English began to gain popularity. The commitment to
learning the language further increased in the 1990s, and was officially encouraged when
Zhang Xinsheng, the Vice-Minister of Education, publicly stated in 2002 that ‘with China’s
accession to the World Trade Organization and the approaching Olympics in 2008 more than ever is it a
priority for young Chinese to learn and improve their languages skills’ (Government Encourage
Public to learn English, Daily china, 10 Feb, 2002). Despite the traumatic experiences of
Cultural Revolution and other political moments with anti-western elements, china has
cuddled the study of English in recent decades with passion and 50 million school children
are currently learning English, taught by approximately 400, 00 teachers (Adamson, 2004).
These figures are increasing tremendously and teachers take up the challenge of teaching
English language through curriculum, as part of ‘bilingual education’ policy. As Chang
(2006) stated, ―with the accelerating process of globalization in the fourth quarter of the last
century, China has maintained the policy favoring to English, and English education has seen
unprecedented development since 1978‖, in (p. 515).
Language and attitudes
Barker (1992) in his book Attitude and language evaluate some issues related to language
and attitude. He mentioned that earlier researches on language attitudes are concentrated on
attitudes to individual languages e.g. attitude towards French in Canada and attitude towards
Welsh. In contrast attitude towards bilingualism were ignored and studies on attitude to a
minority language sometimes considered as they are related to bilingualism. Barker illustrates
that attitude towards bilingualism become different and distinct from attitude to a language.
He also highlights an important issue of language policy and planning. According to him
languages are in danger of extinction when cultures and languages are overtly being
conserved by educational policies changing attitudes is often prominently on the agenda.

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Language policy planning affects the language preservation. Thus changing attitudes is often
a major part of formal or hidden agenda of language planning.
Chen and Cao (2013) conducted a matched-guise experiment as a powerful tool to
observe the attitudes towards different languages. They conduct their study on Uyghur
university students in Xinjiang to observe the language attitudes of Uyghur university
students towards Uyghur (their mother tongue), Chinese (their second language), and English
(their foreign and third language). Through this experimental study they investigate the
differences between their attitudes towards Uyghur, Chinese and English, Uyghur university
students hold overall favorable and positive attitudes towards all the three languages but the
students had high positive affection towards their mother tongue than Chinese and English.
Students showed emotional identification with Chinese language but also showed positive
and favorable attitude towards English language. Chen and Cao stated that Uygur students
have a great interest in the language of English because of its international status, and the
enthusiasm for learning English among Uyghur people is increasing recently.
Current status of English language in China
Along with the appearance of English as a global language, the popularity of English is
spreading rapidly in all countries. This global spread of English over the last 40 years is
remarkable in the history of the language of English. Since the beginning of economy reform
of China (1978), great attention has been given to English teaching and learning. The massive
explosion in English and high status of English in Chinese education are due largely to the
active participation of China in the international affairs. It is commonly recognized that
China‘s joining of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Beijing‘s hosting of 2008
Olympic Games have accelerated a long-standing trend to advance and enhance English
learning (Bolton & Tong, 2002; Lam, 2005; Nunan, 2003; Zhang & Watkins, 2007). as
Bolton (2002) indicated, ―in the minds of many inside China, English seems inextricably
linked to the nation‘s continued economic growth (p. 182).
Learning English is tremendously popular these days and has reached a new crest with
government policy-makers, educationalists, and the Chinese public in the past decades.
Schools with English Language are booming in large cities and coastal provinces. English
language programs are broadcasting daily on TV and radio and more native speakers are
teaching English in China than ever before. Although, English used to be just an obligatory
subject from middle school to college, presently it is learned beyond the school curriculum.
Loads of college students prefer to get their further education in the West to acquire advanced

ccl
knowledge in science and technology. The Chinese students are no longer ignorant of the
international English tests such as TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and
IELTS (International English Language Testing System). Scholars have reported that China
has the largest English-learning population in the world (Bolton and Tong 2002). In other
words, learning English has become a nationwide practice that spans across people of all
ages.
English as a subject and policies
Today, English continues to grow in importance as a school subject throughout China.
English is not an official language in china, yet it is the number one foreign language. The
government gives special importance to English language teaching. China has a nine-year
compulsory education system, from elementary to junior high school (Chinese government
(1986) 1998: Art. 2, 7and 8; as cited in Hu, 2008, p. 516). Ministry of Education made
English education compulsory from third grade at elementary level and elementary students
should have at least four periods of English education per week. (Ministry of
Education2001a: Guideline, Sec.1; Requirements, Sec.2).
Hu (2008) explored the implementation of English language policy for primary schools
in China. The investigation illustrated that the policy was not universally implemented in
school settings, due to the interplay of various factors, including the geographic location and
size of schools, administration, funding, and availability of qualified teachers. Hu (2008)
further argued that the policy was issued prematurely, which could have undesirable impact
on educationally disadvantage students, less privileged schools, and social stratification (p.
516).
A number of colleges and universities have English as a teaching medium. According
to Nunan (2003), from September 2001, all colleges and universities under the control of
Ministry of Education were instructed to use English as the main teaching language in the
following courses: information technology, biotechnology, new-material technology, finance,
foreign trade, economics, and law. In addition, a policy statement entitled ―The Ministry of
Education Guidelines for Vigorously Promoting the Teaching of English in Primary Schools‖, in
was issued in January 2001 (Ministry of Education 2001). The trend of English in China has
led to some daunting statistics. In 2003, it was reported that ‘ over 200 million children, about
20% of the total in the world, are learning in English-medium schools, and about 13 million
young people at universities ’ (Jiang, 2003: 3). By 2006, the figure for English learners in
China had risen to 350 million, supplemented by young professionals, policemen, taxi drivers

ccli
and retired people who were not affiliated to any formal institutions but who chose to learn
English to prepare them for social events such as the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and Shanghai
World Expo in 2010. This figure is roughly equivalent to the total number of native English
speakers in the world (Seargeant, 2012).
English language as a part of College Entrance Examination System
By seeing the importance of English language now a day, it is made a compulsory part of
college entrance examination and its removal from exam considered as a threat to lower the
English-learning efficiency (Sun Xiaochen, 2014) (www.chinadaily.com). Due to large
proportion of marks in Gaokao, students have to pay more attention to learning English as
compared with the other country’s students. Pointing the importance of English language Yu
said (2014) “The existence of the English test in the Gaokao has played a significant role of
promoting the language among Chinese children, no matter whether in test-taking skills or
practical communication" (www.chinadaily.com).
In the national college entrance examination, candidates are tested according to the
requirements of Senior High School English level Two, as set forth by Guidline for English
teaching in full-time General purpose Senior High Schools (Minstry of Education 1999,
Sec.2). The Ministry of Education issued guidelines for textbook makers, requesting that
English textbooks should include materials on the Western culture, listening and speaking
practice as well. The most prominent in reforming the English testing system in China is that
listening and written English are included in some most important English tests for the all
Chinese educational institutions. (Ji Shaobin, 2002).
"If we take it out of the gaokao, I am afraid the enthusiasm for learning English would
decline as any change in the gaokao will largely affect teaching plans and curriculum setting
in secondary schools" (Sun Huiling,2014) (www.chinadaily.com) National English
standardized test will be divided into several levels to evaluate the outcome of reforming in
Chinese ELT from primary level to the tertiary level, which means English will become a real
tool for communication in China's educational institutions.
Difficulties faced by Chinese students
Ji Shaobin (2002) in his article mentioned some problems faced by Chinese students like
lack of qualified foreign language teachers, limited knowledge of English language. As a
result, the teacher development program has become the "bottle-neck" issue in current ELT
(English learning teaching). He also points out that most college students in China whose
majors are not English spend more than 70 percent of their study time on English after class.

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A great feature of ELT reform in China's higher institutions is that English study will be
continuous throughout the duration of four years in college. ESP (English for Special
Purpose) courses are also added to the final year of students' study of English in college with
the purpose to ensure the non-English major students who have different specialized
background can make good use of English after their graduation in their future working
career. He mentioned that besides this, the Ministry of Education requires all of the
specialized subjects (preferably foreign textbooks) be conducted in the English language in
the near future.
This study examined the relationship between attitudes of learners and factors that may
have effect on their attitudes. In this regard, the findings make contribution to a deeper
understanding of Chinese English learners and English education in China.
Methods
In this section, the research method for data collection and research design will be
discussed. The instrument (Appendix A) developed is provided in the last.
Research Design
The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitudes of an accessible population
toward English. English education policies in China and purposes its learning as English
language. It is a qualitative case study. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect
qualitative data to examine their attitudes. Along with exploring and describing the attitudes,
part of the study is relational. In this study, data was collected from an accessible sample of
Chinese students in Beijing Normal University, China. The interviewees were selected from
the survey respondents who volunteered to be interviewed.
Qualitative Data: Semi-structured interview
This section provides an overview of the semi-structured interview developed for this
study. Specifically, the population and sampling, instrumentation, validity and reliability, data
collection, and data analysis are discussed.
Population and Sampling
Given the reality that millions of Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners
are taking regular college English courses (Wu, 2001), obtaining a random sample
representative of all students in China would be extremely difficult. Therefore, this study
adopted a feasible sampling method in which a certain group of people are chosen for study
because of relatively easy access to them. Participants were recruited from public
universities. This university was chosen because the researcher has personal contacts in this

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university who could help for data collection.
Validity and Reliability
To control the measurement error, validity and reliability were established for this study.
Validity of an instrument refers to an instrument ―that accurately measures what it is
supposed to measure‖, in (Vogt, 1999, p. 301). With the help of previous literature review,
unclear items were rephrased, divided into multiple items to ensure clarity, or eliminated.
Reliability of an instrument refers to ―the degree to which scores obtained with an
instrument are consistent measures of whatever the instrument measures‖, in (Frankel & Wallen,
1990). The interview questions were pilot tested with three college students in university,
who were not included in the sample of the study. Unclear and ambiguous question were
revised and omitted.
Attitudes toward English
This domain was designed to assess attitudes of learners toward English. Items 1 and 2
were intended to measure attitudes learners toward the role of English in general.
1. What do you think about learning English?
2. In your opinion, what is the importance of English language? Please give explanation.

Attitudes toward the current English education policies and English as a subject in
National Entrance Examination
This domain was designed to measure attitudes of learners toward the current English
education policies and practices in China. These items were concerned with different
perspectives of English education policies and practices in China, from the high stake
National College Entrance Examination (Gaokao).
1. What is your opinion on the English education policy in china?
2. Thinking about the existing examination system, what’s our opinion about English
subject in Gaokao exam? Is there any aspect you would like to change and why?

Attitudes toward importance of use of English language in their daily life

This domain was designed to measure the attitude of students towards the importance of
use of English language in their daily life, how they make use of English language. And for
what purposes the use it.
1. On what occasions do you use English in China?

Attitudes toward the purposes for learning English

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 This domain was designed to investigate purposes for which Chinese college students
learn English. These ten items were developed based on the literature on motivation and
attitudes of Chinese English learners (Chen, Warden & Chang, 2005; Gao, Zhao, Cheng &
Zhou, 2007; Young, 2006).
1. What do you think about the English instruction in China? Are you satisfied or
dissatisfied with that? Please explain.
2. Do you like English teaching in EFL (English as a foreign language) class rooms?
Why and why not?
3. Do you prefer a native speaker of English to non-native (foreigner) speaker? Please
explain why.
4. Based on your experience, which part of English language is difficult for you?
5. Do you think that students should communicate among each other through English?
6. Are you satisfied with your English language proficiency?

Attitudes toward the Future use of English and parents believes

This domain was design to know about the attitudes of students towards the further use
of English language in future. Will they continue it or just using it as a subject course or to
pass the examination? And also what their parents’ believe about the importance of English
language.
1. How do you think you will be using English in future? Please explain.
2. Do your parents believe English learning language is important? Please explain.

Data Collection
Data was collected through accessible students who were volunteer to interview. The
interviews were semi-structured and open-ended type interviews. Interview was done with 13
students and purpose of the study was briefly described to them. Audio recording was also
done with the permission of the students. The interviewer has openness to changes of
sequences and forms of questions in order to follow-up the answers given (Kvale, 1996, p.
124). This approach allows more flexibility and adaptability and permits the interviewee to
answer broadly than specifically. In addition, with the interview guide developed in advance,
all the important issues were covered efficiently. Therefore, this interview method was
selected to offer deeper insights and additional information about the attitudes of learners and
how their attitudes are formed.
Data analysis

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Table 1. Demographical information of participants
No. of Gender Age Major Experience with native English Knowledge of
students (M/F) English-speaking teachers Parents
(Y/N) (Y/N)
1 F 26 Physics Y N
2 M 26 Material Science & N Y
engineering
3 M 22 Physics Y N
4 M 24 Physics N Y
5 M 21 Chemical Material Y N
6 F 24 Material Science & N Y
engineering
7 M 27 Chemistry & Physics N N
of Material
8 M 24 Condensed matter N N
physics
9 M 23 Physics Y Y
10 F 22 Physics Y Y
11 F 23 Physics N N
12 M 24 Condensed matter N N
physics
13 F 29 Material Science & Y Y
engineering

Analysis and interpretation of interview data were conducted through content analysis.
Interviews were transcribed by following the interpretive and reflective analyses procedures
suggested by Tesch (1990 as cited in Gall, et al., 2003, p. 452). Important words, sentences
and paragraph were marked and categorized. Then coding was done according to the
categories and themes of the study.
Items 1 & 2 were exploring their attitudes toward English language in general. Item 3 is
related to the use of English language in daily life. Item 4 & 5 were building up to know the
opinion of the Chinese students about the English language policy and English as a
compulsory subject in College Entrance Examination (Gaokao). Item 6 to 10 were developed
with the purpose of capturing their attitudes towards college English education in China and
item 11 & 12 were proposed to investigate the attitudes toward importance of English
language for them. How it will be beneficial for them in their future and what was their
parents’ opinion about English language.
Attitudes of Interviewees toward English in general
All students who were interviewed agree that learning English is important and useful to
them for several reasons. The most common reasons are (1) English is an international

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language; (2) English is the main tool for communication with people from other countries.
All of the interviewees believe that English symbolizes internationalization and plays a vital
role in international communication.
Interviewer: What do you think about learning English?
Interviewee 9: English is worldwide language, so we need to learn English as well.
Interviewer: what is the importance of English language?
Interviewee 10: English as an international language, it is possible to communicate all over
the world through this.
Two interviewee expressed their feelings about English language that although it is very
useful but still boring to them. They have low interest in English language. Over all students
show positive attitude towards the role of English language in general.
Attitudes of Interviewees toward use of English language in daily life
The rationale behind this question was to know the occasion on which they make use of
English language in daily life routine. For this question 7 of them (53%) of participants use
English for their entertainment like watching English TV programs and English movies but at
the same time, again 7 of them (53%) of them also made use of English language to
communicate with the foreigners. While 6 respondents (46%) use it for educational purposes
like reading English books, papers and other materials. 4 participants (30%) use of English
language for listening English songs and use it to access English websites. Very few only 3
out of 13 of them (23%) make use of English language to e-mail.
Interviewee 13: I occasionally see English movies and listening English songs. To make it
understandable put lyrics translation and see what is the meaning, sometimes also followed
sing, I also know some foreigners in different websites and occasionally chat with foreigners.
I have an American friend, talk to her often. I also used to speak English with
other foreigners.
Interviewee 8: Mostly use English for education purpose. Like in group meetings and reading
English books and research papers. But also use English to speak with foreigners.
Attitudes of Interviewees toward English Education policies in China
To know about students’ attitude towards English policy and practices in China and
English language as a core subject in Gaokao the following responses were given by the
interviewees. For the question about the English policy in China most of the students’
responses were in negative. According to them it is not very successful and Chinese
government has attached much importance to English education. Policy makers should give

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attention to improve it.
Interviewee 5: Attention should be given to policy because almost all students use English
only in exams. There must be some attention given to spoken rather than writing.
Interviewee 9: It’s not good enough. May be some measures should be taken to improve the
students’ ability to speak English.
Interviewee 1: It is not very well because my English is not very well although I study
English so many years.
Although, it is important for the students but still it is not very successful. It should be
not just a part of exams but also make such policies those make more attention to oral skills
rather than writhing skills.
Attitudes of Interviewees toward College Entrance Examination (Gaokao) China
Answering about the English subject in college entrance examination, 9 (69%)
participants have positive attitude towards English subject as the part of entrance exam as this
will encourage students to learn English language but they also mentioned on the present
style of English in examination. It should also include the oral part. It will help them a lot for
future.
Interviewee 1: It is the method to encourage people to study. English subject should not be
canceled in Gaokao examination because English is important for my future studies.
Interviewee 4: I think there is a need of this subject in Gao kao examination system but on the
other hand there should be other examination styles. We need to add speaking part as it is
necessary. According to them, they learn English language for many years but still their
spoken English is poor.
On the other hand some participants do not think English is as important as government
think. They have opinion that English should not be a compulsory subject in the National
College Entrance Examination in China. It is not fair for students to evaluate their English
proficiency only through this exam.
Interviewee 3: It is a burden for students. It is needed to change our attitude to English
language first.
Interviewee 5: It’s awful, but respectively there is no other way of replacement it from exam.
It should increase the ratio of speaking and listening in exam. It is hard for us but at the same
time it is very helpful too.
Interviewee 12: I think it’s a failure to judge a person by Gaokao exam. Student should not be
judged by only one exam.

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 They suggest the policymakers should shift focus from the scores on standardized exams
to the English communication skills of the students. Some interviewees also point out that the
importance of English is overemphasized. They argue that not everyone needs to be
proficient in English. Considering the fact that some students in China are forced to learn
English, as the interviewees suggest, students should learn English because they want to learn
it.
Attitudes of Interviewees toward College English Instruction in China
Views about the English teaching in class 8 out of 13 (61%) were interested to learn
English and like the English class as English class will improve their oral ability skills, give
them chance to communicate with others and English language is used world widely.
Interviewee 2: Yes, I like it as it gives me plate form to speak and communicate with each
other through English.
Interviewee 10: Yes, in that room, I feel more interesting to study English. it will improve our
English ability.
On contrary 5 out of 13 (38%) showed little or no interest in English language classes as
they considered it boring and that class cannot improve their English very well. Some showed
dissatisfaction with English learning and argued that they do not like the instructor as it was
not native and little bit boring.
Interviewee 1: I do not like that class but it is needed for exams.
Interviewee 7: we work hard to learn English, but could not use it well.
Interviewee 9: No I do not like it because the pronunciation is not native and little bit boring
to me.
Attitudes of Interviewees toward English instruction in China
With the satisfactory level of English language instructions, 8 out of 13 (61%)
interviewees were not satisfied with the current English instructions. The reason behind this
was that English language was only limited to complete the courses. They learn English just
to pass the examination but a little use in the daily life.
Interviewee 4: I am dissatisfied with the English instruction because English instruction
mainly aimed at English test.
Interviewee 3: I am not satisfied with English instruction as those instructions are only for
exam.
While for those 5 (38%) who were satisfied with the English instruction, they found
English language very useful for their better future. Their teachers encourage them to speak

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and learn English as much as u can.
Interviewee 7: yes I am satisfied. It is useful for us to learn about foreigners, their culture, and
their knowledge.
Interviewee 2: I am satisfied with instructions that because it helps me to have a chance for
further study. I can go abroad easily without the language problem and can make my future
brighter.
Attitudes of Interviewees toward Native and non- native English teacher
All of the participants preferred to learn English language through native speakers.
Reasons behind this are: it is easier for them to speak and learn English language and due to
their accent it is easier for them to understand the language. They understand them very well.
Interviewee 2: Our English teacher is very good. I prefer native speaker of English because it
is good for us to speak English language easily and can learn from the pure accent.
Interviewee 12: Native speaker is best because he/she can know about Chinese students more
than non-native speakers. Native speaker can create a good environment to learn English and
culture.
Although in the past, they learn English language from non-native or native speakers but
now based on their experience all the respondents prefer to learn English language from
native speakers.
Attitudes of Interviewees toward difficulty of English language and their satisfaction with
English proficiency
When asked the participant about the difficulty of English language 9 out of 13 (69%)
were point out that listening part of English language is more difficult for them and compare
to speaking and writing English. It is hard for them to understand at first about what the other
person is saying to them as it is not native language for them. An important finding is that
76% participants regard oral language skills more important than literacy skills in college
English education and they also found it more difficult. It was difficult for them to easily
communicate with others. In relation to this, a majority of them prefer native speakers rather
than non-native speakers as their English teachers. Only 2 respondents (15%) were found
difficult to write English language.
Satisfaction about the English proficiency almost all of them were not satisfied with their
present level of English.
Interviewee 13: My English is poor, I can't speak English, I can interact in
a simple statement.

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 Attitudes of Interviewees toward communication among each others
All the participants were agreed that there should be communication among each other in
class and outside the class through English language as it will improve their spoken ability
and help to know others non natives.
Attitudes of Interviewees toward Importance of learning English in future
Importance of English language for the participant is very high. When the students were
asked how they would use English in the future, they believe that English will play a crucial
role in their future life. They give more significance to English language as it is mean for
them to study foreign scholarly literature, easily communicate with others and also get chance
to go abroad for further studies. By learning English language they will get more chance of
god job opportunities and they will continue to use English language in future.
Interviewee 3: It is very important. Through English language we are aware with the world
news. What is happening around us and it is also helpful to communicate with foreigner
friends.
Interviewee 5: Recently, the papers, all the information about advanced technology is printed
by the other countries in English language as it is international language. So through English
language, I can get information more easily.
Attitudes of Interviewees toward Parents believe about English language
84% of the respondents admit that their parents believe that learning English is
important, which indicates that parents may influence their motivations for learning English.
Interviewee 4: Yes, my parents are teachers. They know the importance of English language.
Interviewee 9: Yes, they think it is very important to learn English language as a foreign
language.
Finding and Discussion
This section presents findings about attitudes of Chinese college students toward English
and the current English education policies in China, their purposes for learning English, and
factors that may explain their attitudes.
Attitudes toward English language
The analysis results reveal that the students hold a positive attitude toward the purposes
of Chinese students for learning English. English as an International Language (e.g., Crystal
1997; Jenkins, 2007; Matsuda, 2000; Mckay, 2000; Seidlhofer, 2001), all of the respondents
are motivated to learn English language because English is a very useful tool in modern
society and English can help them catch up with technological and other developments in the

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world. Friedrich‘s (2000) study on attitudes of adult Brazilian learners toward the English
language Survey All the participants recognized the status of English as an international
language and expressed desire to be included in the global society where English serves as
the communication tool (cited by Jenkins, 2007. P. 103-104). Students believe that they can
attain other scholarly literature and advance knowledge by the means of it which can help in
their future career development. While some study in order to learn western cultures. They
can also keep contact with other world countries through this language.
Attitudes toward English education policies and practices
Regarding the English education policies in China, attitudes of participants are complex.
On the one hand, the students believe that the Chinese government has attached much
importance to English education; since most of the students focus solely on obtaining high
scores on English exams. The main goals for Chinese college students in learning English
remain unchanged from the results of previous studies (Chen et al., 2005; Gao et al., 2007;
Young, 2006).
Findings of the interview expose that one of the reason they learn English because it is
tested in a National College Entrance Examination. Students admit that before entering
university, their motivation to study English was to obtain high scores in the National College
Entrance Examination. Students also suggested that government should give attention to
enhance the oral skills through this test.
Attitudes toward English education in China
Along with English as an important school subject throughout China, a number of
colleges and universities have experimented with the use of English as a teaching medium
(Nunan 2003). For this aspect students have positive attitude towards learning English
language. According to them through these English classes they can improve their
communication skills; it can give them chance to study abroad and good job opportunities.
But some of the students feel that they could not be able to enhance their oral skills in class as
the main purpose of the teachers were just to complete the course and pass the exams. Also
they all preferred to study from native English-speaking teachers. Timmis (2002) examined
almost 600 participants (both teachers and students) in over 45 countries with regard to their
attitudes toward the English language. Two parallel Questionnaires survey was used to look
at the students’ and teachers’ attitudes to conforming to native-speaker norms. Both teachers
and students revealed an overall tendency to conform to Native Speaker norms, although the
teachers seemed less attached to those norms.

cclxii
 In relation to the English learners‘ enthusiasm to attain native pronunciation, previous
studies also examined students‘ preference for native English-speaking teachers, such as
Shim (2002) examined attitudes of 57 Korean English learners and Butler (2007) investigated
attitudes of 312 Korean elementary students toward teachers with American accented and
Korean-accented English. These two studies indicated that Korean students showed strong
preference for American-accented English teachers. In this present study, results showed that
the Chinese students prefer native speakers over nonnative speakers as their English teachers.
Attitudes toward Importance of learning English in future
From the findings it is clear that students have positive attitude towards learning and
make use of English language in career development. They believe that it will play an
important role to making their future better and will open paths to success. Also from their
parents point of view English is important for them to achieve future goals. They give
importance to English language although they by themselves not know English language or a
little but they want their children to learn English language as a foreign language. In relation
to this, Matsuda (2000) already pointed out that parents’ attitudes toward English have great
impact on the attitudes of learners (p. 172).
Conclusions
English will continue to play a major role in China‘s engagement with the world.
Furthermore, English will be used as an international language in the fields of commerce,
communication, and education in China (Bolton & Tong, 2002). Although the Chinese
government encourages students to learn English but still the problems of students have not
been examined. Results of the study have shown that some students have keen interest for
learning English language, since many of them learn English in order to pass English exam.
They do not think that English is as important as their government believes. They seem
English classes as boring and frustrating because oral communication skills are not being
addressed in the class. In order to improve college English education attention should be
given in these areas.
The students also believe that to develop their interest in English and strengthening
communication skills should be the main goals of English education in China. Their
experience with non-native English-speaking teachers and preference for native teacher as
English instructor also elucidate their positive attitudes toward English learning. These results
substantiate findings in Matsuda’s (2000) study that in some ways, teachers appear to
influence attitudes of students toward English. In light of these findings, policy makers and

cclxiii
administrators, as well as language teachers may take these noteworthy issues into
consideration in the practices of English education in China.
Implications
In light of findings of present study, this section discusses the implications for Chinese
college English instruction and policy-making in English education in China. More
importantly, policy makers in the Ministry of Education, curriculum writers, material writers,
and English teachers at various educational levels in China should cooperate and coordinate
to promote English language learning. Mckay (2003), argues that classroom aims and
teaching methods should be based on the requirements of an international language.
Specifically, sensitivity in the choice of cultural content in materials, reflexivity in
pedagogical procedures and respect for the local culture of learning are the most important
elements in teaching English as an international language (p. 125). These solutions may
support Chinese learners to develop their confidence in using English in this globalized era.
In Addition to this, curriculum and syllabus writers and policy-makers should carry out
research to identify the needs of learners and address their needs in their English classes and
learning materials. As from the findings, it is notable that some students are interested to
learn English language but are frustrated and bored because oral communication skills are not
addressed by the teachers in the class. The classes are mainly test oriented. May be that is the
reason of dissatisfaction of the students. By the increasing interaction of China with the
world, English teaching and learning is needed in order to prepare Chinese learner with a
stronger communicative capability. As government policy has an influence on attitudes and
learning outcomes (Young, 2006). The government should give attention to the requirements
of learners. Learners’ positive attitudes may lead to increased motivation, which, in turn, may
lead to successful attainment of proficiency due to increased input and interaction‖, in (Young,
2006, p. 480). English plays a more critical role in all the fields of education in China, more
college graduates with strong English communication abilities are needed.
As students give preference to native English-speakers, Chinese English language
teachers should take the responsibility of preparing students for exams while native English-
speaking teachers should engaged for oral English courses. However, the study found that the
needs of Chinese English learners have not been met. Much research is needed to identify the
kinds and levels of English proficiency that Chinese college students need to achieve. To
accomplish this goal, more attention should be given by the ministry of Education,
researchers, policy makers and teachers too.

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content_17339374.htm. retreived at 29/12/2014.
Attitudes of Chinese Students toward English
Thank you so much for participating in this study! This questionnaire
will take approximately 20 minutes to finish and is concerned with your
attitudes toward English and your purposes for learning English. You are the expert
in this case. Please be assured that your identity is completely confidential.
By completing this questionnaire, you consent to participate in this study.

Information about You

1. Gender (Please check one.)
Female______; Male______
2. Age (Please fill in the blank.)
____________ Years old
3. What is your major? (Please fill in the blank.)
______________________
6. Have you had any English teacher(s) who is (a) native speaker(s) of English?
Yes____; No____
7. Do your parents know English?

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Yes____; No____

1. What do you think about learning English?

2. In your opinion, what is the importance of English language? Please give explanation.

3. On what occasions do you use English in China? Please expand your answer and also

give examples.

4. What is your opinion on the English education policy in china?

5. Thinking about the existing examination system, what’s our opinion about English

subject in Gaokao exam? Is there any aspect you would like to change and why?

6. Do you like English teaching in EFL (English as a foreign language) class rooms?

Why and why not?

7. What do you think about the English instruction in China? Are you satisfied or

dissatisfied with that? Please explain.

8. Do you prefer a native speaker of English to non-native (foreigner) speaker? Please

explain why.

9. Based on your experience, which part of English language is difficult for you? Are

you satisfied with your English language proficiency?

10. Do you think that students should communicate among each other through English?

11. How do you think you will be using English in future?

12. Do your parents believe English learning language is important? Please explain.

Thanks for your participation! 

Development and Perspectives of English, asa Language of

Instructionand Learning, in Chinese Educational System

cclxviii
 Review paper as Final Paper Assignment
Student ID: 201539010003
November, 2015

Contents
YAbst
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................233
Methodology...........................................................................................................................................234
Background of English language Development in China...................................................................234
Establishment of language Translating programs................................................................................235
United States International Communication Agency (USICA) Stance on Learning English...............235
Beijing English Conference 2000.......................................................................................................235
Status of Learning English Language in different Parts of China........................................................236
Inclusion of English in Syllabus..........................................................................................................236

cclxix
 Establishment of English Language during Cultural Revolution.........................................................237
Development of English Language after Cultural Revolution.............................................................237
Perspectives of English as a Language of Instruction in China.........................................................237
Provision of Teachers for Teaching English........................................................................................238
Development of English as the Language of Instruction for Teaching................................................238
English Language Instruction and Training Market in China..........................................................239
Challenges to China for English Major...............................................................................................240
Recommendations for English as a Language of Instruction and Learning in Chinese
Educational Institutions........................................................................................................................242
Conclusion..............................................................................................................................................244
References..............................................................................................................................................246

Abstract

World has a new mania, a mania of learning English. Use of English as a language of learning
or scholarly production and advanced studies, as well as the language of business and
diplomacy has increased throughout the world but in China, its increasing trend as the
language of instruction and learning in the last quarter century has received much more
importance. Moreover, major developments and modifications in English language teaching
have been made in last three decades. As we know, that China stood as political, social, most
importantly economic and powerful socialist state throughout the world, due to the reason,
Chinese leadership felt the need of the hour to have a grip on western languages especially
English to compete with the contemporary super power countries. This paper discusses a
historical overview of Development and Prospects of English, as a Language of Instruction
and learning, in Chinese Educational System and touches the present issues and trends.

cclxx
Introduction

In the last few decades, the English language has gained importance and popularity at a very
high speed in the people’s republic of China. The nation has been accepted the English
language to become a modern in world (Cortazzi and Jin, 1996b). English is observed as a
key to endorse international exchange, assimilate scientific knowledge and technological
expertise, fostering economic progress, and participating in international competition (Ross,
1992). Almost 2 billion people are trying to learn the English worldwide including Pakistan,
India, Latin America, South East Asia, and most of all China. Chinese student learn English
from third grade by law that is why China has become the world's largest English speaking
country (Walker, 2009).
In the late 1970s, English has played a vital role, as a vital link between China and other parts
of the world, in subsequent transformations in political, economic, and social domains and as
acceleration of commercial, technological, and cultural exchanges with other parts of the
world. China is growing its contributions all over the world in the fields of economy, social
and politics, because of which the trend of learning English as a second language is
increasing in the mainland of China. So many business companies in Asia are spreading their
business in all over the world especially in Asia, which creates jobs for locals; this fashion
boosts the Chinese students to take up advantage in the form of English language as a tool for
the job, also to take advantage to study abroad. English language is serving as a source of link
or communication between China and other parts of the world (Maley, 1995).
Many students learn English language for so many reasons, likewise in search of
opportunities, for better job, to study abroad, to establish their businesses, some learn because
they want to go to visit other countries and to put better food on table. Learning foreign
language always comes with challenges of new words, different grammar, and sometimes-
strange pronunciation too and for the Chinese learners these concepts of grammar and
pronunciation are really the uphill tasks. English as a second language for the Chinese
students comes up with the unique scenario as they have tones in their own language as

cclxxi
compared to phonetics in English and characters or symbols as compared to alphabets and a
need of grammar and articles that are absent in Chinese language. This research contribution
is an attempt to find the reasons behind English language learning by the Chinese students
and to know their understanding about the different domains of English learning.

Methodology

This paper is based upon the a detailed review and evaluation of secondary data in which past
literature on English language teaching and learning in China was conducted. Different
language related databases were searched and a lot of relevant literature was collected. Good
deal of relevant literature for the intended study is chosen to construct a clear picture about
the development of English as a language of instruction, in earlier and current situation, in
education system of China.

Background of English language Development in China

Chinese history in itself is keeping very strange attraction for outer world especially for
European and Western world. Many different aspects of Chinese culture, which have
attracted the West, are the utter size of its population, its mysterious culture, and the difficulty
of its language. At the same time, Western world has attracted China with its technological
advancements, its cultural diversity within a small space, and the way in which one of its
languages - English - has managed to become the lingua franca of the world. The desire of
China to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), China has welcomed and listened
politely to leaders of Western countries as they gave their views on democracy and human
rights. The language, in which President Clinton spoke, during his visit to China, was of
course English. President Jiang Zemin made his replies in Chinese. Nevertheless, a team of
first-class interpreters, who made smooth communication possible, backed each up. Training
of Interpreters is very recent in China. There is a great deal of learning English language
learning in the political prospective as well as in economic concerns as well.

Establishment of language Translating programs

Under the dire need of this transition different language programmes were launched in
Chinese system. In 1978, it was first time a program for Translators and Interpreters was

cclxxii
started in Beijing Foreign Language Institute. The program was later developed into the pres-
tigious school of translation in the Beijing Foreign Studies University.

United States International Communication Agency (USICA) Stance on Learning

English

A team of US international Communication agency has expressed their opinion very

positively by visiting Chinese five cities, many of the Chinese educational institutions and
greatly welcomed the China’s reasons for learning English. A summary, of the American visit
on the Chinese wish of entering in the world of English Language learners, was expressed in
way two ways, firstly, the Chinese vision to learn English primarily as a necessary tool,
which can facilitate access to modem scientific and technological advances. Secondly, to pro-
mote business, trade and socio political understanding, between the People’s Republic of
China and countries, where English is a major language of market (Cowan et al., 1979).

Beijing English Conference 2000

The British Council and the State Education Commission of the People ’s Republic of China,
in which reasons for the learning of English by Chinese were summarized that learning
second language is necessary because, it is the language of science, commerce and Dolar is
the standard currency of international travel and communication. They learn it because you
find more software in English than in all other languages put together" (Bowers, 1996).

Status of Learning English Language in different Parts of China

Geographically China is very vast and has different regions administratively. So the thinkers
and educationists have took this thing in mind that before getting on the educational reforms
or any academic change the difficulty in regard to geographical construction of China should
be considered (Maley, 1995). The learning of English in the mountainous provinces
near Tibet is very different from the way it is studied in the cities of Nanjing,
Shanghai, or Beijing. Nevertheless, there are sufficient general characteristics about the
history of the learning of English in different parts of China to justify a brief review, if only to
remind us of the pendulum swings of China’s history this century (Maley, 1996).In 1902 it
was first time during Qing Dynasty English was included in the syllabus of schools. Those
days method of learning English was same as it was in Japan. The method of ELT was

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traditional, with emphasis on reading and translation. There was much grammar and vocabu-
lary learning, with pronunciation learned by imitation and repetition. This was the norm for
about the first twenty years of the century.

Inclusion of English in Syllabus

In 1922 there was a change of direction.Schools were obliged to follow the "Outlines for
School Syllabuses of the New Teaching System". In 1949, the Ministry of Education issued a
new "Scheme for English Instruction in Secondary Schools" in which the goal of English
language learning was clearly stated as being to serve the New Republic.The place of English
was taken in school syllabuses by Russian and by 1954 Russian had become the only foreign
language taught in Chinese schools. In 1955 the Ministry of Education announced that-
English teaching should be restarted in secondary schools.The importance of English was
accepted and a significant step was taken in 1962 when English became part of the entrance
examination for colleges and universities.It began to look as though better days had come for
ELT in China (Price, 1971).

Establishment of English Language during Cultural Revolution

The Chinese pendulum swung, and the progress made in the early 1960s was swept aside by
the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 and lasted for ten dreadful years. English
was .again banned from schools. Foreign language teachers were branded as spies. Some
universities were closed; others were subjected to re-education visits. Dow (1975) describes
the situation thus: "During the Cultural Revolution, when workers’ propaganda teams for the
spreading of Mao Tse-Tung’s thoughts came to China’s colleges, classes were stopped
altogether, and the students travelled instead all over the country in order to take part in
criticism and debate and to exchange revolutionary experiences".

Development of English Language after Cultural Revolution

In 1978, the Ministry of Education held an important conference on foreign language

teaching, in which English was given prominence again in schools, on a par with Chinese and
Mathematics. By the early 1980s, it had been restored as a compulsory subject in the college
entrance exam. It has not looked back since then (Kang, 1999) and the fervor for learning
English has been fanned by Teach Yourself English programs on television, watched by hun-

cclxxiv
dreds of millions of people. History is full of examples of the unpredictable. For one
thing, China’s own language is liable to become of more global importance in the futurethat
replacing the oligargy of Chinese and spanish (Graddol 1997, pp. 3). Nevertheless, at this
stage in the last few years of the millennium, it does looks as if China wants it badly for
industrial, scientific and commercial expansion to make herself the world’s largest economy
by the early years of the next century (Boyle, 1980). In order to function efficiently in this
role, it needs to bring large numbers of its people to high levels of proficiency in the use of
English for a wide variety of function (Maley, 1995).

Perspectives of English as a Language of Instruction in China

Provision of Teachers for Teaching English

English teaching and learning is not only a matter of language. Nobody can learn a language
well without knowing its culture. At present, the vast majority of teachers of English learn
English in China teach English in China and finish their postgraduate studies in China. In
other words, they usually have not had the experience of living in English speaking countries.
Such a situation is not favorable for the improvement of English teaching (Anderson, 2002).
In recognition, the Chinese government has begun to send its English teachers to English
speaking countries for further training and experience such a program is considered to be a
very promising beginning. Although compared with the total number of English teachers in
China those who have been sent out are still a very small number (Zhou, 2014). When
everything is taken into consideration, the key issue of sending teachers of English to English
speaking countries only involves money. Therefore, it seems to be a simple rather than
complex issue. Thus, with the financial improvement of China, the day when all the teachers
of English have the experience of being immersed in English culture will soon come (Neave,
2000). For teaching English textbooks, there is at least one set of multimedia software for
teaching and learning (Cortazi and Jin, 1996). This software is very expedient to use that
students can learn English even at home (Lin, 2005; Warschauer, 2000).

Development of English as the Language of Instruction for Teaching

The most significant change in English Language Teaching (ELT) in China is the rise in the
number of teachers and learners. In 1957, there were only 843 full time middle school

cclxxv
teachers, of English in the whole China (ibid), compared to 1995 figures of about 400,000
middle school teachers of English and approximately 28,000 at tertiary level (Maley, 1995).
By the 1990s it was estimated that there were well over 57 million school and university
students studying English (Zhou and Chen, 1991) and 150 million part time students learning
the language (Dzau, 1990) or more conservative estimates of around 200 million users of
English (Yong and Cambell, 1995). This development of English is informally supported in a
variety of ways, e.g. through the media. National and provincial TV channels show the news,
films, and other programmes in English (as well as in other languages). There are English
lessons broadcast on TV and radio, which attracted large number of audiences. The English
language newspaper China Daily has a large circulation nationwide, while Hong Kong has a
thriving English language press. In parks in many large cities, 'English corners' have
spontaneously sprung up, where people meet every week to practice English informally.
Historically, the development of ELT in China has had several rises and falls since the
People's Republic was established in 1949 (ibid).
English has been widely accepted as a utilitarian tool for science, technology, national
development, and modernization. Sometimes in conflict with the view that English might also
be a pathway to individual and cultural transformation, a spiritual pollution, harmful for
Chinese identity (Ward et al., 1995).
The access of Chinese students and teachers to international publications or textbooks
published outside China has been limited. Alexander's New Concept series (1967) has been
particularly widely used since the late 1970s, and is still in use in the 1990s. Like other books
available, such as O'Neill's Kernel Lessons, a popular Chinese edition was a bilingual one,
with all texts, exercises, and explanations translated into Chinese. Other books, such as
Alexander's Mainline Progress (1980), have been used as the basis for distance learning
courses for part-time students, supported by specially prepared Students' Guides
(Mackmillan, 1990).

English Language Instruction and Training Market in China

With China's economy and internationalization advancing, there is an ever-increasing

demand for learning English, and the tremendous market demand has led to the emergence of
an English language education industry. The industry operates on a market mechanism, where
the supply, demand, competition, and price, etc, interact in influencing its development.

cclxxvi
There is no doubt that the market will become larger and larger, and attract new investors.
However, before making any investment, they must be aware that branding competition will
be the theme of the market development, where teaching approaches, availability of foreign
teachers, research into and development of training programs, and market promotion strategy
will make a big difference, when the training quality will be guaranteed (Jiancheng, 2010).
As far as the English teaching environment is concerned, the English language has become a
second rather than a foreign language (Maoying, 2003). Actually, that English is taught from
even Grade 3 in elementary schools provides an exciting symbol of that fundamental change.
The more the Chinese government looks at English teaching from a strategic perspective, the
sooner the day will come when English becomes a second language in China (Hui, 2001).

Challenges to China for English Major

China’s increasing participation in global economy and world affairs has speeded up the
development of education of English majors in China. However, the impact of global and
national changes has also brought problems concerning the education of English majors. The
major challenges are identified as follow.
1. Changing Demands

The caliber of English major graduates cannot meet the changing demands (Zhang and Yang,
2000; Fang, 2001; Shi, 2001). Graduates from English majors in China are mainly trained in
language skills, language knowledge, language theories, and literary studies. Lacking
knowledge in other disciplines, they cannot cope with tasks demanding the interdisciplinary
knowledge required in a rapidly changing social, cultural, economic, scientific and
technological world. Moreover, the educational ideology of teachers and administrators is
still backward owing to the legacy of government planning system. Inflexible management, a
rigid syllabus, teacher-centered teaching, and outdated materials cannot effectively prepare
students for the changing market they are supposed to face.
2. Favoritism

English major graduates are gradually losing their previous advantages in seeking
employment (Zhang, 2000; Fang, 2001). The unchallenged prestige and the dominant status
of English as the first preferred foreign language in society and ongoing reforms in primary
and middle schools have greatly improved school-leavers’ English language skills.

cclxxvii
Undergraduates studying non-English majors, are therefore starting their higher education
with a better English foundation, and will graduate with greater English proficiency. With
knowledge of their relevant disciplines and good English language skills, they are more likely
to be favored in the job market. Moreover, the numerous private language training institutions
established in recent years offer flexible training programmes and are better oriented to the
demands of the market system, thus turning out more competitive candidates for the job
market. Graduates trained in English-speaking countries, with their greater English
proficiency and their knowledge of relevant disciplines, are also posing challenges to English
major graduates.
3. Brain Drain Loss

The brain drain occurs at the rate of about 7 per cent every year among competent middle-
aged and young teachers of English (Cen, 1997; Tan, 2000; Lan and Liao 2003). The Chinese
government’s loss of its tight control over teachers’ mobility in recent years, under the impact
of mercerization and globalization, has meant that individual teachers are more able to choose
their jobs than before. Better opportunities abroad and higher salaries in foreign-funded or
private enterprises in China are draining talented people from campus, thus exacerbating a
severe shortage of English teachers.
4. Affects on Competitiveness

The poorer academic background of students (Fang, 2001) and the consequent lower quality
of graduates from English majors are marring the image of this sector, and thus affecting the
employment prospects of the graduates. Since 1999, China has expanded its higher education
at a remarkable speed. The same thing has happened in the sector of English majors, only at
an even greater speed, resulting in poorer levels of education among the students admitted.
Increased numbers of students, a shortage of language teachers, the lack of teaching resources
and inadequate language training in larger classes are likely to bring about poor results,
consequently affecting the competitiveness of graduates in the job market.

5. Lack of Quality

Some institutions, are pushed by the economic tide, hastily transformed themselves for short-
term goals, and plunged into new ways of training regardless of their own capacity (Cen,
1997; Fang, 2001; Liu, 1995). The courses offered lack of system, quality and

cclxxviii
competitiveness, resulting in the sacrifice of students’ language training and fragmented
knowledge in other disciplines and rendering the graduates less competitive. With the
recognition of challenges, problems are also identified in inflexible syllabuses, teacher-
centered classes, monotonous teaching, over-dependence on force-fed teaching, test oriented
practice, too much mechanical teaching, too little fostering of critical thinking, lack of
efficiency and inadequate incentives for improvement (Chang, 2006).
6. Low Standard Material

There are many errors in English study materials. Although there are no spelling mistakes,
but there are rather a lot of non Standard English words. English study materials are not able
to teach native English. The abilities of authors are somehow limited, because they
themselves are native Chinese, not having a chance to soak in an English environment, which
misleads students from generation to generation, if no person is to correct these errors (Yao,
2012).

Recommendations for English as a Language of Instruction and Learning

in Chinese Educational Institutions

From primary school to college, a complete system of English teaching has been established.
Meanwhile, some problems exist:
1. The system of college English teaching is not cohesive with that of primary and middle
school. The Education Ministry has put forward a new demand: from now on, students from
cities and developed areas of China will start to learn English from grade 3 of primary
schools; students in remote areas from grade 1 of middle schools. Recently, there have been
some gaps and overlaps between middle school and public college English teaching. These
gaps and overlaps occur in content, courses, textbooks, teaching methods, etc, resulting in a
waste of time and energy as well as discontent among students. Some students who did well
in English during high school complained that they gained little from college English
teaching.
2. English teaching aims at developing students’ reading ability. To a certain degree,
communication skills in English such as listening and speaking are not given enough
attention. The aim was suitable when people in China depended on English material to learn
about foreign countries (Zhou, 1991). Nowadays, it is more important for students to improve

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their oral and listening ability. It’s high time we remedied the phenomenon of “deaf English”
and “dumb English” (when students can read, but cannot speak English fluently, or
understand what people say). Some students said their vocabulary was probably larger than
that of some native speakers, but they could not express themselves in English. After ten
years’ English learning, they were still “deaf and dumb.” Because reading is emphasized,
grammar is mainly taught in Chinese. Classes are relatively large (more than 20 students) so
students seldom have a chance to speak. Through lack of funds, many universities lack
language lab or multi-media facilities, thus, students’ listening and oral English training is
impaired. In order to expand their vocabulary, students spend much time reciting words, but
they don’t know how to use them correctly in practice.
3. English teaching in colleges cannot meet the needs of all kinds of personnel in specialized
subjects such as science because all teachers follow the same teaching syllabus. Students
must pass CET (College English Test) Band 4 or Band 6 in order to get their degrees. The
Education Ministry demands over 10% of teachers in important universities teach basic and
specialized courses in English within three years. The aim is to improve students’
comprehensive ability in English use. Nowadays with the development of market economy,
the ties between universities and industries are being strengthened. Different types of
universities should have different demands as to students’ English level. For instance, in well-
known universities around the world, the students’ English level and ability enable them to
communicate. Apart from reading and writing, they can speak and listen quite well, especially
in their majors and the field of science and technology.
4. More money and attention should be put into English teaching. Funding for teaching is
always a weak point, especially English teaching: (1) Lack of language labs and multi-media
classrooms, means students have not enough time to practice English; (2) The quality and
quantity of English teachers need to be improved. At present, public college English teachers
are mostly young postgraduates who need to improve their teaching methods and quality.
Universities should pay more attention to teachers’ training, and their subsidies.
5. More studies should be done on the reform of college English teaching. For example,
studies on teaching and hearing methods, facilities on the Internet, test systems, new
textbooks and excellent textbooks from abroad, English teaching systems and reforming of
courses.
6. Evaluation and test systems need to be improved. Recently, all kinds of evaluation and test
systems have appeared, among which TOEFL and GRE from America, CET Band 4 and CET

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Band 6 from China are very popular. Passing TOEFL and GRE is the key for Chinese
students to go abroad to continue their studies. With the opening of some special training
schools, grades may not reflect the students’ true English level. These tests do not influence
students’ graduation and job selection, so they are not severely criticized. As for CET Band 4
and CET Band 6, two opinions exist. People who approve of them believe that they function
as a bridge which links students’ English level and their future. Meanwhile, these tests
encourage teachers to improve their methods so as to achieve higher grades. In short, these
tests help improve teachers’ teaching methods and students’ English levels, thus benefitting
both. In the long run, they will benefit society. People who oppose these tests argue that
teachers and students pay so much attention to preparing for CET Band 4 and CET Band 6
that they neglect to cultivate the students’ communication skills. They complained that some
students passed CET Band 4 and even 6, but they couldn’t speak and write well in English.
Although they knew how to pass these tests, they did not digest what they had learned (Lin,
2002).

Conclusion

English fashion is good or horrific in case of China. Is English language washing away the
Chinese language? It is not like that, Chinese language (the native language) is the life for
Chinese people, but English is the world's second language, which has become an important
part of China's educational, political, and economic system. Chinese History of culture and its
different philosophies of learning and teaching have definitely influenced the English
teaching and learning in China. In earlier period, after Cultural Revolution, when China
started growing in trade globally, it faced serious problems of language barrier and has to use
interpreter's teams. However, with the passage of time people and government both realized
the worth of International language and started progress in learning and teaching it. Now
there are very few issues related the English language. In addition, after overcoming these
issues English language will definitely contribute China to become the giant of technologies
and trade. Because only teaching English is not enough, how to make the quality of English
teaching comparable with the English taught in other countries is what really counts. By
learning English China wants to become the part of the wider and global conversation about
global problems like, poverty, hunger, disease, climate change, world has other universal
languages like language of mathematics is the language of science, music is the language of

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emotions. Currently, English is becoming the language of problem solving because world is
pulling it, so English obsession of learning and instruction is a turning point, like the
harnessing of the electricity in our cities, fall of Berlin wall. Consequently, English represent
a hope for the better future, a future where the world has common language to solve its
common problems.

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Dzau, Y. F. (1990a). Introduction In Y. F. Dzau (ed.). English in China.Hong Kong: API
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Local Knowledge and Wisdom in Higher Education. Oxford, England, Pergamon.
Price, R. F. (1971). English Teaching in China (Changes in Teaching Methods, 1960–
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Ross, H. (1992). Foreign language education as a barometer of modernization. Education and
modernization: The Chinese experience, 239-254.
Ward, T., Barr, B., Chai, M., Hua, D., Kong, X. & Liu, H. (1995). A Crane among the
Chickens? Evaluating a training program for English teachers in China. Shanghai, Shanghai
Foreign Language Education Press.
Warschauer, M. (2000). The changing global economy and the future of English
teaching. Tesol Quarterly, 34, 511-535.
Yong, Z., & Campbell, K. P. (1995). English in China. World Englishes, 14(3), 377-390.
Zhou, Z. J. & Chen, J. (1991). (eds.). Contemporary College English, Extensive Reading,
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Zhou, X. (2014). THE INFLUENCES OF THE AMERICAN BOXER INDEMNITY
REPARATIONS REMISSIONS ON CHINESE HIGHER EDUCATION.

IMPACTS OF REFORMS IN CHINESE

EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
By
STUDENT ID: 201539010028
Beijing Normal University
Faculty of Education
International and Comparative Education Research Institution

Chinese History and Culture: Education Systems, Policy and Management in China
December, 2015

Contents
Abstract----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 249
1-INTRODUCTION------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 250
2-LITERATURE REVIEW---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 251

cclxxxiv
 2.1 Significance of the reforms and modernization of education-----------------------------------251
2.2 Compulsory education and massification------------------------------------------------------------253
2.3 Curriculum--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 254
3-METHODOLOGIY----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 255
3.1 Research Instrument-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 255
3.2 Data----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 255
4-RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS--------------------------------------------------256
4.1 Consequences of the culture of results in education----------------------------------------------256
4.2 Contrasts or paradoxes within the education system---------------------------------------------257
4.3 Financing of education: insufficient funding--------------------------------------------------------259
4.4 The issue of privatization of education---------------------------------------------------------------259
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS----------------------------------------------------260
REFERENCES-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 261

Abstract
This paper focus on the impacts of the reforms in Chinese educational
system. Education is part of China’s overall development and it is known
that the last recent decades the whole Chinese educational system has been
the subject of unprecedented reforms. The increased impact of educational
reforms has provided significant human resources and innovation, which
facilitated progress in the economic, political, cultural, and social. The
development of China's education system has been a major factor in its
economic and social growth. This article aims to examine some of the
effects that the reforms have generated on the entire Chinese education
system and provide guidelines to minimize limitations and weaknesses of
the education system in its reforms facing the challenges of the modern

cclxxxv
 world. Using a qualitative approach to collect the data drawn from articles
and materials, this paper tried to discuss about educational reforms and
how they affect the Chinese education system by exploiting the readings
related to the subject. Excellent gains have been made through educational
policies supported by good economic health for years. Despite the
progress, education seems to be the field of some contradictions and there
is a need to overcome certain shortcomings and weaknesses of educative
practices facing the Chinese educational system. Possible solutions are
proposed in conclusion and recommendation.
Keywords: China; Chinese educational system; reform; impacts
compulsory education; massification; modernization; quality; equity;
‘’gaokao’’; contrast; paradox;disparity; inequality

1-INTRODUCTION

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world, said
Nelson Mandela, former South African President (Duncan, 2013).Of all human activities
education is among the highest and noblest (Gu, Li &Wang, 2009) ensuring the harmonious
structure of a nation. China is one of ancient civilization in the world and attaches great
importance to education not only in modern society, but also in ancient times and it began
early with Confucius (551 B.C- 4779 B.C) who regarded education as an important
component of social development(Xu & Mei, 2009). In recent decades multiple educational
reforms have been instituted within mainland China.
Between 1966 and 1976 the Cultural Revolution seriously damaged China Education
plunging into a deep crisis, but from 1977 to 1991 a new reform policy initiated and opening
to the world has become the highest priority for the reconstruction of education. Deng
Xiaoping, great leader of People’s Republic of China, engaged Chine to learn from West, in
search of scientific and technical development (Yang, 2009). Thus, 1978 has been particularly
important in the modern history of China, because it marked its entry into a new period of
reform and opening up, and one of socialist modernization. The nation collectively walked
along a new path of reform and development. Since 1978, the educational policy in China has
experienced mainly four stages: the recovery and reconstruction of the educational order
(1978-1984); the total start-up of educational system reform (1985-1992); the adjustment of
educational policy facing the reform of the market economy system (1993-2002) and the new
development of the educational policy under the guidance of Scientific Outlook on

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Development (Xu & Mei, 2009 p. xiii). The rapid development of the economy and the
realization of nine-year compulsory education have provided a sufficient foundation for the
further reform of education in the new century (Xu & Mei, 2009).
To enable better respond to changes in the contemporary world and the expectations
of the Chinese people, Chinese education system has begun an unprecedented reform. The
reform covers all aspects, from preschool education to continuing education, including
educational objectives, the role of teachers and researchers and international cooperation.
Thus, China's education system has steadily improved, with primary education, secondary
and higher, and adult education.
It is clear that until now several reforms have undoubtedly helped to modernize the
Chinese education system. This study is trying to analyze some of these reforms and examine
their implications in the quality of education. It also notes the current challenges in the most
populous country's education system in the world.

2-LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Significance of the reforms and modernization of education

To ensure real importance of education China has adopted several laws, rules and
administrative regulations which constitute the basic framework of the Chinese educational
system. The objective of reforming the education system shall initially establish an education
system geared to the system of socialist market economy, the political system as well as the
technological system. Only in this way would it be possible to achieve an active and vivid
development of the economy and society, and to carry out the new way of educational
development (Xu & Mei, 2009)
Moreover, the article 19 of the 1982 Constitution (Constitution of the People's
Republic of China, 1983) stipulates that "the state develops socialist education to raise the
cultural and scientific level of the whole people." Several laws aimed to revitalizing the
country through science and education complete it and remind that education is at the service
of socialist modernization and aims to build a socialist society advanced culturally and
ideologically and materially (Grenié&Belotel-Grenié, 2006). According to these authors,
Education based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong thought and the theory
of building socialism with Chinese characteristics. Therefore, the ideological and political
training of youth is omnipresent at every stage of the educational background and framed by
laws and regulations from the reforms.

cclxxxvii
 Educational system is the basic educational organization form in a country and the
reform of educational system is the key element in educational reform. To modernize any
educational system must be adapting to the economic, political and cultural development. The
economic boom of the 1980s has enabled China to adapt and develop its education system
based on reforms that reflect the social values of the country, and political and economic
realities. Since China has attached great importance for quality education, efforts are made to
maintain and protect the educational rights of disadvantaged groups. Developing education in
western areas and helping poor students are two notable examples (Xu & Mei, 2009).
When the economic system in a country changes, the educational system will also
change eventually (Yang, 2009) and the reform of educational system can be beneficial to the
reform of economic system (Wang, 1989 as cited in Yang, 2009). On 27 May, 1985, decision
on Reform of Educational System was issued by the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) and in 1993 Program of China’s Educational Reform and
Development was issued by the Central Committee of the CCP and the State Council (He,
1998 as cited in Yang, 2009). The goal of the reforms was to enhance national competence
and provide more and better manpower adapting to the reform of socialist market oriented
economic and political system, and to the scientific and technological development (Yang,
2009). Since 1978, throughout the period of reform and opening up, China implemented a
nine-year compulsory education system, an academic degree system, a graduate education
system, and has further improved the adult education system.
2.2 Compulsory education and massification

In 1986, China promulgated the Compulsory Education Law, putting forward the
implementation of nine years of compulsory education. Compulsory education is
implemented nationwide in accordance with the Compulsory Education Law, which
stipulates that all school-age children and adolescents must receive education that is free,
mandatory, and universal.
China’s nine-year compulsory education is composed of primary and junior secondary
education. School-age children and adolescents are exempted from entrance examinations.
Any child who is at least 6 years must undergo compulsory education of nine years. Local
governments are responsible, under the control of central authorities of this training period (in
theory) free.
The universal level of compulsory education has been rapidly enhanced since the

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promulgation of the Compulsory Education Law in 1986. According to Ministry of
Educationthe gross enrollment rate in junior middle schools had reached 100.1%.5 (MoE,
2012a). After the establishment of compulsory education system in China in 1986 and the
introduction of monitoring system for the development of compulsory and literacy education
in 1993, great progress had been made in the quantitative development of compulsory
education before the end of the 20th century (Wang, 2009). In 2007 the coverage population of
compulsory education and literacy education reached 98% (MoE, 2007).
In 1995 a huge effort was launched to increase enrollment rates in secondary and
higher education. The reform had a number of objectives: to generalize compulsory education
for nine years (currently, only three quarters of an age group after 9 years of schooling);
remove illiteracy; develop technical secondary education, adult education and continuing
education; improve the level of education of girls, and of national minorities in poor areas;
renovate and construct buildings for research and education in order to increase the carrying
capacity of the students. Ministry of Education indicated that, in 2011, the enrollment rate of
primary schoolage children across the nation was 99.76% while the gross enrollment rates of
junior high was 100.1% and senior high schools wasand 84.5% and that of preschool children
aged 3 to 5 was 62.3% (MOE, 2012a).
2.3 Curriculum

China’s current school education system consists of four levels: preschool, elementary,
secondary, and higher education. Basic education and higher education each have a structured
curriculum with the type of education. In the spirit of the reforms, the curriculum was also
affected since it is an important aspect in the educational structure.
In 1999, State Council issued decision on deepening educational reform and
promoting quality education in an all-round way and a fairly complete modern curriculum
system has been operating in China at the end of the 20 th century (Xu & Mei, 2009). New
curriculum reform was a successful part of the quality education, and contributed a great deal
to the political, economic and cultural development. The principal aims of basic education
curriculum are to develop the spirit of patriotism, collectivism and promotion of socialist
awareness and national cultural tradition to democratic awareness, respect to national laws
and public morals, to cultivation of good values and attitudes of the students towards the
world and life, and also to enhance flexibility of school curriculum (MoE, 2001). The new
reform of the 1999 curriculum takes into account the individual development and promotes

cclxxxix
the creation of comprehensive practical activities based on direct experience of students,
integrating theoretical knowledge in social life (Wang, 2014).
The development of school curriculum is one of the most important dimensions in the
quality provision of basic education (Wang, 2009), this is why a system called three-level
management is stated in outlines of the reformsof basic education curriculum, issued by the
Ministry of Education in July 2001. Vocational education is also an important part of China’s
educational system and a crucial means of promoting socioeconomic development and
employment. In 2010, 50.94% of senior high school students were enrolled in secondary
vocational schools and students enrolled in all forms of higher vocational colleges accounted
for 46.92% of the total number of students enrolled in higher education (Statistical Bulletin
for National Educational Development, 2010).

3-METHODOLOGIY
3.1 Research Instrument

Research instrument is the search strategy by which we want to test the hypothesis. The
choice of research method is important to make deductions from a phenomenon because it
will affect what the searcher is going to say about the causes and factors influencing the
phenomenon. It is also important to choose a method of matching research with the
provisions of the researcher because aspects such as time, money, feasibility, ethics and the
ability to correct measurement of the phenomenon are examples of conditions forcing the
search (Exportable.com, 2008).
The objective of this study is to examine the impact of reforms on the educational
system. Therefore, it is an exploratory research. The selected search technique is that of the
literature review is to treat the contents of documents (Muchielli 1991; Bardin, 2003).
Documentary methodology is all steps to seek,identify and document relating to a subject by
developing a research strategy (Bu.univ-avignon.fr/).
3.2 Data

The objective of this study justifies the choice of materials which are drawn data. Indeed,
there are no respondents in a search like that, but there are 'individuals' of a population that
must draw the sample; these individuals are documents (Gaudreau 2011). The review must
not, in the words of the author, a research instrument itself, but a reading grid or grid of
analysis that can be built during the data production process and allowed by it. This is

ccxc
gradually extracted all documents essential and useful information for the study. This corpus
corresponds to a content analysis, the same that is found in qualitative research based on the
interview (ibid.). The data collected is qualitative and are based mainly on the writings of
secondary sources such as books, articles, and government websites. These data were used to
explore the link between reforms and the quality of the Chinese education system.

4-RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1 Consequences of the culture of results in education

The culture of results in the Chinese education system has a national reputation, even
internationally to access higher education. Yet this practice is not without consequences for
students and parents as well as the efficiency of the education system. Speaking of “Gaokao”,
national review of access to higher education Mao Zedong himself had recognized the
stressful nature of this practice and declared (Wang, 2014):
School classes are too heavy, they are hurting young people who are in daily tension.
Courses can be halved. It is inappropriate that students read every day, they could participate
in productive work and social activities. Current methods of examinations, with strange
questions, surprise, confuse who are like approaches in front of the enemy.
The current reform of gaokao carries both the content of the tests and the
modernization of the registration system for future students. In its original form, the gaokao
consists of three basic tests: Chinese, mathematics, English. To recruit their future students,
universities refer exclusively to the note obtained gaokao. Competition for access to higher
education is severe. In the last years of secondary school, students focus their efforts on the
preparation of entrance exams to university: the "gaokao". Failure to gaokao means upheaval
in the future prospects of young Chinese (Embassy of the People's Republic of China in
French republic, 2015). Furthermore, the one-child policy has intensified stress and
psychological pressure of parents and their children for every family wants their child to
become a genius. Also, as pointed out Wang (2014), the elite schools are created and searched
and parents seek by all means to make admit their children. While the gap between good
schools and mainstream schools is widening, industrialization and commercialization of
education have developed quietly, as in Beijing where costs related to school choice can
reach 60,000 yuan, 5000 euros (Wang, 2014). Thus the social and professional future of
young Chinese people depends largely on their school and university curricula. Although, in
1999 the term 'qualifying education' (zhijiaoyu) has replaced "teaching to the test"

ccxci
(yingshijiaoyu) difficulties exist and merely reflect school and social inequalities (ibid.).
During the last three decades of education reforms, policies concerning the reduction
of burden on school students and improving the quality of education have been introduced
but have not yet obtained satisfactory results. The ideology of work by the culture of the
result is the one that defined the current situation in China and maintains a cultural difference
between the young. Admission to gaokao priced miles intellectual and physical effort seems
to give young people a chance of social success, but education based on hard work and
absolute search for performance may harm the personal interests and above all destroy the
spirit innovation (Wang, 2014). Also the first values of education as such as socialization,
humanization, morals and ethics are likely to be less important for young people who have
yet needs of these prerequisites to be in line with the concept of socialist harmonious
society(Grenié&Belotel-Grenié, 2006) and the need to promote morality among the people. A
good education was not just one that would give us knowledge and prepare us for a vocation,
it was also an education that would encourage an ongoing commitment to social justice,
particularly to the struggle for racial equality (hooks, 2010, p.1).
4.2 Contrasts or paradoxes within the education system

There are some contrasts in gearing education, equity, assessment and qualifications.
‘’Gearing education to the needs of modernization, the world and the future” was a vision of
Deng Xiaoping that was to adapt education to the needs of modern society to obtain as
quickly as possible the elite in terms of human resources able to boost economic and social
growth ( Xu & Mei, 2009). But this education policy was based on elitism with the National
College Entrance Examination. Xu & Mei (2009) pointed out that it places emphasis on
selection and excellence, but neglects that basic education is for the public good; it
overstresses the importance of knowledge learning, and the students do not develop in an all-
round way.
Despite many efforts, the issue of equity remains mostly within ethical minorities and
in rural areas. According to the authorities, in 2004 are nearly 2.3 million children who are
out of school, of which 70% girls and the dropout rate in rural areas is 2.45% for primary and
3.91% for college (Shangwu, 2006). Moreover there is insufficient coaching and educational
management and a lack of interest in training whose content is often poor (Grenié&Belotel-
Grenié, 2006). Teachers in rural areas are less well trained and paid less than those in urban
areas: in 2001, the proportion of teachers with higher education was in town to 40.94% for

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the primary and 23.51% for college, while in rural areas it was 20.25% and 9.35%
(Yixian&Yanshu, 2004).
In spite of the compulsory education law which requires all six-years-olds to enrol in
nine years of compulsory education, regardless of gender, ethnicity or race significant
inequalities remain (Peng et al., 2014). In addition, curriculum reform and classroom practice
was attempting to move Chinese society away from an over whelming and deep seated
emphasis on examination results towards the facilitation of all round development and
lifelong learning, although so far with some evidence of limited success ( Thomas et al., 2012
as cited in Peng et al., 2014).
Moreover many families are in debt to finance the high school or university of their
offspring. With the massification of flows, obtaining a first job often requires the acceptance
of underpaid situation where the youth is over graduated. Given the depreciation of their
qualifications on the labor market and competition with migrants, many young people have a
sense of frustration and are disappointed that personal relationships and social background
remain crucial to find a place (Heckman, 2003). If this situation persists, it would not
encourage to invest in human capital. Besides, Grenié&Belotel-Grenié (2006) pointed out the
imbalance of the reforms : while there was massification but unequal access by social status
of families and their residence there, the requirement of success individual is, at heart,
contrary to socialist slogans under which the collective takes precedence over the individual,
educational resources are more abundant in developed or urbanized coastal regions while the
western rural areas are disadvantaged, the openness to Western education more learner-
centered, while the specialties of the Confucian heritage are claimed.
PISA 2012 (Program for International Student Assessment) revealed Shanghai
Municipality topped the results with 613 points, well above the average (494 points) of the 34
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, an advance of
nearly three years of study in mathematics over the average, more than a year and a half in
reading, and more than three quarters in science (Wang, 2014). Although Shanghai is the
most developed city and more modernized (ibid), it is difficult to understand that it can
represent the level of the whole of China. Do these results show the real value of students’
level who certainly have been prepared specifically for PISA assessment?
4.3 Financing of education: insufficient funding

Investment in human capital and involvement in education has taken center stage in strategies

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to promote economic prosperity. The level of education is not only essential to the economic
well-being of individuals but also to that of nations. Yet many developing countries are
struggling with the cost of extending opportunities for access to higher education levels. In
China real efforts have been made as noted the China Development Bank (CDB, 2015). But
public funding of compulsory education was introduced gradually, as taxes and other reforms
increased the amount available. To meet the financial needs, local governments have initially
sought the support of communities and their financial contributions, particularly for
disadvantaged students. In 2008 government spending on education is about 3, 5 % of GDP
for China and 4, 5 % of GDP for Hong Kong (KPMG, 2010).
Vocational education is also a strategic priority. We note in 2014: 11 900 secondary
vocational education institutions formed 18.03 million students and represented 44% of
overall admissions rate in secondary schools; 1327 higher professional education institutions
have formed 10.07 million students and represented 46% of the overall admission rate in
higher education institutions ( CDB, 2015 ). However, funding for studies is a tax budget for
the state and for families. Faced with public funding of primary and secondary education
notoriously inadequate, the priority given to higher education seems questionable the priority
(National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2004). According to Grenier&Belotel-Grenié (2006),
decentralization of education funding has only increased regional disparities: three quarters
are illiterate in rural areas and 72.7% of them are women, according to the 2000 census.
4.4 The issue of privatization of education

Although significant progress has been made in education, it requires large financial
resources from both the government and the people.Mobilize adequate resources for
education in a country like China, the most populous country in the world, remains a
daunting challenge. The challenges of education funding are intertwined with those of the
transient public finance system in China (Wang, 2005) while the Chinese government
accelerated its efforts to increase Western schools funding levels, but collected royalties
increased the financial burden of rural citizens and became a central concern among the
dynamics of poverty reduction and rural development in the western regions advocated by the
Chinese Government. Thus, the situation in financing education has become particularly
complex and, as noted Tri (2001), the private sector that has emerged has resulted in an all-
out privatization, to the point that it is sometimes hard to draw a line clear and sharp
demarcation between public and private sectors as they are closely intertwined. The State

ccxciv
wants to offload its share of the financial burden of education without renouncing to exercise
control, including on the programs, and impose its rules. In Article 25, the Law on Education
of the People's Republic of China from March 18, 1995 stipulates that the State encourages
businesses, communities and other social institutions as well as individual citizens to
establish schools and other educational institutions in accordance with the law.
The funding of education is a concern for parents as it weighs more and more heavily
in China. An average wage has little meaning because there are no reliable statistics on the
subject, then the fact that the differences are very important between the lowest and highest
income (only in the cities, a few hundred yuan to several thousand yuan) (Tri, 2001).
Moreover, this gives rise to the extra work of research practice (eg, public teachers who
supplement their income by working in the private). The consequence is that the quality of
education is a major obstacle that determines the development of rural education.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Certainly, huge efforts have been made by the authorities for decades to raise the level of
education in China. Reports from the China Development Bank (CDB, 2015) has confirmed
the educational progress by mentioning that after introducing a new compulsory curriculum
in 1986, the country reached an enrollment rate of 100% in 2011, while literacy was reduced
to 1.08% in adults. Though there are progress has been made in the economy there are still
some difficulties in education. In this area, there are many problems like inequality, lack of
funding, too big school fees. These are the real challenges and issues of the Chinese
education system.
Faced with new socio-economic issues that require globalization, China should invest
more in its education system to make it more productive and meet the ever-growing needs of
its population. Moreover the State could support the poorest people in taking charge of
students with repayable grants from the earliest years of work as is done in other countries
such as Canada (Quebec). Also, it would encourage private initiative in a formal and
regulatory framework by providing graduates repayable funds.
In addition, it is necessary to follow up the monitoring and the evaluation of
compulsory education to ensure that all areas are covered, particularly in the west. The
education program must take account of ethnic minorities and give them the same
educational opportunities as other groups. A more increased funding for education is
important to raise the low investment in education that is 4%. To do this, it is necessary to

ccxcv
strengthen the modernization of the higher education system by harmonizing Chinese
characteristics with global standards. There is a need to develop a dynamic mechanism of
educational cooperation between universities, research institutes, industry and business to
prepare students for the socio-professional life.
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Reform. Transcontinentales, 3, 67-85.

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Understanding the Importance of Early Childhood

Development in China
And
ccxcviii
 the Impact on Children’s Future Academic
Achievement

Education Systems, Policy and Management in China

Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University 2015
ID 201529010011

Contents
CHAPTER I
Literature Review
The Importance of Early Childhood Education and Care
China’s Brief ECE Historical Context
China’s ECE Status and Policy Overview
CHAPTER II
ECCE In China Through Big Numbers
Status of China’s Children
The Costly Private Provision of ECE and Childcare Services

ccxcix
Discussing the Evidence on the Importance of ECDE
Conclusions
References

Introduction
Education is important for everyone in the world. It makes one able to understand what is
happening around in a logical and clear way. It is well known that education provides the
ladder for achieving success in life and enables one to utilize skills in constructive way.
Therefore, it becomes imperative for an individual to get educated as early as possible. Early
childhood is an important time period for the development of children's mental functions.
This development, including the emergence of language, motor skills, psychosocial,
cognitive, and learning abilities, is now known to be greatly influenced by various factors,
including the educational environment to which a child is exposed. (Bowman, Donovan and
Burns, 2001). It has been proved by neuroscience and longitudinal studies of Early childhood
Development and Education (ECDE) that prenatal care and experiences from birth to the
first six years (0-6), affect physical and brain development of children, and thereby the
cognitive and socio-emotional development in subsequent stages of their lives. On the other
hand, lack of access to nutrition and health care, insufficient stimulating human interaction,
and non-enrollment in pre-primary education are associated with lower educational
attainment and achievement, which, also reduce life-time earnings and potentially contribute
to disruptive behavior to society. Hence, investing in ECDE yields the highest economic
returns because early learning and formation of good habits and social skills are far more
productive than later, remedial education and training.
In China’s context, The initial purpose behind promoting more Early Childhood Education
and the need to alleviate some of the burden on working mothers while emphasizing care for
children. Researchers, policy makers, and educators are increasingly recognizing the

ccc
importance of early childhood education to later development and success (e.g.,
Heckman, 2006; UNESCO, 2010). The benefits of early childhood education on child
development lie in three major areas (Shonkoff, Phillips, 2000): cognitive skills, school
readiness, and social and emotional development. China has developed a countrywide ECCE
policy context that lays out progressive principles and complex management structures for
nurseries, kindergartens, preprimary classes and a variety of other forms of child and parent
education. The general principles of the ECCE policy reflect progressive, child-centered
curriculum, blended with some traditional cultural emphases and recognition of the
importance of evaluation. China has long believed that the future of the country lies with its
children. Given it’s goal to develop a harmonious society and to improve the competitiveness
of its future workforce in order to overcome the challenges of an aging population and move
towards a high-income society, there is an urgent need to identify the gap in its human ECD
strategy.
CHAPTER 1
Literature Review
The purpose of this study is to investigate the importance of Early Childhood Development,
policy and practices of Early Childhood Education in modern China, to understand the
influence in private early childcare institutions ratio enrollment in relation to the future
academic achievement development . This paper provides a qualitative literature revivew
Related to earlychildhood cognitive and physical outcomes as well as recent policy revie and
content analysis of official stattistics about China’s ECE status.
The Importance of Early Childhood Education and Care
It has been proved that Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is of vital importance
to the future economy of a country. According to the UNICEF in the first years of life,
children establish the cognitive, emotional and social foundation upon which they can build
their futures. Early childhood is the most significant developmental period of life. A baby
who is visually stimulated, continuously engaged in interactive activities, hugged and
comforted is more likely to fully develop cognitive, language, emotional and social skills, all
of which are vital for success in school, in the community and subsequently in life. Other
literature on neurological studies explain that adult-child interaction is crucial in the very
early years of life. It has a major effect on neural function and brain development. Sensory
stimulation from the environment, starting from the intrauterine environment (which is
affected by nutrition, pollutants, drugs, infections, and the mother’s health and stress level)

ccci
through the early years after birth—influences how genes are expressed (turned “on” or
“off”) and the architecture and function of the child’s brain. So, both positive and negative
experiences, such as poverty, malnutrition, abuse, and also may affect brain development
(Alderman 2011). Language development and language skills, which are precursors of critical
thinking skills, emerge from various neurobiological transformations occurring in the early
years of life. This reference states that language does not suddenly appear at some
predetermined age in some predetermined fashion. Instead, it emerges after a child has begun
to engage with his or her caregivers in interactive activities, such as sharing, requesting,
imitating, playing, naming, and describing. Research on the brain indicates that a child’s early
environment shapes school readiness (Shonkoff and Phillips 2000). Academic performance in
later years also correlates with exposure to early interventions.
In Western Europe, The State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science of the
Netherlands states that the foundations for lifelong learning are laid during each child’s early
years. This underlines the importance of good quality child rearing and the developmental
conditions during these years for a child’s future life. As more and more women participate
actively in a booming economy worldwide (The Hague 2000). Other reports by UNICEF
Studies in developing countries reveal that early childhood development (ECD) programmes
lead to higher levels of primary school enrolment and educational performance, which
positively affects employment opportunities later in life. On the contrary, children who start
school late and lack the necessary skills to be able to learn constructively are more likely to
fall behind or drop out completely, often perpetuating a cycle of poverty. ECD programmes
represent a cost-effective investment in the future of children and yield tangible returns for
society as a whole UNICEF (2011).
China’s Brief ECE Historical Context
Similar to other countries, China’s experiences in childhood education have been influenced
by the social and educational philosophical frameworks imported from other countries
including the early influences of the reform movement of 1898 and the missionary activities
of imperialist powers, stimulating the modernization of cultural and educational institutions.
The first regulations regarding preschool education were introduced in 1903 based on
Japanese training institutions (Zhenghao, 1993). The earliest kindergarten training was
instituted in 1899 and the first public kindergartens were created in 1903 when 20
kindergartens teachers were brought to China from Japan, where Froebelian kindergartens
had been established by American missionaries (Spodek, 1989).

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During the Cultural Revolution, schools were closed and early childhood education also came
under serious attack. The goals of preschool education were realigned so as to inculcate
revolutionary fervor including the practice of military drills, the memorization of poems and
quotations by Chairman Mao and almost all the teachers were displaced or forced to find
other employment. The year 1979 was in many ways a turning point for early education with
a national conference on nursery and kindergarten education held in Beijing. The purpose of
the conference included developing a coordinated effort on the transition between nursery
and kindergarten It also aimed to resolve the funding base including low teacher salaries,
provide support to local infrastructure and establish more qualified teachers and improve the
health of nursery and kindergarten children. (McLoughlin et al., 1997). To this day, learning
in Chinese early childhood settings are based on these national principles but they have been
supplemented by a variety of more recent policy documents.
China’s ECE Status and Policy Overview
China has already universalized nine years of compulsory education and rapidly expanded
enrolment in post compulsory education. The biggest gap in its human development strategy
is in early child development (ECD): care, development, and education for children from
birth to six years of age. Furthermore, due to China’s rapidly aging population, the burden of
sustaining growth and supporting the elderly will fall on the young children of today ( Wu, Kin
Bing. and others 2012.)
The Ministry of Education sets policy for and oversees the implementation of pre-primary
education for children ages 3–6, sets curricular standards, drafts laws and regulations, and
monitors and evaluates pre-primary education. Education departments at the provincial,
municipal, county, and district levels operate and finance public kindergartens, approve and
oversee private kindergartens, set the level of fees charged by public and private
kindergartens, provide preservice and in-service teacher education, collect statistics, and
inspect kindergartens.
In 1989 and 1996, the State Council approved two documents governing kindergartens. The
first, the Regulations on Kindergartens, is the legal basis for operating kindergarten services.
These regulations set specific norms and standards for preschool education, including
language, basic activities, health and hygiene, and safety. The second, the Regulations on the
Management of Kindergartens, sets forth the principles of operation of kindergartens. These
regulations establish comprehensive norms and standards for utilization of space, class size,
hygiene and health, safety, qualification requirements of kindergarten personnel, and the

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relationships among the family, community, and kindergarten (Wang Libing.2009).
At the beginning of the 21st century, the State Council issued major documents to guide
implementation of policy on ECD, namely, the Guidelines for Kindergarten Education
(August 2001) and the Guidelines Governing the Reform and Development of the Early
Childhood Education (January 2003). The Guidelines establish the framework for provision
of formal and non-formal ECDE services, led by the government, with participation of
nongovernment sectors. A network of community- based, ECD service centres is to be
developed around demonstration kindergartens and is to cater to the diverse needs of rural
and urban areas. The Guidelines define the responsibilities of various levels of government,
an accountability system, and the basic standards for investment, teachers, and overall quality
of kindergartens. (Corter and others 2006). Provision of formal programs ranges from local
government center, to work place-based, to privately-run. Beyond the core programs of
nursery, kindergarten, and pre-primary programs, there is a variety of less formal programs
for children and for parent education. Funding comes from a variety of sources, including
parent fees, as the “Socialist Market” approach has grown over the last decade (Wong &
Pang, 2002; Zhu & Wang, 2005).

Institutions that Care for and Educate Children in China before They Enter Primary
School

• Nurseries Are equivalent to crèches or day care centers in other countries for children
age 3 and younger, except that some Chinese nurseries have boarding
facilities for working parents. Nurseries focus predominantly on custodial
care.
Care providers are not supervised by education authorities but by other
government authorities, depending on their affiliation.

• Are of two to three years’ duration before primary school. They focus on the
Kindergartens development of social skills, hygienic habits, and literacy and numeracy for
children ages 3–6. The Ministry of Education uses the term kindergarten to
include “independent kindergartens, kindergartens attached to primary
schools, and independent preschool classes.” In this book, the term is used
inclusively to cover all institutions that provide development and education
to children before they enter grade 1.

• Preschool Refer to the single year of education before children enter grade 1.
Classes Structurally, it is equivalent to the last year of kindergarten, in which
children are prepared for literacy and numeracy. The one year of education
before grade 1 serves the same function as kindergarten in the United States.
However, in the United States, kindergarten is an integral part of public
education. In China, unlike grades 1–9, preschool classes are neither
compulsory nor free. In rural areas, the early childhood education
experienced by most children before they enter grade 1 is one year of

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 preschool classes, not two to three years of kindergarten.
• Pre-primary Is used by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Education (OECD) to refer to education for children age 3 and older before they enter
grade 1. It is roughly equivalent to the term kindergarten in China. This
book uses the term pre-primary education in the same way that OECD does
when referring to this subsector.
• Early Refers explicitly to a child’s early development. ECD is used in this report
Childhood rather than the nonspecific early childhood development.
Development ECD comprises the care, development, and education of children from birth
(ECD) to age 6.

Source: (Wu, Kin Bing. and others 2012.)

The great societal interest in Kindergarten does not appear to be matched by interest in child
care or Nurseries for 0 to 3. Policy development for nurseries and academic analysis is
relatively thin compared to the recent boom for kindergarten.

Number of Preschools in Urban China (MOE 2012)

50000 43490
40000
30000
20000
10000 6706
986 1195
0
Public Institutions Non-ed. Dept Ed. Dept non-government

kindergartens including Nuerseries/ Day care

Linear (kindergartens including Nuerseries/ Day care)

Pre-primary education is financed mostly on a cost-recovery basis, regardless whether it is

public or private. Recent Statistics (MOE) show that the number of private kindergartens is
considerably higher, compared with other public institutions enrolling about 47 percent of
students. Monthly fees range from RMB130 ($19) to RMB 3,000 ($441). The low end covers
mostly food and learning materials. The more expensive kindergartens also provide air
conditioning and Chinese-English bilingual education. In addition to these fees, most
kindergartens charge “sponsorship fees,” which can range from RMB 3,000 to RMB 12,000 a
year ($441–$1,765). Sponsorship fees are used to purchase equipment (HDTV, computers,
DVDs, musical instruments) and to pay for repairs and maintenance, security, and decoration
of the premises. (Wu, Kin Bing. and others 2012.)
CHAPTER II
Research method
Following a cross-sectional design, a qualitative in addition to quantitative research, obtained

cccv
sata from official chinese govermental institutions as sources will be exmined. To understand
the correlation between the investment of ECE as well as cognitive outcomes with big data
related to chidren’s population pre-primary school enrollment during recent years, a
discussion towards ECE evidence of importance will be presented in this paper.
In oreder to find this correlations some research questions may guide,
What is the approxiate average ratio of population of children in China?
What is the avargage cost of private ECE in urban areas?
What are some of the evident cognitive outcomes and evident academic chievement on
children with provided ECE?

ECCE in China through Big Numbers (Research Findings)

Status of China’s Children
A recent UNICEF (2013) report indicates that 82 million children under age 5 were living in
China in 2011. Given that more than 70% of mothers in the 25–34 age range with children
under the age of 6 in China work outside the home (All-China Women's Federation's, 2011),
child care and education is not only an obvious concern and necessity for many families in
China but also an area in which public policy is essential. Therefore, China has experienced
massive rural to urban migration, with an estimated 211 million rural residents migrating to
cities in 2009, and the average age was 27.8 (NPFPC 2010). Because of the high cost of
living in urban areas and China’s household registration system, which relates to legal
residency (hukou) and the rights to social services, based on a person’s family origin in rural
or urban areas, many migrants leave their young children in rural areas, to be cared for by
grandparents or other relatives. An estimated 55 million children of compulsory school age
were left behind by their parents in 2005 (interview with Mr. N. Yang, Deputy Director
General of Department of Basic Education I, Ministry of Education, June 2010). Children
who migrate to urban areas with their parents often find it difficult to access social services.
Many attend fee-charging private schools, often of poorer quality than public schools (Wang
and Wu 2008).
The poor and rural children, particularly ethnic minorities, have relatively lower access to
ECDE than other children. About 57 percent of enrollment in ECDE in China is in cities and
towns, and only 43 percent is in rural areas. Rural children are under-served because county
governments’ weak fiscal capacity limits supply, and parents’ inability to pay dampens

cccvi
demand. About 32 percent of children in 15 counties in the main sample and 48 percent of
children in 2 minority counties are left behind by their migrant parents and are cared for by
their grandparents or others. Urban children, Han, children cared for by their mother, and
those who attend kindergartens are heavier, taller, and have better cognitive scores though not
necessarily better social development scores, than rural children, ethnic minorities, left-
behind children, and those who do not attend kindergartens. (Wu, Kin Bing. and others 2012.)
The Costly Private Provision of ECE and Childcare Services
Before the reform of 1978, all kindergartens and childcare facilities were in the public sector,
run by ministries, state-owned enterprises, or collectives. After the transition to a market
economy, these public sector agencies separated welfare services such as kindergartens from
their core business in order to cut costs. Some kindergartens became private, run by the
retrenched staff. Over time, an increasing number of kindergartens, particularly in cities and
towns, were established by private individuals or groups and run like businesses.
Recently, in most industrialized urban areas and main cities in China, the emergence of Early
Childhood Care and Education institutions particularly private Nursery schools or Day care
centers including Early Language Learning Centers or“Gym schools” for little children from
0-4 years old can be easily spotted around Shopping malls or nearby community complexes.
The increasing number of non-government kindergardents or nursery schools in urban areas
has dramatically exceeded compared with other type of higher level institutions.
Given China’s family planning policy, families tend to spare no efforts to provide for their
children. This thinking has largely fueled the development of the market for private
kindergartens. Figure 3.5 shows that whereas no private kindergartens were in existence in
1986, 68 percent of kindergartens were private by 2012.

cccvii
 Number of students enrolled in preschool education by age (URBAN) 2012
2000000
1789782
1800000
1600000
1400000
1200000
1000000
800000 703687
577971
600000
400000
3 years under Linear (3 years under) 3 years
200000 120943 82888
14747 58731 28136
0
Public Institutions Non-ed. Dept Ed. Dept non-government

As preprimary education is financed by user charges, inability to pay is a barrier to access.

Private expenditure accounts for an estimated 70 percent of total expenditure on preprimary
education in China, when user fees in both public and private institutions are included. The
OECD average was 18.5 percent in 2008 (figure 3.6). Private spending in China dwarfed
private spending even in Australia, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, where private resources
accounted for than 50 percent of total spending on preprimary education.
Fees charged for kindergartens vary widely. Private kindergartens are free to set their own
fees, but they need to report them to the local government (approval is pro forma). Their rates
are market based. On the whole, public kindergartens have lower totally monthly fees but
highersponsorship fees,” usually one-time payments made in order to gain admission.
Sponsorship fees contribute to the capital of kindergartens. They are used to renovate
classrooms; buy equipment (HDTVs, computers, DVDs, musical instruments); undertake
repairs and maintenance; and beautify the premises. These fees can be hefty. Monthly fees
cover the cost of teaching and learning materials (mostly)consumables, such as papers for
drawing) and food. Government subsidies usually cover the salaries of teachers and staff and
provisions for the Figure 3.5 Ownership of and Enrollment in Private and Public
Kindergartens Figure 3.6 Private Expenditure as a Percentage of Total Expenditure on
Preprimary Education Institutions in Selected Countries, 2008 66 Early Child Development
in China premises. Public kindergartens usually receive free land and buildings; private
kindergartens have to purchase land or rent their premises. Public kindergartens tend to be of
higher quality than private kindergartens, with more space and better qualified teachers.

cccviii
Demand for them is also higher, allowing them to charge higher sponsorship fees (see annex
tables 3A.2–3A.4 for the tuition fees charged in kindergartens in Shaanxi and Guangdong
provinces and other selected provinces). Fees can be classified into three categories: The
most expensive kindergartens cost in 2008 about RMB30,000–RMB50,000 ($4,411–$7,353)
a year, inclusive of sponsorship fees, management fees, food, insurance, uniforms, books,
notebooks, computers, utilities (air conditioning), and activities. The higher end of the fee
structure includes boarding. These facilities tend to be Chinese-English bilingual and include
a health room, a dance room, a game room, and a drawing room. Teachers are highly
qualified. A medium-range kindergarten costs about RMB800–RMB3,000 ($118–$441) a
year, exclusive of sponsorship fees. The fees cover learn-ing materials, but the facilities are
not as well equipped as higher-end facilities.
Very small-scale private kindergartens, which charge RMB130–RMB800 ($19–$118) a year,
excluding sponsorship fees and boarding. To put these fee levels in perspective, in 2009
average rural income in China was RMB 5,135 ($755), and some 36 million people lived on
less than RMB1,196 ($176) a year. Inability to pay is thus the main barrier to access on the
demand side, with the scarcity of kindergartens the main barrier to access on the supply side.
Without intervention, preprimary education could become education for the elit

Discussing the Evident on the Importance of ECDE

The findings reveal that By the time children enter school, their early development will have
determined whether they will succeed in school and later in life; the extent of their learning in
school and throughout life depends largely on the social and emotional competence they
develop in their early years (Carnegie Corporation 1996). Children who are ready for school
share a combination of positive characteristics: they are socially engaged and emotionally
stable, confident, friendly, and attentive; have good peer relationships; tackle and persist with
challenging tasks; have good language and communication skills; and listen to instructions.
ECD programs have both broad and specific effects on the development of human capital.
Although poor children tend to be more vulnerable than other children, there is no definitive
cut-off point between children below a certain poverty line and those above that poverty line.
Rather, there is a gradient of risks, which lasts a lifetime
The contribution of ECDE to subsequent achievement was again evidenced in the recently
released results of OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (2010),

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a cross national comparison of mathematics, science and reading skills of 15-year-olds. In
this study, Shanghai-China had the highest scores among 75 participating countries and
territories. There was a difference of over 60 score points (or about 10 percent difference in
the scores in Shanghai) between 15-year-old students who had attended pre-primary school
for more than a year and those who did not. This suggests that China can boost its overall
student achievement further by universalizing ECDE services. This is consistent with the
conclusion of Nobel Laureate Heckman and his coauthor (2003) that investing in ECDE
yields the highest economic returns because early learning (including formation of good
habits) is far more productive than later, remedial education. The internal rates of return of
rigorously evaluated programs range from 7 percent to 18 percent, which is higher than the
rates of return to financial capital on average. (Wu, Kin Bing. and others 2012.)
The results of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (OECD
2010), a cross-national comparison of mathematics, science, and reading skills of 15-year-
olds, provides fresh evidence reaffirming the contribution of ECD to school readiness and
subsequent achievement. 10 China participated in this international assessment for the first
time, although only Shanghai took part (the sample is therefore not nationally representative).
Shanghai had the highest scores among participating countries and territories. There was a
difference of more than 60 score points (about 10 percent of the difference in Shanghai’s
score) between students who had attended preprimary school for more than a year and
students who had not In Israel, this difference was 120 points. The differences remain large
even after accounting for socioeconomic background (Schleicher 2010). Cognitive skills as
well as noncognitive skills have a positive impact on economic development because they
enhance the capacity to use, adopt, and generate technology and to innovate to solve
problems. Differences in cognitive skills account for most of the differences in economic
growth rates across OECD countries (Hanushek and Woessmann 2008, 2009; OECD 2010a).
Hanushek and Kimko (2000) estimate that an increase of one country-level standard
deviation in test performance yielded about a 1 percentage point increase in annual economic
growth rates during the period 1960–90. Given the impact of ECD on subsequent academic
achievement, investing in ECD can help boost student achievement, which, in turn, enhances
a country’s capacity to innovate and sustain competitivenes
Conclusions
The correlation between the perfomance of children at school after having been provided

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with education at a very early age and high rate results in international academic
examinations through governmental bodies such as (PISA) is one of the most remarkable
assets in China’s academic achievement compared to other competitive western countires.
Avobe all, China’s current educational policy is still in process to cover all needs for the
children left behind in rural areas. The ministry of Education along with the State need to
allocate special attention in implemeting preschool as compulsory. China’s great effort to
persuit academic achievement favoring young new generations is quite remarkable in
estimate with other developing countries. China’s population is aging, just as the country is
trying to make the transition from a middle-income to a high-income economy. The
proportion of people age 60 and over was 13.3 percent in 2011 andis projected to double by
2030 (State Council 2011a). The burden of increased productivity and competitiveness to
sustain economic growth and support the older population will fall on people who are young
children today.
Provided that, China has to race against time to implement policies in the mediumterm to
address these problems. Sustaining its economic growth and attaining a higher standard of
living for all require transformation from past and present reliance on capital- and labor-
intensive production to production driven by knowledge and innovation. Investing in human
development, particularly early child development, lies on the critical path to achieving
China’s goals.
Worldwide, poverty and inequality, children born into poor families have a higher probability
of having lower birth weight because of poor nutrition. Low-income parents are more likely
to have low levels of education attainment and less knowledge of good child-rearing
practices. They have to work instead of spending more time with their children to stimulate
their development. They are also less likely to have access to public services, specially Early
childhood education. A recent study finds that inequality of opportunity accounts for 20–50
percent of observed economic inequality in Latin America (Ferreira and Gignoux 2007).
Investments in early child development (ECD) are one of the most cost-effective strategies
for breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty and improving equality of
opportunity.
Neglecting ECD imposes a high opportunity cost on both children and society. To build a
harmonious society, China must eliminate absolute poverty and reduce inequality. Eventually
ensuring that all children can grow up to live to their full potential will both improve the
quality of human development and enhance China’s competitiveness.

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Alderman, H., ed. 2011. No Small Matter: The Impact of Poverty, Shocks, and
All-China Women's Federation. (2011). Latest statistics: Women's rights protected and gender
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America. Development Research Group. Washington, DC: World Bank
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raGignoux.pdf
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Bowman, B., M Donovan and M. Burns, eds. 2001. Eager to Learn: Educating Our
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Carnegie Corporation. 1996. Years of Promise; A Comprehensive Learning Strategy for

America’s Children. Report of the Carnegie Task Force on Learning in the Primary Grades.
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Shonkoff, J. P., and D. A. Phillips. 2000. From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of
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_and_Learning.pdf

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(Eds.), International developments in early childhood services (pp. 53 –69). New York: Peter
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policies and programs (1 ed.) (pp. 83-106). Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

FACULTY OF EDUCATION
International and Comparative Education Research Institution
CHINESE HISTORY AND CULTURE (EDUCATION SYSTEMS, POLICY AND
MANAGEMENT IN CHINA)
(FINAL PAPER)

BARRIERS AND CHALLENGES OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA:

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS ON MIGRANTS RESIDENTS
STUDENT ID: 201539010029

Contents

1 INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................284

1.1 BACKGROUND...............................................................................................................284

1.2 BRIEF HISTORY OF CHINESE EDUCATION SYSTEM.............................................284

2 LITERATURE REVIEW......................................................................................................285

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 2.1 THE HOUSEHOLD REGISTRATION SYSTEM............................................................286

2.2 THE ROLE OF HUKOU...................................................................................................287

2.3 EDUCATION IN CHINA.................................................................................................288

2.4 EDUCATING MIGRANT CHILDREN IN CITIES.........................................................289

3 METHODOLOGY.................................................................................................................289

3.1 DATA.................................................................................................................................290

4 RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS..................................................................290

4.1 THE NATIONAL ENTRANCE EXAMINATION..........................................................290

4.2 THE HUKOU SYSTEM....................................................................................................292

4.3 THE POLITICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL ISSUES.......................................................292

5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS..................................................................293

REFERENCES..........................................................................................................................294

BARRIERS AND CHALLENGES OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA:

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS ON MIGRANTS RESIDENTS

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND

Education worldwide has been regarded as the engine of growth and the vehicle to facilitate
the social and economic development of every society and a country as a whole and china is
of no exception. There have been excellent achievements in the reform and development of
education in China. Education again has played a significant part in economic growth,
scientific and social progress in the country by producing large scale of sophisticated talents

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and expects for the construction of socialist modernization, there are still a few challenges
that will determine its further development and over-all success in the near future. This paper
seek to increase the knowledge and illicit the challenges and barriers that confronts the
development of education in China and also to suggest possible remedies for such challenges
and barriers.

1.2 BRIEF HISTORY OF CHINESE EDUCATION SYSTEM

China has a very rich educational history dating back to so many years ago. Chinese
education system has it root from the legalist and Confucius ideologies. The philosophies of
Confucius continue to play major role in the shaping of the overall Chinese conviction for the
more than 2500 years. Other external factors has influence the educational development. A
typical example is the First Opium War which opened China to the rest of the world. As a
result, western advances in technologies and science came to the limelight of the Chinese
scholars. This had a major impact on the educational system and curriculum.

In the 1950s, the Chinese government implemented policies to nationalize all education
institutions. A centralized government can exploit economies of scale in the provisions of
public goods and coordinate fiscal policy. The education system was under a tight control of
the central government and everyone had access to free education. Centralized governments
do not have an unrestricted capacity to collect information and observe their agents (Bardhan,
2002). In the post-Mao era the State Council began to move educational issues towards
decentralization (Mok, 2000). At the same time, peasants and farmers were keen to build
their own schools in the villages. It is this view that led to the acceptance of local
nongovernmental organization 1980 to finance schools. This paved the way for a major
reform of education (OECD, 2010). Due to the challenges of monitoring and bearing of the
cost of free education, steps were taken in 1986 to decentralize education with the enactment
of the Compulsory Education Law. The idea with decentralization is to push decision making
and responsibility for public functions from the state to the local government.
Decentralization increases efficiency in delivery of public services and promotes democracy,
if it is promoted in right manner (World Resource Institute, 2002).

The Education law from 1995 promoted equal opportunity for all citizens to receive
education gave schools and other educational institutions the permission to charge education

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fee, and laid guidelines on how the State Council and local governments would manage the
educational system.

In 2006, the State Council made amendments to the Compulsory Education Law to further
improve education for migrant children. The local government was made responsible for
primary education cost of all migrant children forbidding them to charge any kinds of
additional fees during compulsory education (Chan A. , 2009). According to the law, all
migrant children at the age of six should have the rights to free compulsory education without
consideration of gender, family status, nationality, race or religious thoughts.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

According to Bless and Smith (1992), literature review is the process of obtaining some
necessary ground information in order to consider the research topic in a way that permits a
clear formulation of the problem and the hypothesis. A researcher has to know the past in
order to design research basing on what is already known. In view of the above thinking and
propositions the researcher has delved on making this study.

2.1 THE HOUSEHOLD REGISTRATION SYSTEM

Hukuo as it is called in Chinese or the Household Registration system first came again into
existence in China after the communist revolution in 1949 when Chairman Mao Zedong
proclaimed the founding of The People’s Republic of China (PRC), (Cheng & Selden, 1994).
The foundations of the Household Registration System can be excavated all the way back to

the Xia dynasty (21st to the 16thcentury BC), during that time it was use as a social control
system, which permitted tax collection, recording of birth and death rates of citizens, as well
as the preservation of order (Zhu L., 2003).

This hukou word itself turned up in the end of the Qing dynasty (beginning of 20th century)
and when it was taken up again by the PRC it later became the touchstone of the social
distinction between urban and rural inhabitants. The hukou system, which was designed to
provide population statistics and identify personal status, became important to the central
government as a measure of social control, which assisted to standardize rural - urban

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migration. But as a matter of fact, its roles go far beyond just controlling population mobility
(Chan & Zhang, 1999).

Before advent of Mao, the country thus China was largely agricultural state. In the 1950s
downwards, there was the introduction of industrialization and the mobility regulations aided
the Chinese government to strengthen the command structure of the economy that ranked
industrial areas higher than rural areas. With the intention of financing the industrialization,
the central government underpriced agricultural products and costly industrial products to
bring an inequity between the agricultural and industrial sectors (Chan & Zhang, 1999). This
led to increase in rural urban migration.

In order to be able to control the population flow between the sectors, the government had to
introduce a system which obstructed liberal flows of labor between industry and agriculture
and between urban and the rural area. The rapid urban population growth and the unraveling
of their economic plans threatened to create social disorder; the CCP began to issue directives
to bring an end to uncontrolled rural migration (Windrow & Guha, 2005). Despite the
migrant worker’s contribution to urban development, the central government saw them in a
bad way and referred to this group of workers as blind migrants or mangliu. The state
anticipated them to go back to the rural area after their work was accomplished (Cheng &
Selden, 1994). In 1955, the government enacted the food rationing system to prevent
migration flow between rural and urban areas (Wang F.L., 2005). Then in 1957 the
government set up detention centers to return peasants to the countryside. But all of these
policies failed to control the migration tide (Windrow & Guha, 2005).

2.2 THE ROLE OF HUKOU

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1932 designed an internal passport
system, the Propiska system, for the urban population as it needed oversight of the migration
of their citizens in order to control the geographical distributions of labour supply and
mobility in the economy (Lyubarsky, 2001). China tried to implement a system that was
somewhat modeled after the Propiska system (Shatrunga, 1991). On October 1, 1949,
Chairman Mao opted to associate or be inclined towards the USSR in the bid to restructure
the Chinese economy.

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The very existence of the hukou system has much to do with China’s development strategies
under an authoritarian government of Chairman Mao and the Communist party (Wang F.L.,
2005). At the initial stages, the hukou system promoted the country’s rapid economic growth
and was an important mechanism to create political stability. But as time passed both political
and economic factors changed and the issues of regional and economical inequalities became
evident with the hukou system. Nonetheless the hukou system has played an important role in
China’s impressive economic development. It disturbs China’s political stability, governance,
economic growth, social life, as well as equality. The function of the system allows
authorities to control mobility of laborers by giving hukou status to migrant workers.

The Regulations on hukou registration in the People’s Republic of China was introduced with
its purpose to manage social order and serve socialist construction, and therefore prohibit
freedom of movement (Cheng & Selden, 1994). The hukou system required all Chinese
citizens to register with the authority.

Hukou registration is legal for personal identification and its classification is dual in nature.
The first classification is local residency classification (hukou suozaidi), which can be urban
or rural, and defines one’s permanent residence. This specific type of hukou gives citizens
rights for social and economic benefits, only in their local area. The second classification is
the status or type of hukou registration (hukou leibie), which can be either agricultural or
non-agricultural hukou. This classification originated from the occupational division in 1955
which gave the non-agricultural hukou holders entitlement to grain subsidies and greater
employment opportunities, free education, and medical care (Chan & Zhang, 1999). Until
1998, hukou residency and type was inherited from a person's mother to safeguard minimum
upward movement of peasants, due to the fact that women were less likely to marry down
(Davin, 1999). After 1998 children were allowed to choose either fathers or their mothers’
hukou residency and type.

2.3 EDUCATION IN CHINA

Education policy was one of the most discussed topics throughout the National People’s
Congress (NPC) and Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference
(CPPCC) annual sessions, in the March of 2010. Preceding these sessions, the Ministry of

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Education (MoE) released the first copy of the State guidelines for middle- and long-term
educational reform and development strategy for public feedback. The guidelines were
subsequently finalized and issued on 29 July 2010. These guidelines cover a number of plans
for the education industry for the next 10 years. Priority is placed on developing the
education industry and so expenditure by government is expected to increase. A lot of
policies will be carrying out to inspire growth in private-own institutions as well as
vocational education. Extra financial provision will be provided to grant equal education
chances to students residing in rural places and places of ethnic minorities. Adequate
resources will be extended to enhance the value of teachers in rural places. In the higher
education level, the entrance exams to higher education will be restructured to guarantee
brilliant students are not sidelined to the academic system, and the quality of higher education
will be enriched (KPMG, 2010).

2.4 EDUCATION OF MIGRANT CHILDREN IN CITIES

About 98 million rural migrants live in cities in China, and out of this, 14 million are
children. Under China’s present residency registration system (also known as hukou), school
budgets are normally based on the number of students recorded with the authorities as
approved residents in the schools district. Schools time and again require unregistered
students who want to gain admission to pay additional fees to support unbudgeted
government funding. Migrant families, who are known for lower income than that of city
residents, are often incapable to afford the additional school fee.
Many have little choice but to attend privately funded migrant schools where standards and
amenities are less encouraging than that of public schools. Both state and local governments
are giving more interest to the quality of life of migrant workers and their children in more
developed cities. There are up surging supports in place for these children to study in public
schools, and enjoy the same education opportunities. For example, Shenzhen has annulled all
supplementary school fees for migrant children. Similarly, Shanghai plans to help migrant
children get an education either by offering lawful status and funding, or closing some
schools and transferring the children to public schools by 2010. Following the release of the
“State guidelines middle and long-term education reform and development strategy”, the
government is likely to issue further policies to waive additional school fees nationwide

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3 METHODOLOGY

This part of the paper discusses the research design, which is the blue print for conducting
this study. It sets out the information required for the study, the procedure for obtaining the
required information as well as how the data will be analysed.

The writer adopted a qualitative method in this study. Since the paper is descriptive in nature,
the writer adopted a case study (often associated with descriptive studies Ghauri, 1983)
strategy in arriving at the results. According to Ghauri and Gronhang (2005), a case study is
particularly useful in business studies when the phenomenon under investigation is difficult
to study outside its natural setting and also when the concepts and variables under study are
difficult to quantify. Ghauri and Gronhang (2005) also argue that the case study strategy is
useful for theory development and testing. This paper seeks to assess the challenges and
barriers of educational development in China. The observations in the case study (i.e. some
phenomena) were use to analyse the challenges and barriers.

3.1 DATA

To be able to uncover the challenges and the barriers of educational development in China,
educational data is collected and use to ascertain the challenges. The writer relied heavily on
statistics from secondary sources to draw conclusions. The researcher relied on secondary
data from relatively credible sources such as literatures based on articles from journals,
reports, official statistics from governmental websites, and other articles to establish basic
understanding of educational problems.

4 RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

This part of the paper analyses, present and discusses all data gathered making use of texts. It
focused on the main educational challenges and barriers which are divided into three parts:
the national college entrance examination, the hukou system and the political and institutional
issues.

4.1 THE NATIONAL ENTRANCE EXAMINATION

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The educational system in China starts with 9 years of compulsory education which consists
of 6 years of Elementary school (6-12 years of age) and 3 years of Junior high school (12-15
years of age). After the compulsory education, children have the option of leaving school or
entering secondary program. All students attend senior secondary school entrance exam at the
end of their junior high school education (Zhongkao). Depending on the outcome of this
exam, students may enroll into an academic or a vocational upper secondary school, or they
may choose to end their formal education (Ministry of education of the people´s republic of
China, 2010). The next level includes 2-3 years at a Senior high school or a Secondary
Vocational school. The final stage is university, high vocational school or employment
(Yingkang, 2012). To continue their education to university or higher education, students
must take and pass the National College Entrance examination (Gaokao). Passing the Gaokao
is one of the most important goals to reach for Chinese students as its score determines which
college or university they can attend. Gaokao is usually taken over a two-day period in June
(China daily, 2012). The Gaokao was established in 1952 and was suspended during the
Cultural Revolution in 1966-1976 (Economist, 2012). Gaokao is the only exam that allows
students to be enrolled at a college or a public university in China and is seen as the best
option for brighter future (Rabkin, 2011)

The National College Entrance examination and associated rules remain as a challenge and
barrier to migrant children receiving education in urban schools. According to the MoE, all
students must take the Gaokao exam in the county to which their original hukou belongs
(Chan A, 2009). Due to this millions of students have been forced to return to their local
residency to take the Gaokao exam (Xinhuanet, 2012). It has been argued that migrant
students, who return to their hometown to sit the exam, are often not competitive as the
curriculum and textbooks may be different from what they are used to in the urban area
(Fang, Miller, Trieu, & Yang, 2006). Moreover, the exams are likely to be set up differently
than they are used to and in some cases they have to receive higher marks than their urban
classmates to get accepted to a city college or university (China Labour Bulletin, 2012). This
might encourage families not to bring their children to the city. Although discussions have
been brought up to let migrant students sit Gaokao at their destination place city governments
are still reluctant to do so.

4.2 THE HUKOU SYSTEM

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Institutionally, the hukou system is widely considered a fundamental cause for unequal
treatment of migrant workers, resulting in a series of problems with regard to public goods
provision, such as children’s education (Jiang, 2009). Although Hukou is an important tool to
control and curb rural urban migration, the functioning of the hukou system generates social
barriers and provides unequal access towards education. As said before, hukou classifications
is inherited from parents, and migrant parents are often living in cities without urban hukou,
which is necessary for entrance to state services. Domestic migration has intended millions of
children have no household registration where they are living now and that generates
problems of educational provision (Guo, 2002). Consequently, migrant children living in the
cities are in effect kept out of the state schools (Branigan, 2010).

4.3 THE POLITICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL ISSUES

Article 10 of the Compulsory Education Law also provides that the state shall not charge
tuition for students receiving obligatory education and shall set up a system of grants to
support the school attendance of children from poor families.

However, the Compulsory Education Law provided migrant children more protection in
theory than in reality. Solinger (1999) calculated that in mid-1990s only 40% of mi-grant
children, age between five and twelve, attended school in Beijing, compared to nearly 100%
of local children.
Widespread media coverage, among other factors, resulted in changes in education
legislation. The Education Law from 1995 was designed to improve school attendance among
migrant children. In spite of the law, school authorities have not shown full interest in
eliminating the hostility and discrimination towards migrant children in state schools as they
are considered second-class citizen (Amnesty International, 2007). Recent studies have
shown that migrant students frequently complain about being teased and bullied by the local
students, as well as finding themselves ignored by their teachers when searching for a support
for academic and social reasons (Tan, 2010).

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The reason for why some school going age children and especially migrant children face
difficulties accessing education is privation of governmental funding as state institutions
often receive no/little financial support from the central government for these children (Chan
A., 2009). Government funding for education is based on the number of school age children
of local residents. Despite the 1995 Education Law, local governments have no absolute
obligation to educate migrants (Chan A., 2009). Because migrants are not included in the
local education budgets, schools given permission to charge temporary student fees, within
limits set by the local government, to cover their expenses. However, the local government
limits rarely covered the additional costs incurred by schools. Consequently many urban state
schools were extremely reluctant to admit migrants (Chan A., 2009).

5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

There is growing evidence that the reform process and decentralization policies have
increased both economical and social inequalities (Froissart, 2003).

There is no doubt that hukou as well as decentralization of financing educational have led to
great obstacles for migrant children to access high quality compulsory education. Barriers
and challenges of migrants children only calls on their parents to take them to schools that are
for migrant children thus migrant schools, which are usually ready and available. These
schools are affordable but they are mostly of low standard and quality.
While most urban students continue their studies through Gaokao, many migrant students
have to find other alternatives of education as they neither have the same opportunity nor
access to education as urban students. Attending a vocational school might be the answer for
them to get a decent position at the labor market. The condition for attending a vocational
school is to sit the Zhongkao entrance exam in their hometown to be promoted from junior
high school to vocational school (Liu, et al., 2009). But many migrant students find it hard to
get a good score on this examination due to their poor educational background. Therefore in
many cases instead of continuing their studies they quit school and enter the labor market
(Chan A., 2009).
Tuition fee and the high cost of textbooks is a barrier for many students in achieving higher
education, this is especially true for migrants as they are economically more disadvantaged in

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receiving higher education due to low household income (Liu, et al., 2009).
In a nutshell I suggest that the government is required to stipulate clearer laws that are aimed
if not to eliminate, reduce the disparity among Chinese residents.

REFERENCES

Amnesty International. (2007, March 1). People's Republic of China: Internal Migrants:
Discrimination and Abuse. The Human Cost of an Economic 'Miracle'. Amnesty
International. Retrieved September 19, 2012, from Refworld. The Leader in Refugee
Decision Support.: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/45ffa3bd2.html Bardhan, P.
(2002). Decentralizaton of Governance and Development. Journal of Economic
Perspectives, 16(4), 185-205.

Bless C and Smith H (1995Fundamentals of Social Research Methods an African Perspective

Creda Press, Cape Town.

Branigan, T. (2010, March 15). Millions of Chinese Rural Migrants Denied Education for
Their Children. Retrieved from The Guardian:
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INTCMP=SRCH
Cheng, T., & Selden, M. (1994). The Origins and Social Consequences of China's Hukou

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Syst. The China Quarterly, 644-668.
China Labour Bulletin. (2012, September 10). Will China’s cities really let migrant students
sit the national college entrance examination? Retrieved October 29, 2012, from China
Labour Bulletin: http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/110128
Chinadaily. (2012, May 7). Students 'drugged' in class ahead of gaokao. Retrieved September
24, 2012, from Chinadaily.com.cn:
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Davin, D. (1999). Internal migration in contemporary China. London: Macmillan Press Ltd.
Economist, T. (2012, June 13). The Economist. Retrieved October 28, 2012, from University
entrance exams. Testing times: http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/06/university-
entrance-exams
Froissart, C. (2003, July - August). China perpectives. Retrieved Oktober 2, 2012, from The
Hazards of the Right to an Education: http://chinaperspectives
Guo, F. (2002). School attendance of migrant children in Beijing, China: A multivariate
analysis. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 357-374.
Jiang, W. (2009). Prosperity at the Expense of Equality: Migrant Workers are Falling Behind
in Urban China's Rise. In E. P. Mendes, & S. Srighanthan, Confronting Discrimination and
Inequality in China Chinese and Canadian Perspective (pp. 16-30). Ottawa: University of
Ottawa Press.
KPMG, 2010. Education in China.
Liang, V. (2003). The Chinese informal labor market and the hukou system: its origin,
implementation, and social consequences for migrating rural women. Durham: Duke
University
Liu, C., Zhang, L., Luo, R., Rozelle, S., Sharbono, B., & Shi, Y. (2009). Development
Challenges, Tuition Barriers and High School Education in China. Asia Pacific Journal of
Education, 503-520. Retrieved from REAP, Rural Education Action Project.
Lyubarsky, K. (2001). Passportnaia sistema i prpiski v Rossii (The Passport System and the
Propiska System in Russia. Retrieved October 12, 2011 , from Institut Prav Cheloveka:
www.hrights.ru
Ministry of education of the people´s republic of China. (2010). Basic Education in China. A
Survey of the Development of Basic Education. Retrieved September 25, 2012, from
Ministry of education of the people´s republic of China: http://202.205.177.9/english/
basic_b.htm

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Mok, K.-H. (2000). Marketizing higher education in post-Mao China. International Journal
of Educational Development, 109-126.
OECD. (2010). Shanghai and Hong Kong: Two Distinct Examples of Education Reform in
China. In Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for
the United States (p. 258). Paris: OECD Publishing.
Rabkin, A. (2011, August 8). Fast Company. Retrieved October 28, 2012, from Cramming
For College At Beijing's Second High: http://www.fastcompany.com/1769017/cramming-
college-beijings-second-high
Solinger, D. J. (1999). Contesting citizenship in urban China: peasant migrants, the state,
and the logic of the market. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tan, G. (2010). Under the Same Blue Sky? Inequity in Migrant Children's Education in
China. CICE: Current Issues in Comparative Education, 12(2).
Wang, F.-L. (2005). Organizing Through Division and Exclusion: China's Hukou System.
Stanford, California, USA: Stanford University Press.
Windrow, H., & Guha, A. (2005, April 8). The Hukou System, Migrant Workers, & State
Power in the People’s Republic of China. Northwestern University Journal of International
Human Rights, 3, 1-18.
World Resource Institute. (2002). Decentralization: Pro and Con. Retrieved from World
Resource Institute: http://www.wri.org/publication/content/8535
Xinhuanet. (2012, september 1). "Migrant students" to be fairly treated when taking college
entrance exam. Retrieved september 21, 2012, from news.xinhuanet.com:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-09/01/c_131820890.htm
Zhu, L. (2003). The Hukou System of the People's Republic of China: A Critical Appraisal
under International Standards of Internal Movement and Residence. Chinese Journal of
International Law, 2(2), 519-565.

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 Chinese Education System Reforms
Resulting from Western Influence: 16th
century – 1911
201529010005
Education Systems, Policy and Management in China
Dr. Li Jiayong & Dr. Sang Guoyuan
Final Paper

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Introduction
China’s relationship with people from Western countries has gone through various
fluctuations since first contact in the mid 16th century (Mingyuan, 2014). This paper explores
the impact these interactions have had on Chinese learning and thinking and, subsequently,
the Chinese education system, from first contact until the beginning of the Republic of China
in the early 20th century.

At the outset, the Chinese shunned the Westerner’s ideas and refused to collaborate
with them. Eventually, the Chinese sent them to Macau, which became a hotspot for Western
thinking in the east. Jesuit missionaries played a major role in the spreading of western ideas
in China. By embracing Chinese culture and adhering to Confucian thinking, a few
missionaries gained support from the Emperors and were able to build strong relationships
with influential Chinese people. As a result of these relationships, they were able to have a
major impact on Chinese thinking and learning (Ichiko, 1980).

Following the Opium Wars and several unequal treaties. Missionaries were able to
gain greater access to Mainland China, especially in the port areas (Mingyuan, 2014). During
this period Western thinking was coerced on the Chinese. Missionaries proceeded to open
many schools. These schools were very different than traditional Chinese schools. They had a
major influence on the reforms and modernization of the Chinese education system.

Near the end of the 19th century many factors forced Chinese leaders to re-think their
views about Western ideas and thinking (Elman. 2003). They began to embrace and
incorporate Western ideas into their education system. This led to various reforms that
resulted in the creation of the modern Chinese education system (Ichiko, 1980).

Literature Review

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 Professor Gu Mingyuan’s book, Culture Foundations of Chinese Education, provides
a wealth of information about the history of Chinese relations with the west and the effects
they have had on the modernization of the Chinese education system. He evaluates the impact
that Western learning has had on traditional Chinese culture. Western ideas revolutionized
the Chinese people’s ways of thinking. They went from basing their decisions on intuition to
using deductive reasoning (Mingyuan, 2014). This was largely due to the Jesuit missionaries
who came to China, with their Western Enlightenment thinking and cultivated strong
relationships with prominent Chinese people. These relationships enabled the missionaries to
have a great influence on Chinese society.

Three very influential missionaries, as chronicled by Silvia, Noel and Vamos

respectively, Matteo Ricci, Ferdinand Verbiest and Johann Adam Schall von Bell had a major
impact on spreading Enlightenment ideas. These missionaries gained respect from the
Chinese elite by embracing Chinese values.

Silvia Marchetti, in her piece titled Matteo Ricci, Bridge Between Italy, China,
chronicles Ricci’s impact on China. Ricci was the first Westerner to be invited to the
Forbidden City and the first to be buried in China (Marchetti, 2010). He gained respect from
the Chinese elites by sharing his expertise in astronomy and cartography. His relationship
with Minister of Rites, Xu Guangxi, was invaluable. This relationship enabled the burgeoning
of the spread of his ideas.

This relationship, and the life of Xu Guangxi, explored in Anne Commire’s article
eponymously titled Xu Guangxi. In the words of George Dunne, Xu Guangxi is rightly
regarded as the greatest glory of Chinese Catholicism (Commire, 1994). Commire chronicles
Guanxi’s major accomplishments impact on the spread of Western learning and ideas. Xu
received formal instruction in mathematics, astronomy and Christian theology from Ricci.
Together they translated Euclid’s Elements and General Principles of Mathematics and
Agriculture into Chinese (Commire, 1994).

Following in Ricci’s footsteps, Ferdinand Verbiest came to China as a Jesuit

missionary in the early 17th century. Noel Glover’s article, Ferdinand Verbiest (1623 -

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1688) and the Chinese Heaven, gives an overlook of Verbiest’s influence in China. He
has been described as a ‘missionary, scientist, engineer and diplomat’. He helped to
reinvigorate the Imperial Observatory with new instruments. He altered and updated the
Chinese calendar, created several hundred cannons and helped as an intermediary for
diplomatic discussions between China and Russia (Glovers, 2003). Glover’s emphasizes the
importance that Verbiest and the other Western missionaries had on bringing Western science
to China and, in turn, Chinese culture to Europe.
The final missionary I included, Johann Adam Schall von Bell, arrived in Macau in
1618. Peter Vamos takes a look at Schall von Bell’s time in his review of a compilation of
essays from a 1992 symposium dedicated to the legacy of Schall von Bell titled, Western
Learning and Christianity in China. The Contribution and Impact of Johann Adam Schall
Bell, S.J. ( 1592- 1666 ), which was included in the Acta Orientalia Academiae
Scientiarum Hungarice. In his review he states that Schall von Bell tried to bring
fulfillment to what Ricci had began. He worked to bring closer integration into the Imperial
Court, continued to more accurately reform the calendar and managed the Bureau of
Astronomy. (Vamos, 2000). He goes on to share the fascinating story of Schall von Bell’s
time in China and the major impacts he had

Together, these four authors did a wonderful job enlightening me on the impacts these
three missionaries, and Xu Guangxi, had on the spread of Western thinking to China. By
looking into their lives and accomplishments in China I was able to get a better grasp on the
major influence they had. It helped me to make sense of the following advancements that
happened in the proceeding centuries. Their work, along with Professor Gu Mingyuan’s
book, gave me an introduction to Chinese traditional culture and the wide impact it had on all
areas of life.

Mingyuan chronicled the history of missionary schools in China. He talked about their
initial setbacks, adjustments and alteration into elite schools. These schools were the source
of the modernization of the Chinese education system (Mingyuan, 2014). They broadened the
curriculum to include many more courses, which emphasized science and math. Another
major innovation they had was giving girls an equal opportunity to obtain a well-rounded
education. Traditionally girls were not allowed attend schools. A Chinese Proverb states,
ignorance was one of girl’s virtues (Mingyuan, 2014). The expansion of missionary

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schools after the Second Opium War gave Chinese girls an opportunity to study and expand
their knowledge.

Near the end of the 20th century there was a major shift in the Chinese people’s
outlook towards Western learning and thinking. A major reason for this was their defeat in
the Sino-Japanese War. Benjamin Elman in his article, Naval Warfare and the Reform of
China’s Self-Strengthening Reforms into Scientific and Technological Failure, 1865 -
1895, explores historian’s views about China’s defeat in the war. One historians views
shared by Elman was Quan Hansheng. He contended in 1954 that the Qing failure to
industrialize after the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64) was the major reason why China lacked
modern weapons during the Sino-Japanese War (Elman, 2003). There are varying views but
many scholars seem to agree with Hansheng’s analysis.

Throughout this research I have noticed the major correlation between politics and
education. Elman’s piece further illustrated that link. The education reforms during the late
19th century and early 20th century were mainly implemented as a result of the
aforementioned military loss.

In Trends in Chinese Education, an article done by J. C.C, trends in Chinese

education from the early 20th century to the mid 20th century are chronicled. For this paper I
focused on the section focused on the early 20th century. The author alludes that prior to the
downfall of the Manchus in 1911 the Chinese scholar regarded himself as a superior being
who was separate from hands-on work. The introduction of western educational methods,
together with the internal social forces at work, helped to change this concept, and it was
replaced by thoughts of universal education (C.C., 1951). He goes on to further discuss the
specific changes that were made to the Chinese education system which were mainly based
on ideas that manifested in the West.

This article, along with the knowledge I gained about 16th century China, helped me
to realize the vast changes that took place in China. The culmination of modern Chinese
schools, which C.C. described, were a blend of Western enlightenment ideas fused with
Confucius thinking. In some areas these two contradicted each other. However, the Chinese

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education system maintained its traditional culture while at the same time modernized its
ways of thinking and views of the world.

The final book I used to research this paper was The Cambridge History of China:
Part II - Late Ch’ing (1800-1911). This book contains a compilation of essays, from various
scholars. From this book I focused on the Chapter, written by Chuzo Ichiko, which looked at
Political and Institutional Reforms, from 1901 - 1911. In this section I mainly focused on the
educational reforms. Ichiko credits many of the reforms that happened to Chinese education
to the outward, mainly Western, thinking of the Chinese. He discussed the advent of the
modern Chinese education system. The cessation of the Imperial Exam, the structural
changes and the new trend of sending students abroad were the cultivating forces of the new
education system (Ichiko, 1980).

The final portion of Gu Mingyuan’s book I used for this paper analyzed the influences
on the modernization of Chinese education exerted by the dissemination of Western learning.
In this section Mingyuan, through looking at historical factors, gave specific examples of
how ideas from the west led to the creation of the modern Chinese education system. He
looked at the advancements for girls, the beginnings of the study abroad movement and the
major structural and curricular changes that took place.

Ichiko’s and Mingyuan’s writings touched on a lot overlapping topics. However, each
provided different information about specific events. For example, Mingyuan talked about
the first group of Chinese students who went to the United States of America to study abroad
while Ichiko mainly focused on the Chinese students who went to Japan for their overseas
study. Both accounts provide invaluable information and helped me to get a better
understanding of the major transformation of the Chines education system at the end of the
19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

Overall, the literature used for this paper was very useful. By piecing together all of
the author’s fields of expertise I was able to analyze the major changes that occurred in
China, specifically regarding education and thinking, from the 17th century to the 20th

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century. By looking at different sources from such a long period of time I was able to get a
vivid idea of the realities of life and the subsequent influences they had on education.

There was ample research available for this topic. However, there was not one
culminating paper that addressed all of these important topics and people involved in the
transformation of Chinese views towards the West from the 16th century until the early 20th
century and their subsequent effects on Chinese educational policy. Through reading and
analyzing all of the literature I was able compile the ideas of the authors and create a more
comprehensive view of the topic.

Research Methodology

The research methodology for this paper was solely content analysis. I used books, journal
articles and magazine articles to research the information about the influence of Western
thinking and learning on the Chinese education system from the 16th century until the early
20th century. The three databases I used were J-STOR, Proquest (Educational Journals) and
the World History Journal. Along with these articles I was able to obtain two high quality
books that had very valuable information relating to my topic. I synthesized the literature via
literature review. I then used that synthesis to coherently organize my findings.

Research Findings
Western ideas have had a tremendous impact on the development and modernization of Chinese
education. Following centuries of insular views towards education China was opened up to western
learning. At first China refused, then they were coerced and finally they deliberately embraced western
enlightenment ideas (Mingyuan, 2014). Albeit it was a cultural invasion, in many respects, western
thinking was pivotal in changing China’s way of thinking about the world.

During the late Ming Dynasty western missionaries began infiltrating China. The Portuguese
were the first to come to China. Chinese rulers did not embrace their ideas and sent them to Macau, which
became a port for western learning. The Chinese considered themselves celestial beings and thought that
China was the center of the universe (Mingyuan, 2014). The western missionaries, whom were greatly
influenced by the Renaissance, thought that many of the Chinese ideas and views were arrogant and

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wholly subjective.

Missionaries played a pivotal role in the modernization of Chinese education. The ones that were
successful embraced Chinese culture and Confucius thinking and learned Chinese. They won the approval
of rulers by introducing them to scientific ideas and bringing them scientific instruments.

An Italian missionary, Matteo Ricci, or Li Madour as the Chinese called him, arguably had the
largest influence on Chinese enlightenment thinking. In China Ricci is remembered as the first Westerner
who created the first map of the world in the Chinese language (now known as the “Impossible Black
Tulip”) (Silvia, 2010). Also Ricci compiled the first Portugese-Chinese dictionary. He was the first
westerner to be invited to the Forbidden City by a Chinese emperor and the first to be buried in China.
Ricci was effective because he was able to assimilate to Chinese culture. He wore Chinese garb, learned to
speak and write traditional Chinese.

Xu Guangxi was a major reason for Ricci’s successes in China. He was a Chinese scholar-official,
who rose to one of the highest government positions in the Ming dynasty, pioneered in the introduction of
Western science and technology into China, and became one of the “Three Pillars of the Catholic Religion
in China” in the 17th century. (Commire, 1994). Xu received formal instruction from Ricci in mathematics,
astronomy and Christian theology. He, along with Ricci, translated Euclid into Chinese. He was a major
proponent of Western scientific ideas and knowledge and worked hard to spread the knowledge within
China (Commire, 1994).

Another very influential follower of Ricci was Ferdinand Verbiest. Verbiest came from Belgium.
He has been described as a ‘missionary, scientist, engineer and diplomat’. He helped to reinvigorate the
Imperial Observatory with new instruments. He altered and updated the Chinese calendar, created several
hundred cannons and helped as an intermediary for diplomatic discussions between China and Russia
(Glovers, 2003). He, along with the other Jesuit missionaries from that period, helped to bring continue the
transfer of Western Renaissance ideas to China. His best-known writings are compiled in his Astronomia
Europea (Glovers, 2003). It is an invaluable record of the history of Western science in China, and a
major reason for Chinese cultural transmission to Europe.

Johann Adam Schall von Bell was also a dedicated follower of Matteo Ricci. He worked to bring
closer integration into the Imperial Court, continued to more accurately reform the calendar and manage
the Burea of Astronomy. (Vamos, 2000). He, following the example of Ricci and his predecessors,
embraced Chinese culture and Confucius values in order to gain legitimation from the courts.

The missionary’s enlightenment ideas helped shift China’s general way of thinking. Prior to their

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arrival nobody had ever seen a map. Chinese people though that China was the center of the universe
(Mingyuan, 2014). Western missionaries introduced advanced cartography that used latitude and longitude.
This was far more accurate than the previous methods of counting in miles and drawing in grids. They
helped to create various scientific tools which are, in some forms, still used in China today (Mingyuan,
2014) . Chinese people shifted from basing their ideas on intuition and generalization to focusing more on
reasoning and deduction.

After the Opium war, and successive unequal treaties, China was forced to accept westerners.
Missionaries established many religious schools. At the outset the missionaries were unable to gain a
following due to the major differences in Catholic and Confucius thought. They began by trying to attract
families and adults. This was unsuccessful so they focused on attracting young children (Mingyuan, 2014).
Initially, orphans from poor families were sent to the missionary schools. The schools gained nationwide
attention due to their high achievement. Before long they were considered elite schools with a large student
population and high tuition rates. From 1877 to 1890 the number of missionary schools doubled
(Mingyuan, 2014).

With the expansion of missionary schools came new ideas towards traditional Chinese education.
Traditionally there were two levels of school in China. Primary schools, which were family schools, taught
children basic words and rites. And Academies, which students attended when they were about fifteen
years old, where students studied The Four Books & The Five Classics to prepare them for the imperial
examination (Mingyuan, 2014).

The introduction of western educational methods, together with the internal social forces at work,
helped to change these concepts, and it was replaced by thoughts of universal education (C.C., 1951). As a
result different levels of education were instituted, which was a major variation from the traditional two
levels of Chinese elementary schools. The new levels of schooling were primary and secondary schools,
universities and other institutions of higher education. Along with the structural changes, the content taught
at schools changed considerably.

In China there were three main types of western schools: foreign language schools, military
schools and technology schools. In addition to Confucian classics, science, math, history and the arts were
taught. Some of the courses included in the new curriculums were geometry, physiology, geography,
cultural studies, gymnastics and zoology (Mingyuan, 2014). In the western schools students were taught in
groups, which was a major deviation from the individual instruction in traditional Chinese schools.

Another trend, which began in the late 19th century, was sending students overseas to learn. They
were sent to absorb the useful aspects of other cultures. The first group of students was sent in 1872. They

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were expected to study until graduation. But, in 1881 many of the students were brought back to China
because they were suspected of picking up bad habits. Only ten students in the inaugural group stayed until
graduation. Although small in number they contributed significantly to the modernization of Chinese
education (Mingyuan, 2014).

An alternate reason students were sent overseas to study was that there was not enough teachers
for the new schools that were being built (Ichiko, 1980). Many Chinese were sent to Japan. This was cost
effective for the Chinese because the Japanese had adopted their school system from the Germans, so they
were able to send the children to get a western education for much cheaper than sending them west. Also,
Japanese culture was very similar to that of the Chinese and their characters were much more similar to
Chinese characters (Ichiko,1980).

Traditionally boys were considered superior to girls. Girls were excluded from formal education.
It was thought that ignorance is one of women’s virtues. They were taught The Three Obedience’s
and The Four Virtues along with basic reading and writing and needlework (Mingyuan, 2014). After the
Second Opium War missionary schools were opened for girls in the port areas. At these schools girls were
taught the same coursework as boys. By 1877 there were over two thousand girls studying in these schools.
Girl’s representation in schools continued to increase and in 1905 the first group of girls entered a non-
missionary school (Ichiko, 1980).

In the middle of the 19th century China, in competition with Japan, revamped their schools to better
produce their war arsenals. Scholars in the 20th century have looked back on this and debated the effects
these reforms had on geopolitical factors. For example, Quan Hansheng contended in 1954 that the Qing
failure to industrialize after the Taipning Rebellion (1850-64) was the major reason why China lacked
modern weapons during the Sino-Japanese War (Elman, 2003). Many scholars agree with Hansheng and
further the argument by contributing that the inadequacies of the late Qing Chinese navy and army were
due to poor armaments, insufficient training and low morale.

In the early 20th century pioneer intellectuals learned from China’s recent defeat and realized the
importance of embracing western ideas towards learning. Their motto was Chinese learning was for the
essence and western learning was for practical use (Mingyuan, 2014). The Qing Government
established the first western style school, School of Combined Learning. Shortly after twenty-one other
western schools were built.

In 1906 the Imperial Examination, which was in place for over thirteen hundred years, was
abolished. This was the first sign of the major Chinese education reform. As Ichiko describes:
“Along with the makeshift measures, the government attempted an overall reform in
the method of selecting officials. Ever since the 17th century, Chinese rulers had set

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 written examinations by which men could qualify to be high-level servants. This system of
evaluation had been an excellent institution and during more than a thousand years’ of
practice the system had become more and more complete. ........ By Ming and Ch’ing
times, each Confucian classic was supplied with official annotations, which became the
accepted version of the annotations. Consequently the examination candidates tried to
memorize the entire texts of the classics as well as the official version of the annotations.
The civil-service examination became merely a test of memory and writing ability, requiring
not logical or clear essays but essays in an elegant style, studded with parallel phrases
and classical allusions. In addition, an essay had to consist of eight paragraphs, written in
the so-called ‘eight legged’ style. Even the handwriting had to be in the ‘small, square style’
(Ichiko,1980, 376)“

The education reforms began with the reforms of the civil service exam, creation of the new styles of
schools and encouragement of students to study abroad. There was a major rate in advance following the
downfall of the Qing Dynasty. In 1913 there were less than 3 million primary and secondary
schoolchildren. By 1937, the number of school children had risen to over 12 million (C.C. 1951).

Discussion
Often times we can use history to analyze our current situations. Through looking into
the past we can learn from what others have done before us and use this information to make
better decisions. The various interactions and events that led to Chinese education reforms
from the mid 16th century to the early 20th century draw many parallels to recent and current
educational affairs and reforms.
The 16th century to the early 20th century depicts the beginnings of the impacts that
resulted from Western influences and philosophies on Chinese educational policies. Through
the historical lens we can better analyze these events, which were seemingly wholly negative
at the time, and see the positives educational shifts that resulted from them. Besides the
inclusion of Confucius Classics, the modern curriculum and schooling structure was largely a
product of Western ideas.
This trend has persisted throughout the 20th century. Various western philosophers
have impacted the reforms in Chinese education (i.e. Dewey, Herbart, Marx). As we saw in
the early 20th century reforms, China has used these ideas and blended them with their own
cultural characteristics. Currently, there are many Western ideas that have been studied and
implemented into the Chinese educational system. As the world continues to become more

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globalized China has access, to information from all over the world, and increased ability to
learn from what other countries do well and implement them in their educational framework.
Politics played a major role in the education reform in China during this period. Two
major political events that led to reforms in Chinese education were the Opium Wars and the
Sino-Japanese Wars. The result from the Opium Wars was that missionaries, via unfair
treaties and coercion, were able to increase their presence in Mainland China and open many
schools. These schools, although unjustly opened, were very different from traditional
Chinese schools. They grew in prominence and the pedagogy and curriculum used at these
schools came to be the framework for the modernization of Chinese schools. The Chinese
defeat in the Sino-Japanese War also had many implications on education reforms. To keep
up with the advancements in technology of their opposition, Japan in this instance, they
embraced a new view towards education (education for practicality) and subsequently altered
the curriculum to meet the practical application of this new view.
As we have seen in the 20th century, many political events affected the education
system and reforms in China. One example is the change to a Soviet style of education in the
50’s resulting from their political alignment with the USSR. Another example is the reforms
in the 1980’s and 1990’s that resulted from the changing political landscape and China’s
changing views about globalization.

Conclusion
After initial refusal and later coercion China realized the importance of embracing enlightenment
ideas from the west and deliberately sought to learn from them. These ideas shifted Chinese people’s way
of thinking and laid the framework for modern Chinese education. The abolishment of the imperial exam,
the reforming of the schooling structure and curriculum and sending students to study abroad signified the
major changes in Chinese thinking. There were undeniable negative consequences that resulted from the
West’s meddling in China. However, the ideas and logic that was transmitted by Westerners was invaluable
the reformation an modernization of the Chinese education system.

References:
C.C., J. (1951). Trends in Chinese Education. The World Today. 7.11, 480-488.

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Commire, Anne. (1994). Xu Guangxi. Historic World Leaders. Detroit: Gale, 1994.

Elman, Benjamin A.. (2003). Naval Warfare and the Reform of China’s Self-
Strengthening Reforms into Scientific and Technological Failure,1865 - 1895.
Modern Asian Studies. 38.2, 283 - 326.

Glovers, Noel. (2003). Ferdinand Verbiest (1623 - 1688 ) and the Chinese Heaven.
Leuven University Press. Pp. 670.

Ichiko, Chuzo (1980). The Cambridge History of China: Political and institutional
reform 1901-1911. Cambridge. pp. 376 - 383.

Marchetti, Silvia. (2010). Feature: Matteo Ricci, bridge between Italy, China. Xinhua
News Agency. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Mingyuan, Gu. (2014). Cultural Foundations of Chinese Education. Brill Press. Pp.
129 - 166.

Vamos, Peter. (2000). Reviewed Work: Western Learning and Christianity in China.
The Contribution and Impact of Johann Adam Schall von Bell, S.J. ( 1592-1666).
Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. 53, 144 - 146.

Final paper of ‘Education Systems, Policy and Management in China’ class

Comparison of secondary school science curriculum

in China and Korea

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 Student ID: 201539010007

December, 2015

Contents

I. Introduction························································································································1

II. Literature Review··············································································································2

A. Curriculum·····················································································································2

B. Secondary Science Curriculum in Korea·······································································2

C. Science Curriculum in China·························································································4

III. Research Methodology····································································································6

IV. Research Findings············································································································6

A. Science Curriculum in Korea························································································6

1. Objectives············································································································6

2. Time allotment·····································································································7

3. Contents···············································································································7

4. Main problems of science education····································································8

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 B. Science Curriculum in China·························································································8
1. Outline and Objectives·························································································8

2. Time allotment·····································································································9

3. Contents···············································································································9

4. Main problems of science education··································································11

C. Common tendency of the curriculum reform in two countries····································11

V. Discussion and Conclusion·····························································································12

VI. References······················································································································13

I. Introduction

Recently, growing up in the China, interest in China is increasing in Korea. The number
of Korean students studying in China amounts to more than 600,000 people that has the
highest percentage of foreigners who come to China to study and the number is increasing.
The age of students who come to China to study is decreasing. At such a time we need to
compare the curriculum of Korea and China’s in secondary school.
I think science education played a large role in developing China and Korea. In addition, it is
the envy of Korean people that this year China’s Youyou Tu won the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine while Korea doesn’t have any winner in science. Add to those
situations, personal interest in science education makes me choose the topic “Comparison of
secondary school science curriculum in China and Korea”. The purpose of this paper is to
introduce and analyze secondary science curricula in Korea and China and find out some
implications for improvement of those curricula.
Modern western science education was introduced to Korea and China in the late 19th
century. But current science education in both countries has been developed after the Second
World War. Science education in Korea has been influenced by that of the west, mostly the
United States, while Science education in China has been developed under the influence of
that of the Soviet Union. The school system of 6-3-3-4 and nine years of mandatory
education of the two countries are the same, but the name of secondary schools and
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characteristics of the curriculum are different. The name of Junior and Senior secondary
schools are “middle school” and “high school” in Korea, while they are “junior middle
school” and “senior middle school” in China. In Korea and China, school curriculum is
defined as legal government documents prescribing objectives, contents, and methods of
teaching in school. The school curriculum is called “National Curriculum” in Korea,
“Curricular Standards” in China.
The curriculum-to-curriculum mapping and analysis of science subject are useful
methodologies to compare secondary qualifications between two countries that operate under
different education systems. It will provide a snapshot which allow for common concepts and
differences to be discussed, and enable the concept of ‘best-fit’ to be applied.

II. Literature Review

2.1 Curriculum
Curriculum is the most important element for formulating educational experiences. It is
assumed that there are same opportunities for students who received educational experiences
in certain grade. In that case educational acquirements are predictable and all students likely
access to fair opportunities. Knowledge how curriculum leads to regularize experiences of
students in formal education is an important issue in curricular and intended curriculum was
proposed in the similar stream of thinking.
It curriculum perspective, it learns us which topics are taught and when they start and
finish in other countries? And how national curriculums relate to performance of students?
Furthermore, some terms such as world class standards do not mean without information of
other countries.
According to TIMSS frameworks, triplet curriculums formulate students learning. They
are intended, implemented and attained curriculums. The intended curriculum is official set
of learning expectations as described in local, state or national curriculum frameworks, the
implemented curriculum is who topics is presented to students by teachers and the attained
curriculum is actual learning of students (Tarr et al., 2008; Zuzovsky, 2003). The importance
of intended curriculum and its role in achievement of students has highlighted in present
study. Among many aspects of intended curriculum, recurrent of attained topics was
considered as a center of focus. (Masoud et al., IRC-2013, Analysis of science intended
curriculum based on topics recurrent, 1-2)

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 2.2 Secondary Science Curriculum in Korea
The first Korean science curriculum after the Second World War was introduced by the
American Military government in 1956. The Curriculum was revised in 1955, 1963, 1973/4,
1981, 1987/8, 1992, 1997, 2007, and 2009. The curriculum follows the system of the
National Common Basic Curriculum with elective programs. The National Common Basic
Curriculum includes subject disciplines, optional activities, and extracurricular activities. The
subject disciplines include Korean Language, Moral Education, Social Studies, Mathematics,
Science, Practical Arts (Technology, Home Economics), Physical Education, Music, Fine
Arts, and Foreign Language (English). The high school curriculum with elective programs
covers subject disciplines and extracurricular activities. Science in the National Common
Basic Course begins from the 3rd year of primary school, and ends at the 1st grade of high
school. Therefore, science subjects of primary school are known as Science 3, 4, 5, 6 and
middle school science subjects are called ‘Science 7, 8, and 9’. The last Common Basic
Science subject is ‘Science 10’ for the 1st grade of high schools.
Science of the national common basic curriculum is designed for all students from grades
three to ten. The Science Curriculum aims to help students understand the basic concepts of
science through inquiry with interest and curiosity of natural phenomena and objects, and
develop scientific thinking skills and creative problem solving abilities. In consequence,
students are able to develop the scientific literacy necessary for solving creatively and
scientifically the problems of daily life. ‘Science’ is organized with a close relationship to
‘Intelligent Life’ for grades one and two at elementary school level, and Physics I, Chemistry
I, Life Science I, Earth Science I, Physics II, Chemistry II, Life Science II, Earth Science II
for grades 11 and 12 at high school level. The contents of ‘Science’ include the domains of
motion and energy, materials, life, and earth and space and have links of basic concepts and
inquiry processes across grades and domains. In addition, it consists of free inquiry that
provides students with the opportunity to select their own topics based on their interests, to
enhance their interest in science, and to develop creativity.
In ‘Science’, learning is centered around various inquiry-based activities including
observing, experimenting, investigating, discussing, etc., depending upon students abilities.
Learning emphasizes independent activities as well as group ones for nurturing scientific
attitudes and communication skills including criticism, openness, integrity, objectivity,
cooperation, etc. Learning also stresses the comprehensive understanding of basic concepts

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rather than a fragmental acquisition of knowledge and the ability to scientifically solve
problems in daily life using that knowledge.
The core concepts of ‘Science’ are taught with a close relation to learners` experiences,
and students are provided with opportunities to apply science related knowledge and inquiry
skills for problem solving in society and daily life. By learning about science, students are
able to recognize the relationships between science, technology and society as well as the
value of science (Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, Korea, 2007-
79, science curriculum, characters, 5-6 )
2.3 Science Curriculum in China
Science education, like other subjects in the Chinese curriculum, has experienced
change. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (1966 – 1976), schooling
was given less emphasis, being shortened from 12 to 10 years, as well as becoming less
academic and more vocational. Cross and Price point out, however, that “this period in
education in China is of undoubted interest for teachers in the West because of the way in
which Chinese curriculum writers appear to have attempted to produce textbooks that
stressed the relevance of science rather than its theoretical aspects. For example, their
analysis of Chinese physics texts revealed that there appeared to be a greater emphasis on
“useful knowledge rather than understanding laws and principles Although the present
Communist regime in Beijing has rejected the Great Cultural Revolution, Cross and Price
point out that what might be lost is the attempt of Chinese educators during this period to
‘combine education with productive labor’ in contrast to traditional ‘goose-stuffing’ methods
In 1978 two conferences were held to rebuild the science curriculum after the Great
Cultural Revolution. These conferences, attended by thousands of scientists and educators,
shaped the new emphasis on science in China, which according to Hurd, is as follows: In
contrast with science education policies characteristic of the Cultural Revolution, the new
science program was viewed as one emphasizing basic theories and stressing logical and
abstract thinking. Problem solving, conceptualizing, and applying knowledge leading to
production were to be stressed. The new science program in China, which resulted in new
textbooks and curricula, is based on goals formulated by scientists and teachers as follows:
1) Mastery of key concepts and basic information;
2) Ability to conceptualize and make inferences;
3) Development of systematic and logical methods for analysis and synthesis in solving
problems;

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 4) Appreciation of the importance of physical models in thinking;
5) Facilitation of the student’s ability to apply knowledge to practical problems,
especially in agriculture and production;
6) Appreciation of the evolution of science concepts to foster a dialectical-materialistic
point of view and way of thinking;
7) Development of skills in experimental procedures and in the use of scientific
instruments
Textbooks that are written by committees of scientists and teachers drive science
education in China. According to Hurd, the first set of texts produced after the Cultural
Revolution were criticized as being too theoretical and impractical for many Chinese
students.
Secondary level science is divided into three years each at the junior and senior levels.
Science courses make up slightly more than 20 percent of the Chinese student’s curriculum in
most of the nation’s schools. Although there are different arrangements of Chinese schools
(five-year versus six-year schools, priority versus non-priority), the science curriculum
includes sequenced courses in physics, chemistry and biology.
As in many of the other countries, science is given high priority in the curriculum. One
question that we might raise given the priority of science in China’s schools is how is science
taught?
In an analysis of science textbooks in Chinese schools, Cross, Henze, and Price
concluded, after an exhaustive analysis of topics and questions at the end of each chapter, that
the aim was to produce specialists, and the textbooks did not appear to provide training skills
that would be useful in a variety of situations. They also concluded that the following goals
were not emphasized: problem solving, the application of principles to novel situations, and
interpreting and predicting.
Although it is difficult to generalize on the actual nature of classroom instruction in
Chinese classrooms, Cross, Henze, and Price make these observations: Class sizes are very
large, often ranging from fifty to seventy students per class. Only in a few schools within
each province is equipment comparable to what one finds in schools in the advanced
industrial countries, though in the best-equipped schools it is excellent, both in quality and
quantity. Probably for reasons of class size and availability of equipment class experiments
are confined to the few ‘Student Experiments’ listed in the textbooks or may even be totally
absent. But teacher demonstration is common, often involving special apparatus. Lessons are

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formal, closely following the textbook. Students memorize a great deal of material and work
through exercises, regularly being brought to the blackboard to answer questions orally.
(Science Curriculum – A Global Perspective, 2009, http://artofteachingscience.org/countries/
china.html)

III. Research Methodology

This research is aimed to help promote a shared understanding of Korea and China’s
secondary science education systems and curricula. In this study, the curriculum-to-
curriculum comparative analysis focused on Science. Science subjects selected include
science in Korea and science, physics, chemistry, and biology in China. Both Korea and
China have a National standard curriculum for Science in secondary school. The study used
the 2007 revision curriculum promulgated by the Korea Institute for Curriculum and
Evaluation (KICE) and national curriculum standards and the Guidelines for the Curriculum
Reform of basic education in 2001 issued by China’s Minister of Education (MOE) as data
source.
The study looks at common concepts and differences within the agreed subject
parameters to determine the overall comparability. Furthermore, it considers the problem of
current science education and recent trends of the curriculum reform.

IV. Research Findings

A. Science Curriculum in Korea

1. Objectives
Science curriculum aims to help students understand the basic concepts of science
through inquiry with interest and curiosity of natural phenomena and objects, and
development scientific thinking skills and creative problem solving abilities. In consequence
students are able to develop the scientific literacy necessary for solving creatively and
scientifically the problems of daily life. The objectives of the Science Curriculum are to
educate students who are able to:
1) Understand the basic concepts of science and apply them for solving problems in

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 daily life.
2) Develop the ability to determine the scientific nature and use it for solving problems
in daily life.
3) Enhance curiosity and interest in natural phenomena and science learning, and
develop an attitude to scientifically solve problems in daily life.
4) Recognize the relationship between science, technology and society.
2. Time allotment
<Table 1> shows the time allotment of the 2007 revision curriculum in Korea.
Grade Middle school High school
7th 8th 9th 10th
Science 102 136 136 136
Total hours/year 1,122 1,122 1,122 1,190
<Table 1> The time allotment of science in the 2007 revision curriculum
One school hour lasts for 45 minutes in middle school and 50 minutes in high school.
The number of periods allocated to subjects is based on a school year consisting of 34 weeks.
Science subjects are taught 3 or 4 class hours a week. The proportion of science in the middle
school curriculum is 9.1%(7th), 12.1%(8th, 9th)
3. Contents
<Table 2> shows the knowledge part of contents in the 2007 revision science curriculum
for the three grades of middle school and the first grade of high school. The four areas of
science are physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science.
Grade
7th 8th 9th 10th
Field
Motion Force and
Thermal energy Work and energy Motion of object
and motion
Light and waves Electricity Electro-magnetism
Energy Electro-statics
Three Phases of
matters composition of Regularity in
nature of Matter
Materia Molecular substances chemical reaction
Electrolytes and
l motion Compounds Various chemical
ions
Phase change around us reactions
and energy
Inheritance and
Organization and Digestion and Stimulus and
evolution
diversity of circulation response Energy
Life Life science and
living organism Respiration and Reproduction and in
the future of the
Plant nutrition excretion development nature
human species
Earth Earth’s crust Solar system Characteristics of Earth system

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 materials and atmosphere and
changes weather change
and Stars and the Movement of
Tectonic Composition and
Space universe celestial bodies
movements and movement of sea
plate-tectonics water
<Table 2> Categories of contents in the 2007 revision science curriculum
4. Main problems of science education
1) Korean education is still suffering from a centralized education system and a
centralized curriculum.
2) Middle school science which is being used is a simple combination of contents
from four subjects without real integration.
3) In Korea science classes lack excellent teachers, materials and models from which
other teachers can learn. Most teachers at the middle- and high-school levels use
similar materials and methods, relying on lectures and blackboards rather than
laboratory activities, field trips, discussions and information technology. There
has been some gradual movement towards overcoming the centralized system as
educational autonomy increased, but more needs to be done.
4) As a result of urbanization, much of the countries’ population is located in the
metropolitan areas. In these districts, Science classes suffer from overcrowding,
which hinders individual student participation, hands-on activities and laboratory
activities required for meaningful learning.

B. Science Curriculum in China

1. Outline and Objectives
The MOE developed national curriculum standards, including all core curricular areas,
namely Chinese, math, foreign languages (English as well as Russian, Japanese, French),
moral education for grade 1-12, primary science (grade 3-6), integral science (grade 7-9),
physics (grade 8-12), chemistry (grade 9-12), biology(grade9-12), history (grade 7-11),
geography (7-11). The MOE sets guidance for provincial level curricula designing, yet does
not interfere in its autonomy. Likely, each school may set its own school based curriculum.
According to teaching hours, national curricula consist of 80%, provincial curricula consists
15% and school curriculum consists 5%. In the curriculum reform in 2001, the first National
Curriculum Standard of Science Education for grades 7-9 was issued by the MOE in China.
Science curriculum is based on the understanding of the essence of the science, and will help

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students to understand the nature of science. “Enhance scientific literacy of all students” is
the core idea of the science curriculum. Science curriculum (grades 7-9) is rudimental for the
purpose of cultivating scientific literacy of students. Compared with separate science
subjects, integrated science curriculum tries to go beyond the boundaries of disciplines, has
integrative design of the whole system, and pays attention to the relation and penetration
among separate science subjects. Integrated science is helpful to students to learn science and
the nature, to study scientific method, to develop their inquiry ability, to understand science,
technology and society.

2. Time allotment
In middle school period, there are integral science and independent subjects. If a middle
school offers integral science, it does not offer physics, chemistry, biology, vice versa. But at
high school level, there is no subject called science, rather, physics, chemistry and biology
are taught respectively nationwide. In China, there are three science subjects for junior
middle school; Physics, Chemistry, and Biology.

Grade Junior Level Senior Level % Curriculum

7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th
Physics 2 3 4 3 4 9.0
Science Chemistry 4 4 5 3 3 3 3 6.7
Biology 2 2 0-1 0 0 2 3.5
Total Hours/week 31 31 31 29 26 26
<Table 3> The time allotment of science subjects in China
One school hour lasts for 45 minutes in junior and senior level. The number of periods
allocated to subjects is based on a school year consisting of 34 weeks.

3. Contents
The following is the content of one kind of text books in science published by Zhejiang
Education Press, from which we can find structure and contents of the book obviously
Volume 1 Volume 2
The Science Entrance Aware of the environment
Biological Observation Movement and Force
Grade 9
the Earth and Universe The Continuation of Life
Matter ’s Characteristic The Earth Movement

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 Water in life Model and Sign of Particles
Atmosphere—Earth Coat Air and Life
Grade10
Adjustments of Life Activity Plant and Soil
Explore Electric Circuit Electricity and Magnetism
Exploring Matter Change Evolving nature
Material Transformation and Use Biology and Environment
Grade11
Transformation & Conservation Health and Environment
Metabolism and Balance Sustainable Environment
<Table 4> The Content of Science text books published by Zhejiang Education Press
<Table 5> shows contents of physics, chemistry and biology in junior and senior level.
Junior Level Senior Level
The physics course begins in the second
year of the junior school with the study of
Three years of physics are offered. Topics
mechanics. Topics include measurement,
include mechanics, including concepts of
weight, force, pressure in liquids and
equilibrium and motion including
gases, buoyancy, force and movement,
Phy Newton's laws; mechanical vibration and
simple machines, work and energy,
wave motion and the gas equations;
sics change of state, heat energy, and heat
electric and magnetic fields, static
engines. In the third year, the course
electricity, alternating current electricity,
includes current electricity, electrical
the nature of light, and elementary
work, transmission in liquids and gases,
concepts of atomic structure.
electromagnetism, and an introduction to
light.
Senior Level chemistry begins in year 1
The chemistry course begins in the third with sodium and sulfuric acid, heats of
year of the junior level with topics reaction, the periodic table of the
Che including oxygen, hydrogen, solutions, elements, the nitrogen group, the carbon
mist moles and heats of reaction, the structure group, and colloids. In year 2 topics
ry of matter, nitrogen subgroup, speeds of include electrolysis, magnetism and
reaction and equilibrium, the carbon aluminum, transitional elements,
group, and organic compounds. hydrocarbons, sugars and proteins, and
high polymer compounds.
The biology course begins in the first
year of the primary school and continues
into the second year. The course begins Senior level biology begins with the
with a consideration of the structure of structure and function of the cell, and
Biol living things, including cells, tissues, and then considers the origin of life,
ogy organs. The organs of flowering plants, assimilation and metabolism,
seeds, roots, stems and leaves, flowers, reproduction and development, regulation
and fruit follow this. Students then study and control, heredity and variation.
the structure and functions of the major
groups.
<Table 5> Contents of physics, chemistry and biology in junior and senior level
4. Main problems of science education
Some of the problems presently plaguing the Chinese science curriculum are:

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 1) The curriculum is subject-centered and knowledge-centered.
2) There is undue stress on acquiring knowledge, while the development of student
ability to apply scientific skills and knowledge to problem solving remains neglected.
3) Recitation of science prevails over science as inquiry.
4) Teachers fail to inculcate scientific attitudes, values, processing skills and higher-
order thinking skills in their students.

C. Common tendency of the curriculum reform in two countries

We need a creative school environment to cope with a knowledge-based information and
technology society. In order to better respond to the socioeconomic changes, China and
Korea have carried out a serious of education reforms. The reform focuses on improving the
relevance of curriculum content to modern society and to promote the development of
science and technology.
Secondary education in China and Korea remains centralized with regards to curricula
guidelines and major policy decisions. However, recent legal reforms have allowed
secondary institutions to transition from a year-based system to a credit-based system in
China, a measure that has allowed for greater regional autonomy in implementing education
standards. As a result, regional and provincial differences in curriculum content and
standards, as well as measures of academic performance, may become more significant in the
years to come. New curriculum in Korea is student-centered, respects individual diversity and
facilitates students' autonomy and creativity.
The new curriculum structure of basic education tends to contain a comprehensive,
balanced, and selective curriculum in common. The organization of curriculum content also
tends to reflect comprehensiveness, progressively achieving the shift from subjects to areas of
study, and from subject division to subject integration.

V. Discussion and Conclusion

While there are distinct differences in the education system and curricula focus between
Korea and China, there is more common content in the secondary school curriculum for
Science than differences. China and Korea in current education situation are similar in long

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having examination-oriented education deeply embedded. Both China and Korea provide
highly standardized contents with textbooks and teachers’ manuals provided within the
framework of the National Curriculum. One school hour for 45 minutes and a school year of
34 weeks in middle school are also same.
In middle school period, there are integral science and independent subjects: physics,
chemistry, biology in China, while there is only science as one subject in Korea. At high
school level, there are three science subjects; physics, chemistry, biology in China. But there
are many science subjects; Physics I, Chemistry I, Life Science I, Earth Science I, Physics II,
Chemistry II, Life Science II, Earth Science II for grades 11 and 12 Physics, Chemistry,
Biology, and Earth Science as elective subjects in Korea. They Use the term ‘Life Science’
Instead of biology. Unlike Korea, Earth Science is not included in Science, but major
contents of earth science are taught in Geography and Physics. The emphasis on physics is
known from the time allotment of science subjects in China. The curriculum content for
physics, chemistry and biology content are generally considered a good fit.
The curriculum reforms have implemented to strengthen the relevance of the curriculum
to society, science, technology, and students’ development in order to encourage creativity
and practical ability. The remarkable characteristic of science curriculum is the integration,
which is emphasized from curriculum structure system of science but by simple superposition
of different subject knowledge. The integration in science curriculum should surpass subject
boundary of separate science, remain core contents of science and pay attention to digest of
knowledge, skills among different subjects firstly, should enhance scientific literary of
students, integrated science knowledge, skills, attitude, emotion, value, process, method and
ability, infiltrate conception of interaction in science, technology and society secondly.
We need more changes to make learning more, relevant to the lives of the learners, their
interests and their needs. Learning science should be a hands-on experience, where the
student actively deploys his scientific knowledge. I suggest use of out-of-school resources,
public science-based issues within lessons and invigorate science clubs and cultural
associations from individual learning towards co-operative learning. Accordingly a
assessment system must be characterized and established by multiple assessment indicators
and multiple ways of assessment, which takes both outcome and process into account.
Ultimately, I think that we should try to write the history of twentieth-century science
from a properly global perspective. It is a daunting task, yet we can probably start by
rethinking categories and making connections and comparisons.

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 VI. References

Wang L.B. (2009). Basic Education in China, 29-46.

Ministry of Education. (1997). The school curriculum of the Republic of Korea.
Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, Korea, 2007-79, science
curriculum, characters, 5-6 .
Ministry of Education.(2006). Innovation on Science Curriculum in China.
Masoud et al., IRC-2013, Analysis of science intended curriculum based on topics recurrent,
1-2
Zhong Qi-quan (2006). Curriculum reform in China: Challenges and reflections.
Fa-ti Fan.(2007) Redrawing the Map Science in Twentieth-Century China.
Kyunghee So, Jiyoung Kang (2014). Conflicting Discourses on Content Reduction in South
Korea’s National Curriculum.
International Bureau of education the Chinese national commission for UNESCO.(2000).
Science education for contemporary society: Problems, issues, and dilemmas.
http://wenr.wes.org/2011/11/wenr-novemberdecember-2011-practical-information-
curriculum-reform-in-chinese-secondary-education/
Science Curriculum–A Global Perspective. (2009). http://artofteachingscience.org/

Education Systems, Policy and Management in China Final Assignment

Chinese Undergraduate Freshmen Perceive High School As Giving Them Adequate

Academic Preparation For Their University Studies.

201529010024_version 2

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Introduction

Out of all of the transitions that an individual goes through during their lifetime, their
entrance to university surely has to be one of the most important issues. In many instances it
is believed that a university degree can change the course of somebody’s life and therefore a

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lot depends on being able to meet the requirements of this new environment in order to
succeed. The question then is whether students are prepared for the challenges they face once
they arrive at university in terms of meeting new academic demands, managing their own
time, and in some instances living away from home for the first time. In this study, I
investigated whether a group of freshmen students studying at Honor College of Beihang
University (BUAA) in Beijing, China, felt that their high school studies gave them adequate
preparation for university. Through my own experiences of teaching in Chinese universities
and the observations of student counselors at Honor College I hypothesised that there was a
disconnection between what the students had learned in high school and what was required of
them at university. This project was intended as a pilot study for a larger piece of research for
my master’s thesis and it was carried out using quantitative methods: an online survey
designed to judge the student’s perceptions of preparation. Ultimately the student’s
perceptions refuted my overall hypothesis although a few key areas suggested a lack of
preparation for the demands of higher education that may warrant further attention. After
detailing the context of this study and discussing the literature on the subject, I describe the
methods and findings, before finally discussing the limitations of the methods and my
conclusion.

Context

I have been teaching EFL for around seven years, the last four of them in China. From 2011-
2013 I taught at Jilin University-Lambton College22, a Sino Cooperation College in
Changchun, Jilin province, and from 2013-2015 I taught at Beihang University (BUAA) in
Beijing. One of the schools I worked with at BUAA was Honor College, formerly the School
of Advanced Engineering.

While BUAA is considered one of the top universities in China (among the top 25 in the
country according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities23), especially in terms of
engineering and research, Honor College is designated as its elite institution. The concept is
that Honor College recruits the best students and utilises experimental and innovative
teaching methods to help the students reach their maximum potential. These methods are then

22
http://en.julc.cn/
23
http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-University-Rankings/Beihang-University.html

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applied to other schools within BUAA if they prove beneficial. In the past this has included
focusing the best resources on students such as inviting esteemed professors to give lectures,
the opportunity for study abroad programs, and taking a more flexible approach to learning
compared to other Chinese degree programs. For example Honor College students do not
pick their major as freshmen but can try out different courses before settling on one path,
similar to that of the U.S. college system. Recently Honor College received increased focus
from the BUAA administration, with its 2015 intake rising to 200 freshmen, compared to 50
the year before. In previous years the recruitment process consisted of interviewing
prospective students for Honor College; however the expansion made this impractical so
instead Honor College chose from the applicants to BUAA with the highest Chinese National
College Entrance Exam (NCEE) scores (otherwise known as gaokao).

Literature review

In reviewing the literature for this project two key themes emerged: the first theme was
concerned with the education students received prior to their arrival at university, for instance
the nature of Chinese upper secondary education and the gaokao. The second theme was
concerned with how the students fare after their entrance to university, broadly defined as the
process of adaptation.

Preparation at High School

Wang (2009) offers an overview of Chinese policy and practice in relation to basic education,
gaokao, and also mentions the 2001 curriculum reforms that included the introduction of the
‘comprehensive practice activities’, a shift to focus on non-textbook based subjects and
independent learning24. Despite these policy reforms, there are a number of critical studies of
Chinese high schooling, such as Kirkpatrick and Zhang (2011) who suggest the system
creates examination backwash, while Abdulghani and Sang’s(2015) study of the gaokao
suggested the need for reform and to pay more attention to developing student’s creativity,
critical thinking and learning autonomy25 . On the other hand, researchers such as Zhang and

24
Wang, L. (2009). Basic Education in China. p44-45
25
Abdulghani, M., Sang, G. (2015). ‘Undergraduate Chinese students' perspectives on
Gaokao examination: Strengths, weaknesses, and implications.’ p6
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Li (2004) and Li and Wegerif (2014) have risen to the defense of the Chinese high schooling
suggesting the system is misunderstood by foreign observers.

A theory that connects what students learn at high school and how this affects their university
performance is that of college readiness, for which Conley (2008) offers an executive
summary: “the level of preparation a student needs in order to enroll and succeed — without
remediation — in a credit-bearing general education course at a post secondary institution”26.
Colney also offers a conceptual framework for analysing college readiness that includes key
cognitive skills, key content, academic behaviors, and contextual skills/ awareness which
could be seen as lacking in the Chinese high school system according to Abdulghani and
Sang’s(2015) observations. The PhD thesis by Hu (2014) on international college preparation
programs draws a link between the education Chinese students receive in high school and
their college readiness as well as acquisition of 21st century skills, which are also thought to
be of key importance in tertiary education.

21st century skills is an emerging field which Wright and Lee (2014) offer a clear outline of:
“cognitive skills (adaptability, creativity, critical thinking and problem solving), interpersonal
non-cognitive skills (communication, cultural sensitivity, leadership and teamwork) and
intrapersonal non-cognitive skills.”27 Their paper discovered that while the International
Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) meets the needs of instilling 21st century skills
into students this is not an option for most Chinese students due to government policy
forbidding Chinese students from attending international schools (coupled with hefty fees),
while state high schooling was deemed not to meet the perceived requirements of furnishing
students with skills for the 21st century.

Adaptation to University

26
Conley, DT., (2008) ‘Rethinking College Readiness’ p24
27

Wright, E., Lee, M. (2014). ‘Developing skills for youth in the 21st century: The role of elite
International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme schools in China.’ p200
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Chen and Li (2014) lay out the key issues with regards to academic adaptation to university
in China — most crucially it provides a comprehensive review of the literature on the subject
in English. They identify key factors involved in adaptation including the student’s attitude,
ability to use technology and adapt to their environment as well as their health, both physical
and mental28. Overall it is suggested that the academic adaptation of Chinese undergraduates
is low. Lu, Lv, and Deng (2014) go further to lay out what is at stake in that the learning
mode between high school and university is significantly different. Their study also claims
that up to a third of students cannot adapt to university, which in turn impacts the students
learning interests29.

Issues with adaptation are held to be a serious concern by a number of a researchers: Xu, Gu,
Zhang, and Zhi (2013) stress potential psychological and emotions risks linked to a failure to
adapt; Tao et al (2000) stress that a student’s transition to university entails a significant
change in the individual’s environment ; Yao, Han, Zeng, and Guo (2013) also stress the
importance of adaptation to university and draw a link between a failure to adapt and a higher
risk of internet addiction.

A review of the literature on adaptation also revealed a number of instruments that have been
developed to measure this phenomenon: The Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire
(SACQ) by Baker and Siryk (1989); the Chinese College Student Adjustment Scale (CCSAS)
by Fang,Wo, and Lin(2005); the College Freshmen’s Adaptability Scale as used by Xu,
Gu,Zhang, and Zhi (2013) are just a few of the instruments in use. These tools are
predominately Likert style questionnaires designed for quantitative studies through which
respondents come out with a final score on which their level of adaptation can be determined.
Therefore while adaptation is held to a measurable phenomenon there is no single method
with which to study it.

Summary

28
Chen, L., Li, Y., (2014). ‘A Research Review of Undergraduates Academic Adaptability’
p88
29
Lu, Z., Lv, Y., Deng, X. (2014). ‘Teaching Adaptability, Teaching Approach Preference
and Learning Interest: Evidence from Freshman in Sichuan University, China.’ p32
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From reviewing the literature a number of points for my study have become apparent. There
are two approaches for dealing with the transition from high school to university studies:
before the student enrolls (which the studies on college readiness and to some extent 21st
century skills deal with) and after the student has arrived at university (which studies into
adjustment/adaptation assess). Some of the literature on the Chinese high school system
suggests an examination orientated system that does not provide many of the skills needed in
tertiary education, making adaptation a problematic process, in line with my hypothesis. On
the other hand some of the literature on Chinese high schooling suggests a system that does
the opposite, refuting my hypothesis. Which viewpoint is held by the students can be tested
by assessing the student’s perceptions of adaptation. As adaptation and college readiness are
asserted to be quantifiable phenomenon it therefore seems possible to attempt to investigate
the student’s adaptation through quantitative means, using the framework set out in the
Academic Adaptability Test Manual by Zhou(1991) as quoted in Chen and Li’s (2014),
which presented key themes such as, “learning attitude , learning technology, learning
environment and physical and mental health”30 (See Appendix i for details of how this relates
to the question design). Crucially the literature on adaptation suggested that a lack of
adaptation could have a negative impact on a student’s life and academic career and therefore
that this is an important factor to be considered when regarding the well being of students.

Methodology

During my time teaching in Chinese higher education institutions (HEI) I became accustomed
to having to offer remedial classes to students, especially freshmen, in order for them to meet
the requirements of the courses I was tasked to teach: tasks such a writing essays, preparing a
speech with use of PowerPoint, conducting independent research, managing their time, and
keeping track of deadlines all seemed to be problematic for the students. Furthermore in
conversation with “H.Y” and “C,” the student counselors of Honor College, I discovered they
shared the opinion that many students arrived at university not really prepared for what was
expected of them, especially given that the progressive approach of Honor College requires
students to take more ownership of their learning. This led me to formulate a hypothesis:

30
Chen, L., Li, Y., (2014). ‘A Research Review of Undergraduates Academic Adaptability’
p88
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Chinese high school education does not furnish students with the knowledge and skills they
need at university to its heavy exam focus and inflexible curriculum. A lack of learner
autonomy and student centered learner compounds this. This means the students’ preparation
in terms of 21st century skills and college readiness is lacking, creating difficulties for the
students to adapt to the demands of university studies.

However, rather than simply applying my assumption to the students I wanted to grant them
the agency to refute or confirm my hypothesis by investigating their perceptions of the
preparation they had received. For this I chose to use quantitative research methods in order
to gauge the opinions of the freshmen students. There were a number of reasons for this;
firstly, previous studies into adaptation noted in the literature review have successfully used
quantitative approaches. While there are already existing quantitative instruments in English
and Chinese specifically designed for testing college adaptation researchers are required to
pay to use them, which wasn’t a viable option for unfunded independent research by a
master’s student. However, I was able to take influence from these existing instruments to
develop my own. Secondly, as this was a study for a single semester course I didn’t have a
great deal of time to collect my data. A quantitative approach makes collecting a
representative sample comparatively speedy and while in the past analyzing data was a time
consuming task computer software has sped up the process greatly. The third reason for my
choice of quantitative methodology was that I have a fair amount of experience with
qualitative methodology due to studying Social Anthropology as an undergraduate degree at
the University of Kent. On the other hand I am quite unfamiliar with quantitative
methodology as this approach isn’t as common in Social Anthropology, so by choosing to use
methods I’m less acquainted with I hoped to broaden my skill set as a researcher.

Having settled on taking a quantitative approach I decided a multiple indicator measure in the
style of a Likert scale would be the appropriate choice. As noted many of the existing
instruments are Likert scales and this format presents numerous advantages as they allow for
much more detailed responses and reliable data than a yes/no questionnaire as outlined by
Bryman (2008)31. The items on the scale were developed under Zhou’s(1991) framework and
included a mixture of points from the literature and the observations of HY and C as to what

31
Bryman, A. (2008) Social Research Methods p146-147
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they felt the freshmen had issues adapting to(for an explanation of the questions relate to
different themes once again please refer to Appendix i).

The items were first written in English and then translated into Chinese with the help of HY
and my partner Su Nan. The questionnaire was then uploaded to the online survey service
sojump.com. The advantages of using an electronically delivered questionnaire was that it
could be instantly distributed to all of the participants via email, required minimal effort to
complete, and part of the service included the website analysing the data and delivering it in a
digestible form via charts and graphs while also compiling the results into Excel spreadsheets
and SPSS ready datasets, which made this approach especially valuable given the time
constraints.

All 200 participants were freshmen students at BUAA enrolled in Honor College. The reason
for choosing this sample was three fold: firstly, I already have a working relationship with
Honor College so gaining access to the students wasn’t a problem. Secondly, Honor College
aims to implement a more innovative curriculum and so there was a higher chance for a
disconnect between what the students had learnt at high school and what was expected of
them at university compared to students enrolled in more conventional programs. Thirdly,
given that the questionnaire was delivered at the end of October this proved to be an
opportune time to gather the freshmen’s perceptions as they were roughly half way through
their first semester and so changes and challenges would still be very apparent to them.

This particular group was not necessarily be representative of freshmen students on a national
or even regional scale given that BUAA is one of the top universities in China and requires a
higher gaokao score, and within that population Honor College students could be considered
above average due to their higher gaokao scores. Therefore for the purposes of this study we
will assume that this sample is only useful for learning about the students of this one
particular school and not draw any wider conclusions. All of the students arrived at BUAA at
the same time and therefore we can assume they were all going through the same process of
transition and adjustment.

The questionnaire was published online and emailed to the 200 freshmen of Honor College in
a mass email by the student counselors, remaining open for three days. In addition to the

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items intended to gauge the student’s perceptions of preparation the questionnaire asked
students for their age, gender, and the town/city they attended high school in. Each answer
was assigned a value eg. strongly agree equaled one point whereas strongly disagree equaled
five points. Therefore the lowest possible overall score was 10, which would suggest strong
agreement with the idea of high school preparing the student for university, whereas 50
would represent strong disagreement (see Appendix iii for the final questionnaire.)

Data Collection and Analysis

In total 188 out of a possible 200 freshmen responded to the survey. Out of this nine
respondents stated they were not Honor College students and upon analysis of the data one
respondent’s data showed insincere answering, which left 178 valid responses. According to
Krejecie and Morgan (1970)32 for a population of 200 the recommended sample is 132,
making this a viable response rate. Data analysis was done using free software: after taking
out the invalid answers the rudimentary tools available on Sojump gave a percentage
breakdown of the answers. By downloading the data as a spreadsheet and opening in Apple
Numbers the average and range of scores could be calculated. Uploading the data into Using
Google Fusion Tables allowed the distribution of high school locations to be visualised on a
map of China.

Upon analyzing the data it was discovered that the freshmen were predominantly male (148
men to 30 women) and their average age was 18, the youngest being 16 years old, the eldest
20. They attended high school all over China, as far away from Beijing as Urumqi. The most
students came from Beijing (26 in all) followed by Chengdu and Chongqing (5 each), with 1-
3 students hailing from the other 125 locations (see map 2 and table 2 in Appendix iv). Upon
comparing the responses of males and females there was a general trend that proportionally
more females disagreed than their male counterparts, however more males agreed with the
negative statements which equated an opinion of disagreement (see table 3 in Appendix iv).

32
Krejecie,R.V.,& Morgan D.W.(1970) ‘Determining sample size for research activities.’ p
608
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 Agree/Disagree %

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Q5

Q6

Q7 table
Q8 1:
Q9 note
Q10

0.0000 strongly disagree

20.0000 disagree
40.0000 don’t know
60.0000 agree
80.0000 strongly agree
100.0000 120.0000

items 3,5,7 were negatively worded statements and therefore agreement with these items
would signify disagreement with high school giving preparation for university

Findings

For the whole group the average score was 28.4, signifying slight disagreement that they had
been adequately prepared for university, yet for most of the items more students agreed or
strongly agreed that they were prepared (see table 1). By Using Google Fusion Tables the
locations of the students’ high schools were displayed with colouration according to their
score (see map 1 below) with green representing a low score and red a high one. Almost all
locations showed up as shades of green while Beijing was the only location to show up red.
Upon investigation it was discovered the Beijing respondents average score was 24, which
suggests that the red colouration was simply due to the fact that there were more students
from Beijing and therefore more of a range compared to other locations.

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Map 1: perceptions of preparation according to high school location. Green represents
general agreement with the concept of preparation, red represents disagreement

More participants agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that high school adequately
prepared them for university studies (item 1), as well as for items 2-3 and 5-8 suggesting
agreement with high school provided adequate preparation on a number of points, including:
(2) preparation with basic skills in maths, science, Chinese and foreign languages; (3)
preparation for self study; (5) preparation in using the Internet as a study tool; (6) preparation
for effective time management; (7)
preparation for living away from home; (8) preparation in carrying out independent research
and developing individual academic interests. Overall the data suggests that the participants
are satisfied with the preparation they received and that they have generally been able to
adapt to university studies, which refutes my hypothesis about high school education not
furnishing students with the knowledge and skills needed for higher education, instead
supporting the views of Zhang and Li (2004) and Li and Wegerif (2014).

However, despite general agreement there were three items that stood out for significantly
more respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. They were: (4) adequate training in

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basic ICT skills; (9) preparation for writing college level papers; (10) ‘comprehensive
practice activities’ developing skills that are of use. Females tended to disagree more on the
items regarding ICT and college level papers, yet more males tended to strongly disagree and
more males disagreed with regards to the ‘comprehensive practice activities’ courses.

This presents two areas where the freshmen do not perceive themselves to be prepared: the
lack of ICT preparation is not only pertinent to adaptation to college but could also suggest a
lack of certain 21st century skills. Meanwhile the lack of preparation for writing college level
papers, which would involve critical thinking, would suggest a lack of college readiness,
which in turns makes academic adaptation problematic. Meanwhile the suggestion that the
‘comprehensive practice activities’ wasn’t useful to the students once they had arrived at
university presents a point for policy consideration as the aim of this course was to
familiarise students with inquiry based learning33 that the literature on college readiness,
adaptation ,and 21st century skills would suggest would be beneficial in higher education.

Overall there doesn’t appear to be any link between the location of the student’s high school
and their perception of preparation, and there didn’t appear to be any huge differences in
perceptions between boys and girls.

Discussion

While there were inherent limitations of this study (detailed shortly) the results suggest the
following points that could require further investigation from BUAA Honor College:

1) The students suggested they generally did feel prepared for university by their high school
studies in terms of basic knowledge, management of time, carrying out research and
developing independent academic interests.
2) The students suggested they do not feel adequately prepared in ICT, therefore it might be
beneficial to do further research on this matter and then organise lectures or seminars
instructing students on how to use programs such as Excel, appropriate design for PowerPoint
presentations and so forth.

33
Wang, L. (2009). Basic Education in China p36
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3) The students do not seem to be confident in being able to write university level papers and
further investigation should be done and again seminars and tutorials organised to help
students with this area.
4) The students have suggested their ‘comprehensive practice activities’ classes were not
useful in preparing them for university so it is worth considering going through the
appropriate channels in order to try and influence further reform of the national curriculum to
improve these courses.

Limitations

There were numerous limitations involved in this study, the most decisive being: 1) time 2)
money 3) the relative inexperience of the researcher.

1) Given that this paper was intended for a set deadline a short period of time was available
for conception, reading, design, and data analysis. Given more time a far more
comprehensive approach could have been taken, for example using a mixed methods
approach and collecting data on more than one school.

2) Compared to a professionally developed instrument such as the SACQ my own instrument

lacked the same level of internal validity and reliability. The financial and time limitations
also influenced the use of a free online survey service that was not as secure as other
methods. For example anyone with access to the survey’s URL could have potentially filled
out the questionnaire and if they were not freshmen of Honor College this would invalidate
the data. Simply asking respondents to verify they were actual students was a poor security
method compared to face to face interviews or carrying out surveys in person.

3) My inexperience with quantitative instruments led to a number of flaws. For example with
hindsight some of the questions were worded clumsily compared to already existing
instruments and could have adhered more closely to one theoretical framework. There were
issues with determining the locations of the respondents’ high schools as there was no set
format for answering: some respondents answered with their province, others with their town
or city, whilst others with their province, town and the name of their school. Others did not
answer at all, which made the data on location somewhat unreliable. As the respondents were

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notified about the survey by their teachers there is the possibility they were uneasy about
being completely honest for fear of repercussions, especially as they were asked to write
down their names, which in hindsight wasn’t necessary.

On the other hand there were positives from this exercise. Firstly, as stated one of my reasons
for choosing to conduct a quantitative study was a lack of experience with this methodology
and the project provided insight and experience into how quantitative research is done and
how future projects could be improved. Secondly, despite its deficiencies the questionnaire
received a strong response, and while the data may not be entirely reliable the findings give
the student counselors and myself some clues as to what the participants felt they are
prepared and unprepared for upon entering university, which could be investigated further
using more reliable methods — at the time of writing the counselors are conducting further
research on the freshmen students using the CCSAS. Thirdly, following on from the previous
two points this study was intended to be a pilot study, to investigate if such a line of enquiry
could be expanded out into a full research project. Completing this initial study has laid the
groundwork for a larger more professional project. Therefore from the limited aims of this
project it has been successful.

Conclusion

In this project I attempted a pilot study into how freshmen from BUAA’s Honor College
perceived the preparation for university they received during their high school education. My
aim was to “get my feet wet” so to speak in terms of doing empirical research in the realm of
education, specifically focused on the area of Chinese university students and adaptation. The
initial hypothesis was that the exam driven focus of Chinese high schooling created a gap
between what students were taught and what skills and knowledge they needed once they
arrived at university, a view supported by some previous studies on similar areas. By
conducting a quantitative research in the form of an online survey it was discovered that the
freshmen questioned generally felt high school prepared them adequately, however they did
feel their preparation in ICT and essay writing was lacking. While there were numerous
limitations with this research the results given suggest areas to investigate further.

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Amending policies can be a slow process and by the time changes have been made whole
year groups of students would have passed through the system, with the reforms coming too
late to help them. Yet if teachers and administrators are able to discover their students’
weaknesses and areas they feel unprepared for upon arrival in higher education they can
respond appropriately and take proactive measures such as organising lectures, seminars and
workshops to aid the students in their adaptation so that they can get the most out of their
time in higher education.

Acknowledgments: The research performed would not have been possible without the help of
the Honor College student counselors and my partner Su Nan.

References:

Abdulghani, M., Sang, G. (2015). Undergraduate Chinese students' perspectives on Gaokao

examination: Strengths, weaknesses, and implications. International Journal of Research
Studies in Education 4 (5) Retrieved from
http://www.consortiacademia.org/index.php/ijrse/article/view/1224
Baker, R., Siryk, B., (1989). The Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (SACQ).
Torrance, California: Western Psychological Services Retrieved from
https://www.wpspublish.com/store/Images/Downloads/Product/SACQ_Sample-Test-
Report.pdf

Bryman, A. (2008) Social Research Methods. New York: Oxford University Press

Chen, L., Li, Y., (2014). A Research Review of Undergraduates Academic Adaptability.
International Journal of Information Processing and Management (IJIPM) 5 (2) 88-94.
Retrieved from http://www.aicit.org/IJIPM/ppl/IJIPM275PPL.pdf

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Conley, DT., (2008) .Rethinking College Readiness. The New England Board of Higher
Education, 24-26. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ794245.pdf

Fang Xi.,Wo J.,Lin X. (2005). DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE COLLEGE STUDENT

ADJUSTMENT SCALE. Studies of Psychology and Behaviour 3(2) 95-101. Retrieved from
http://journal.psytj.net/EN/abstract/abstract1106.shtml

Hu, J. (2014).Chinese high school to American university: The effects and outcomes of
international college preparation programs. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Paper 14032.
Retrieved from http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5039&context=etd

Kirkpatrick, R., & Zang, Y. (2011). The negative influences exam-oriented education on
Chinese high school students: backwash from classroom to child. Language Testing in Asia,
1, 36–45. Retrieved from http://www.languagetestingasia.com/content/4/1/2

Kong, S. C., Chan, T.-W., Griffin, P., Hoppe, U., Huang, R., Looi, C. K., ...Yu, S. (2014). E-
learning in School Education in the Coming 10 Years for Developing 21st Century Skills:
Critical Research Issues and Policy Implications. Educational Technology & Society 17 (1)
70-78. Retrieved from http://repository.ied.edu.hk/dspace/handle/2260.2/14350
Krejecie,R.V.,& Morgan D.W.(1970) Determining sample size for research activities.
Educational and Psychological Measurement 30:3

Li, L., Wegerif, R. (2014) What does it mean to teach thinking in China? Challenging and
developing notions of ‘Confucian education. Thinking Skills and Creativity 11 22 (32) 22-
32.Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187118711300059X

Lu, Z., Lv, Y., Deng, X. (2014). Teaching Adaptability, Teaching Approach Preference and
Learning Interest: Evidence from Freshman in Sichuan University, China. Asian Social
Science 10 (7) 29-37. Retrieved from
http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ass/article/view/35620

Tao, S.,Dong, Q.,Pratt, M., Hunsberger B.,Pancer S. (2000) Social Support: Relations to
Coping and Adjustment During the Transition to University in the People’s Republic of

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China. Journal of Adolescent Research 15 (1) 123-144. Retrieved from
http://jar.sagepub.com/content/15/1/123.abstract

Wang, L. (2009). Basic Education in China. Hangzhou, Zhejiang: Zhejiang University Press

Wright, E., Lee, M. (2014). Developing skills for youth in the 21st century: The role of elite
International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme schools in China. International Review of
Education 60 (2), 119-216. Retrieved from
http://www.hlrcjournal.com/index.php/HLRC/article/download/123/187

Xu, L., Gu, C., Zhang, D., Jing, Z. (2013) The Characteristics of Social Adaptation of
College Freshmen and Educational Strategy. International Conference on the Modern
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Yao,B.,Han, W., Zeng, L., Guo, X. (2013). Freshman year mental health symptoms and level
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Zhang, L.,Li, X. (2004) A comparative study on learner autonomy between Chinese students
and west European students. Foreign Language World No.4 102 15-23.Retrieved from http://
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Zhou, B.C. (1991) Learning Adaptability Test. Shanghai: East China Normal University
Press

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Appendix i) Justification of items

Below you can find the items included in questionnaire in Chinese and English with an
explanation for each. A screenshot of the questionnaire as it appeared online can be found in
Appendix ii, and the entire questionnaire can be found in Appendix iii.

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For each item respondents had the option of answering with:
-strongly agree 强烈同意
-agree 同意
-don’t know 不知道
-disagree 不同意
-strongly disagree 强烈不同意

Broadly these questions were situated under Zhou’s(1991) framework of academic adaptability
quoted in Chen and Li (2014) which suggests “the tendency to achieve better learning
outcomes by overcoming individual difficult[sic], namely the ability of academic
adaptability, including learning attitude , learning technology, learning environment and
physical and mental health.”34

1. [高中教育为你的大学学习提供了充分的准备] “High school adequately prepared you for

university studies.”
This question directly addresses the key theme of the survey, whether high school was useful
in preparing the students for their university studies. This was informed by my own
experiences teaching at universities as well as observations from the student counselors H.Y
and C, who had noted that students had difficulty adapting to tertiary education to the extent
that delivering lectures on topics such as self study and time management was necessary.

2.[高中教育为你提供了学习数学、自然科学、语文和外语的必要技能] “High school prepared you

with the skills you needed in maths, sciences, Chinese, and foreign languages.”
The senior secondary school curriculum is quite rigid with an aim to “reflect the
comprehensive nature of modern subjects and facilitate all-round development of the
students”35. The purpose of this question is then to try and find out if students believe their
high school education did give them a broad foundation in modern subjects that could be
freely applied to their university studies.

34
Chen, L., Li, Y., (2014). ‘A Research Review of Undergraduates Academic Adaptability’
p88
35
Wang, L. (2009). Basic Education in China p34
ccclxxiii
3.[高中教育未能赋予你良好的自学能力] “Your high school education did not give you adequate
experience in self study.”
This question was primarily influenced by H.Y and C’s observation that many of the students
arriving at Honors College were unfamiliar with the idea of self study and not relying on their
teachers for direction in their studies. This view was supported by Lu, Lv, and Deng (2014)
who observed that self study plays a greater role in tertiary education. In their study they
discovered that many students couldn’t adapt to this new learning style which led to a loss of
learning interest.36

4.[高中教育在基本的电脑操作技能(微软 word 文档，制作 ppt 等)方面为你提供了充分的训练] “High

school gave you adequate training in basic ICT skills (MS word, PowerPoint).”

Wang’s (2009) analysis of the senior secondary curriculum mentions ICT as coming under
the remit for compulsory courses on technology37, so going on the assumption that the
students had received ICT education the aim of this question is how useful were these courses
now they had arrived at university. This question also took particular influence from the
literature on 21st century skills, with Kong et al (2014) noting “The introduction of digital
resources, digital ways of communication and digital platforms for learning and teaching
brings about many opportunities to enhance the learning process in school education in the
21st century”38, a view supported by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills(2008), the up
thrust being that in order for students to take advantage of new digital learning opportunities
they need to be competent in digital learning. Under Zhou’s (1991) framework this would
come under the area of learning technology.

5.[高中教育未能在使用互联网作为学习工具方面给予你充分的训练] “High school did not give you

adequate training in using the internet as a study tool.”
36
Lu, Z., Lv, Y., Deng, X. (2014). ‘Teaching Adaptability, Teaching Approach Preference
and Learning Interest: Evidence from Freshman in Sichuan University, China.‘p30
37
Wang, L. (2009). Basic Education in China p35
38
Kong, S. C., Chan, T.-W., Griffin, P., Hoppe, U., Huang, R., Kinshuk, Looi, C. K., Milrad,
M., Norris, C., Nussbaum, M., Sharples, M., So, W. M. W., Soloway, E., & Yu, S. (2014). in
‘E-learning in School Education in the Coming 10 Years for Developing 21st Century Skills:
Critical Research Issues and Policy Implications.‘p71
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This question follows on from the last, situated under learning technology in Zhou’s (1991)
framework. It was also informed by Kong et al (2014) and the Partnership for 21st Century
Skills (2008) description of the opportunities that digital learning present, especially in terms
of resources available through the internet. This question is also somewhat informed by
observations of H.Y and C that while the students may be highly internet savvy having grown
up in a world where access to high speed internet is common place this doesn’t necessarily
mean they know how to use it constructively in an academic setting.

6. [高中教育教会你如何高效的管理时间] “Your high school education prepared you for managing

your time effectively.”
This question is linked to the earlier question about self study, though more broadly concerns
how students manage and use their time. This question was primarily influenced by H.Y and
C’s observation that in preparation for the highly competitive gaokao examination students
had very little free time, going through a very stressful period as described in Abdulghani and
Sang’s (2015) study39 . After arriving at university the students are suddenly confronted with
having free time and a lack of supervision: using this excess after-class free time effectively
can be problematic for them, something also noted by Lu, Lv, and Deng (2014)40. Under
Zhou’s (1991) framework it would come under learning attitude.

7. [高中教育未能为你离开家庭和父母独立生活提供准备] “High school did not prepare you for

living away from home and your parents.”
This question is primarily influenced by Tao et al’s (2000) study into perceptions of social
support during the transition to higher education amongst Chinese students. They identify
university as a key life event and one that should not be taken lightly as, “it is also
accompanied by multiple and significant changes. For example, the supervision and
protection of parents and teachers decreases, the daily routine is altered, and individuals must
deal with challenges in academics, social relationships, and other areas demanded by a new
environment”41. Considering Zhou’s (1991) framework this adaptation to living away from
home and coping strategies for this change could be linked to mental and physical health.
39
Abdulghani, M., Sang, G. (2015). ‘Undergraduate Chinese students' perspectives on
Gaokao examination: Strengths, weaknesses, and implications’ p6
40
Lu, Z., Lv, Y., Deng, X. (2014). ‘Teaching Adaptability, Teaching Approach Preference
and Learning Interest: Evidence from Freshman in Sichuan University, China.‘p29
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8.[高中教育为你独立进行研究并探索学术兴趣提供了准备] “High school prepared you for carrying
out independent research and developing your own academic interests.”

This was another question initially influenced by observations by H.Y and C that students
rarely developed their own academic interests or areas of research to pursue, instead deferring
to follow research directions set out by their teachers. Under Zhou’s (1991) framework this
would also come under learning attitude. Chen and Li’s (2014) review mentions how
academic autonomy is an area appearing in the literature on adaptation, while interestingly
Zhang and Li’s (2004) study on student autonomy claimed the learner autonomy of Chinese
students was equal to that of European students, which therefore makes this seem like an area
worth touching on.

9.[高中教育为你大学的论文撰写提供了帮助] “Your high school studies prepared you for writing

college level papers.”

In Conley’s (2008) description of college readiness one of the key cognitive strategies
described as being necessary for tertiary education is the ability to reason, argue and prove
phenomena or issue, which would be expected in university level papers, which would also
include key academic knowledge and skills for certain majors such as social sciences.
Therefore the students’ confidence in writing a university level paper can be seen to be a
gauge of their college readiness. Under Zhou’s (1991) framework this would broadly relate to
academic adaptability.

10.[高中的实践类课程为你提供了作为大学生的必要技能] “Your ‘Comprehensive Practice

Activities’ courses in high school gave you skills that are useful for you now that you’re a
college student.”

The final question is directed to one particular course the students are expected to have taken
from primary to high school according to Wang (2009. Wang describes how the course

41
Tao, S.,Dong, Q.,Pratt, M., Hunsberger B.,Pancer S. (2000)‘Social Support: Relations to
Coping and Adjustment During the Transition to University in the People’s Republic of
China.’ p124
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includes enquiry based learning and it is thought that student can “cultivate their enquiring
and innovative spirit” 42. As a key part of the 2001 curriculum reform, introduced into the
national high school curriculum in 2003, it was an interesting addition as the actual content of
the course was more loosely defined, with an aim towards being more student centered and to
instill a sense of enquiry based learning in the students. The aim of this question then is to
assess whether the students feel this compulsory course has been of benefit to them since
arriving at university.

Appendix ii: Screenshot of the questionnaire

42
Wang, L. (2009). Basic Education in China p36
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ccclxxviii
Appendix iii: Questionnaire

姓名 Name: _________

年龄 Age: ___________

高中所在地 High school location: _____________

性别 Gender:
男 Male
女 Female

你是北京航空航天大学 SAE 的大一新生 Are you a freshman student of BUAA Honor College?:
是 Yes
不是 No

1.[高中教育为你的大学学习提供了充分的准备] “High school adequately prepared you for

university studies.”
-strongly agree 强烈同意
-agree 同意
-don’t know 不知道
-disagree 不同意
-strongly disagree 强烈不同意

2.[高中教育为你提供了学习数学、自然科学、语文和外语的必要技能] “High school prepared you

with the skills you needed in maths, sciences, Chinese, and foreign languages.”
-strongly agree 强烈同意
-agree 同意
-don’t know 不知道

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-disagree 不同意
-strongly disagree 强烈不同意

3.[高中教育未能赋予你良好的自学能力] “Your high school education did not give you adequate
experience in self study.”
-strongly agree 强烈同意
-agree 同意
-don’t know 不知道
-disagree 不同意
-strongly disagree 强烈不同意

4.[高中教育在基本的电脑操作技能(微软 word 文档，制作 ppt 等)方面为你提供了充分的训练] “High

school gave you adequate training in basic ICT skills (MS word, Powerpoint).”
-strongly agree 强烈同意
-agree 同意
-don’t know 不知道
-disagree 不同意
-strongly disagree 强烈不同意

5.[高中教育未能在使用互联网作为学习工具方面给予你充分的训练] “High school did not give you

adequate training in using the internet as a study tool.”
-strongly agree 强烈同意
-agree 同意
-don’t know 不知道
-disagree 不同意
-strongly disagree 强烈不同意

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6. [高中教育教会你如何高效的管理时间] “Your high school education prepared you for managing
your time effectively.”
-strongly agree 强烈同意
-agree 同意
-don’t know 不知道
-disagree 不同意
-strongly disagree 强烈不同意

[高中教育未能为你离开家庭和父母独立生活提供准备] “High school did not prepare you for living

away from home and your parents.”
-strongly agree 强烈同意
-agree 同意
-don’t know 不知道
-disagree 不同意
-strongly disagree 强烈不同意

8.[高中教育为你独立进行研究并探索学术兴趣提供了准备] “High school prepared you for carrying

out independent research and developing your own academic interests.”
-strongly agree 强烈同意
-agree 同意
-don’t know 不知道
-disagree 不同意
-strongly disagree 强烈不同意

9.[高中教育为你大学的论文撰写提供了帮助] “Your high school studies prepared you for writing

college level papers.”
-strongly agree 强烈同意
-agree 同意
-don’t know 不知道
-disagree 不同意

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-strongly disagree 强烈不同意

10.[高中的实践类课程为你提供了作为大学生的必要技能] “Your ‘Comprehensive Practice

Activities’ courses in high school gave you skills that are useful for you now that you’re a
college student.”
-strongly agree 强烈同意
-agree 同意
-don’t know 不知道
-disagree 不同意
-strongly disagree 强烈不同意

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Appendix iv: additional maps, tables and graphs

Map 2: Distribution of students’ high schools

Location of high school Number of respondents

Beijing 26
Chengdu 5
Chongqing 5
No location given 11

Table 2: Top three locations from which students attending high school. All other locations
had 1-3 students attending high school.

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 Gender Comparison
1.2000

1.0000

0.8000

0.6000

0.4000

0.2000

0.0000
e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
al al al al al al al al al al al al al al al al al al al al
. m e m . m e m . m e m . m e m . m e m . m e m . m e m . m e m . m e m . m e m
1 f 2 f 3 f 4 f 5 f 6 f 7 f 8 f 9 f f
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10 .
disagree don’t know agree strongly agree 10

Table 3: The bar on the left for each question represents the opinions of male students, the bar
on the right represents female students note items 3,5,7 were negatively worded statements
and therefore agreement with these items would signify disagreement with high school giving
preparation for university

Clustering applications in education and exploiting of big data in

education

Rashid Mehmood

College of information sciences and technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.

E-mail:gulkhan007@gmail.com

Student ID : 201439210001

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Clustering applications in education and exploiting of big data in
education

Abstract
Education data mining is an interdisciplinary research filed. It deals with development of self-
learning and adaptive methods to find intrinsic hidden patterns from education data, generated
and gathered from multiple data sources. Its primary goal is how student and teachers can
discover the optimal setting in which they can robust their learning capabilities, hence can boost
their outcomes, and how administration can find essential hidden pattern to bring the effective
reforms in the existing system. Data generated and captured in educational institutes is
comprises of multiple type and nature and growing in the paradigm of big data. The traditional
datamining techniques cannot be applied directly to cope with the issues of the big data. So, to
adaptively generate knowledge from big educational data, some specified data mining
techniques are needed. This paper presents a comprehensive review of data mining techniques
with some specific tools to deal with education big data, effective teaching methods in class, and
personalized based intelligent e-learning system

Keywords: Data mining; Clustering; big data, e-learning

1:Introduction
The rapid development in e-learning, educational research liberties, educational software, social
networking, and educational databases is resultant in exponential growth of education data that
is being stored into databases in different format and locations. The huge amount of stored data
can be explore and exploit to find the interesting pattern to boost up the student and teacher
learning capabilities and effective decision making. Currently, the challenge is 1) to exponential
growth of educational data, 2) effective storage of data, and 3) analysis of data to generate
knowledge for effective decision making.
Education in most society has always been major agenda and historical and current data is an
asset for all countries to develop their economy and cultivate a highly educated society. Recently
with advancement of communicational technologies and Internet of things (IoT) [1] are
generating data which is known as big data. However, the big date have more importance in
scientific studies, public and industrial application rather than in the field of education. In
education some of these key issues related to big data are listed as:

Increase effective education

Educate individual with his interest and capabilities.
Discover new studies and find association with different fields.
Find a new insight in experimental data.

Data mining in education is a new insight in education and it concerned with study and
development of new adaptive methods, instruments to artificially analyze and visualize the
hidden patterns from educational datasets. Mostly, education related datasets contains
structured, semi-structured and un-structured data distributed geographically [2].Data mining in
education (DME) has emerged as a unique research area aimed to analyze the intrinsic hidden
patterns and insights in educational datasets [3]. However,DME can be define as an application
of datamining methods in the field of education to exploit the novel pattern in education and
artificially analyze big data efficiently and effectively.
This article describes a detail survey of data mining techniques in education, highlights the issue
of existing e-learning systems, propose a personalized e-learning architecture, and importance of
big data in education and data mining based solutions are discussed.

The rest of paper is organized as follows. The introduction of big data is presented in Section 2.

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Section 3 describes the data mining in education. Idea of Personalization in e-Learning Systems
discussed in Section 4. Importance of big data in education is discussed in section 5 and finally,
the concluding remarks are presented in Section 6.

2:Big Data
The quantity of data generated by education, government, and business has
increased immensely in recent year exponentially. This exponential increase can
be referred as data deluge [4]. Infographic made by Intel, reveals that 90% of
whole data in the world is generated in last two years and it is continuously
growing [5]. It was estimated that the globally generated data in beginning of
2003 was about 5 Exabyte, the data generated until 2012 was of 2.7 zettabytes
and until end of 2015 it will be 3 times large until 2015 [5]. This diversity in the
volume of data is big challenge to store data the data in a compact and to
process in an effective way. This increasing nature of data is referred as big data.
The term big data in literature is introduced by Michael Cox and David Ellsworth
[6]. They referred the big data to use larger volumes of scientific data for
visualization. Recently, there are number of definitions of big data. Perhaps most
comprehensive and well kwon definition of big data is given by IBM [7] that the
big data can characterized by any or all three “V” in order to investigate situation,
event and so on. Three “V” refer to Volume, Variety, and Velocity.
 Volume: The large number of data in being generated from variety range
of different data sources. The social networking and internet of things are
major sources that are generating large volume of data. For example in
education, tweets and web blogs are generating large amount of data in
every second. One another major source of big data generation is internet
of things (IoT).IoT deployed in class rooms are capturing a large amount of
data, comprises of 1) teacher delivered contents, 2) group discussions, 3)
student activities, and 4) security surveillance tasks.
 Variety: The variety in the context of big data refers to analyze a situation
or event by exploring multiple kind of related data. Especially on the IoT,
thousands of devices are generating a continuous data results in not only
in sense of volume but different types of data characterizinga situation. For
example in education class cameras are used to capture overall class
activity that contains variety of data such as, sound, videos, and pictures
etc. however, in internet based learning systems are also generating
different format of data which might be even structural or unstructured
data. The web logs of a student activity is also an interested dimension to
learn the behaviour and interest of student.
 Velocity: The velocity refers as a rapid increase in generated data over
time in an exponential manner, hence need a frequent decision making by
incorporating fresh data. With the development of world, more and more
IoT are incorporating in business, education, and scientific research to get
a new insight and exploit captured data. Similar, in social network, there
are more than 250 million tweets per day [7]. The tweets leads to decision
about other tweets or users personal views about a particular tweets.
The big data is not only the volume, variety, and velocity. Sometime big data is

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refers as an increasing giant elephant and current software and hardware are
unable to analyze the giant elephant of big data [7].

2.1 Where does Big Data come from?

The educational software, online discussion forums, virtual training systems, and
IoT are generating massive amount of data in structural, Simi-structure, and
unstructured form. The analysis of multi-nature of data provides a new insight
that was not possible before.

2.1.1 Importance of IoT in china education

China government has decided to robustly develop IoT and the minister of
education (MOE) also wants to take part in develop of IoT industry. The MOE has
directed instructions to train IoT professionals by introducing IoT as major. In
2012, MOE started new 140 new major at college level and first 31 colleges in
china are authorized to start IoT as a major. Moreover, local governments and
vocational schools will also set IoT as new major [8].

2.1.2 Role of big data in higher education and teacher

training programs
Different universities contains a variety of data, collected from student information
systems, administration system, IoT, and virtual class rooms etc. Collectively this
data can be used to conduct multi-disciplinary research activates and to train
teachers by exploiting effective patterns from data by means of Data Mining (DM)
tools and techniques [9].

3:Data Mining in Education

Recently, the most important innovations in traditional education system is use of
technologies [10] such as web based system, IoT, and social networks. Web
based systems are computer-aided virtual forms of instructions and it does not
depends upon the geographical location or some particular place. Social network
is another source of learning. It contains rich information of people’s thoughts
about different events in semi structure or unstructured form. The computer-aided
system of instruction gained much popularity and thousands of such system have
been deployed in the past few years. Most of web based learning methods are
static and fail to take in account the diversity of students. These virtual
educational system can be improve by utilizing data mining techniques, in order
to meet the diverse requirements of students.
Data mining is a subfield of computer science, concerns to discover intrinsic
hidden pattern in large data sets. Data mining is a combination of artificial
intelligence, machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Primary purpose
of data mining is to extract useful information in large datasets and compile it in a
form of knowledge [10].

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 Figure 5: main areas related to education data mining [10]

In general, there are variety of data mining methods that can be applied in field of
education. There methods can be categories into 1) classification, clustering,
neural network, and relationship manning.

3.1 Clustering
Clustering is one of the most major approach to organize data into appropriate
categories. It is frequently applied in different fields such as e-learning [11], text
mining [12], social networks [14], cyber security [15], bioinformatics [16],
astronomy [17], and health care [18] etc. It aims to cluster the data according to
the estimated intrinsic characteristics or similarities. Clustering methods can be
categorized into different categories such as, density-based [13-15], model-based
[19, 20], grid-based [21], hierarchical [22-25], and partitioning [26, 26].

3.1.1 Application of clustering methods in education

The K-means [22] clustering is very basic and state-of-the-art partition based
clustering algorithm. In K-means, the input data is partitioned into k number of
distinct groups, whereas k is an input parameter used to specify the numbers of
the output clusters. K-means iteratively improves the initial partitions until the
optimized clusters cannot find. Mathematically we can express K-means using
the following expression:

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Where, μi is mean of data-points in Si and Si is initial partition of dataset { x , x ,
i 1 2

…, x }
n

Density based clustering is a primary approach to create clusters of arbitrary

shapes and to identify noise from spatial dataset. The clusters are characterized
as dense regions and some points have isolated densities declared as noise or
outliers. Clusters of arbitrary shapes are created by connecting densities with
maximum set of density-connected points [14]. For density based clustering
approaches there is only need of minimum domain knowledge to cluster the
datasets [13].
DBSCAN [27] is a popular density based clustering method used to create
clusters of arbitrary shapes. DBSCAN is robust to noise, well scale to large
datasets, and requires minimum number of input parameter. However, it is not
completely deterministic for border points, and does not perform well on highly
overlapped dense regions. Correctly estimate the input parameters are also a
difficult task.

3.1.2 Case- study: K-means based an approach to

improve student’s academics performance.
Grade point average (GPA) and percentage score are important indicators for
the measurement of student academic performance and student capabilities.
GPA is an important factor for academic planner to plan and manage the high
class educational environment [28]. The CPA or percentage score of students
could be affected by many factors such as teacher training methods or teacher
attention towards some particular students. It is a general phenomenon that
teachers mostly focus those student those take part in class activities and show
satisfactory output. Furthermore, generally there is some intrinsic hidden parents
exist among the students. Based on student progress student can be divided into
different categories. So, the same teaching method might be a hurdle for different
categories of student in a class. With the effective use of K-means we can divide
student into different pre-defined categories and hence student performance can
be increased by utilizing different methods for each group of student.
We conduct the experiment to extract the meaning full relationship between
student and their GPA. Based on the resultant groups, we predict some different
teaching methods and techniques for each group of students. To conduct
experiment, we utilize the real result of introduction to computer class and apply
K-means clustering approach to find useful groups in a class. Our method,
successfully find three groups in a class based on the progress of students, as
shown in table-1. Based on discovered groups, we predict to use more care for B
and C category student also recommend teacher special attention and extra care
for lower categories of student. The steps involve in this process is given bellow:
(1) Input : D={all students obtained marks}, K
(2) Output : Si= {S1, S2, S3, …, Sk} ,K set of student groups
(3) Initial partition D into Sk groups
(4) For i=1:n
a. Refine partitions

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 (5) Return refined set of students groups

3.5

2.5

1.5

0.5

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Figure 6:GPA of 57 student in an introduction to computer class

Table 2: K-means based created 3 categories of in subject “introduction to computer” of MBA class is
created. Each categories needs different teacher care level.

No. of Category Efforts

student
18 A He/She is a good student. Need not to take special care.
18 B Is not so good. Need to take care of CT & Quiz.
21 C Is a lower standard student. Need lot of practice of his/her lesson
and also take care of all the courses ct,lab,quiz ,attendance
carefully.

In aforementioned study we utilize data mining technique named as K-mean

clustering to find useful categories into student database and predict to use
different methods for each of category students. This study is useful for teacher
as well student to build up a robust teaching and learning mechanism in schools,
colleges, and universities.

4:Idea of Personalization in e-Learning

Systems
Web based education or e-learning is a new dimension in education where a
significant large amounts of information describing the continuum of the teaching-

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learning interactions are endlessly generated and ubiquitously available. This
could be seen as a blessing: plenty of information readily available just a click
away. But it could equally be seen as an exponentially growing nightmare, in
which unstructured information chokes the educational system without providing
any articulate knowledge to its actors [29]. A review of the possibilities of the
application of Web Mining (Web usage mining and clustering) techniques to meet
some of the current challenges in distance education was presented in [30].
To cope with aforementioned e-learning issue, we present a new framework that
used the data mining techniques. Incorporation of DMT makes the learning
system more interest oriented. The overall structure of propose method is shown
in fig. 3.

Internet profile

Track of student learning process

Data Mining

Tutor on/offline Recommendation

student Tutor

Virtual Views/ user request and results

Internet Virtual Views

Figure 7:Intelligent personalized learning architecture

 Student Profile: typical group of students are called profile or sometimes a student model
[31, 32]. The role of student’s profile is to automatically discover the user-learner preferences
and needs.
 Students activates and data for profile creation : Student related data is base for
personalization of student queries and intelligent response of queries. Student profiling is
an ongoing process which contains both static and dynamic data. Data acquired in a
static way mostly [32] refer to: personal, personality, cognitive, pedagogical and
preference data. Personal data describe the biographical information about the student.
Personality data come from personality tests. However, other cases is ability of student
concentration, cooperation and relational. Student profile reflects the overall interest and
behaviour of a student. Cognition tests deliver information about the type of student's
cognition. Learning style and the approach to learning are defined in pedagogical data. If
profile maintaining system detect any unusual behaviour in student activates, it update
the profile accordingly.
 Data Mining: Data mining is responsible to find association, recommendation, and
intelligent to provide customize and power learning mechanism for student. For example,
appropriate contents selection bases on the student interest and understanding is a big
problem. This can be resolve by grouping the whole contents by simply applying K-
means clustering approach to filter contents according to student profile.

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  Recommendation: This process is responsible to collect data from databases according
to student profile with the help of data mining techniques.
 Data base: the data bases contains the rich data of courses and other education related
activities.
 Virtual Views: after the intelligently analysis of student record and selection of
appropriate contents for student. Virtual views are created and delivered to the student in
the form of electronic documents.
The overall student learning process is monitored and controlled by artificially and it also
provides full access to teachers to control and manage virtual views as well.
 Conclusion
In this subsection a customized e-learning system architecture is proposed. Proposed system is
capable to understand the student understanding level and then respond to the student
according to its learning capabilities. Proposed system finds the possible groups in students by
matching shared similarities and level of interest. For each group, system generates different
quizzes, assignments, study related games, and books contents to improve their learning
capabilities. To makes groups and select appropriate teaching methods, system uses artificial
intelligent and adaptive clustering methods. In proposed architecture, we use K-means as a
profiling and content filtering method to group student into appropriate classes. Proposed method
is more robust as compared to typical e-learning systems. Because traditional e-learning system
are mostly queries based and queries are respond without any intelligence or heuristics.
Future work: in future work, we are suggested to make proposed system more intelligent by
introducing different other data mining techniques to generate knowledge and provide more
intelligent assistance to students. We also want to improve learning capabilities by introducing
games based learning. The student collaboration is an important aspect of learning by group
discussion and sharing student’s personal thoughts. We will also focus on to use intelligent
techniques to apply student group discussion and their thoughts to categorize different students
with significant attributes for problem solving.

5:Importance of big data in education

The thousands of schools, colleges, universities, e-learning web sites, IoT, and social networking
applications are being generated deluge of data and information, in china and around the globe.
This data contains a variety of intrinsic hidden patterns. The whole data is stored in structured,
unstructured, and Simi structured form on different places. Big data, currently is a challenge for
researchers and scientists to explore and analyze. Specially, big data can play in important rules
in multidisciplinary research and common interest of field among different fields.
One of the most pressing educational concerns is increasing potential of technologies to make
learning available online to students globally. The internet, cloud computing, live stream, and
other comparable technological developments bring new forms for delivering and increasing
access to learning. In the process the widespread ability to collect, integrate and analyses BD
data from these activities is generating important opportunities for improving education, but it
also poses new challenges.
With innovations in technology and increasing student mobility, educational delivery is changing
constantly. Rising in popularity are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Currently in China,
46 universities has been approved to run interest based (distance learning) courses and these
universities have enrolled about 400,000 student. According to the Ministry of education, after the
five year period (2001-2005), these universities would be more than 100, with 4 million internet
students [33].

5.1 Analysis of big data in education

The exponential growth of big data in education contains intrinsic hidden pattern which can be
explorer by implying data mining (clustering) approaches. In this subsection, we will discuss
some scenarios which needs clustering approaches to analyze educational big data.

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 Exploration of big data for interdisciplinary
research
Interdisciplinary research is an attractive area for research to find a new insight into different
fields. Big data is providing an opportunity to researcher of different field to find interesting
pattern among various fields.
A primary agenda of higher education is to harness cross disciplinary intelligence to improve
syllabuses, content and delivery, enhance learners’ experiences and create an atmosphere that
equips them with the skills and knowledge required to cope the changes and challenges posed
by the big data. In such complex environment as education it is tough for humans to see patterns
manually, but database projects have the abilities to incorporate and link traditional and new data
sources. Such competences can create deeper insights into students’ learning and enhance
classroom teaching as a clear picture of their abilities and needs are developed earlier.

 Use of data mining to improve interdisciplinary

research
The similarity measurement and clustering is an important task to find the similar groups in big
data. The similar patterns of data in different field might be useful for searcher and learners to get
easily knowledge of variant fields. For example, we can use partition based clustering, density
based clustering , and hierarchical based clustering for text mining, find similarity amount data,
find outliers, and to find similar related fields by clustering big data.

 Exploration of big data for improving course

contents
Freshness of knowledge is an important factor in the field of education. Nowadays, there are
thousands of research journals, social networking personal pages, web blogs, where authors
regularly publish their work and latest research. It is a big challenge for course contents
designers to include latest research and exercise novel teaching methods to educate society with
updated knowledge. The data mining techniques can easily apply on big data to find updated and
related contents by utilizing its artificial intelligence effectively. To improve course contents the
text mining, density based clustering, hierarchical and partition based clustering can easily use to
explore related topics from big data, with minim human interaction.

 Exploring big data for improving e-learning

Generally the most of e-learning system are static and query based. Institutional databases
contains the teaching material and users query are entertained according to the stored data.
However, most of updated knowledge lies on internet in different places. To robust the student
learning capabilities it might be credible to integrate the rest of data sources with e-learning
system. The data mining techniques can play an important roles to find the relation between
different topics available over internet. In this way e-learning system automatically will be in
position to automatically generate new knowledge and to find relationship between different
topics and applications.
In this domain, student click based server logs also generates valuable data. Clustering methods
can be successfully utilize to analyze the click stream data. clustering of click streams data
further can be utilize to make e-learning system more attractive and to understand the students’
activities and interest.

cccxciii
6:Conclusion
In this paper, 1) relationship of data mining in area of education is explored, 2) presented K-

means as a solution of effective student grouping problems , 3) intelligent framework of

personalized e-learning is presented, and 4) clustering approach of various educational big

data problems are discussed. The data mining approaches provides the sense of intelligence in

existing e-learning systems, efficiently and effectively. The data mining techniques are

equally effective to analyze the big data to make education systems more robust and solve the

challenges of inter-disciplinary research in field of education. In case study of effective

teaching of class, we use real life dataset and apply k-means to find significant groups in a

class and suggest different levels of care for each of group.

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165370.article

01252014_ _201329010014_VERSION 2

THE EFFECTS OF THE LOCAL HOUSEHOLD REGISTRATION (HUKOU)

ON ACCESS AND EQUITY ON ENROLLMENT FOR MIGRANT CHILDREN
INTO PUBLIC PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN BEIJING.

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Education is a key player in determining the status and future of the children’s future
in a society. This is because it provides them with a better chance of survival in a
digital and competitive world which requires some level of knowledge in managing
the various careers they might assume in the future. It is every child’s right to enroll
into any school and acquire some form of education as it paves way to a better
educational future as well as career development. Thus according to Wang (2009;19)
“…Children with learning abilities should start receiving compulsory education at thefull
age of 6, regardless of theirgender, ethnic background, economic conditions and religious
beliefs”.1 Article4 of the Compulsory Education Law of China which was amended in
June 2006 states that “…All school-age children and adolescents of the nationality of the
People's Republicof China shall, in accordance with law, enjoy the equal right, and fulfill
cccxcvi
the obligation, to receive compulsory education, regardless of sex, ethnic status or race,
family financial conditions, religious belief, etc.”2Thus everyone has to enjoy the
benefits of education without any restrictions because it is their right to be educated.
The system of the Local Household Registration (hukou) which was implemented by
the Chinese Government in the 1950s to monitor the flow of people form one region
to another has had devastating effects on migrant children in terms of educational
facilities as well as other social benefits from the government. People who migrate to
other places quickly lose their rights to State benefits.The majority of rural migrants
in cities do not possess local household registration (hukou), thus are excluded from
full access to pension, health care, public education and other social benefits at the
place they live. Based on the 2010 Census, there are around 210 million such “non-
hukou” migrants who work and live in a city other than where his/her official hukou
is registered at (NBS, 2012)as quoted by Chen and Feng (2013). 3This system is
inherited which means that if the parents migrant to another city for greener pastures
the children would suffer from the same consequences hence it is a major
disadvantage to both parties (parents and kids) as it will continue to be passed to
other generations thereby creating a gap in the society between the people with hukou
and those who do not.
When we are talking of migrants, we are referring to those people who have moved
from the rural areas to the urban areas or those who move inter-urban (from one city
to another) between jobs. Thus, the hukou system creates a discriminatory system as
the migrant children find it difficult to enroll into public schools which is rather a
dilemma caused by the rapid urbanization and industrialization of china.Xiaogang Wu
(2011) quoted that, “In developing countrieseducationaloutcomes can also be explained
largely by family background”.4This means that migrant children are placed in a
disadvantage by the hukou yet most of the rural migrants in China are poor already
and they are led to the cities in search for jobs with better wages apart from the
rural life.

1.1 AREA OF INVESTIGATION

This study seeks to investigate the problems of access and equity faced by
migrant children in public primary school enrollment in Beijing. Due to the huge
paradigm shift in the Chinese economy, there has been a huge influx of migrants
into the cities. Migrant parents are finding it difficult to enroll their children into
public schools mainly because the school may demand a lot from the parents.
Therefore, the hukou system is a major hindrance to the enrollment of migrant
children into public schools because it stipulates that a person has to be educated
in the nearby schools where they are registered.

1.2 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The Chinese children are all entitled to education which is rather

compulsory yet not all of these children are given the intended education.
The system of hukou is marginalizing the people and creating a huge gap
in the society. Hence, the study intends to address the following problems

cccxcvii
 which are shrouded in the State regulations and the enrollment procedures
in schools;

 The study seeks to analyze the effects of hukou on the enrollment

procedure in these public primary schools if it still plays a
significant role in the enrollment process in a the schools.
 It also tries to address the problems of access and equity into the
public primary schools in Beijing.
 The problems of school choice as there is the gap between schools
i.e. ‘Good’ schools and ‘Bad’ schools. This raises a question of
whether it is really the aspect of school choice when hukou is not
giving a choice to the migrant parents to enroll their child?
 There is also the need to analyze the strain caused by hukou onto
the families as some might as well leave their children in the rural
areas to be educated there whilst they work in Beijing.
 The study also seeks to help reveal the Chinese people’s opinion
on hukou and what they feel could be done to make sure that
there equity in the school enrollment processes.

1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIIONS

1. How does hukou affect enrollment of migrant children into public

primary schools in Beijing?
2. Do migrant parents really have a choice when it comes to the
aspect of school choice?
3. What dopublic schools consider when enrolling migrant children?
4. What social implications does the hukou system have on the
migrant families as well as the children’s educational career?

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Access and equity in primary school education lies at the heart of

development because if people are educated, it means that there will be more
skilled labor in various disciplines which in turn will benefit the country in
its economic development. So the mere lack of education is both a part of
the definition of poverty and a means for its diminution. This is because if a
child has a bright primary school education, the greater the chances of
excelling up the channels of education such as secondary education, high
school education or university level. According to Wang (2009) “…Sustained
and meaningful access and equity to primary education is critical to the future
educational path in secondary and higher education. ”5 I also believe that migrants
play a vital role in the development of the economy because China is largely
dependent on cheap labor. The 5th National Census dataindicated in November

cccxcviii
 of 2000 that the total migrant population was more than 100 million. Among
them, more than 14 million are children ages of 0-14, accounting for 13.7%
of the total migrant population, which indicates the continuing large education
demand from the migrant population. 6 Up to this day, there is a huge influx of
migrant workers from all over China who are working in Beijingyet they do
not have the hukou. This hukou being hereditary itself presents a lot of
challenges to the migrant community as there is the urgent need to provide
their children with quality education. However, most of these migrant workers
are poor and living in Beijing without most of the social services only
proves their lives to be costly hence even afford a luxurious life. This thereby,
proves the significance of this study as it will help guide the policy makersin
considering;

 Their choices when it comes to revising the restrictions placed upon education
by the hukou system.
 The future of the country’s labor community as these migrant children are the
ones who will provide that labor pool hence they are also a pillar to the
economy and depriving them of their education is on the other hand a major
hindrance to economic growth.
 The migrant workers play a vibrant role in the labor society so at least their
livelihood needs at least to be considered as they already rely on poor wages
hence separating the children form their parents would just bring more misery
to the families as there would be a double burden placed on them. The parent
would have to fend for both houses in the city as well as the rural area.

2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW

There has been various literatures that have been written on the issues of access and
equity in the enrollment processes and the effects of the hukou system on migrant
children in Urban China. These can be subdivided into themes to ensure a clear
understanding of the problems in question for study in these public educational
institutions as well as the regulations that determine the enrollment procedure.
 ACCESS AND EQUITY IN EDUCATION

Keith M. Lewin (2007) asserted that access to basic education lies at the
heart of development. Lack of educational access, and securely acquired
knowledge and skill, is both a part of the definition of poverty, and a
means for its diminution. Sustained access to meaningful learning that
has value is critical to long term improvements in productivity, the
reduction of inter-generational cycles of poverty, demographic transition,
preventive health care, the empowerment of women, and reductions in
inequality. He also argued that many children remain un-enrolled at
primary level, many of those enrolled attend irregularly and learn little,
and large numbers fail to make the transition to secondary schooling. A
conclusion was made in this study that improved access to education,
broadly defined is central to progress towards EFA and the MDGs. It is

cccxcix
 also essential for development more generally. Rights to education, and
their realization through meaningful participation, are fundamental to any
recent conception of development. The knowledge and skill that
educational participation can and should confer on the next generation
will contribute to poverty alleviation albeit that this alone will be a
necessary but insufficient condition for progress.

This study is essential to this research because depriving migrant

children of their education causes massive destruction of their lives
because the chances that they will not be able to have a successful life
will be high. The system of hukou is inhibiting the access of migrant into
public schools which calls for the need for this research.

J Huisman and J Smits (2008) in their study quoted that education is

generally regarded as a powerful means for reducing poverty and achieving
economic growth. It has beenmentioned as a way to empower people, improve
individuals’ earning potential, promotea healthy population, and build
acompetitive economy. They went onto argue that despite considerable
progress, still millions of young children in developing countries are not in
primary education. To improve this situation, it isof fundamental importance to
gain a better understanding ofthe factors that influence the educational
enrollment of childrenin the developing world. This study is vital because
children should be enrolled into schools for it is way of empowering
them. They also quoted that, “…according to human capital theory,
participation in education is an investment in human capital made because
of the expected returns later in life (Becker, 1964; Mincer, 1958).” They
also concluded that in thecase of young children in the developing countries,
the investmentdecision is generally made by the parents. They are expectedto
weigh off the future benefits of sending theirchildren to school against the
immediate costs. Those benefitscan be for the children, but also for the parents
themselves, becausein the absence of pension systems, children may be
theirold-age security. This calls for the significance of analyzing the
effects of hukou in enrolling migrant children in urban schools in China
because it will not only affect the children’s future but the parents as
well.

 HUKOU SYSTEM ON MIGRANT EDUCATION

Liu and Jacob (2012) focused on the problems that are faced by migrant
children after they enroll into public schools. Their results identify the need for
further adjustments of the existing education system which can help
improvemigrant children’s education in China. Findings also highlight the dilemmas
regarding howto best meet the needs for teachers, migrant parents, and migrant
children who attend publicschools. In order to provide a quality education for migrant
children, they concludedby arguingthat there must be a three-pronged partnership to
best accommodate the unique educationneeds of migrant children in urban China. In
their study they put much considerations into what happens after enrollment
forgetting the major challenge being faced by migrant children in China is
cd
 accessing the public schools since there are policies which try to incorporate
them into the system yet implementation of these policies is the challenge.

Liang and Chen (2005) also did the same research to examine the school
enrollment of migrant children who resided in cities of Guangdong province in
1995. Using data from the 1995 China1% Population Sample Survey. In their study
they concluded that temporary migrant children are much less likely to be enrolled
in school compared to local children. Temporarymigrants with less than one year of
residence in cities suffer the most. Compared to non-migrant children at the place
of origin, rural temporary migrant children from Guangdong also encounter a major
disadvantage in terms ofschool enrollment. As education becomes more and more
important for socio-economic mobility in theChinese society, such disadvantages
faced by temporary migrant children are likely to have detrimentaland long-term
consequences for migrant children and for urban society as a whole. In this study
they referred to Guangdong and this leaves a question whether this situation is
the same for Beijing and they used data from the year 1995 whilst there must
have been some developments in the past years.

3.0 RESEARCH FRAMEWORK

This study was based on the Theory of Inclusive Education with was adopted by
Jing Liu and W. James Jacob (2012)in their article “From access to quality:
migrant children’s education in urban China.” This theory was developed by
the authors from inclusive education literature (Corbett 2001; Mittler 2000;
UNESCO 1994).Originally, scholars who wrote on inclusive education focused
primarily on special education needs; the concept was later used to explain
phenomena in general public educationsettings. The basic concept of inclusive
education emphasizes the importance of accommodating special needs from the
learners’ perspectives. They definedthe Theory of InclusiveEducation as a four-step
process of integrating students in schools and accommodating theirvarious
needstoward achieving a quality education.The first stepin this process referredto
the provision of equal access to public schools for children. The second step
referred to the identification and responding to the needs of children’seducation.
Participation is essential for migrantstudents to succeed in public schools
includingfull participation from students, parents of students, teachers, and
administrators andconstitutes the third step. Finally, the last step is quality education,
which refers to the successful achievement of children’s education relating
totheir individual needs.

In this study we used the Theory of inclusive education to focus the aspects
of access and equity in the enrollment processes for migrant children in the
public schools. This is because for there to be an adequate response to the
needs of children in the schools, we need to solve the problems of access in
enrolling students in schools. If there is no equal access to education then it
means that there will not be a bright future for children in their educational
careers. There might be various policies which were propounded by the
Chinese government to carter for the needs of migrant children since the
1990s but the main problem comes to the implementation of these policies in
the schools because migrant children are still facing the same problems as

cdi
 before.

The diagram below (Fig 1) tries to describe the success of the educational
systems using the Inclusion theory in four steps from access to equity. These
four steps are interrelated and they cannot fully co-exist without the other. In
order for migrant children to enjoy the benefits of education in public schools,
the first step is to ensure fully Access in the enrollment procedure without
much restrictions. This leads us to the second step in the process which is
Inclusion which entails migrant children being included into public schools
thereby fulfilling the aims of The Compulsory Education Law of China so as
rising hope for an educational career for the children. The third step will be
the Accommodation of the needs of migrant children which includes some of
the benefits that come with the possession of the hukou which will help them
to blend into the system. The final step will be Equity which is accomplished
when the first three steps are implemented because if the migrant children are
allowed access into the schools it means that they are being included into the
system hence accommodation of their needs as well as equity in the system of
enrollment.

Fig 1: Theory of Inclusion; Access to Equity

EQUITY

ACCESS

ACCOMODATION OF
INCLUSION NEEDS

3.1 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Qualitative methods were adopted in this research. The data was collected
mainly through interviews which are semi-structured in nature. Interviews were
conducted mainly because in qualitative research they have an advantage over
the self-completed questionnaires as the interviewer can explain questions that

cdii
 the respondent hasnot understood and can ask for further elaborationof replies and
questions that follow might depend on what the interviewee has answered in
response to what he/she was asked.
The survey research was confined to the Chaoyang district in Beijing. This
region was chosen because of the migrant community that resides in the area.
The other factor which was considered about this survey area was the aspect
of convenience in terms of access to the interviewees.

3.2 STUDY POPULATION

The study sample consisted mainly of Two groups which are the migrant parents and
the teachers which are then sub-divided into two categories.
 Migrant parents
The migrant parents were chosen in this study because they are the ones who
migrated from the areas where they hold the hukou in search for a better life
in Beijing. The hukou being hereditary, they passed it onto to the children
thereby by making them the right sample to provide primary data from their
experiences. They can also reveal their true feelings as they are the non-
hukou citizens in the City. Amongst these migrant communities are those
people who have failed or managed to secure places for their children into
the public schools and this helps the study in revealing the situation on the
ground.

 Teachers
The teachers were chosen in this study because they are the ones involved in
the enrollment process in the schools. The schools vary by their standards as
there are schools with different standards in Beijing. There are some schools
termed good schools and some are known asbad schools and all these
classifications come because of the variations in standards making a huge gap
or difference in terms of requirements for enrollment. Therefore, having
teachers from different schools would help in getting the different criteria of
recruiting students in their schools because every school has its own way or
certain attributes they look for in a child upon enrollment. The study
population of teachers falls into two groups; public school teachers and
private migrant school teachers and this helps to see the difference between
the two schools systems (public and private).

4.0 DATA COLLECTION

 The data was collected using face to face interviews with the help of an
interview guide which constituted of semi-structured questions. It was
structured in such a way because some of the questions largely depended on
the responses from the interviewees.
 There were two sets of questions for the parents and the teachers.
 Seven interviews were conducted in total as per the study population;
Four migrant parents were interviewed at a migrant compound in Chaoyang
District.
Three primary school teachers were interviewed; two of them were public
cdiii
 primary school teachers and one was a teacher at a private migrant primary
school run by another migrant in Chaoyang Districtas well.

4.1 LIMITATIONS

There are some challenges that were encountered during the data collection
process which included;
 the reluctance of the study population to cooperate as they could not disclose
some information due to fear of the various authorities.
 There was also the issue of a language barrier as some of the interviewees
could not speak English which led to the use of a translator.
 Allocation of limited resources for the research.
 Limited time frame to do the research.

4.2DATA ANALYSIS

The data was analyzed using the method of conceptualization and it was categorized
into two basic themes; fairness and the concept of inclusion as per responses from
our study population. Each theme shall contain responses from both parties ( teachers
and parents). These two themes try to embrace the questions of access and equity in
public school enrollments with the hukou restrictions.

INCLUSION
 The school regulations try to accommodate every child.
 Parents need to produce several documents in order for their child to be
enrolled and if they do not produce the documents there will be no
enrollment.
 If parents do not have hukou they can enroll into the school but should
pay an undisclosed amount of money such as sponsorship money amongst
others.
 If you do not have the money your child will not be enrolled in a good
school.
 The school needs to be selective for the children they enroll and this may
include scouting for various talents such as sports, dance etc.
 Poor parents do not have the liberty to choose a good school mainly
because of the high standards the school seeks to maintain leaving only
one option of the so-called poor schools.

FAIRNESS

cdiv
  Teachers view the system of hukou as fair because it gives everyone with the
correct documentation and resources the chance to enroll.
 Some parents view the process as strenuous and too demanding.
 The school system of selecting students on the basis of special skills is a
disadvantage to others children who do not.
 The poor parents are marginalized as they cannot afford to pay the
sponsorship fees thereby leaving them with little or no choice other than
going to the poor schools.

5.0 FINDINGS
During the course of data analysis for this study, the data reveals that there are a lot
of challenges presented to these migrant parents in search for schools to enroll their
children.The findings will thereby be subdivided into four parts according to our
research questions as well as some of the responses from our interviewees.
 Effects of hukou on enrollment of migrant children into public schools

Apart from the State’s regulations to accommodate every child through compulsory
education, the schools have their own criteria of selecting students for enrollment and
this varies with the schools as well. Every child needs to enroll into a school in his/
her catchment area. This means that hukou is a top priority in this selection process.
From all the seven interviews, their responses revealed that; it is very difficult to
enroll your child without the hukou and due to the stiff competition, most of these
parents have failed to enroll their children in public schools. If they cannot enroll
into these schools they end up sending their children back to where their hukou exists
or opting for schools with poor standards.
 Considerations by the Public schools when enrolling migrant children

The interviewees revealed that; parents have to produce a lot of documents to the
school which includes hukou certificate, working certificate, endorsement from the
local bureau amongst others. In most cases failure to produce these documents means
that your child will not be enrolled though it can be redeemed by payment of
sponsorship fees amongst other monies to the school and it is usually a lot of
money. Two of our interviewees actually failed to enroll their kids into these schools
because they could not afford to pay the sponsorship fees. They also revealed that;
some schools also enroll their students on the basis of special talents such as music,
sports, dance amongst others for the sake of maintaining the glory or raising the
school’s standards.
 Problems of school choice

Migrant parents are divided into two groups; rich ones and the poor. The rich ones
have liberty of choosing a school for their children because the system requires
money which they will pay but poor parents cannot afford to pay these kinds of
money which leaves them with no choice other than going to the poor schools where
they can afford. During the interviews, some parents talked about their children not
going to school and some opting for migrant schools which do not offer quality
education.This also brings up the issue of the gap between these schools, dividing

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them into two subgroups mainly good and bad schools according to standards. The
standards of selection in these good schools are high and the competition is rife than
in the poor schools.

 Social implications of hukou on migrant families

There is also the aspect of many migrant parents being separated from their families
because their hukou status because it is hard for their children to access education in
Beijing which results in them resorting to leave them behind with other family
relatives. Interviews revealed that many families are disintegrated due to this hukou
system. Some parents raised the questions of leaving their children in the rural areas
with their grandparents or distant relatives. This situation brings a double burden on
the parents as they try to make a living in Beijing on low wages at the same time
trying to support relatives back home. This separation becomes expensive yet depriving
their rights in life.

5.1 DISCUSSION AND CONLUSION

The purpose of this study is to understand the system of local household registration
(hukou) and the grip it still has on the enrollment of migrant children into public
primary schools in Beijing-China. This system was meant to control the movement of
people from one place to another in the 1950s but due to the rapid economic growth
of China centralized in the urban areas, people are moving into the cities. There has
been problems in access and equity in the public school for migrant children mainly
because of the hukou restrictions yet the government tried to make some adjustments
on paper but implementation of these policies has proved to be a problem. This is
symbolized by the strict requirements by most schools in selecting the students for
enrollment thereby creating a marginalized society since the poor cannot access the
school hence no equality.
Liu and Jacob (2012) also quoted “…a dilemma between improving access to public
education and the lack of systematic guarantee and assistance in quality education for
migrant children. Education reform efforts have not kept up with the rapid
demographic changes and unique needs ofmigrant children. The government has made great
strides in promoting access to public education for migrant children in urban areas,
but there still needs to be more systematic focus on establishing and maintaining the
quality of education offered to migrant children following enrollment (Kwong2006; Liu
2012). There are no specific strategies for guaranteeing education quality for migrant
children and assisting in the stability of migrant children’s education in urban and
rural settings.”
Therefore, the theory of school choice no longer exists for these poor parents
because they will only have one choice of opting for the poor schools or those
schools run by other migrants which then raises other questions of the quality of
education they will be exposed to. Chen and Feng (2012) also argued that because of
the current hukou system, many of them are not able to enroll in public schools and
have to go to privately operated migrant schools. Primary school education is a crucial
stage for the development of the child’s educational future as well the life in general
so depriving these children of their education is damaging their future hence
destroying the country’s as well. Wu (2011) pointed out that one’s hukou status also
plays an important role in determining the likelihood of transitions to junior high
school and academic senior high schools.Policy makers should rethink the hukou
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system in terms of education for migrant children because they need to be included in
the education circles in order for them to have a better future.
The hukou system is playing a big role of family disintegration in these migrant
families because parents are being forced to abandon their children with their
grandparents or other distant relatives mainly because the hukou cannot accommodate
social services and other benefits when they move to other cities in search for better
wages. Revision of the hukou system is necessary so as to accommodate the lives
and wellbeing migrant citizens for they play a major role in nation building through
labor supply and they are still Chinese people not from other countries hence access
and equity in education is needed for the better tomorrow where everyone is not
deprived of their rights.

REFFERENCES

1. Chen, Y. & Jacob, W, J. (2013). China Economic Review: Access to public

schools and the education of migrant children, 1-4.
Retrieved onhttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2157995
2. Huisman, J. & Smits, J. (2008). World development volume 37 (1): Effects of
household and district-level factors on primary school enrollment in 30
developing countries, 179-1193.
3. Lewin, M, L. (2007). Consortium for research on education access, transition
and equity: Improving access, equity and transition in education: Creating a
research agenda, 1-56.
4. Liang, Z. & Chen, Y, P. (2005). Social science research 36 (2007): The
educational consequences of migrant children in China, 2-20.
5. Liu, J. & Jacob, W, J. (2012). Education research policy practice: From access
to quality: Migrant children’s education in urban-China, 3-15.
6. Wang, L. (2009). Basic education in China, New Jersey, USA, Homa and
Sekey books, 19.
7. Wu, X. (2011). Population studies Centre, Research paper: The household
registration system and rural-urban educational inequality in contemporary
China, 11-735.

The First Page of position paper

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Specific Title of paper Making people employable: Reforming higher
education in China.

Student Number 201339010004

Student Name

E-mail salikqau@yahoo.com
Cell Phone
13522399648

Making People Employable: Reforming higher education in China

Abstract:
Today, more than ever before in human history, the wealth or poverty of nations depends on
the quality of higher education. Those with a larger repertoire of skills and a greater capacity
for learning can look forward to lifetimes of unprecedented economic fulfillment. This paper
tries to debunk some of the myths surrounding higher education in China and define what
quality and excellence in higher education means and how to bring employability skills in the
graduates to meet the demands of labor market. This paper also outlines the nature of crisis
afflicting higher education in China, points out the opportunities and highlights a few reform
proposals in China to address the current morass.
Key words: Higher Education, Quality assurance, Skills, Employability, Reforms.
Journal of Further and Higher Education

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1. Introduction:
It is imperative for China to quickly put in place the building blocks of a knowledge
economy. The first step in this direction requires moving the country out of the “low creative
skills, low communication skills and low expectations” trap which permeates many spheres
of economic activity. To meet this objective even partly, it will be necessary to address the
fundamental crisis in higher education related to access and completion, in quality, as well as
market relevance. There have been several major attempts at playing ‘catch up’ during the
last 150 years and the dynamics of the process have been studied extensively. These include
German attempts to emulate the earlier industrial revolution in England [Gershenkron (1962)]
and the forced modernization of Meiji Japanese society [Morishima (1994)], both of which
took place in the 19th century. More recent studies have focused on the post-war boom in
Europe, the sudden rise of NICs in East Asia and of course China. The conditions for
latecomers may be different from those who have gone before, but the institutional evolution
of domestic knowledge systems and economic catch-up depends critically upon collective
competence building as well as technological congruence and social capability and
infrastructure [Abramovitz (1994)].While economic integration, larger and more
homogeneous markets, and large scale production technologies have driven growth and
development, the process of sustained growth experienced by several countries and regions
would not have been possible without a general increase in educational levels [Barro and Lee
(2004)] and additional resources being allocated to public and private R&D. This facilitated
growth of a large stock of human capital, and encouraged innovation in firms [Schumpeter
1912); Harvard (1934)], and explained to a considerable extent Europe’s successful ‘catch-
up’ with the USA or the phenomenal rate of growth, first in East and South East Asia and
now in China. This article suggests that even if institutional excellence and quality, creative
and communication skills can be assured, the major crisis facing the Chinese economy will
remain the absence of employable skills. Quality assurance and competence in hard and soft
skills rather than under investment in business and economic activity. This of course reflects
into one of the three informational asymmetries suggested by Schumpeterian competition
dynamics [Schumpeter (1939–1942) technological innovation and has important implications
for China’s competitiveness in the global economy and its attempts at playing ‘catch-up’.

2 . Higher education in China

Higher education at the undergraduate level includes two and three-year associate programs,

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and four-year bachelor's degree programs. There are junior colleges and higher vocational
colleges which only offer associate degrees. However, associate degrees are also offered by
universities offering four-year bachelor's degrees. Three-year masters and three-year doctoral
degrees are offered by both universities and research institutes. Higher education institutions
are administered at the provincial and/or central level. Institutions have some degree of
autonomy, most clearly seen in staff recruitment. A unique characteristic of the Chinese
system is the presence of a dual administrative structure, wherein the Chinese Communist
Party sets up its own administrative structure within each university, parallel to the
administrative system. Between 1950 and 1980, universities were fully funded by the state. In
the 1990s we witnessed a shift in financing policies, with the state encouraging universities to
charge tuition fees and generate revenues. Fiscal funding accounted for no more than 43% of
all university income in 2005. The average tuition fee for a student in public institutions is
currently at around 5000 Yuan per year. Currently 39 universities receive development
funding with the intent of transforming them into “world class” research universities (985
project universities). These constitute the top layer of Chinese universities. The second layer
is comprised of 73 teaching and research universities selected to receive funding for quality
development in certain fields. Together the two groups comprise the project 211 universities.
In the third layer there are around 600 institutions, usually regional and with greater emphasis
on teaching. The remaining more than 1,000 institutions are at the bottom, primarily
providing associate programs. Most private institutions are mainly in the bottom layer. In the
past two decades, reforms in Chinese higher education have achieved remarkable success,
including the establishment of a legal environment within which the higher education system
can operate, the relaxation of state control, the realization of mass higher education, the
establishment of quality assurance systems, the introduction of market mechanisms, the
development of competitive universities, and the advancement of internationalization.
Despite these achievements reforms have always been associated with difficulties and
dilemmas which hamper china efforts at making the transition from a labor-intensive
economy to a knowledge-based economy driven by innovation and international
competitiveness.

2.1. Funding of higher education

From the 1950s up to 1980, all higher education institutions were almost entirely financed by
State appropriations. Funding for each institution for the current year was determined by an

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‘‘incremental approach’’, based on the previous budget. The government made incremental
adjustments according to higher education institutions’ development needs and the available
budget for higher education. About the funding of higher education from 1990 to 2001 the
graph shows the outline.

Fig 1: Funding in higher education Years v/s Subtotal % of educational revenue from 1990-2001
Source: Zha (2009 p.48).

2.2. Higher education institutions

By the end of 2009, there were 2,305 regular higher education institutions, including 658
degree (either bachelor or associate degree) granting private higher education institutions
(Chinese Ministry of Education, 2010). The higher education system in China is vertically
divided into four layers, namely research institutions, research & teaching institutions,
teaching institutions, and application oriented institutions (Cheng, 2004, p.207-208).
Research universities are typically “project 985”. The four layers of Chinese regular higher
education institutions can be described in this way:
 University Research institutions, “985”.
 University Research and Teaching, “211”.
 Teaching institutions (some are also orientated to both teaching and research).
 Application oriented institutions.
.

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2.3. Teacher and student numbers
By 2010, staff numbers in regular higher education institutions had reached 2.16 million, of
which teachers comprised 1.34 million. The student/teacher ratio is 17.33:1. Total enrolment
in all higher education institutions amounts to 29.22 million, including 0.26 million doctoral
students, 1.28million master’s students, 22.32 million undergraduate students in regulation
higher education Institutions and 5.36 million undergraduate students in adult higher
education institutions (Chinese Ministry of Education, 2011) .Since the 1990s, both the
numbers of teaching staff and students have increased significantly. However, the growth in
student numbers far outstrips that of teachers, which is reflected in the student/teacher ratio.
The high student/teacher ratio illustrates a shortage of teachers in Chinese higher education.
The table also indicates that doctoral degree holders among higher education teachers make
up only around 10% of total (No: 1000) teaching staff. This is still very low.

Fig 2: The change of teacher numbers in higher education institutions 1990-2006.

Source: Wang and Liu (2009 p.14)

3. Skills bias in growth

3.1. Worldwide Networks
The presently known industrial economy is being transformed inexorably into yet
undefined morphologies on the shoulders of the information and technology revolution. The
nature of work and workplace is changing, and national economies are diffusing across
national boundaries into truly global networks, whether in industry, services or ownership.
This dispersal of work and strategic linkages across national boundaries, coupled with

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information integration, and a shift in the technological content (NSF, SEI 2006) of world
manufacturing and trade towards high technology. The following figure is the most
conspicuous feature of the globalised economy of the present and foreseeable future in China.
One manifestation is a major re-location [Lamy (2004)] of manufacturing and even services
from developed to less developed countries including China emerging as major destinations.
Fig 3: shows the changing share of high technology in manufacturing by China from 1990 to
2004.

Fig 3: Changing Share of High-technology in Manufacturing by China 1990–2004

Source: NSF, USA, SEI (2006).
Almost all developed economies can now be identified as “knowledge economies” to some
extent or the other, and they are taking further steps to consolidate this position by becoming
even more knowledge intensive and competitive [Romer (2004)]. Even when their
productivity growth has slowed down, the rate of increase in the skill bias in technology has
not. In some newly industrialized Asian countries including China, such activities have
already led to the evolution of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) into major global
players and conglomerates. These now offer complete end-to-end services in the supply
chain, whether as manufacturers of piece parts and systems, or providers of services, design,
and research. Machin and van Reenen (2007, 1997) regard higher skills as one input factor in
the production process, whereby higher educated workers are more able to respond to new

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technologies such as ICT than less educated workers, and are also able to better react to
organizational changes such as decentralization of decision making and control, collective
work, job rotation and skills segregation/homogenization in modern firms. This non-neutral
technological change makes higher educated workers much more attractive for employers
and rising worker skills could perhaps create its own demand.

3.2. Economic and social Returns to Higher Education

This is about the changing economic value of higher education in China economic
powerhouse. Here I discuss to study the payoff to education for two main reasons. First,
these payoff are primarily shaped by varied economic and political forces, not by “iron rule
“of diminishing returns to capital. The China is good example of this because it is big,
developing economies with rapidly expanding supply and demand contexts, particularly at
the university level. Secondly China produces a high proportion of university graduates,
especially in technical field. So I want to assess whether the level and observed changes in
rates help us to understand the expansion and financing of higher education.
Especially important to note is that the rising payoff to higher education has occurred despite
a massive increase in university graduates as the government rapidly expanded higher
education enrollment in the 2000.The “real “ payoff to higher education graduates in the late
1980s and early 1990s was already very high, as reflected in the studies showing a large gap
between productivity estimates and wages for the higher educators(Fleisher and Chen
1997 .Tight government on higher education enrollment could have played an important role
in driving up this “unmeasured” payoff across age groups. However, this high rate was
probably an overestimated of the “true” rate because of the sizable selection bias when only 4
percent of the age cohort attended and completed university.
Younger worker are likely have entered the labor market during the period when labor market
reforms had already been implemented and with skills more in line with the kind of work
required in the new Chinese economy, so their wages are more likely to reflect the real payoff
to education rises. The demand for the higher educated increased rapidly in 1990s and 2000s
with China’s very high growth rate and shift to financial and business series as well as more
sophisticated manufacturing production and sharp increase in private business .Fan and
colleagues (2010) find that that the high return (40-60 percent) to four year institutions in
particular may have continuing repercussions for widening income inequality in China.

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3.3. Higher education and skills
Higher education as a provider of skills
Skills are produced in many different ways, dynamically, and through multiple actors. Pre
employment education and training, on-the-job training, work and life experience, and peer
learning all contribute to skill development that could be useful on the job. Whereas academic
skills are normally acquired through formal and non formal educational situations, generic or
life skills are acquired in various ways. Early-childhood parental education, specifically
targeted curricular and pedagogical approaches, on-the-job training, and work experience all
develop and enrich these types of skills. Technical skills are generally provided through
tertiary training programs, on-the-job training, and learning-by-doing. Skill acquisition is thus
a cumulative and dynamic process that occurs throughout the life cycle. It starts at birth with
parental education and continues through the course of school education, training, and
experience. And just as these skills can grow over time, they can deteriorate if the
possibilities for lifelong learning are not well developed. Actors outside the formal education
system also have a large role. Quality non formal education and training can provide
academic, generic, and technical skills and can complement formal education with additional
generic or technical skill instruction. It can also provide opportunities to update academic and
technical skills over time. Firm and on-the-job training can complement both formal and non
formal education and training by providing additional job-relevant technical and generic
skills. This type of training can also provide opportunities to maintain the existing generic
and technical skills of workers. Within this broad skill framework, higher education plays a
crucial role—perhaps no more clearly than in skill provision. Higher education institutions
provide the basis for the range of skills needed for both mature and developing economies.
Tertiary graduates enter the workforce with cognitive, technical, social, and behavioral skills
honed at university that allow them to bring advanced knowledge to bear on complex
problems, use that knowledge to work toward their solution, perform research, and develop
ideas of more productive ways of performing. It is during higher education that more mature
students have the capacity, ability, and time to learn sophisticated client orientation,
communication, problem solving, and creativity skills, not only through close links with
particular careers (for example, business and communication), but also across careers through
the use of well-crafted teaching-learning methodologies. While many practical skills will be
acquired on the job, higher education also offers a critical opportunity to its students to apply
academic skills to more concrete and practical cases through case studies and other

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methodologies, with wider breadth than more specific on-the-job training would provide.
Other research indicates that higher education instructors can teach students relevant
technical and behavioral skills that they will need to know and use as industrial actors,
without actually doing industrial research themselves. These points reflect in some part a
changing concept of the role of higher education. As technological structures and the nature
of industry evolve, academic qualifications are increasingly taken as indicators of a particular
level of academic competence and of the skills to deal with the demands of a fast-changing
work environment. Employers expect tertiary graduates to possess the academic, generic, and
technical skills to increase their productivity and growth. Increasingly, employers also expect
a smaller group of workers to possess the ability to think, to be creative, and to have the
capacity to spur innovation. This is consistent with merging research on academic knowledge
transfer, which has found that skilled graduates bring to industry attitudes and abilities for
acquiring knowledge and using it in novel ways. Keen to bolster their productivity, East
Asian economies are giving new consideration to the knowledge and skills of their workers,
and consequently the education and training systems that shape them. Policy makers in China
are reexamining how higher education systems should prepare graduates to take their places
in the labor force. They are also asking how graduates should be equipped to deal with
changing labor force structures and demands from employers in ways that can meet both the
current and future needs of the economy. A better perspective of higher education’s potential
for delivering skills requires knowing the skills. A famous quote exactly describe the benefit
of the skills and knowledge(Once your degree has unlocked the door, you'll need the right
mix of skills, abilities and personal qualities in order to turn the handle and give the door the
push that will open it to you).
4. Methodologies for making people employable
Many of the skills needed to make people employable are specific to particular occupations.
However, increasingly employers are defining a set of “generic”, usually personal, skills
which they seek when recruiting new employees. These “generic skills” include, for example,
communication skills, creative and leadership skills the ability to apply basic literacy and
numeracy in a work situation, being a “team player”, the ability to relate to customers and
clients, taking initiative (for one’s own work and personal and career development), taking
responsibility and making decisions. Occupational skills may be seen as necessary but not
enough, or as “easily trained in”.
China's recent upsurge in graduate unemployment relates to a number of things. One

cdxvi
important aspect is its education policy-making and economic development as well as
reforms in the economy and in its higher education. Recently, the annual growth in the
numbers of new graduates, estimated at four million for 2005, and in the rate of young
unemployed graduates should logically bring about a withdrawal from higher education.
Because with 8% annual growth, the Chinese labor market may well generate about eight
million jobs, but these are mainly ones in manufacturing requiring low-level
qualifications. This rising enrollment made employment an issue and a serious challenge for
China. The employment situation for new college graduates is different from the working
population in general. The graduate unemployment crisis in China represents a wasteful
investment of scarce resources. Large sums of money have consequently been invested in
educating unemployed graduates which could otherwise have been invested in job-creating
productive programs. With a flood of new graduates, individuals are having a tough time
finding jobs in an increasingly competitive labor market. Meanwhile, graduates have some
negative expectations under the pressure of seeking jobs. Nanjing Normal University has
surveyed students who expected to graduate in 2006 about "College Student's Attitudes about
Job Seeking and Career". 44.21% prefer to get an employment contract first, and then
consider pursuing a new job position which is what they really desire to be employed for an
average of 2 years. This phenomenon not only causes underemployment and high turnover in
the job market, but also, graduates will have lower levels of job satisfaction, work
commitment, job involvement and internal China's recent upsurge in graduate unemployment
has specific causes relating to economic development, education policy-making, and reforms
in the economy as well as in higher education. With a focus on graduate unemployment, this
study looks at the historical and socio-economic conditions for China's move to raise the
level of participation in higher education, the rationale behind the 1999 decision to accelerate
the pace of expansion in the tertiary education sector, and the impact of this rapid expansion
on society, and on graduate employment in particular. The Chinese government should issue
a circular urging universities and colleges to strengthen their efforts in preparing students for
the workplace. The government should set up its own internship scheme to help graduates
find work during the recession. In this scheme, universities should be encouraged to
exchange ideas and develop programs aimed at improving the entrepreneurship and
employability of graduates. "We found employers in china put a great emphasis on leadership
qualities and initiative - things that are learned through the activities students engage in and
the responsibilities they take on during their time at university," Heffernan told a conference

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in London organized by the council, which is inviting proposals for 10 new partnerships in
china."However, there are some clear differences in the emphasis put on different attributes,
such as the value placed by the Chinese on 'guanxi', the network of connections that a person
has built up," he said. For those wanting to work in the public service, guanxi is likely to
include connections with the Communist Party: but more generally it includes family and
friends and links with people working in other companies, voluntary organizations, or leisure
activities. The Chinese also tend to take more time building up relationships with people
before getting down to business. The China Agricultural University in Beijing is working to
determine the skills most likely to lead to employability and successful careers. Staff at
universities have conducted face-to-face and telephone interviews with local employers of
graduates in three
areas, marketing, human resources and finance-accounting.
A draft of report should be published which shows marketing executives in china put a high
emphasis on good communication skills, including written and verbal communication,
networking skills and foreign language ability - as the top priority followed by the ability to
work in a team. The Chinese employers should set a demand who completes a job and get
things done will be highly prized. Next they seek creativity - an attribute of growing
importance in the dynamic, developing market in China that requires people to be good at
thinking and putting their ideas and insights into action. Graduates seeking work in finance
and accountancy should have a good level of commercial awareness and be able to
demonstrate a breadth of knowledge outside their academic comfort zone. The fast growth of
China's economy which has required updating of law and regulation, employers in the
financial sector value graduates with the ability to continuously update their
knowledge. "Banking in China is challenged by change," said one Chinese bank executive.
"We not only care about what our new staff has learned - that is textbook knowledge mainly.
We care about whether the new person can autonomously learn in the future."
Employers in China value the personal skills of graduates seeking work in human resources.
China employers should view the most important attribute as time management and good
organization. Personal skills, including being approachable, confident, emotionally strong,
empathetic and patient should be the second most important requirement. The Chinese HR
managers stress the importance of a new recruit being ethically strong and possessing high
moral principles followed by good communication skills.
Li Jiahua, a professor of higher education and Vice-president of the China Youth University

cdxviii
for Political Science, told the council conference, higher education facing challenges in terms
of student motivation and employment. The number of students had increased more than
fourfold in China since 2001 and around 1.5 million of the country's more than six million
graduates last year had not yet found jobs, he said."Students in China generally lose touch
with society and they need help to understand how companies work and what is involved in
the different jobs and professions to reduce the gap of communication, territory and creative
skills.

5. Internationalization in higher education

In China, internationalization signifies an integration of China’s higher education community
with the international community. The internationalization of higher education in China at
present takes the Following major forms:
• sending Chinese students and members of faculty abroad for advanced study or research;
• attracting foreign students to study in China;
• integrating international dimensions into university teaching and learning, including
introducing foreign textbooks and references, and developing both English programmes and
bilingual programmes (mainly in Chinese and English);
• providing transnational programmes in Chinese universities in cooperation with foreign
institutional partners.
The internationalization of higher education is an inevitable result of China’s integration into
the global economy as well as an essential measure to improve its higher education system.
The process of internationalization started as early as 1978, when China opened its doors
to foreign investments. Current practice signifies the government’s intent to integrate Chinese
higher education more closely with the international community, as part of its strategy to
build “world-class” Chinese universities and strengthen national economic competitiveness.
The concrete implementation can be summed up as follows: student mobility, international
dimensions in teaching and research, as well as joint educational provisions. Since the late
1990s, the focus has changed from promoting student mobility to enhancing the international
dimension of teaching and research. An increasing number of original English language
textbooks, mainly from the US, have been either directly used in Chinese universities or
translated into Chinese language versions. Continuous efforts are being made to hold courses
in English or bilingually (Chinese and English), as well as to strengthen foreign language
(English in particular) skills among both teachers and students. There has been a dramatic

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expansion in the number of programmes for foreign languages/cross-cultural studies which
lead to international professional qualifications at the graduate level. An increasing number of
Chinese teachers have some learning or teaching experience from abroad, and international
experts in a variety of fields are invited to teaching Chinese higher education institutions. The
Chinese government encourages Chinese universities and research institutes to develop joint
research projects with foreign partners by obtaining support from various sources. The EU
has opened its research and technology development Framework Programme to China,
allowing the participation of Chinese institutions. In turn China opened its National High
Technology Research and Development Programme (863 programme) and the National Key
Basic Research Programme (973 programme) to EU researchers and institutions.
Internationalization in higher education prepares students for the global workforce and
enhances the learning skills and research.
6. Quality assurance
Quality assurance has been integrated into the fabric of higher education in China, with the
issue of quality in higher education - how to evaluate it and how to enhance it - now taking
centre stage in Chinese higher education. In the past decade, the development of quality
assurance in Chinese higher education has covered a broad spectrum of initiatives, from
national policy, quality evaluation methodology, and institutional adoption of quality
assurance schemes, to the matrix of quality evaluations. Welcomed, resisted, or debated,
quality evaluation/assurance has become a staple of Chinese higher education over the last
decade. As Vlk (2006) points out, quality assurance schemes are being developed in many
states and higher education systems as one of the instruments necessary to adapt higher
education institutions to the increasing demands put upon them by the states’ economy and
society, and equally to prepare or adapt the states’ systems for the increasing impacts of
globalization on higher education. ‘Quality higher education’ often remains undefined in
operational terms, because there is no uniform understanding of the purpose (or multiple
purposes) of higher education in current society (Westerheijden et al, 2007). The term
‘quality’ is applied to a number of characteristics, including excellence, value for money,
conformance to specifications, transformation, and value added (Woodhouse, 2003).
Similarly, there are many definitions of ‘quality assurance’ in the literature (e.g. Ball, 1985;
van Vught & Westerheijden, 1993; Birnbaum, 1994: Frazer, 1995, Woodhouse,
1999). Harman (1998) suggests that, in essence, quality assurance refers to the systematic
management and assessment procedures adopted to ensure achievement of specified quality

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or of improved quality, and to enable key stakeholders to have confidence in the management
of quality and the outcomes achieved. Quality assurance may, in other words, be seen in a
context of the regulation of higher education. The rapid expansion of higher education in
China prompted debates about its efficiency, efficacy and equity. Public interest in and
concern about quality has also intensified with the expansion of student numbers. The old
optimistic conception of realizing personal ambition through university education has been
strained by growing difficulties in university graduates’ job placement. As a result of the
process of Chinese higher education reaching its ‘massification’ stage, various qualities
related problems have arisen (Gu, 2006; Song & Song, 2006; Ding, 2008; Li & Zhang, 2008),
such as a mismatch between financial input and student numbers: the rapid increase of
student numbers leads to a decrease in resources per student; a structural shortage of qualified
faculty; this shortage leads to a work overload for the current teachers, and to class sizes
doubling or becoming several times larger than before. In this situation, there is very limited
capacity to develop sufficient teacher-student interaction, or to adapt teaching to student
needs; lower student entry levels: the broader entry into universities automatically lowers the
student entry level; eagerness to achieve quick success: some institutions strive for a ‘larger
size’ and ‘higher level’ in their educational provision. In order to get more research projects
and to raise revenue, some institutions deliberately lower their entry requirement to attract
additional students. The inappropriate use of teaching evaluation for purposes of teacher
appraisal in these institutions increases unhealthy competition among teachers. Another
problem is the lack of differentiation among Chinese higher education institutions. Smaller
colleges attempt to model on the structure of large and comprehensive universities, and
vocational schools seek to evolve into research institutions (Zhao & Sheng, 2008). These
problems weaken the quality of higher education and the public’s trust in higher education
institutions and their graduates. It is in this context that the Chinese government has realized
that conventional higher education quality management structures are inappropriate in the
context of a mass higher education system. ‘Quality’ is now a common theme and concern in
various Chinese higher education policies and reports. Building quality assurance systems is
perceived as part of the higher education modernization process. In the meantime, quality
assessment might be seen as a government tool to regain some degree of control over
institutions (Amaral & Maassen, 2007) and to meet the challenges of the government’s
steering capacity and policy effectiveness in the process of reforming Chinese higher
education.

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7. Major Educational Reforms in Chinese Higher Education
In November 1985, China’s Education Committee (now called the Ministry of Education)
issued the ‘Higher Education Evaluation Research and Experiment in Engineering
Programmes’, which aimed at using engineering education evaluation, in terms of
institutional review, discipline and curriculum review, as the pilot for higher education quality
evaluation. The pilot evaluation was carried out in around 500 higher education institutions.
In October 1990, the ‘Draft Regulation of Higher Education Institution Evaluation’ was
issued by the National Education Committee, the first regulation of higher education
evaluation defining its aims, tasks, principles, system and procedure. In early 1994, the
National Education Committee started to implement higher education evaluation on a large
scale. The evaluation evolved through the following stages: qualified evaluation; excellence
evaluation; randomized evaluation; and general evaluation. Qualified evaluation started in
1994 with the purpose of promoting standards of teaching and administration. This was only
applied to those institutions that were established after 1976. A total of 179 institutions
underwent this form of evaluation from 1994 to 2001. Excellence evaluation started in 1996
in the form of ‘Project 211’ for developing 100 first-class universities, with a number of key
fields of research to be developed for the challenges of the twenty-first century. This form of
evaluation was applied to those institutions with already well-established histories and
reputations. Randomised evaluation started from 1998, targeted at those institutions situated
between the post-1976 institutions and those of Project 211. Twenty-six institutions were
evaluated under this form.
In 2002, these three forms of evaluation were integrated into the one entitled ‘Undergraduate
Teaching Quality Evaluation’. This was revised again into the current one in operation, with
four resultant Categories: excellent, good, pass and fail (Zhou, 2005).
In April 2003, the ‘Project for Quality Assurance and Further Reform in Higher Education
Institutions’ was initiated by the Ministry of Education, as an important component of the
‘2003-2007 Education Revitalization Action Plan’; it comprised a twelve-point framework
for
developing quality assurance in Chinese higher education, that consisted of:
 carrying out further reform on teaching and educational structures with the help of
information technology;
 encouraging professors to teach undergraduate courses;

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 offering a number of top-quality courses via the Internet to students all over the
country;
 further improving the standards and methodology of teaching English to students of
non-
English majors;
 enhancing quality evaluation of higher education institutions, with five years as an
evaluation cycle;
 . establishing a series of national teaching bases and experiment bases via the
facilitation of the Internet ;
 further developing vocational education to meet the needs of the market economy;
 further improving the structure of disciplines at Chinese higher education institutions
with a focus on tertiary vocational programmes;
 promoting reform in medical education;
 building more efficient e-libraries and improving the quality of textbooks;
 enhancing students’ ideological, ethical and cultural development;
inviting top-quality teachers both at home and abroad to teach at Chinese higher education
institutions.
7.1. Management Reforms:
In August 2004, the Higher Education Evaluation Centre (HEEC) of the Ministry of
Education (MOE) was established in order to institutionalize and direct evaluation towards a
regular, scientific, systematic and professional process. As Harman (1998) summarizes, there
are a number of different models for administrative responsibility for the management of
quality assurance at both national and institutional levels, and at national level the most
common pattern is for responsibility to lie with a specialized unit or agency set up by the
government. As a central agency that reports back to the Ministry of Education, the HEEC
shoulders the responsibility for quality assurance management. Its main responsibilities are:
 To organize and implement higher education evaluation;
 To conduct research in policies, regulations and theories relating to higher education
reform and evaluation;
 To develop international cooperation with evaluation agencies in other countries;
 To undertake evaluator training;
 To provide evaluation-related consultation and information services.
At the beginning of 2006, Zhou Ji, the former Minister of Education, emphasized in a speech

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that all the universities and colleges in China should give more attention to the raising of
teaching standards and quality assurance. The following four aspects were further elaborated
in his comments on the implementation of the ‘Project for Quality Assurance and Further
Reform in Higher Education Institutions’ that started in 2003 (He, 2007):
1. Selecting excellent teachers.
2. Establishing high-quality courses.
3. Further promoting the reform of teaching English to students of non-English majors.
4. Regulating and improving the higher education evaluation system.
Earlier, Harman (1998) had summarized the main approaches to quality assurance
management using the following criteria:
 responsible agency or unit;
 participation in reviews and other activities;
 main methodologies of review and assessment;
 focus of quality assurance activities;
 purposes of such activities;
 report and or follow-up activities.

In 2003, the “2003-2007” Education Revitalization Action Plan’ was issued by the Ministry
of Education. In it, five years was specified as the time in which the cycle for the
undergraduate teaching evaluation should be repeated. The reforms which can bring best
quality and excellence in higher education and make the students/people/graduates skillful to
meet the demands of the employer are as under:
8. Further reforming in higher education
8.1. Reforming leadership
Leadership must develop future vision keeping in view historical values. Financial
management planning and resource allocation planning depends on vision of leadership. Such
planning is vital for design of successful academic programs. Vision of leadership should
establish clear perception, principles, policies and approaches to continually improve process
of teaching and learning. It is achieved through process control on all financial, physical and
human resources. Such quality control on processes can improve HEIs towards excellence.
Performance of all processes should be measured and evaluated regularly for continuous
improvement and to optimize program design effectiveness in HEIs.
8.2. Academic, Teaching and Curriculum Reforming
 building a teaching quality assurance system;
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  establishing agencies for educational evaluation;
 developing a system of periodic review of teaching quality;
 building links between program evaluation and professional qualifications and
certificates;
 formulating evaluation standards and indicators;
 building data banks on college teaching;
 developing an analyzing and reporting system.
8.3. Institutional reforming
The management of government sector universities should be made more autonomous rather
keeping it linked with government.
 Committees of senior faculty should be responsible for faculty appointments and
evaluation on tenure track system based on performance in research, teaching and
service.
 To promote research culture with in universities, a research cell should be developed,
to get the staff financial assistance, to facilitate research publication, to keep a record
of the endeavors, to keep a liaison with the local and international donor agencies, to
keep and maintain financial records.
 Concept of research labs should be initiated enabling to; avoid duplication of efforts,
to work on the footing available, provide a forum for interaction.

MOE Programs and Projects

The running of following programs may be credited to MOE:
 Capacity building of the faculty
 Under taking of revision of curriculum
 Development of infrastructure of higher education
 Award of indigenous scholarships
 Grant of foreign scholarships
 Patent filing support
 Travel grant for participation in the conferences
 Increasing collaboration between industry and university research

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  Bringing in technology reforms
8.4. Information Technology Reforming
The following reforms have been brought into the system - also known as e-reforms.
 Development of country wide educational research network
 Bringing in the reach of the scholars the use of digital sources
 Developing a research repository for the potential researchers
 Making learning possible through e-resources
 Making available the opportunity of video conferencing
8.5. Practical reforming:
 Internship facilities for students of higher education institutions and universities
should be ensured.
 Coordination between universities and industrial, agricultural, and other sectors of the
economy should be ensured. Foreign Direct investment in Education sector be
encouraged.
 Faculty exchange programs be launched.
 Credit exchange programs at local and international levels be launched.
 Produce students who can compete worldwide.
 Funding should be enhanced.
 University examination system should be made competitive and responsive to
ultimate users and open to all students of the country.

9. Conclusion
The empirical evidence shows a steady increase of the rate of return to higher education and a
lower percentage of highly educated workers in China compared with the corresponding
international average that are encouraging for further development. If the Ministry of
Education monitors the rate of expansion of higher education, as well as encourages
structural educational reform and the relationship with the labor market, it is reasonable to be
optimistic about the future of Chinese higher education and the contribution of its graduates
to Chinese economy and society.
The matter of improved governance and quality is essentially one of “change management”
(training, research and skill development, and adaptation of communication technology). It is
proposed that an internal technology transfer and networking with ‘mother institutes’ could
be a key instrument for the chain of ‘model training centers’ to be set up in the country

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(reformed, re-built, or completely new ones if necessary) and will be intensified by enhanced
networking with industrial clusters and business houses..The issue of linkages with industry
and employers is important not only in terms of relevance and quality, but also in terms of
financing. Three forms of co-financing are proposed, in which the state can fund the entire
programme (‘occupational tracks’ in each institution for 15-20 percent of studies, and one
‘model’ training institution in each district), or share it with employers and other
stakeholders. Finally China’s rare inability to consider importing teachers is highlighted. It is
time for China to enter the global race for attraction and retention of men and women of
talent and skills who are valued and sought after by all nations.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10734-008-9180-y

BEIJING NORMAL UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

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Abstract:

guoyuan sang

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................................411
LITERATURE REVIEW..................................................................................................................412
SEARCH STRATEGY AND SELECTION CRITERIA...................................................................413
IMPORTANCE OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION.............................................................413
BRIEF HISTORY OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IN CHINA.......................................415
EDUCATIONAL POLICIES AND REFORMS...............................................................................417
CURRICULUM................................................................................................................................419
PRIVATE AND PUBLIC KINDERGARTENS................................................................................422
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IN CHINA AS A NEW BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY.......423
CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................................425
REFERENCES..................................................................................................................................426

INTRODUCTION

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
(Nelson Mandela).

In the field of education China went through zigzag transformation and educational system in
China is still changing. Early Childhood Education (ECE) has developed rapidly in the past
30 years under the Western influences and traditional Chinese practises. Over the last three
decades the fast development of Chinese economy and its growth have shaken up the rest of
the world. “Globalisation, the catchword of the 1990s, has gained its prominence due to the
opening of the Second World (i.e. central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union)
and the rise of new industrial powers in Asia, most prominently China.” (Dauderstadt, M.
&Statten, J., 2005), (p.1). One of the main reasons for rapid changes in China is certainly

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opening up to the world in 1978. China has changed in all fields, including education.
Without any doubt, China became a big player on the world’s scene and economy global
market. In addition to that, when it goes further up on the ladder of economic leaders, China
might change its interests in the global politics. At the moment, China is still learning and
implementing new ideas borrowed from the West, but in the near future the whole world
might follow China’s example and learn from it.

One of the biggest challenges for Chinese Early Childhood Education system is to find a
balance between keeping the traditional beliefs, which are rooted deep into the Chinese
culture, and learning from the advanced West. In this paper the effect of globalisation on
development of Early Childhood Education, policy and curriculum changes will be discussed
in a historical context.

LITERATURE REVIEW

In the last three decades Early Childhood Education in China has experienced a lot of
changes, it was under the foreign influences and it developed through different policies and
curriculum practices. Development of Early Childhood Education in China was an interesting
topic for many researchers and lot of different studies were conducted based on ECE as a
main topic.
This paper explores the impact of globalisation on Early Chinese Education in China by
looking back at educational changes and reforms in historical context and it presents a review
of the available literature regarding the Early Childhood Education in China. In this paper I
have summarized the literature on development of Early Childhood Education since the
1980’s in historical context, because in that period China started being influenced by the
process of globalisation. Expansion of kindergartens, the changes in curriculum and policy
are some of the topics which were reviewed in this paper. During the literature review I have
found out the knowledge gap, pointing out that most of the researchers are interested in the
policy development, curriculum models and kindergarten teacher’s education while little is
known about the quality of Early Childhood Education programs in China and kindergarten
teachers’ perception on ECE programs.

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SEARCH STRATEGY AND SELECTION CRITERIA

This literature review examines the previous literature on Early Childhood Education in
China and identify areas for improvement. The key research question for this literature
review was: “How didthe process of globalisation affect the development of Early Childhood
Education in China?”
The literature search was carried out across three databases, which are: BNU Library
(www.lib.bnu.edu.cn), Jstor (www.jstor.com) and Education Resources Information Centre
(ERIC). The search was limited to articles that had been peer-reviewed and were available for
online reading. The basis for this review is relevant literature from full-text journals
published in the past 15 years, but some older articles that were considered relevant for this
literature review were also included. The search was carried out with the following search
terms: Early Childhood Education, Preschool, China, policy, globalisation, and curriculum.
The first three terms were keywords for this review and the others helped to narrow down the
scope of the search. Judged by the titles of the articles found, some articles were discarded.
According to the relevance the rest were further grouped into key articles and relevant
articles.

IMPORTANCE OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

Education comes in many forms. People, especially children, look up at the behaviour of
other people and learn from it. “What is done to children they will do to society!” is an old
Chinese proverb which perfectly describes how important is to provide a high quality
education for children. Parents, educators and practitioners would have agreed that the years
from birth through age 6 are a critical time for children’s development and learning. In this
period children tend tolearn the important skills which might help them in future, especially
in developing later academic skills. Lot of research have been conducted about the preschool
education, importance and its influence on the achievements in the future life. Today it is
known that human brain can form itself based on the experiences of children (Wolfe&Nevills,
2004). So many years of research on child’s development and the benefits we could have
from Early Childhood Education indicates that good quality programs mayresult in both,long
and short-term benefits to children (Shonkoff& Phillips 2000). Activities that children
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participate in, during their learning process in preschool, encourage brain growth in this
critical age, which helps them to have better results and achievements in the future. Thanks to
the previous research today we also know that a child’s family is alsolinked to his/her
development, and having a stable family and good relationship with them couldpromote
positive emotional, social and cognitive developmental outcomes in the future.
(Bronfenbrenner 1986; Ainsworth &Bowlby 1991). Slaby (2005) has also agreed that
children grow within the context of their family and that home environment is very
important, because children believe it represent who they are and what the world is. So, if we
consider the importance of home environment and the concept of family for student’s
development, than we could agree that preschool education is a perfect fit with the family
life.
China, like many other countries, has also acknowledged the importance of Early Childhood
Education, even though it is not compulsory.In the past few decades Early Childhood
Education became very popular in China and percentage of children enrolled in kindergartens
in the past 10 years increased significantly (See Figure 1).
Early Childhood Education in China is also known as a ‘preschool education’ and this kind of
education is related to care for young children from 0 to 6 years old. Preschool education in
China includes nurseries (0-3 years old) and kindergartens (3-6 years old). Most of the
kindergartens in China include a single-age or mixed groups, nursery class (kids are 2-3 years
old), K-1 or 小班 (students are 3-4 years old), K-2 or 中班(students are 4-5years old) and K-
3 or 大 班 (students are 5-6 years old). (Fees, B., Hoover, L. &Zheng, F., 2014). Local
department of education is in charge of supervising the kindergartens, since kindergartens are
considered to be a pre-primary programs.

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Figure 1: Percentage (%) of children aged 3-6, enrolled in kindergartens in China between
2001 and 2014. Source: http://moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s7212/list.ht

BRIEF HISTORY OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IN

CHINA

If we look back at the history of Chinese education we could see that it goes back a thousands
of years ago, but it doesn’t include an Early Childhood Education. The first traces of ECE
could be found at the early beginning of 20th century.The first kindergarten In China was
foundedby the governor Duanfang (Qi, X. &Melhuish, E., 2016), during the Qing dynasty
(1644-1912), in 1903 in Wuhan, however, instruction and curriculum used were borrowed
from Japan, and all teachers and the principal in kindergarten were Japanese (Li, H., Yang,
W., Chen, J.J. 2016; Zhu & Wang 2005). The first kindergartens had their roots in
Froebelian’s work, since the Japanese teachers were trained by the US missionaries who
established Froebelian kindergartens in Japan.(Spodek, 1988). After,in order to help widows
without economic support, government hired them to teach children. Zhu and Wang (2005)
noted that in 1904. kindergarten was formally integrated into the Chinese education system

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and the first regulations regarding the ECE were released.
Kindergartens became more popular after establishment of Republic of China in 1912. Most
of the kindergartens at that time were private. In urban areas children started to spend most of
their days in kindergartens, because both parents were working. One of the primary purpose
of the kindergarten back then was to provide a child-care service to the parents who were
working, because they were not able to take care of their children. In 1949, after the
establishment of People’s Republic of China, most of the private kindergartens were replaced
with socialist public kindergartens and they have also expanded to rural areas. In this period
China started to look at USSR for appropriate models of education.Kindergarten practices
were replaced with the Soviet model and it became more available to all children in China.
The Soviet model had emphasised the importance of centralized government and national
plan. There was ran expansion of Early Childhood Education and also a kindergarten teacher
education, but Soviet model had shown to be ineffective when it comes to reaching a national
plans of China.“Based on Mao’s strategy of ‘walking on two legs’, China practised an
unprecedented extension of mass education, relying on ‘whoever could teach’ and leaving
behind the old notion of ‘led by expert’. “ (Xu, S., 2005), (p.4).
The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was a step back for the development of Early
Childhood Education and at that period some of the kindergartens and all schools for
kindergarten teachers were closed down until Deng Xiaoping’s reforms and opening up to the
world in December, 1978. New reform created a high demand for a working labour in big
cities, so many families left their homes in rural areas and relocated to big cities to find a
better job opportunities. The demand for more kindergartens also grew. ”Due to a lack of
infrastructure and budget for public kindergartens, the central government had to accept the
privatization of ECE as a workable solution.” (Li, H., Yang, W., & Chen, J. J., 2016), (p.4).
The implementation of opening policy resulted in influence of globalization in which
European-American culture started influencing China in post-Mao era (after 1976) and it is
present until today.
Today, Early Childhood Education is very popular in China. According to National Bureau of
Statistics of the People’s Republic of China (2013), the proportion of 3–6-year-
oldchildrenenrolledinchildcare centres rose from 28% in 1991 to 62% in 2012.By the end of
2013, China had a 198,553 kindergartens in total, raising for 9.5% comparing to previous
year - 2012. (Research in China, 2014). As I have mentioned above, even though China
accepted a lot of Western ideas in the past few decades, it is still under the influence of own

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traditional culture and educational ideas which propose collectivism and traditional beliefs.
So, it’s not strange that Chinese ECE tends to focus on maintaining discipline, teaching
children rules, memorizing rather than creativity, basic art and academic skills (Li & Rao,
2005). Notmany researchers have conducted studies regarding the quality of ECE in China.
Some of these studies discovered that quality of ECE is low. One of the problems
contributing the low quality of ECE was the interaction between teacher and students.Usually
the teacher–child interactions were in a large groups and in one-way direction and teachers
didn’t pay enough attention to children’s interests and individual learning needs (Pan et al.,
2010). Also, many of activities that took place were group activities, not leaving enough
space for individual work and improvement. After Deng Xiaoping’s historical reform and his
‘Open Door Policy’ in 1978, China had to keep up with the world’s trends in all fields. Over
the past three decades, Chinese ECE educators have introduced some Western ECE quality
concepts into Chinese ECE regulations and practices ( Zhu & Zhang,2008), such as play-
based curriculum and child-cantered teaching approaches (Ministry of Education of the
People’s Republic of China, 2001).A lot of changes regarding the policy, regulations,
curriculum and teaching approaches were made in order to improve the quality of Early
Childhood Education.

EDUCATIONAL POLICIES AND REFORMS

China has established the Education Law of the People’s Republic in 1995, and the main
purpose was reforming an outdated educational system (Yoxall, J., 2006). Development of
ECE in China continues further and it started to get more attention.
The Government’s Guidelines for Kindergartens (2001) offered a new teaching approach
which is student-oriented and focuses on developing student’s creativity and self-awareness.
In order to accomplish that, the new approach needed a new curriculum, starting with the
preschool curriculum. Of course, as they say, every change is difficult at the beginning.
Applying a new approach and new curriculum was difficult, especially because most of the
teachers were trained in a different approach and even though new Guideline supported and
highly recommended the use of this new approach, there still was a lack of training for
teachers and educators, so they were not able to understand and implement this new approach
fully. As a result, in the most of Chinese Kindergartens today we can find combination of

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Chinese and Western pedagogical and teaching methods, which makes it unique. Chinese
Early Childhood educators suggests that aggressive push towards child-centeredness and
progressivism that used to characterized Chinese ECE from 1990 to 2006 has begun to be
counterbalanced by acknowledging the value of Chinese traditional pedagogical practices,
which also include mastery of skills and the value of direct instruction (Tobin, J. 2014).
For the Early Childhood Education in China the year 2010 is one of the most important years
in the history of Early Childhood Education, because in 2010 Government has proposed the
Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and
Development, also known as ‘Plan’, in which they set goals, strategies, and main tasks in
order to develop a better ECE program by 2020. Chinese government became aware that for
the development of ECE they have to keep a balance between public and private
kindergartens. The expectations are that by the 2020 there will be more public kindergartens.
Zhou, X. (2001) noted that by the year 2020, all children in China should be able to fully
access to 1 year of ECE; most of the children should be able to fully access to 2 years of
ECE; and children in developed areas should be able to access to 3 years of ECE. After the
Plan was released in 2010, another important document regarding the Early Childhood
Education was released by the China State Council. The name of this document is Several
Views on the Development of Preschool Education. In the Chinese history for the first time,
this document treats early childhood education development as an important measure for
improving people’s lives and protecting them. (Zhou, X., 2011). The important issues
regarding the ECE, like the importance of ECE, expanding the resources, teacher capacity,
management, security, more investment in ECE, etc., were identified and described in this
document.
Today, China faces a lot of problems on its road to success. . For example, there are obvious
differences in the quality of ECE between rural and urban areas. Lack of funds, qualified
teachers, lower salaries and low income are just some of the factors affecting the quality of
ECE in rural areas. So, it won’t be wrong if I say that children in urban areas get better
education at the early age than children in rural areas, which will make them have better
achievements and grades in the future. In addition to that I would like to add that in urban
areas we can find a larger number of private kindergartens, nurseries and training centres than
in rural areas. Children in urban areas have more opportunities for learning and improvement
than children in rural areas. Attempting to solve that problem, Ministry of Education released
a new reforms in 2004 targeting the rural areas in China. These reforms included a nine-year

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compulsory free education, an increase in teacher’s salaries, re-construction of run-down
schools and programs targeting China’s rural illiteracy problem (Yoxall, J., 2006).
Even though China became a one of the world’s leading countries with a great economy, the
problems like a big population, gap between poor and rich, difference between old people
with traditional beliefs and new generation with the creative and critically thinking ability,
etc. are still present and they have a big influence on the educational system in China. Even
though the government might be threatened by the new generation of independent and free
thinkers, in order to keep up with the world’s trends and keep its position on a global market
China has to address a more open form of education, starting with the Early Childhood
Education. The new ‘two child policy’, which was released in January 1st 2016, may bring
the new problems for Early Childhood Education. It is expected that the number of new-born
children will increase in next few years. Will Chinese Educational System be good enough
and able to provide the equal and high-quality care for all children in the future? Time will
show, but a growing concern still remains. If expansion is too rapid China might not be able
to maintain the high-quality program of Early Childhood Education. The political, economic
and social reforms are still ongoing in China. In every aspect each change takes time, and
development is not balanced through the whole country, so it makes it a more complex.

CURRICULUM

The curriculum for Early Childhood Education program in China has also changed and
developed during the time in which China was experiencing a lot of social, economic and
cultural changes. At the beginning, after the first kindergarten was introduced to China, the
first curriculum was following the Japanese model. After that a Western theories were
introduced and implemented into Chinese curriculum. “Many Chinese education scholars
such as Tao, Xingzhi (1891-1946), Zhang, Xuemen (1891-1973) and Chen Heqin (1892-
1982) initiated the ECE curriculum experimental movement.” (Qi, X. &Melhuish, E., 2016),
(p.3). These scholars believed that Chinese kindergartens should implement Western ideas
into Chinese kindergarten practices. This way they have develop a new curriculum models,
which were used in China, such as ‘Action Curriculum’ developed by Zhang Xuemen, or
‘Units Pedagogy’ which was developed by Chen Heqin. (Qi, X. &Melhuish, E., 2016). These

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new models of curriculum developed in 1920’ by Chinese scholars were influenced by
Western theories, which means that they have also emphasized the child-centred pedagogy.
Traditional beliefs and educational practices were present for a long time in Early
Childhood Education programs. The curriculum changes started with experimenting in
different areas of the country, and after a while, from a single subject these changes gradually
expanded to the whole curriculum. (Zhu, J., & Zhang, J., 2008). The reforms issued by the
Ministry of Education in 1989 emphasized individual differences, importance of play, child-
initiated activity and an integrated curriculum. It became clear that these reforms of ECE
should have the strong aim, which is to be able to face modernization, face the world and face
the future. Qi, X. &Melhuish, E., (2016) noted that in 2001 the Guidelines for kindergartens
have specified five main domains (language, science, art, health and social studies) and
practical guidance for educators were further explained in these Guidelines. The individual
differences between children and their personal experience should be respected and
recognized. ECE program should also provide more engagement for teachers and parents in
their activities. Each province is required by government to make their own local 3-year
action plan in order to improve the quality of ECE.
When it comes to English language “a review of the development of English curricula in
basic education in China since the 1970s has made it evident that, in the English curricula
issued by the Ministry of Education, the educational function of the course and the
instructional function are discrete.” (Dai, Z., 2015), (p.4). Learning English in China became
popular in the past 20 years and English language curriculum has been developing and
improving since then. When it comes to teaching a second language at such a young age the
curriculum components should include elements of structured and less structured activities in
order to maximize learning and get better results. Slaby (2005) noted that print awareness,
word and syllable counting, alphabet and letter naming, rhyming and phonemic awareness
were part of the every preschool day. Most of these components are included in the
curriculum that foreign teachers use in kindergartens and training centres all over the China
to teach English as a second language. Even though foreign teachers usually take under the
consideration students’ point of view and difficulties in learning by adapting curriculum to
students’ needs and culture, so they often structure lessons around primary concepts.
Curriculum was changing and it has evolved through time.
In the English Curriculum Standards, which was issued in 2011, English language was
placed as a subject in compulsory education (Dai, Z., 2015). Dai, Z. (2015) has explained

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further that English course have dual purpose: humanistic and instrumental. Humanistic
purpose means that English courses should help students to be more creative and patriotic,
more self-aware, to broaden their horizons and shape the right values towards life, while, on
the other hand, instrumental purpose of learning English includes mastering a basic
knowledge of English, especially listening, reading, speaking and writing skills. In China,
learning English at the young age should help students to adapt to the changing world and to
be able to survive in the age of globalization and technology. We can find a lot of cases in
China, in which Chinese children learn how to deliver a long, rehearsed speeches without any
mistake, which they have memorized by practising, without even understanding the meaning
of the speech. Educators argue that instead children should practise to see words as a key in
promoting individuality and creativity. Children should learn how to express themselves and
how to think creatively. In order to accomplish that many kindergartens in China tried to
change their language-teaching programs and adjust their curriculum to student’s needs. The
problem was that many teachers still were using old teaching methods based on their own
culture and most of the parents valued memorization more than self-expression. To
emphasize “Western” thinking, especially when it comes to language learning, many different
pedagogical models and curriculums from the West were introduced to China. “These include
the Project Approach, the Montessori curriculum, Reggio Emilia, High/Scope, the Whole
Language Approach, and especially DAP (Developmentally Appropriate Practise).” ( Zhu,
J., & Zhang, J., 2008), (p.5). Most of these approaches are considered to be a part of high-
quality programs, which also tend to be very expensive and available mostly for children
from the high-income families living in developed areas.

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC KINDERGARTENS

China is experiencing a renewed interest in Early Childhood Education which took a

foundational role in Chinese educational system and placed a whole educational system on a
completely new level. When it comes to Chinese kindergartensnowadays, kindergartens can
be mostly divided into private and public ones.During the past 20 years the number of public

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kindergartens has been reduced due to the government’s reforms and economic development.
Due to the economic development and reformsof public companies, many early childhood
programs that were supported by public companies were either integrated into other programs
or closed down, and some of them even have been changed to private property (Zhou X.,
2011). In national financial planning, the budget for Early Childhood Education was
drastically cut to zero in 2005, which leftless than 1.3% of the entire educational budget
forlocal governments to sponsor public kindergartens (Li 2009). As the result, the number of
private kindergartens have increased all over the China, especially in developed areas(See
Figure 2). Since the Early Childhood Education is not compulsory, both types, public and
private, are self-funded. Most of its funds kindergartens are getting from the student's tuition
or donations.
Since there has been an expansion of private kindergartens, Early Childhood Education in
China nowadays is usually too expensive (and of good quality), or too cheap (and of poor
quality), (Li, Yang & Chen, 2016).Like in many other countries, in China also children from
rich familiesmay have better chances to attend higher quality kindergartens than children
from poor families (Zhang et al., 2015).In the recent years, the private kindergartens in China
developed the way faster than the public ones. By the end of 2013, there were 133. 451
private kindergartens in China, which is 7.1% more than in 2012. (Research in China, 2014).
In addition to that, statistics show that, even ECE is not compulsory, the gross enrolment rate
of 3-year ECE hit more than 95% in developed areas like Beijing, Guangzhou or Shanghai,
while the western and central regions like Guangxi, Tibet or Yunnan have only about 60% in
2015. (Research in China, 2016).In addition to that, Song (2016) argues that increasing
number of private and public kindergartens still didn’t solve the problem of enrolment of
children from low-income families. He explained that public kindergarten are hard to access,
because there is a high demand for them, and the private kindergartens are too expensive.

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Figure 2.Number of private and non-private kindergartens in rural and urban areas in China
between 2005 and 2013. Source: China National Statistic on Education (Early Childhood)

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IN CHINA AS A NEW

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

Educators in China together with parents have realized that ECE program is the first step in a
long process of competition for admission into the best universities in China and worldwide.
Kindergartens are also a great solution for children, who are an outcome of one-child policy,
to socialize with other children and learn how to share and stop being feared spoiled. Early
Childhood Education has become a global phenomenon and important part of educational
systems in a lot of countries all over the world.
But, on the other hand, Early Childhood Education in China also became a great business
opportunity for future investors. There are a lot of examples in which big companies invested
or bought kindergartens in order to make more money. In 2015, Jiangsu Xiuqiang Glasswork
Co., Ltd. took over a Whole Person Education, while theTime Publishing and Media Co., Ltd.

cdxliii
had built their own kindergartens, Internet companies like Baidu and Tencent are also
investing in the education sector, and these are just some of examples on the long list.
(Research in China, 2016). Trying to survive on the competitive market has brought an Early
Childhood Education on another level. Since we live in the era of technology, lot of
kindergartens are using internet to promote their courses, enrol students or communicate with
parents. Early Childhood Education program became a part of a giant education industry,
which also offers IT training, after-class tutoring, online classes, etc.
According to the ‘Research in China’ the market size of education industry in China was
955.4 billion RMB in 2012. (2014). It is estimated that by the 2020 education market in
China will reach 3 trillion RMB, which is 12.7% more compared to 1.6 trillion RMB in 2015
(Lu, C. & Chung, R., 2016).Chinese government is determinate in supporting
industrialization of Chinese education market. In the 13th Five Year Plan it is evident that
Government is planning to invest in ECE and make it available in all parts of the country by
2020. There are also a lot of foreign companies investing in kindergartens, training centres
and online learning, even though their investments are restricted by the government’s
regulations. Beside the compulsory sector which is closed for foreign investments,Catalogue
of Industries for Guiding Foreign Investments (Revised Edition, 2015), which was issued by
the NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission), also restrict foreign investors
to own schools which are part of non-compulsory sectors (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Restriction for foreign investments. Source: Deloitte Analysis.

Foreign companies can have more than 51% of ownership, but they still need Chinese
citizens to be a part of a board of directors and holding other high position (Lu, C. & Chung,

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R., 2016).
Even though there is a bigger number of kindergartens, especially private ones and mostly in
the developed areas, the bigger quantity doesn’t always mean also the better quality.
Nowadays, most of the parents find really difficult to choose a good and affordable
kindergarten for their children. Enrolling into the public kindergarten is really difficult, so
most of the parents are trying to find a good private kindergarten, which is affordable for
middle-class parents. According to the parents and kindergarten teachers, it is nearly
impossible to find a good kindergarten which won’t be expensive and which will charge less
than 1000RMB per month, which is amount approved by government (Ford, P., 2010). Most
of the private kindergartens charge six, seven times that price. For example, Ivy Academy in
Beijing charges around 26,000 US dollars per year for an international kindergarten program,
which includes small class size, and English language curriculum (Koh, J., 2015). Even
though the average salary in Beijing is the way less, the parents are still willing to spend
money on a good education for their children. One of the parents stated: “"We don't want to
spend that much, but if we have no choice, we will have to.” (Ford, P., 2010), (p.1). The
parent has further explained that he doesn’t want his child to be behind the other children
when he enrol the elementary school.Finding a good kindergarten and being able to afford a
high-quality education is a real pressure for a lot of parents in China, but at the end of the
day, most of them believe that investing their money in their children’s education and
providing them with a high-quality education will pay off in the future.
“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it
today.” (Malcom, X.)

CONCLUSION

After carefully reviewing the literature we can agree that Early Childhood Education in China
went through rapid transformation, rebirth in the philosophy, pedagogical methods and
improvement in teaching practices, so it won’t be wrong if I say that change is a true mantra
for most educators in China. Even though, after crash of the Soviet model and opening policy
in 1978, Chinese educators and practitioners have adopted Western ideas and implemented
them into Chinese practices, child development is still considered to be a partof a global field

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and China took a big part in it. Almost three decades of practice in Early Childhood
Education have shown us that Western influence is too strong and that progress of
globalisation has allowed China to learn from the advanced West, adopt new ideas and raise
human wellbeing. While lot of questions arise from the rest of the world, problems within
China are too far from being resolved. The biggest challenges that ECE in China face are
connected to the quality of the ECE, funding, kindergarten teachers’ education and inequality
in education between rural and urban areas. Through all these changes Chinese educators
gave their best to learn from West, to combine new ideas with the traditional practices and to
challenge their own way of thinking about how teachers in China should teach and how
children should learn.
Being educated in China have a valuable tradition and it is also a valuable thing nowadays,
so it’s not strange that education is, not only subjected to governmental directives, but also
influenced by traditional believes. Chinese government has realized the importance of ECE
and they are still looking for the best educational method which could meet national
priorities: “The destiny of our nation rests on education!” (MOE 2010), (p.6).

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“Never For Prize, Only For Peace”: An Exploration Into The Current Validity Of This Maxim In Modern
Chinese Education.

Introduction

The maxim, ‘Never for prize, only for peace’ as described the 1999 paper by Li Defeng

cdl
entitled,”Modernization And Teacher Education In China” is a description used to explain the somewhat
cautious approach undertaken by teachers throughout the twentieth century in China. This caution can be
understood when one considers the rather turbulent history experienced by the teaching profession
throughout this period. When examining the root of this maxim, and to what extent is still applies in
modern day China, one must consider the current approach for Teacher Education policy. One must
determine whether the modern governmental approach to the teaching profession mirrors reflects this
maxim. Moreover, one must consider the perception of the modern teaching profession, as seen as a
comparative view with other major nations. To try to ascertain whether or not China is competitive on the
world stage relating to educational achievements. Moreover, assess to what extent there is a confidence in
the current education systemthat the maxim implies is absent from the Chinese model of education.
Furthermore, one should recognize the current issues facing Teacher Education in the People’s Republic of
China, and attempt to analyze their impact upon the evolution within the field.

Historical Context

When analyzing the current state of Teacher Education in China, and the utility of the maxim, ‘Never For
Prize, Only For Peace’, one is required to provide an historical overview as to why this might have been
the case. The Cultural Revolution, ending in 1976, was a period that, although incredibly complicated with
conclusions far beyond the scope of this assignment, one can safely state provided significant challenges to
the teaching profession. Tan Ren-Mei states, “prior to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in
1949, education was largely ignored.”43 The intervening years saw a rise in the perceived importance of the
teaching profession. Tan states, “Since the founding of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949, leaders of
the Communist Party of China have renewed the emphasis on teacher education by declaring it equal to
industrial development.”44 The author continues, “Teacher training became the central link in the entire
educational reform movement.”45 In attempting to develop the national education model during this time,
“The Chinese government tried, in a variety of ways, to promote educational opportunities for the children
of peasant and worker families at the expense of those from higher state backgrounds.” 46 The methods
used in order to achieve their desired aims were three-fold. “They expanded the formal education system,
established an informal ‘mass education’ alternative, and employed different enrollment criteria for people
with different social backgrounds.”47 This placed unique pressures upon the already pressurized

43
Tan, R..,Mingshui, Z. and Wendel, R. (1985) ‘Recent Chinese innovations in teacher education’,
Journal of Teacher Education, 36(5), pp. 16
44
pp.16
45
pp.16

46
The Impact of the Cultural Revolution on Trends in Educational Attainment in the People's Republic
of China, Deng &Treiman pp. 392

47
Deng &Treiman pp.396

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framework of national Education policy throughout this period. In the case study, The ‘Politics Of The
Chinese Cultural Revolution’, Lee Hong Yung concludes,“The education system, the most important
avenue for upward mobility in China, was... affected.” 48 In 1953, the Open the Door of High Education for
Workers and Peasants was initiated. Through this policy, more resources from the ‘mainstream’ education
system were diverted to the priority of ‘workers and peasants’. Whilst not considering the political aspect
to this controversial time in history, this is an example of the general trend of educational policy
throughout this period. The disruption within the already young and undeveloped policy environment was
bound to have an effect upon the teaching profession. Li quotes the prior work of Tan, Zhuang&Wendel in
their 1985 paper, ‘Recent Chinese Innovations in Teacher Education’ stated that “In China, a country with
a history of thousands of years, formal teacher education is less than a hundred years old” 49 (currently that
figure amounts to around one hundred and twenty years old as the first teaching academy established in
China was Nanyang Teachers Academy, based in Shanghai.) The relative infancy of the system inherited at
the time of the Cultural Revolution meant that any impact caused by policy changes would be keenly felt
within the teaching profession.

The reputation of teachers during this time, and the general feeling toward the teaching profession, was the
motivation behind the maxim, ‘Never For Prize, Only For Peace’. The challenges placed upon the teaching
profession at this time, described by Tan as a “period that thwarted development in education” 50 were
significant. Indeed, as Li states, “When the Cultural Revolution started in 1967, teachers’ status
plummeted.”51 Li continues, ‘Teachers became ‘stinking intellectuals and often the ‘targets of the
proletariat dictatorship’.”52 This was in direct opposition to the long held view in China, established in the
initial phase of central organization relating to Teacher Education that is summarized by the maxim,
“Become teachers, so you can become elders; become elders, so you can become kings” 53. This highlights
the attitude towards teaching when the first book on learning, as described by Tan Ren-Mei, “ Hue-Ji,
taught that kings built their kingdoms and ruled their people by putting learning first.” 54

The animosity felt towards teachers, as with other academics throughout this period, undoubtedly had an
effect upon the willingness of individuals within the teaching profession to destabilize the already
uncertain foundation through the risk and reward attitude required to initiate advancement and innovation.

48
Lee Hong Yung 1978 The Politics Of The Chinese Cultural Revolution: a case study. Berkeley:
California press pp. 325

49
Li, D. (1999) ‘Modernization and teacher education in china’, Teaching and Teacher Education,
15(2), pp.179
50
Recent Chinese Innovations in Teacher Education pp.16
51
Li, D. (1999) ‘Modernization and teacher education in china’, Teaching and Teacher Education,
15(2), pp. 184
52
Li, D. (1999) ‘Modernization and teacher education in china’, Teaching and Teacher Education,
15(2), pp. 184
53
Recent Chinese Innovations pp.16
54
Recent Chinese Innovations ..pp.16

cdlii
As Li surmises, ““Having experienced and learned about the fluctuations of teacher status, teachers,
however, to protect themselves, are known to play safe and be content with things as they are.” 55 The
author continues, “The manifestation of such an attitude in teaching is teachers adhering to the traditional
methods of teaching and seldom taking any initiatives to innovations in teaching. Without teachers’ desire
to change, there can be little development in education and teacher education.” 56 When assessing the utility
of the maxim, ‘Never for prize, only for peace’, one cannot underestimate the influence of the Cultural
Revolution upon the teaching profession. What is required at this stage is analysis of the modern
challenges arising regarding teachers and teacher education, and the extent to which they have changed in
the proceeding years since the conclusion of this turbulent period.

Modern Challenges

In his 2011 Masters’ Thesis entitled, “Innovation in the Classroom: Design Thinking for 21st Century
Learning”, ‘David’ Kwek discusses the changing landscape of education, and provides analysis of the
adaptations he feels educators must achieve in order to retain their relevancy in the new ‘digital age’.
Quoting from Chen’s 2010 paper ‘Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our
Schools’Kwek states, “The profile of our learners has changed. They are digital natives weaned on video
games and Web 2.0, and have been described as ‘marching through our schools, carrying a
transformational change in their pockets in the form of powerful multimedia handheld devices’.” 57 This
gives an insightful overview reflecting the current nature of education worldwide. Significant numbers of
students have access to the Internet, either through home computers, smart phones or a variety of other
sources. The challenge facing educators in the twenty first century is that the modern day student is one
whom has access to infinite sources of data regarding infinite topics, delivered in a huge array of different
means. The traditional rote-learning model of teaching, so prevalent throughout the twentieth century is
fast losing its relevancy in the modern educational field. Indeed, as Tam et al, in their paper entitled, ‘What
undergraduate students in China say about their professors’ teaching’ state, “Official policy in China in the
wake of globalization has pushed for teachers to move from a tradition of jiaoshu, literally to teach books,
to a more learner-oriented view of teaching, namely, jiaoren, literally to teach people.”58The debate
surrounding the efficacy of rote learning, and the affect that this learning style has upon students is outside
the remit of this paper. However, it is safe to assert that, with the influx of new technologies, and the
widening scope of alternative educational routes students can undertake, the teaching profession must also
55
Li, D. (1999) ‘Modernization and teacher education in china’, Teaching and Teacher Education,
15(2), pp. 185
56
Li, D. (1999) ‘Modernization and teacher education in china’, Teaching and Teacher Education,
15(2), pp. 185
57
Kwek, S.H. (2011). Innovation in the Classroom: Design Thinking for 21st Century Learning.
(Master’s thesis). Retrieved from
http://www.stanford.edu/group/redlab/cgibin/publications_resources.php
58
Tam, K.Y.(b., Heng, M.A. and Jiang, G.H. (2009) ‘What undergraduate students in china say about
their professors’ teaching’, Teaching in Higher Education, 14(2), pp. 148

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adapt and innovate to maximize the interest of, and subsequent results attained by, their students.
Considering the statement read previously, concluding that Chinese teachers lack the will to pursue the
required innovation, due to the turbulent modern history the profession had experienced, if this was still
the approach undertaken within the profession, one may expect to see problems arising with this juncture.

A Comparison of Governmental Outlook Regarding Teacher Education

A method to analyze whether or not there is opportunity for innovation and adaptation within the teaching
profession is to assess the current governmental approach to teacher education, and offer comparisons with
previous approaches. ‘Prize’ as stated in the original maxim, reflects a desire for professional and self-
improvement, both of which work towards receiving the professional accolades given when improvements
are made, as well as any subsequent material benefits achieved. The opportunity afforded teachers, in
public education models, to focus on these aspects comes from the Government.

To this end, a key statement in the General Strategy of the ‘Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium
and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020)’, reads that the Chinese Government
will, “(treat) reform and innovation as a mighty driving force for education.” 59 Further to this, the
document states that, “It is imperative to renovate talent or professional cultivation … overhaul quality
evaluation … and revamp teaching contents, methods and approaches.” 60 These statements both
simultaneously recognize and allude to the general problems within the current education system, and
acknowledge the need for modernization within the education system, and teacher education, as the
solution to these problems. From the top-down approach of the Chinese education system, any space given
for modernization must be given from directives from the Government. With these statements, the
Government has acknowledged the need for this. Moreover, ‘Prize’ as stated in the maxim, “never for
prize, only for peace’, can also be defined in terms of ‘quality’. When searching for ‘prize’ in any work
environment, ‘quality’ of output becomes synonymous. To this end, the Government states that it
“(Considers) quality improvement as the core task for education reform and development.” 61 Further to
this, the document states that, “Our outlook on educational development should be centered on quality
improvement, and great importance should be attached to the connotative development of education.” 62
Moreover, “Schools should be encouraged to distinguish themselves with first-rate education quality, and
to produce renowned teachers and topnotch talents or professionals.” 63 This focus is in direct opposition to
the environment depicted in Li’s summary of motivation to improve and innovate within the teaching

59
‘Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development
(2010-2020)’, pp.8
60
‘Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development
(2010-2020)’, pp.8
61
PP.8
62
PP.8
63
PP8.

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profession.

Focusing upon achieving ‘distinguished’ quality is, semantically speaking, a challenge and motivation to
attain the ‘prize’ of bettering one’s competitors. The production of ‘renowned’ teachers can be viewed
through a similar prism. The placement of teacher quality inside the market place, which is effective
interpretation of the current stance of the Chinese Government, requires ‘prize’ to be a significant factor
towards realizing the aim of producing ‘renowned’ teachers or ‘topnotch professionals’. A statement made
in their 1985 paper considering the future of the teaching profession, Tan et al state, “Of paramount
importance is the implementation of policies to orient the thinking of the masses to continue and promote
genuine respect for teachers. Only in this way is it possible to lay a solid foundation for the success of
teacher education in China.”64 The plans and motivations for the coming decade set out by the Government
seem to be synchronized with this point of view. The statement that “we will foster the sense of the
diversity of talents and professionals, so that individuals’ personal choices can be respected, personalized
development encouraged, and talents or professionals groomed in more than one way” 65 reflects this
approach.

One significant factor not yet discussed relating to ‘Prize’ is the economic reality. ‘Prize’, as previously
stated, can be presented in the form of competition between schools, a drive for both professional and self-
improvement, as well as the production of ‘topnotch professionals’. However, within the market place
economy, where talent is sought and competition is fierce between rivaling business entities, the economics
of teaching must equate to the desired status of the teaching profession. To be ‘for prize’, as opposed by the
above maxim, the financial offer and social benefits must be on par with other aspects of the employment
landscape. Considering this truth as evident in a market-based approach, the Chinese Government has been
explicit with their aims for the future of Teaching. “It is … essential to improve the status of teachers,
safeguard their rights and interest, raise their salaries and benefits, and turn teaching into a respected
occupation”66 Further to this statement, the Outline of China’s National Plan also stated, “the working,
learning and living conditions for teachers shall be bettered constantly ad a part of the endeavor to draw
outstanding talents to teach in school and make teaching a lifelong commitment.” 67 Moreover, “Legislation
shall be enacted to guarantee that the average salary for teachers is higher, at least not lower, than that for

64
Tan, R..,Mingshui, Z. and Wendel, R. (1985) ‘Recent Chinese innovations in teacher education’,
Journal of Teacher Education, 36(5), pp. 16

65
Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development
(2010-2020)’, pp.25
66
Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development
(2010-2020)’, pp.36
67
Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development
(2010-2020)’, pp.37

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civil servants and rises steadily.”68 With these statements, the Government has explicitly stated that
Teaching should be both cultivated in terms of a lifelong career option for skilled and sought-after
professionals and competitive financially in regard to other, seemingly more illustrious occupations. Both
of these declarations insinuate the Teaching can, and indeed should, be ‘for prize’, which is in direct
opposition to the maxim stated above.

International Comparison

A method with which one can assess the current situation and general environment within the Teaching
profession in China is by comparing different aspects of the life of a Chinese teacher with their
international counterparts. The Global Teacher Status Index was a study run in 2013 to assess how teachers
are viewed throughout the world. The conclusions drawn from the Chinese population surveyed are as
follows:

“China had the highest Teacher Status Index ranking out of our surveyed countries, with an index of 100.
China was consistently at the top of our charts on teacher respect and status, which ranged from having the
highest respect for secondary school teachers to being the most likely to give encouragement to children to
become teachers. Of significance was that China was the only country to rank doctors as holding the same
social status as teachers, indicative of the high status attributed to the teaching profession. Although
teacher respect and status was high, this is not so for public opinion on the educational system, with China
mid-rank on how successful the public defines its educational system.” 69

From this survey, it was found that 50% of the respondents said that as parents, they would encourage their
child about a career in teaching. Over 70% of the respondents said they believe that teachers are respected
by students and that China is the only country where the majority of people polled equate doctors and
teachers in the same social bracket. As a direct comparison,“In the UK, by contrast, fewer than 5% of
people thought that teachers had an equivalent status.” 70Considering what has been discussed previously,
this is in stark contrast to the problems experienced by the profession, as according to Li and other
commentators. Moreover, the timing of this survey is worth discussion. The 2013 release date of this
survey is three years after the Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education
Reform and Development. The issues and ambitions raised in that document focused in on the
improvement of the reputation throughout the wider society. This survey shows that a hugely significant

68
Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development
(2010-2020)’, pp.37
69
https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/sites/default/files/documents/2013GlobalTeacherStatusIndex.pdf
pp.30
70
pp.4

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majority of those asked believed that teachers are viewed as equal to doctors. In which case, can one
confidently state that there has been an improvement and a step made in the right direction toward the
government’s aims? There may be a caveat to these results. The use of a comparison with doctors is useful
as far as a general comparison with a generally prestigious profession throughout the world. The choice to
use the medical profession as the root for comparison is following the oft-held notion that a doctor is seen
as a noble profession. The banking or financial industry, the professions in the field of Law or a profession
in the Arts may differ strongly from country to country, and therefore would not provide a stable
comparison for the aims of this survey. Therefore, although outside of the remit of this paper to study this
comparison further, one must accept the logic its use in this survey.

As the Global Teacher Status Index has found, China is the only nation where teachers are seen as equal to
doctors. Of the other nations polled, a comparison with a country with a perceived better-established
national policy framework for education and a nation a perceived weaker national policy framework for
education. For the former; Japan provides adequate comparison, as an established economy in Asia. For
the latter; Brazil, as a country of vast size and population, with a history of recent economic development,
much like China, can provide interesting scope for analysis.

In the survey the question was asked, “How much do you trust teachers to deliver a good education?” The
rating was given on a sliding scale from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest). Of those polled, China received a rating
of 6.8. Interestingly, this was only bettered by two nations: Finland (7.1) and Brazil (7.2). The lowest
scoring nations on this list were: Israel (5.3) and Japan (5.4). 71 In this instance, the country with the
perceived better-established policy foundation scored significantly lower than both China and Brazil. In
Brazil, 47% of people would not encourage their child to become a teacher. 18%of those polled would
either ‘definitely encourage’ or ‘probably encourage’. This figure is even lower in Japan where 14% of
72
those polled would actively encourage their children to become teachers. The PISA scoring system, used
to assess the efficacy of education systems throughout the world, has its deficiencies. However, as a
commonly used barometer for such assessments, it is suitable for the purposes of this study. At the time of
this survey, the PISA ranking system, scored from 20 (lowest) to 1 (highest), scored China as number 3.
This was bettered only by Singapore and Finland, two countries with worldwide reputations for delivering
an excellent education system. China, placed higher than Japan (5) and extremely favorably compared to
Brazil (20).73 I have argued that the comparison between Brazil and China is more suitable for these
instances due to the nature of the developing economy and relative size of population. The fact that China
ranked higher than Japan as well as Brazil indicates that the teaching profession is achieving significantly
positive results at this stage of its development. Moreover, China ranked highest of those countries studied

71
pp.24
72
pp.17
73
pp.13

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in the Teacher Status Index against PISA ranking table.74

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the survey was the question, “Should teachers be rewarded in pay
according to their pupils’ results?” The results can be seen in fig.1 below:
Fig.1.75
The significance of this question lies in the approach to the monetization of teaching. The term ‘results’ is
fraught with difficulty. ‘Results’ in the education system implies examination scores. The focus on which,

it can be argued, can actually be detrimental to the quality of education. The reasoning for which can be
that an exclusively examination-based focus for students can detract from the overall education experience.
However, in spite of this argument, it can also be read as a motivation for ‘Prize’ within the education
system of China is clearly evident. With the acceptance that results achieved should be reflected by the
appropriate financial incentives shows that ‘Prize’ is an accepted part of the teaching profession. 2% of
those polled would ‘tend to disagree’ with the notion, whilst there were no respondents advocating ‘strong
disagreement’ with the notion. If that is the general view of society as whole (with the obvious caveat that
this survey can only justify a small sample of the population of China), one can accept that ‘Never for
prize, only for peace’ is a concept that has diminished in Chinese education.

Overall, as stated previously, China topped the list of the twenty-one countries survey and thus placed top
of the index ranking with a index rating of 100. Despite higher levels of trust in the ability of teachers’ to

74
pp. 14
75
pp.23

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provide a good education, Brazil concluded with a score of 2.4 on the same index rating. Japan was rated
as 16.2 on the same scale. As Andreas Schleicher, the Deputy Director for Education and Skills and
Special Advisor on Education Policy to OECD’s Secretary- General stated, “The results provide a first
comparative quantification of the social status of teachers, as seen by those for whom they work. They
offer an innovative perspective on the status of the teaching profession”76

The key question raised in terms of this enquiry is, ‘What do these results mean in terms of ‘Prize’?’. One
has previously discussed the categorization of ‘Prize’ relating to education and the teaching profession. The
array of results gathered by this study show that, in 2013, the Chinese education system scored favorably
among many of the categories. A conclusion that can be drawn from this international comparison is that
China is performing well compared to both established nations and developing nations. The comparison
between Japan and Brazil highlights this assertion. Further to this, one can surmise that the underlying
factors motivating such positivity can be attributed to an increased competition within the profession, a rise
in social status afforded, increased economic incentives and higher requirements to become a teacher.
When considering the Government approach to provide improvements to the teaching profession, Li stated
that, “in order to have teachers better qualified for and more committed to training talented personnel of
science and technology considered essential for the country’s modernization, it was decided that efforts
should be made to improve teachers’ treatment in general.” 77 Moreover, considering how to best achieve
these aims, Li states that the Government decided on the approach of “establishment of a nationwide
network of teacher preparation and professional development, launching of a nationwide upgradingand
improvement of the qualifications of in-service teachers, building up nationwide respect for teachers, and
improvement of the treatment of teachers (salaries, living and working conditions).” 78All of these factors
point toward the acceptance within China that ‘prize’ is an important component of progression, and that
the maxim, ‘Never for prize, only for peace’ is no longer a valid one.

Challenges in the Modern Education System

In summarising the current situation in the Chinese education system, Li Defeng states that, “in spite of the
efforts and attempts that China has made in the last 15 years to improve teacher education, teacher
education is still imbued with problems, and that these problems must be addressed effectively and
immediately before teacher education can gear up with the country’s desire for modernization.” 79 This view
is shared, to differing extents, throughout the majority of the literature on the subject. The general
consensus seems to be that the profession has undergone significant changes in the last few decades, and
that it has yet to establish a firm foundation with its new outlook. This view is echoed by Jun Li in the

76
pp.10
77
Li pp.181
78
pp.181
79
Li pp.179

cdlix
2006 Case Study regarding the implementation of teacher education policy wherein the author states,
“Since the 1990s, China’s teacher education has been undergoing radical transformations: The vision and
mission of teacher education have changed significantly; teachers’ roles are redefined in order for them to
respond to the new demands of the dramatically changing society; the “market” for preparing teachers is
shared by various competitors; new degrees, programs as well as curricula are designed for prospective
teachers. The implementation process of the national policy of reform, however, has not been paid enough
attention.”80Xu and Connelly assert that, “China’s emphasis on educational reform is part of China’s
overall modernization effort. Modernization, some argue, is prerequisite to successful national
development (Inkeles,1975; So,1990). Li (2006) points out that the People’s Republic of China has been
focused on modernization since the late 1970’s in an effort to catch up with the West. 81” Further to this,
Tam et al argue that “it seems that the emerging culture of learning among university students in China
today who are influenced by more Western pedagogies may be somewhat dissonant with that of university
professors who remain rooted to more traditional and authoritarian pedagogies.82

All of these assertions regarding the current state of the Chinese education system agree upon the fact that
the issues stem from a discord between the traditional outlook regarding teachers and education in general,
with that of the current view which understands the need to modernize to meet the challenge of a highly
globalized and interconnected world. The impact this is having upon individual teachers is difficult to
ascertain. However, one conclusion that can be drawn regarding the maxim, ‘Never for prize, only for
peace’ is that, despite the ongoing challenges faced by this modernization, space has been opened up
within the system for competition, innovation and progress. Jun Li’s assertion that’ teachers’ roles are
redefined in order for them to respond to the new demands of the dramatically changing society’ reflects
the conclusion that, although fraught with difficulties, the role of the teacher has indeed changed. The
requirement to follow the traditional lines, without risk or innovation otherwise risking the potential
backlash faced by teachers during the Cultural Revolution, has dissipated. The challenges facing the
profession now relate to how quickly and effectively teachers can react to the challenges of education in
the modern world. Furthermore, how quickly the government can establish the framework to facilitate the
progress required to meet these modern day expectations. ‘Never for prize’ is no longer the default
position, and needs not to be a concern for the modern Chinese educator.

Conclusions

This paper has attempted to critique the utility and legitimacy of the maxim, ‘Never for prize, only for
peace’ in the context of modern day Chinese education. The maxim described in Li Defeng’s paper
ANALYSIS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TEACHER EDUCATION POLICY IN CHINA
80

SINCE THE 1990S: A CASE STUDY Jun Li, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 pp.1
81
Xu, S. and Connelly, F.M. (2009) ‘Narrative inquiry for teacher education and development: Focus
on English as a foreign language in china’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(2), pp. 220
82
Tam et al pp.157

cdlx
regarding the modernization of teacher education in China, referenced a period of time in modern Chinese
history where teachers indeed feared disruption and innovation for fear of strong repercussions. The
Cultural Revolution had a lasting impact upon many areas of Chinese society. This is especially among
academia, where the teaching profession sits. Through analysis of the historical context of teacher
education, and a comparison between this and the modern governmental approach to the field through
analysis of the, to date, most recent Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-term
Education Reform and Development (2010-2020), one has found that the current approach is far different
to the rather protectionist outlook of pre-1990’s China. In this document, the Government
havesimultaneously acknowledged the challenges facing the profession and their desire to promote
teaching as a noble profession. Importantly, the government also acknowledge the financial incentives
required to reach this ambition, as well as the need for competition and innovation to ensure this progress.
This is in direct opposition to the protectionist maxim, ’Never for prize, only for peace.’ Moreover, this
paper has provided an international comparison of teachers’ status. The results from the 2003 international
survey found China achieving strong results when compared to other nations. The findings of the study
indicate that teachers in China hold a solid enough reputation that they needn’t be concerned about any
potential backlash, like that experienced in its recent history. These findings further confirm the notion that
there is ample scope for the teaching profession to chase the ‘prize’ so feared previously. Finally, the
current challenges outlined in the literature show that all the issues facing the teacher profession are not
viewed in terms of individual teachers and ambitions they may hold in terms of the aspects of ‘prize’ one
has defined. Those aspects discussed related to financial, individualism and professional development.
Indeed, the challenges facing the profession are, conversely, to what extent education is able to modernize
in the face of the current international and societal pressures. The need for ‘prize’, it can be argued, is at
the root of the advancements the profession requires to match the ambitions set out by the Government for
the future of Teacher Education.

Bibliography

cdlxi
 1. The Impact of the Cultural Revolution on Trends in Educational Attainment in the People's
Republic of China Zhong Deng and Donald J. TreimanAmerican Journal of Sociology Vol.
103, No. 2 (September 1997), pp. 391-428
2. Tan, R..,Mingshui, Z. and Wendel, R. (1985) ‘Recent Chinese innovations in teacher
education’, Journal of Teacher Education, 36(5), pp. 16–19. doi:
10.1177/002248718503600503.
3. Zagoria, D.S. and Lee, H.Y. (1978) ‘The politics of the Chinese cultural revolution: A
case study’, Foreign Affairs, 57(1), p. 231. doi: 10.2307/20040099.Pepper Suzanne,
1980 “Chinese Education after Mao: Two Steps Forwards, Two Steps Back and Begin Again?
China Quarterly 81:1-65
4. Li, D. (1999a) ‘Modernization and teacher education in china’, Teaching and Teacher
Education, 15(2), pp. 179–192. doi: 10.1016/s0742-051x(98)00058-4.
5. Kwek, S.H. (2011). Innovation in the Classroom: Design Thinking for 21st Century Learning.
(Master’s thesis). Retrieved from
http://www.stanford.edu/group/redlab/cgibin/publications_resources.php
6. Tam, K.Y.(b., Heng, M.A. and Jiang, G.H. (2009) ‘What undergraduate students in china say
about their professors’ teaching’, Teaching in Higher Education, 14(2), pp. 148
7. http://planipolis.iiep.unesco.org/upload/China/
China_National_Long_Term_Educational_Reform_Development_2010-2020_eng.pdf
8. ANALYSIS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TEACHER EDUCATION POLICY IN
CHINA SINCE THE 1990S: A CASE STUDY Jun Li, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 pp.1
9. Xu, S. and Connelly, F.M. (2009) ‘Narrative inquiry for teacher education and development:
Focus on English as a foreign language in china’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(2), pp.
220
10. https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/sites/default/files/documents/
2013GlobalTeacherStatusIndex.pdf
11. Pepper, S. (1977) ‘An interview on changes in Chinese education after the “Gang of Four”’,
The China Quarterly, 72, p. 815. doi: 10.1017/s0305741000020518.
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again?’,The China Quarterly, 81, p. 1. doi: 10.1017/s030574100001213
13.
Evolution of Private Education In China since 1949 up to now
“Teaching without thinking is useless, but thinking without education is more dangerous.
~ Confucius~”
1. Introduction
Private education is a secondary or elementary school run and supported by private individuals
or a corporation rather than by the government or public agency. In China, Private Education
called “People-run”(minban) or “social forces-run”(shehuililiang ban). “Before the Communist
Party of China CPC’s assumption of power in 1949, private schools of China accounted for about
40% of the school sector (Wang, 2000)”. But later it disappeared in between 1950s and 1980s for
the simple fact that CPC for its social objective change all private schools into public schools.

cdlxii
Private educationin China has been since taking a long way to develop and have not so much
government support, which involved the changing policies towards its main importance and its
goalsin the society by giving more chance to post-compulsory schooling level students and the
development of the country’s economy. In this chapter my research will be analyzing and
understandingthe evolution of Private Education in China from 1949 up to nowadays. The
change of its policies and the regulation and the challenge the private sector faced. My questions
to this study are what is the importance and challenges of private education in education system
of China?Andhas it contributed to the development of the Chinese society economy?

2. Study background
2.1 The Reemergence of Private Education
After in 1949, The Chinese Communist Party was promoting equality as important principle,
Private education was consider as Western capitalism totally opposite to the communist point of
view of the collective goal. The first school that change at the time was a mission university
FurenUniversity and became part of Beijing Normal University. In 1952,all the Private Education
system vanished in China.Ding (2012,pp.41-42) said that: “Although private sector for non-profit
schooling was banned, non-profit public schools administered by local commune governments
known as minban (school prior to 1980 referred to common collective investment by everyone in
a village: everyone enjoyed the right to enter the school and also the obligation to support it. ‘In
contrast to private schools which are sponsored by non-governmental organizations and
individuals, minban were more like collective enterprises in terms of sponsorship—that is, they
were collectively sponsored by the neighborhood.’ Since the 1980s, by centrally administered
government schools, the meaning of the term minban has since shifted in general usage towards
a synonym for private education)”.Since the 1980s, “China’s economic reform has generated
increasing educational demands from state, the market, and individuals; one of these demands
was provide more opportunities at the post-compulsory schooling level (Deng, 1997; Kwong,
1997)”. Simply for the reason that, China’s education budget between 1950 and 1985 rarely
exceeded 3 percent of its GNP and was overall 0.7 percent less than the international average
(Ho and Mao, 1992). Most of the students, who completed stages from primary schools to the
entry exam, are refused the access for further step in education system. The role of private
schools was to target those students. “The market of “second chance” students still exists today.
Public compulsory education is not absolutely free. Though it charges no tuition, fees are
nonetheless collected under various names. (ZeyuXu 2002,P.15)”. To understand more about
this raise of the main context of reinstate private education is due to the social demand, the
parents who are more worried about the future of their children to have a better social life.
Another factor is the one-child policy, where the parents were allowed to have one kid, whose
parents hope for a better education than what they have during the Cultural Revolution, to
access to great universities.
“Privatization in education follows the privatization of economic production in the country
(Tsang,2000b)”.“Between 1999 and 2006, enrollment in the private education sector increased
from less than six million to over 23 million students (China Education yearbook Editorial Board,
2000; Ministry of Education, 2007a)”. But still is the number of private sector has not so much
increase, it just represent 10% of the student population.The 3 different majors types of private
schools are: Urban elites primary schools and secondary, ordinary private schools, and private
universities.“Ordinary private schools include rural private schools, single sex schools and art
schools (Lin, 1999)”.
Investors in education range from individuals, business entrepreneurs, organizations,
government officials, overseas Chinese businessmen, public schools to retired teachers.Lin
(1999) identified four sources of funds for private schools; state funds, fees charged to parents,
income from operating school businesses, and income from offering extra classes. Other sources
also include equity and short-term bank loans (LaRocque& Jacobsen, 2000).“From 2010-2013,
total number of various private schools has increased from 119 thousand to 149 thousand, rose
by 26% with a compound annual growth rate 8%. Among them the number of private
kindergartens, primary schools, and middle schools respectively increased by 30%, 10% and
6%. While private secondary vocational schools, high schools, high schools and independent

cdlxiii
colleges decreased by 21%,5%, and 10% respectively. Private colleges and universities rose by
6%.(Deloitte, 2015)”.In 2015, there are 163000 private schools across the country, accounting for 31.8%
of the total number of the country; with 45.704 million students enroll, accounting for 17.6% of the total
number of the country. The numbers of Private Pre-school education, compulsory education, high school
education, the number of private schools of higher education and the total number of non-governmental
schools respectively are 90%, 6.6%, 3.0%, 0.4%.

2.2Laws and Regulations of Private Education

In 1982,The constitution of the People Republic of China passed fifth Session of the Fifth
National People’s Congress said that “China encourages collectives economic organizations,
national enterprises, public institutions and the other social forces to run all kinds of education
undertaking in accordance laws”.Thus, the government create “as early as 1985, some
documents on ‘structural reform of China’s education system’ allowed university department to
find part of their resources through engaging in business activities or through enrolling a certain
number of students outside the admission quota set by the government. (Lin, 1999) ”. In 1986,
the compulsory Education law was introduced with the aim of eliminating child labor under the
age of 15 and universalizing nine years of basic education by the end of the century.
In the process of legislating private education in China there were three major players: the
State’s executive arm(represented by the State Council, particularly its Ministry of Education), the
le legislative arm (represented by the NPC Standing committee), and the private education
constituency, particularly investors and founders of private schools and education institutes.
(Wing-Wah Law, Su-Yu Pan,2009).Before 1990, NPC (National People’s Congress) did not
create any law for private education sector. In 1997, the state council issued the Regulation on
Schools Run by Social Forces, which adopted a policy of “active encouragement, vigorous
support, right guidance, and strengthening governance” of private education by the state
(jjjgulidalizhichizhengqueyindaojiaqiangguanli) (Article 4).
“The four laws that would promote private education draft by the Education,Science,Culture and
Public Health Committee (ESCPHC): 1- provide a common legal framework for regulating both
new private education practices and the government’s administration of private education;2-
recognize and protect the legal rights and benefits of private schools and their teachers and
students; 3- protect private education providers’ legal rights and freedom to own and use their
private property for private schools; 4-and increase investor’s interest in expending more capital
on education.(Wing-Wah Law, Su-Yu Pan,2009)”.
The NPC’s law drafting committee suggested adopting a new position on profit-making, from
forbidding all schools and institutes (including privates ones) from earning profits to allowing the
return of operating profits to the founders of private schools (Chu, 2003). “The Ministry of
Education has released or amended Certain Provisions on the Running of Educational
Institutions with Social Resources, Educational law of the People’s Republic of China, and
Regulations on the Running of Education institutions with Social Resources. It isnot difficult to
figure out from these laws and regulations that the government is still inclined to define private
education agencies as non-profit public organizations‘any organization or individual shall run
schools or others educational institutions not for the purpose of profit’.(Deloitte,2015)”.
In 2003 the Private Education Promotion Lawapproved and passed by Standing Committee of
NPC, delete the statement “not for the purpose of profit”. This statement allows private sectors
educational to gain back reasonable profit.
“Three varieties or ‘models’, of private schools compose this category in the official Ministry of
Education data:
1)-‘Purely private with no government support(cunminban)’ entrepreneurial individual educators,
usually acting as the ‘founding principal’ and responding to perceived social need in the
community, provide the typical driving force behind the ‘pure private’ model,
2)-‘Privately owned and run, but aided by the government subsidies (minbangongzhu)’ schools
received policy support and government subsidies to aid in their development. Local actors both
governmental and nongovernmental view this type of school as a win-win situation.Local
government benefits because it is able to increase the supply of education to its local population
without significantly increasing expenditures, and private actors, including investors and

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educators, benefit because they are able to contribute to education supply while receiving a
return on their investment.
3-‘Government owned but privately operated schools (guoyouminban)’due to the decentralization
of fiscal responsibility for education, local governments often turn to local ‘society’ to share the
education burden.(Daniel B. W., 2005)”.
“The Decision on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensive Deepening Reforms released in the
Third Plenary Session of the 18 th CPC Central Committee that the role of market should be
brought into full play in the field of education by means of shareholding, mixed ownership under
the new principle of running schools with market forces.(Deloitte, 2015).
“Premier Li Keqiang presided over the executive meeting of the State Council On January
7,2015, discussed and approved a draft amendment to education law, higher education law, and
private education promotion law, and decided to submit them to standing Committee NPC for
deliberation. (Deloitte, Development of Private school & Education industry in China, Educational
report, 2015)”. For the promotion and development of private education sectors.

(fig.1. Deloitte research,2015)

fig.2. Table-1 National Level Education Laws (Qin H., Zhou X., (2016))

3. Methods
To analyzeand understand this phenomena,I use a qualitative research methods, I started to

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select relevant documentation about the private education system in China, the research of
appropriate documentswas online through the library system and website, I also interviewed
some Chinese students to share their personal experience or point of viewattending private
institution.All the documentation was concerning private education from pre-schoolsto university,
firstly I did not know what to find on this paper until my idea of research and the question that I
wanted toinvestigatearise.It was quite important to check newly documentation, so during my
research in the school library system, I selected the date of publication papers from 2006 to the
earliest one. During that process I retrieved articles from the library and online resources or
journals or articles related to private education system in China.And then, I went through the
articles that were differently written with different analysis over the private education system in
China.As long I wanted to write something about the private education I did not have any clue
over my topic and how I will develop my ideas. By reviewing the paper it was more common that
some data have been update and the articles on the issue of private education has been studied
in different methods approach: in comparative study approach, in quantitativeand qualitative
study approach. During my research I selected relevant information than can help me draw my
paper. Analyzing and interpreting results from books and articles, and I slowly started to follow
some ideas and write a draft about my paper.

4. Resultsand discussions
After a long review of articles about the development of private education in China,I found that
the private education has grown slowly, first it was established then forbidden and then reemerge
again, from the 1949 to 1976 and up today, the private education sector was a challenging time
in China’s education system to have its place.It is obvious that the governmentlaws and
regulations towards private sector were difficult. “After the chaotic ’10-year Cultural Revolution’
ended in 1976, the less radical faction in the Chinese Communist party rose to power under the
leadership of Deng Xiaoping In the process of reform Education’s role national development is no
longer ideological; instead education has the important function of meeting the skill requirements
of a developing socialist market economy and any portrayed as the strategic foundation for
national development(Tsang, 1996, p.54)”.During that period of Cultural revolution some schools
were closed for the simple fact that, students level of education was weak and poor. Then there
will be a reform to deal with those issues, and it was a bit difficult to understand how the laws and
regulations were established.“China ‘s case depend on how policy makers and other
stakeholders interact strategically because their interests, strategies information and authorities
can affect policy outcomes.“A special form of policy making, lawmaking in education is a series of
complex, goal directed activities that involve interdependent interactions among interest parties,
such as coalition building,lobbying, negotiating and making compromises. (Wing-W.,Su-Y.,
2008)”. “The basis of decision making in policymaking often needs to be extended from logical
reasoning to include social cultural, political or even ideological considerations and preferences.
(Wing-W.,Su-Y., 2008)” Because China want “Education for all”, but the results of this action was
not so much satisfying because the number of students enrollment in each steps of education
from primary to final examination “Gaokao” was denied the entrance to further step of
education.It was not easy at the time for some to pursue their study and none of them could have
a better education, then the policies has been revised to let the private agencies to help students
to have more opportunities to continue their studies even if they did not pass the “Gaokao”. It
was no concerning people living in town or a rural area but also for immigrant children registered
in the Hukou system. The matter was all over China and was affecting badly the development of
education. Important laws and legislation must be established to solve that issues for the better
development of the country.“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to
those who prepare for it today. (Malcolm X)”.“Usually private education comes into play when
there is either an absolute shortage of education such that not everybody had access to
schooling, or demand for education alternatives that the existing system cannot satisfy (James,
1995)”. In 1992 we can observe a growth of economy in family incomes and there is a big
demand of private agencies. Wealthy families want the best quality of education for their kids,
and seek for private education system because it can offer more course and best qualities to
build their children life, it will shape their creativeness ability and help them to develop

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themselves and easily interact abroad and can adjust to their new environment.
Not only urban citizens were facing the same problem to have the choice of choosing what is
best for their children, in the rural area there are those with the conditions which are not the
same compared to those living in the city, they also were seeking to have their own choice over
the best for what is for their kids, to choose for the private education because the compulsory
education that was free, was not as it was said. Children in rural area have to face difficulties to
reach their school, lack of road and facilities and as it was not enough, their parents still gave
money forbooks, chalk etc. Based on the Article 16 of the Chinese Education Reform and
Development in 1993 (State Council, 1993) state that: “The State adopt a policy of active
encouragement, vigorous support, correct guidelines, and enhanced management toward the
lawful establishment of schools by social groups and individuals and individuals citizens”. Which
gives a total approval for having private schools in rural area.

4.1 The importance(Advantage) and problems of Private education in China

4.1.1 Advantage
Advantage of private education institution offer classes that are small and can contain small
amount of students, so that they will have more close observation from the teacher, the school
facilities is more attracting and the curriculum is more flexible. The used of English lesson,
computer, science and mathematics, they can even have some art class for creativity. The
students attending private institution have more opportunities to be selected in University abroad.
And also it can guarantee a better future for children to have more job opportunities and be
global market of employment. It can help parents who don’t have time to take care of the
education of their kids due to their busy timework,to provide education and good care of children
development life. “According to the statistic from eol.cn, current size of abroad education industry
has exceeded RMB 200 billion Yuan,including abroad study agency fees about RMB 4 billion
Yuan capturing 2% of the total, training fees about RMB 26 billion Yuan occupying 13% of the
total and consumption abroad about RMB 170 billion Yuan grabbing 85% of the total. (Deloitte,
2015)”. Students went abroad through a consulting agencies which introduce better education
institution and share commission each other because the agencies is promoting the institution
quality and which also is facing employment competition so they have to go through this
mechanism to earn something, the student can get good education and technology innovation.
As we can see in the draft below.fig.3.

fig.3: Ecosphere of abroad education industry (Deloitte analysis)

Advocates argue that the private schools are sharing the state’s task of basic education and can
alleviate the shortage of the governmental educational funds (Qu, 1993; Zhang 1994a; Zhang,
1994). Zhu Kaixuan, director of the State Education Commission (SEC), admitted the non-
governmental schools are to some extend relieving the government of part of its burden in

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educational funding and social employment (Zhu, K., 1994). For the recruitment of teachers the
private sectors are independent administration.The teacher’s in private institution are well paid
than teachers in public schools. “To ensure a certain level of quality, they sometimes provide
scholarships to attract top students from key schools and persuade poorly performing students to
transfer to vocational schools before the college entrance examination(Lin, 1999)”. It is clear that
private education are different from public education in terms of curriculum, teaching methods,
facilities and the teacher recruit there have teaching qualification and their salary is established
directly by the institution and investors, somehow they can not be paid the same amount as the
teacher in public school whose salaries are established by the government. And also their
timetable of course program is not like the public teacher course program.
“The personal accounts nationwide accumulated a total sum of deposit exceeding 2 trillion RMB
(or more than 250 billion USD) as of 1994 (Deng, 1997)”. For the better use of citizen to save
their own resources and to be more involve in education. The government required for immediate
action to develop more education by using private resources.

4.2 Problems
Mostly the private sector innovations are more likely for marketing matter than for education.
“Allocations of resources is under the control of investors who may not have no experience in
education field.(ZeyuXu, 2002)”.“The government appear to care more about the earning money
by using its education institutions than educational quality. (ZeyuXu,2002)”.
“Education is the path of higher education economic gains for the majority of common citizen
who can afford it. (ZeyuXu, 2002)”. It lost its own importance which is education for all, and even
for the preschool and basic education which is very important for the foundation and the
development of the students, is not more take seriously, example: “There are other worries about
private education…. Now is not so rare for some kindergarten to teach children English before
they can speak Chinese fluently. Computer classes are emphasis of the many private high
schools, while such subjects like math is ignored.(Lin, 1999)”. This kind of situation is very
dangerous for the development of the child, parents send their children to these institution
because they expect the best, if the system is not taking seriously, it will be damaging the main
role of the purpose of education and its goals most people are educated and more the country is
develop and the economy can grow. The selection of teacher is made by the institution, they
have to be very strict and promote the excellence. Parents are spending a lot of money to have
something better. If it is not the case, they will have to send their children to attend public
institution.“Private schools are overseen by two agencies: the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of
Civil Affairs (MCA). The latter regulates all non-commercial institutions (minbanfeiqiyedanwei), and thus
all the civil private schools, and is currently trying to create a new nationwide legal regime for them. This
is tied to the overall “small government” administrative reforms currently underway in China with the
general oversight of the State Commission on Public Sector Reform (SCOPSR). The cooperation between
SCOPSR and MCA on most reforms has been relatively smooth, but the issue of educating the country’s
youth is a politically sensitive one.(Karla, 2015)”.It is a important for the private sector to be develop and
copy the western styles for the creativity and development of children, but at the same time it is the
responsibility of the government to control what is has been taught in these institutions to not loose the
traditional identity of the Chinese culture in the western styles. Having such institution aim to develop
economically the country, but not to erase what identify its culture. Some private investors or
organizations open private institutions copying the same model of curriculum of foreign colleges.
The major problem with many private schools, as many point out, is that their faculties are chiefly
made up of elderly retired teachers who are less energetic and find it difficult to adapt to a new
working style. According to a survey in Wenzhou city of the teacher’s staffs in ten private schools,
90 per cent of the 140 full-time teachers were retirees (Qu, 1993). However, when the
administrators of private schools go to basic schools and teachers’ colleges to recruit young
teachers, they are required to pay high ‘training fees’ (Zang and Ji, 1994). It is obvious because
they teach what the public institution doesn’t teach, and mostly courses programs are Western
courses mixed with Chinese courses or any specific academic area.
“…The government has constantly increase investment in public education, and the sustained
raises in salaries of public school teachers has brought enormous wage pressures to bear on

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private schools, which at the same time must pay extra costs for teachers’ social guarantees as
compared with public schools. According to a plan for reforming the social guarantees system
promulgated by the Ministry of labor and social guarantees, starting on January1, 2006, the
monthly payment standard per unit of basic retirement pension will be adjusted from 20 to 30
percent of average monthly salaries.(Wu Hua, 2009)”. For example: if it is 20 per cent that need
to be paid, the private institution in addition to the teachers salaries have to pay to the social
guarantee fund 20 per cent of the teachers average monthly salaries.The retirement pension
forteacherin private education is very low than the retirement pension of teacher in public
education.They don’t share the same advantage than those in the public schools.
Because they are just non-governmental enterprises.“…the private school teachers’ status
problem caused by the above-ownership system discrimination, there is the issue of taxation on
private schools triggered by the ‘Circular of the Finance Ministry and State Administration of
Taxation on Education policy’ (caishuino.39 [2004]). (Wu Hua, 2009)”.
It is quite relevant that concerning the laws and regulations to protect the investors rights and
interests, the gain of the investors, students and teachers must be equitable each other, is a win-
win process, the students pay for knowledge, the teacher must do his right as educator to teach
and the investor can have his investment back. Every group must gain their will for a better
harmony, which can promote development, excellence and success of the education.

“The joint venture”, it means that the government allows private school to be associated with the
public universities, it remains as a non-governmental enterprise and act like a public institution,
the investors can be an organization, an individuals, an agencies, an enterprises etc. This new
partnership is call “independent schools or college” this association can allow public universities
not to pay to much taxes like private institutions, the teachers mostly comes from public
universities and it is difficult to evaluate their salaries. But this kind of cooperation is not afair
partnership for the development of higher education.“Private joint venture universities programs
in 2003 the state council issued the Rules on Sino-foreign Co-operation in Running Schools
which laid out the ground rules for establishing Sino-foreign schools in China. Since then a
number of joint venture universities have been established. A few domestic universities in China
also co-operate with foreign universities to develop programs leading to foreign degrees.
(Education in China, kpmg.com/cn). The Joint venture has his pros and cons it simply depend on
the terms of the laws established for this fusion, if we observe clearly at the situation each of
them have their own gain.

Conclusion
This study was aim to analyze and understand the long process of the evolution of Private
education in China its challenge its faced during decades to develop itself and its participation at
the country economy growth. China private education has take a long road with such difficulties
to develop itself, it has been put away from the government support because of the fact that, at
the time the education in China was very low and the country was facing an high rate of illiteracy.
To tackle at this situation after the People’s Republic of China take the lead with the creation of
the Party Communist, the laws and legislations was to praise more on the egalitarian society, the
missionary private institution established at the time was forced to close. The Chinese
government goal was to erase the illiteracy; everyone must be educated, because it had a great
impact over the economy of the country, and for its foreign cooperation and trade. The law on the
nine years compulsory education was established to make it happen, but at a certain time it was
difficult for the student to go further with their study due to the lack of the qualities of teaching
and methods. After the Cultural Revolution, the private education reemerged and had enormous
social, economic and political implications. It was recognized to reach the goal of modernization,
new intellectual resources,development of science and technologies. The laws have been voted
by the government to support private sectors after long time of abandon. It was clear that the
growth of economy at the time was slow and the input of private education might boost the
country’s economy and its development. The government prospect was to modernize the country
to reduce the gap between China and developing countries. Therefore, China’s economy has
growth at some level, the population incomes was sufficient to seek for a better education for the

cdlxix
children, most parents was so anxious and worried about the future of their children, they would
make everything to give them a better future than theirs. Wealthier families can paid the price to
send their kids in private institution abroad. Then more institutions have been open in urban and
rural area from pre-schools up to the university, vocational etc. Since then, private
education’smovement had been guide by the market of economy, more organizations,
individuals, businessmen or officialsetc. invested in private sector. It became more about
education and market.Nowadays the amount of private institutions rises.China’s economy
improved faster than expected. But still is that the private sectors still have some issues with the
laws and regulations that are sometimes not so clear. The emergence of private schools has in
insight relation between social, political and economic.To what is concerning the private and the
public education all have a lot of opportunities for the academic success.Each sector participates
to the development of the country.
“2010-2020 Reform and Plan for Chinese Education Development promulgated by the Ministry of
Education, the Chinese government will continually focus on the revision of the essential
structure of private education.”(Mun C.T., 2001) more is to come to develop china education
system to enhance and boost to maximize the results, and to reach it aim goal,to more
developed economy strategies and more investors. As China's Deputy Director General of Basic
Education Wang Dinghuasaid "We need to shift from a nation with large human resources to a nation
with strong human resources".
During my research on this topic, I got some questions that makes me think more about the situation of
private education in the future,for knowing that those private institutions will shape a better future life
for a global market of employment, for those students who go to study abroad, will it be easier for them
to come back home and accept earning less money as salary from what they expected? And what will be
the cost for those who went to study abroad and don’t come back to work at home?

References:

Daniel B.W. (2005). The politics of Private Education in Rich and Poor in China. Dissertation
paper retrieved on10-01-2017 at lib.bnu.edu.cn
Deloitte, (2015). Development of Private School& Education industry in China 2015. Open &
integration. Technology Media and Telecommunication retrieved on 13-01-2017 at
www.google.com
Education in China, kpmg.com/cn retrieved online 17-01-2017 at
https://www.kpmg.de/docs/Education-in-China-201011.pdf
Karla S. (2015).Private schools, on the rise of China, are Now in Beijing “Crosshairs”.
Retrieved online 22-01-2017 at http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/private-schools-rise-
china-are-now-beijings-crosshairs
Kenneth Yeo, (2011).Private education a sunrise industry in China. Hong Kong business edition
journal. Retrieved online 05-01-2017 http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/hkedition/2011
01/12/content_11830900.htm
Mun C.T., (2001). School choice in the people’s republic of China. Retrieved online 10-01-2017
at http://www.tc.columbia.edu/faculty/tsang/Files/36.pdf
Peng W., (2001).Private Education Emerges in Modern China. A Comparative case Study.

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Nagoya University of Commerce & Business Administration, library electronic service
Qin H., Zhou X., (2016). Private higher education in China: History, legislation and future.
Retrieved on 05-10-2017 at
http://www.lawyerseducation.co.nz/site/nzlaw/files/ANZELA%202016%Conference%20
papers/[NEW]%2021.%20Qin%20Zhou.pdf
The dawn of private educational & training institutions by King & Wood Mallesons. FDI Group
June 13,2014 website China law insight
The Economist, (March 29,2003). A private matter; Education in China. Beijing Normal
University library links
William C.S., Devin K.J., (2015). Public vs. private schooling as a route to universal basic
education: A comparison of China and India. Retrieved on 09-01-2017 at
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0738059315300195
Wing-Wah Law, Su-Yan Pan. (2008). Game theory and Education policy: Private education
legislation in China retrieved on 10-01-2017 at
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0738059308000412
Wu Hua, (2010). Prospect of Private Education in China.
ZeyuXu, (2002). An Overview of Private Education Development in Modern China. Education
Policy Analysis Archives, Vol. 10 Number 10 October 26,2002 retrieved on 13-01
2017 at http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/download/326.452
www.wikipedia.com
http://mt.sohu.com/20161108/n472611546.shtml

[Title Here, up to 12 Words, on One to

Two Lines]
Department of Comparative Education and Leadership Policy

Chinese History and Culture (Education Systems, Policy and Management in China

Beijing Normal University

January, 20, 2017.

cdlxxi
 Abstract

China is at the crossroads today. It shall either become a great multicultural and multiracial society, or
revert to a compassionless society in which only the dominant Han elites have power and privilege
and in which people are not judged by the content of their character but by their race and culture.
Therefore, this paper aimed at exploring the issues and challengesfacing China’s ethnic minority
policy in education. It accepts the assumption that education through diversity and educating cultural
diversity is the key solution for China ethnic conflicts.
This paper reviewed five articles written by both Chinese and western authors and critics in the field
of minority education using discourse analysis theory. The selection of these articles was randomly
done to see the attitudes of both critics and authors towards Chinese ethnic minority policy. This
paper proposed the statement of the problem as follow: how to protect minorities’ cultures and
languages through bilingual and multicultural education. Based on the reviewed papers and findings
from this study, one contend that adopting multicultural education in China would help in both
ethnic minorities andpolicy makers and officials value and respect minority languages and culture
and help teachers design culturally relevant curricula.
Keywords: ethnic minorities empowerment, ethnic policy, bilingual and Multicultural education.

cdlxxii
 [Title Here, up to 12 Words, on One to Two Lines]

Introduction
Shortly after the establishment of the people Republic of China, the Government launched its ethnic
minority policy with the identification of different ethnic groups within the country. China ‘ethnic groups’
(minzu, 民族) was modified from Stalin’sapproach developed in 1913, under which the criteria have been
increased from 4 to 6 aspects. Under the Official criteria, an ethnic group refers to a group of people
sharing the: common history, common means of production, common Language, common culture,
common custom, and common psychological makeup(Shen &Ou 2007, pp. 41-42). Under the new criteria,
56 ethnic groups have been identified and recognized by the Central Government. The Chinese Han (over
90%) is the majority group and other 55 ethnic groups.
To sustain unity, harmony and stability, an ethnic minority policy has become China’s major domestic
policy. However, ethnic unrest and hostility continue to threaten china stability, with Lhasa (2008),
Urumqi (2009), Shaoguan (2009), and other cities witnessing conflicts, violence and unrest. Thus, China is
at the crossroads today. It shall either become a great multicultural and multiracial society, or revert to a
compassionless society in which only the dominant elites have power and privilege and in which people
are not judged by the content of their character but by their race and culture. Therefore, this paper accepts
the assumption that education through diversity and educating cultural diversity is the key solution for
China ethnic conflicts. This paper analyzed five articles written by both Chinese and western authors and
critics in the field of minority education using discourse analysis theory. The selection of these articles was
randomly done to see the attitudes of both critics and authors towards Chinese ethnic minority policy.
Based on the background and focus above, this paper proposed the statement of the problem as follow:
how to protect minorities’ cultural cultures and languages? How to empower ethnic minorities through
multicultural education? What are the challenges and obstacles that hinder minorities’ education in china?
What are the recommendations that China would benefit from in improving its ethnic minorities policies?
To answer these questions, this paper first reviews the literature that discusses China ethnic minorities
education policy and the challenges it faces over the ethnic minorities issues. Second, recommends steps
required to improve multicultural education for minorities in China to enhance minorities’ educational
outcomes.

Discussion
China’s Ethnic Minority Policy
China minority policy is characterized by its multiculturalism, which is based onConfucius values and
government’s overriding concerns on unity and economic development. Its criteria are ‘Ren’ which
‘implies a paternalistic government whose duty is to look after the weak and the poor’ (He 2005, p.59).
Ethnic minorities are given rights; to self-autonomy, right to representation in Government, right to bear
more children and right ‘to direct economic subsidies from government’
Tim (2009) stated that,‘Most of these policies are top down policies initiated from the Central Government
and could be perceived as the majority Han’s duty to take care of their weaker ethnic minority brothers’
(pp.4-5).

The Chinese government relies on the policy of Ronghe (intermingling) rather than assimilation in its

cdlxxiii
ethnic minority policy. This policy is based on the Confucius values of ‘Harmony with differences’, it
recognizes the cultural differences between the Han and ethnic minorities, while it does not enforce the
compliance of the later to the former (He, 2005. pp.76).

Unity

Despite the dominating influence of Marxism to the Chinese communist party. The PRC Government
abandoned the principal of national self-determination; neither had it adopted the soviet-style multination
federalism. A weaker system of regional autonomy, which is more favorable to the consideration of
national unity, was established instead. Since the beginning of the PRC regime, the state has identified
upholding a ‘unified multi-ethnic state’ and achieving ‘unity among ethnic groups’ (Permanent Mission of
the People’s Republic of China, 1999) as the 2 most priority agenda in its ethnic policy. Indeed, unity
among ethnic minority groups has critical impact to the national security and territorial integrity of the
PRC since most of the ethnic minority groups are distributed in border regions or in remote regions.

Economic Determinism

One of the core values under Chinese multiculturalism is economic determinism. Instead of replacing
ethnic identity of different ethnic group with ‘class consciousness’, Deng Xiaoping, the former leader of
the PRC had successfully unified the ethnic groups together under the shared objective of economic
development. As He (2005) has pointed out, ‘Deng’s theory of modernization requires economic
development to override any consideration of ethnic identity (p.63). Deng’s economic approach to ethnic
minority question was adopted by his successor Jiang Zeming, and then Hu Jintao and currently XiJinping .

China’s Ethnic Policy Under Xi Jinping

Xi Jinping policy was frequently lauds by media for his speeches about the minority issues and
his inspection tours to minority regions were news’s front page. Yet, his intervention has failed to
end the long-running debates over the future of ethnic policies in China. Leibold (2015) pointed
out that Xi “lacks both the authority and political capital to push ethnic policy in the more
assimilationist direction he desires.” (p.7). Moreover, Leibold referred to Xi policy as a
combination of his father ‘XizhongXun’ liberal legacy and the continued influence of his former
secretary general Hu Jintao, as both being too powerful sources for the support of ethnic lobby
and its defense of ethnic pluralism. (P.7)
In a debate over the efficiency of Xi policy over ethnic minority, Ma Hong, Peking University
professor argued that, “China shares same preconditions for national fracturing as the Soviet-
Union.” Whereas, Hu Angang, scholar and professor at Tsinghua University has called for a
“Second generation of ethnic politics.”
As a result, current policies as reformers would agree place too much emphases on ethnic
identities while creating institutional barriers (administrative autonomy, ethnic classification,
ethnic based preferences) that hinder the natural fusion of different groups and a forging of a
strong, shared national identity.
An opponent to the former professors, Professor Yang Shengmin argued that any rethink of
ethnic theory and policy would lead to ‘ideological chaos’ and political and social upheaval.
There are reasons to believe that Xi Jinping is highly sympathetic to the integrationist agenda. He
has consistently stressed the importance of national unity in the context of his “China dream,”

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while remaining largely silent on the place of ethnic autonomy, languages and cultures. He has
resurrected and promoted the “four identifications” ( 四 个 认 同 ), which stresses the affinity of
minorities with the motherland, the Chinese nation/race, Chinese culture and the socialist road
with Chinese characteristics, while promoting a sense of collective belonging through Mandarin–
language instruction and patriotic education in frontier regions. [1] Xi has also stressed the
“equality of everyone before the law” ( 法律面前人人平等 ), rather than the group-differentiated
rights enshrined in the Chinese Constitution (People’s Daily, November 21, 2014; Xinhua, August
28).

The controversial theme of “ethnic mingling” ( 民 族 交 融 ) is now one of the “guiding

principles” ( 提 法 ) of ethnic work under Xi Jinping’s government. Rather than promoting ethnic
diversity, the Party Center stresses residential integration, joint schooling, and increased
interethnic migration and mobility. The concept of ethnic mingling is closely associated with
another leading ethnic policy reformer, the former Executive Director of the United Front Work
Department (UFWD), Zhu Weiqun, who believes mingling is an inevitable social and historical
trend that cannot be resisted (China Brief, June 19, 2014).

Challenges facing Policy Application

According to Yuen Sin Tim China minority policy can be described as hybrid
product of “Confucian paternalism and Marxist economic determinism.” In
order to implement the ‘Ronghe’ policy the government initiate various
political, economic and social measurement to protect the rights and cultures
of ethnic minorities.
These policies are proclaimed to be for the interest of all minorities
(Information office of the state council of the people’s republic of china 2005,
65).Tim stated that these proclaimed policies put for the interests of minorities
are passed without the democratic participation of ethnic minorities in its
initiation. Besides, He (2005) described these policies with paternalistic
nature, as a duty of Han majority to protect their weak ethnic minorities
brothers. (P.59)
According to James Leibold ethnic minority policy has been in state of
constant flux “swinging between the accommodation and protection of ethnic
differences and centralizing integrationist tendencies.” (p.7)
Regional Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities
The controversial policy of ‘Ronghe’ is implemented through the system of regional autonomy for
ethnic minorities. This policy is considered as the realization of the Ronghe policy. Under this
approach or system, local states organs are given the rights such as: certain level of autonomy
over local finance, power to develop the local and written languages. (PermanentMission of the
People Republic of China, 1999, p. 40). Thus, the practice of this policy is characterized by two
features: first, the policy is marked by the precedence of national unity and central authority over
the minority rights. Second, is the integration of ethnic and regional factors and the combination
of political and economic factors. (Permanent Mission of the People Republic of China, 1999,
p.38). Although, ethnic autonomous regions are given special representation rights in the
National People’s Congress (NPC), their representation is criticized for its weak democratic
foundation, and less effectiveness. As He (2005) pointed out:
The fact that 12 percent of seats in the NPC are reserved for minorities
does not guarantee the effective representation of national minorities,
because in most cases, there are no competitive elections for people’s
deputies and minority representatives are ‘hand-picked’ by the Party.
(p.67).

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Education Rights for Minorities
Under the system of regional autonomy of the ethnic minorities, ethnic autonomous areas are
granted the right to develop ethnic education of their own. This includes the right of teaching
minority languages and carry out bilingual teaching in the autonomous region. Besides the
development of diverse education, another main agenda of the PRC Government on ethnic
minority education is to eliminate illiteracy among the young and middle-age population in the
ethnic autonomous regions. The nine-year compulsory education program was universalized in
ethnic autonomous region. Between 1995 – 2000, the central and local government had planned
to provide 10 billion Yuan (Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China, 1999, p.72) for
promoting basic education in the ethnic autonomous regions. However, scale of government
input in promoting education was much smaller in comparison to the economic development in
ethnic minority regions.
Apart from direct investment in education, the Government also encourages the establishment of
public service project such as the ‘Hope Project’ to promote basic education in the ethnic
autonomous areas.
Impacts of minority policy on Ethnic minorities

China’s minority language policies experienced several stages: support of minority

languages in the early and mid-1950s, suppression of minority languages during the late 1950s
and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and tolerance of minority language starting from the
late 1970s (Zhou, 2000, 2004). In the 1950s, the Chinese government established autonomous
governments in minority regions and helped eliminate illiteracy in the minority regions. Both the
Han officials and local minority officials were trained in minority languages (Zhou, 2000).

In spite of governments’ effort in preserving the ethnic minority culture, economic development
(e.g. development of tourism) has resulted in the commercialization of multiculturalism (He, 2005,
p.78), resulting in the ‘vulgarization and fundamental alteration of minority cultures.’ (Ibid., p.78).
Xu and Jin (2008), were also concerned about the risk of marginalization and assimilation of
ethnic minority culture in the rapid process of modernization in China (p. 105)

The Decline of Ethnic Minorities’ Languages

Mandarin Chinese was declared a national language in whole China in 1956 (Rohsenow, 2004;
Zhou, 1999), the provision of Mandarin Chinese starting from Grade three in minority regions (Hu
&Seifman, 1987; Zhou, 2004), and the popularity of Mandarin Chinese because of globalization
and China’s trade relations with the world have created unfavorable positions for minority
languages in China (Zhou & Ross, 2004).

Chinese language has spread among ethnic minorities, an overwhelming number of ethnic
groups such as; Huizu, Manchu, Hezhen, Tujia, Xibe, and She, view Chinese Language as their
language. Other groups such as; Mongolian, Zhuang, Sala, Miao, Yao, Dongxiang, Tu, Baoan
[Bonan], Jiang, Mulao, and Bai) of cadres and ordinary citizens generally use Chinese to
communicate, whereas among other ethnic minorities a majority of educated people and cadres
are familiar with Chinese. Thus, Chinese language becomes a lingua franca, an inter language
between minorities and Han majority and between ethnic minorities who belong to different
languages.According to Ma Rong (2007) Chinese language is no more ‘the Language of majority
Han,’Rong added:

From one end of the country to the other, universal familiarity with Chinese Man-
darin [Hanyuputonghua] is a major trend in the development of society—not a
transformation moved forward by human will, but something that will certainly
happen sooner or later. (p.10)

To Ma Rong, the importance of Mandarin Chinese what is called ： ‘汉语普通话’ 汉 语 普 通 话’ ’ is for all

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people of China, Rong referred to the spread of dialects even among the Han majority which may
hinder communication between the Han Chinese themselves. Mandarin Chinese is a
requirement in job applications. Furthermore, the number of people learning Chinese is
increasing outside China, including students and those involved in diplomacy, trade and foreign
researches conducted in China besides the Chinese migrants in the 5 continents.

Since the creation of the People Republic of China in 1949, and based on the usefulness of
languages and language development, the Chinese government had passed different policies to
protect the languages of Minorities. One of the strategies that Chinese government followed is
helping ethnic minorities whose languages have no written manuscript to develop their own
languages. So, governments had created written systems for ten ethnic minorities. this policy to
Rong (2007) is shortsighted when it comes to ‘long- term language development.’ (p.11)

In a study conducted in Inner-Mongolia by Ma Rong (2007) to observe the usefulness of the

created written system in dealing with the challenges faced by language users. The results were
in one direction, that is, there were a large number of Mongolian learning Chinese, whereas, few
Han were learning Mongolian. The same result was discovered in Lhasa in Tibet, where many
Tibetans spoke fluent Chinese, yet no Han Chinese spoke Tibetan. Although, Chinese and
Tibetan were considered official languages, the most used language of communication was
Chinese. This phenomenon showed the practical value shifting in language utilization in social
interactions that involved Chinese language such as health, education, trade, culture and
science. In another study carried out earlier by Ma Rong 1985 in Tibet showed that less than half
of the Tibetan people spoke their language (Tibetan) whereas the rest which represent almost
the whole population spoke fluent Chinese. Rong (2007) concluded his study by the statistics of
language utilization in china by ethnic minorities. He stated:

Of the fifty-five ethnic minorities in China, one-third function in Chinese as

well as in their own language, six of the nationalities have converted
mainly or entirely to using Chinese, and a majority of the members of forty
of the nationalities can use Chinese as a second language. (P.12)

In the above quotation one can recognize the dominance of the Chinese language and the
decline in the utilization of ethnic minorities languages. Consequentially, this spread of Chinese
language utilization among minorities over their mother tongues will resulted in both language
and culture decline.

XieQihuang and Sun Ruoqiong (1991) had emphasized the importance of bilingual education
and the compatibility of Chinese and ethnic minorities languages in science and economic
development for ethnic minorities. They stated:

[…] based on the actual extent to which Chinese is used by each of the various
nationalities, use of Chinese as the medium of educational instruction or
implementation of bilingual education using both Chinese and the minority
language can both be considered scientific and enlightened alternatives. . . . The
future economic development and prosperity of minority peoples, particularly in
relation to reform, openness, and moving toward modernization, is linked to the
extent to which they have mastered Chinese. (P. 114)

Besides helping minorities developing their language and culture, learning the Chinese language
would introduce them to the globalized world and push them towards modernization. XieQihuang
and Sun Ruoqiong (1991) focused on the language of instruction as being both Chinese and
minorities languages. That is, these two languages should not be favored one over the other, or
neglected. They emphasized that:

Educational instruction in the minority language and educational

instruction in Chinese should not be mutually exclusive or replace

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 one another, but rather, they should complement and reinforce
each other. . . . The two must be emphasized equally, without
favoring one over the other or showing bias. (p.114).

Rong (2007) had pointed out the priority for ethnic minorities to learn both their languages and
Chinese as a response to some scholars who had suggested the priority for learning ethnic
minorities languages and English rather than Chinese. He said:

[…] for purposes of providing basic education to the masses,

priority should be given to learning their own ethnic languages
and Chinese, which is the interethnic common language of
China’s peoples and the language that the broad masses of
minority students will find most widely applicable and most
beneficial in daily life and work after they have graduated from
primary and secondary school. (p.13).

One should not neglect the importance of Chinese as a national language and a mean of
interethnic social interaction. Therefore, this paper aimed at researching solutions and strategies
to restore the language of ethnic minorities which is a tool for acquiring language and developing
self knowledge and understanding of the world from Minorities perspectives. Moreover, restoring
ethnic minorities languages is a way to protect their heritage and culture.

The theme of language loss is common in different multiethnic countries in the world.
Taking the example of the States’ Native-Americans and African-Americans who have almost
lost their languages.

Issues Regarding Bilingual Education in China

The main issues and challenges facing bilingual education in China is the lack of materials
and qualified teachers of ethnic minorities languages. Zhou Wangyun(1989) pointed out to the
importance of creating appropriate teaching materials and providing qualified teachers for the
success of bilingual education, “The two instructional systems that coexist within bilingual
education, particularly where the approach emphasizes the minority language, must be
developed at a pace that matches the creation of appropriate teaching materials and recruitment
of appropriate teaching talent” (Zhou Wangyun 1989, 31)

The Tibetan efforts in developing appropriate materials in Tibetan language started earlier. In a
long process and tiring efforts intranslating different subjects from Chinese to Tibetan, is one of
the examples in ethnic minorities bilingual education development.By the year 1990s, Tibet had,
for the first time in its history, a complete set of instructional materials for primary and secondary
schools compiled in their language. However, having instructional materials in Tibetan language
does not solve the problem of quality education.

Rong (2007) describe the great difficulty that minorities or even Chinese government officials
might face in trying to translate several teaching materials in subjects such as chemistry, biology,
math...etc. to minorities languages. Rong stated that,

Compiling complete sets of such materials for other minorities that

were smaller and live dispersed over wide areas would not only be
questionable in terms of practicality but would also be problematic
with regard to inputs of time and human capital. (p.13)

In order to compile such materials Chinese government ethnic policy officials concerned with
ethnic education development wouldat first train scholars and effective teachers from ethnic
groups, so that they would take charge of compiling and editing the materials.The efforts done

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over the past years have resulted in training few effective teachers for some of the minorities,
‘but this still falls short of the high standards of modern educational development.’ (Rong, 2007,
p. 20)

Another factor that affects the quality of teaching in minority languages is the lack of an adequate
number of minority teachers, especially for mathematics, physics, and chemistry. As a result,
even if there are proper materials, the problem of minority-language instruction will still not be
completely solved. A good teacher must have an in-depth understanding of the materials and
deep experience in classroom teaching and motivation. This can happen if teachers are backed
by an advanced degree and training that meets the needs and norms of the profession. The
quality of teaching staff among all the minorities needs to be raised as quickly as possible.

However, language policies have many discrepancies in applying the ethnic minorities law
concerning language teaching. Zhou (2000)described the dramatic effects of language policies
on language use in Tibet such as the unqualified teachers. He stated, “teachers who cannot
speak Tibetan can teach in Tibetan schools and those who can speak Tibetan are not qualified
to teach in Tibetan schools. (cited in Wang &Phillion, 2009, p.5). Moreover, Zhou (2000)depicted
the attitudes of Han officials as, “what is stipulated by law is often undermined by practices of
local Han officials whose stereotypical and discriminative views have a negative impact on the
enactment of official policy about minority culture and language.” (Ibid, p.5)

Furthermore, Nima (2001) found that some local Han officials in minority regions interpret
minority language and culture as “backwardness” and Han language and culture as “civilization,”
even though Article 53 in the PRC Regional Autonomy Law for Minority Nationalities in 1984
states, “Autonomous government should encourage officials and masses of all ethnic groups to
respect each other’s languages and scripts.” (Ibid, p. 5).

Ma Rong (2007) stated that the wishes of the masses concerning the choice of language of
instruction among minority people should be taken in consideration. The results of studies done
in this concern in Tibet were what LiuQinghui(1989) found,

When it comes to the education of their own children, however,

they refuse to enroll them in classes given in Tibetan, doing
whatever it takes to enroll them in classes conducted in Chinese
or in schools that are in China proper [. . .] The main reason for
this is that in actual work situations the Tibetan language imposes
certain limitations. (cited in Rong 2007, p. 20)

The job limitation for speakers of Tibetan language or other minorities’ languages is due to
globalization and the domination of Chinese language in all social interaction in Han majority
region as well as minorities autonomous regions. Rong in a research conducted earlier in 1996
about language choice reported that: “Parents who were hoping that their children could attend
classes conducted in Chinese and felt unhappy about the fact that the government was forcing
ethnic Tibetan students to attend classes conducted in the Tibetan language.” (Rong, 2007,
p.21).

Rong (2007) explanation of parents and masses preference of Chinese over their minorities
languages, and the priority of taking by their choices in education is not a solution for
empowering ethnic minorities education. The reasons behind language choice is the poverty of
minorities families, and the unclear future of education in their languages. Rong 2007 concluded,

The importance of having the minority students get a firm mastery

of standard Chinese, and it is made clear that the most important
and useful language for the future modernization of the country
and for the students’ own individual development is definitely
Chinese. This way of stating it, however, overlooks the disparity in

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 practicality among the languages of our more than fifty minority
groups; these are terms that are too absolute. (p.22)

Consequentially, discouraging bilingual education from policy makers and government’s officials
and the stereotypes about ethnic minorities languages are obstacles towards bilingual education.
Therefore, developing education among ethnic minorities is based on multiculturalist education.
One believe that to examine China’s minority language policy and practice to discover the
discrepancies between its minority policy and practice and to take measures to protect minority
groups’ language rights is a duty for Chinese government to save its minorities languages and
cultures and avoid ethnic unrest and conflicts in its borders.

Multicultural Education in China

Culture plays a very special role within communities’ interaction. Culture represent a
specific field of activities, including language and heritage protection. Culture encourage
creativity particularly in the cultural industries, moreover, it facilitates mutual understanding
through intercultural dialogue. Whereas, language plays a role of culture and heritage protection.

Cultural diversity has emerged as a key concern at the turn of a new century. Some
scholars predictthat globalization and the liberalization of the goods and the world market will
lead to cultural standardization, reinforcing existing imbalances between cultures. Therefore,
cultural diversity is posing a challenge to the principles of international cooperation and to some
to contest universally recognized human rights.

Thus, every country and every nation in the world seeks to minimize ethnic unrest and rivalry and
conflict between various groups within its borders. Each country tries to maintain an adherence
to the notion that all citizens share common humanity, needs, hopes and fears regardless of their
colors, races, languages and religious beliefs. Therefore, multicultural education seeks to
facilitate and advance this common human bond rather than the alternate practice of bigotry,
stereotyping and ethnocentrism. (UNESCO World report, 2009).

Multiculturalism is a concept that needs the attention of all groups in a multiracial and multiethnic society,
such as China. Multiculturalism is important even within one homogenous or cultural group. The idea is
about ending the stigma and endemic devaluation of all peoples, classes and groups (Pai, 1990). We must
not perpetuate notions of superiority or inferiority among our school age population. Multiculturalism is
about challenging everyone academically, ending segregated programs, valuing differences and
recognizing all cultures as significant in the mainstream curriculum. Wang and Phillion (2009) indicated
that there was a critical need for multicultural education in China. They contended that a large gap existed
between China’s ethnic minority policy and practices. They further stated that the provisions in the
Constitution of the Peoples’ Republic of China with regard to minority rights are not implemented in the
daily lives of minority groups. These researchers asserted that the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party)
control of all institutions in China propagated dominant Han ideologies and reproduced dominant Han
culture as ways to maintain national unity. Therefore, multiculturalism in China has its own distinct
characteristic, tolerance of minority cultures and languages on the condition that they do not damage
national stability and national unity.

Multicultural education contains possibilities for China’s majority Han population and members of the 55
other nationalities to be both conscious and proud of their country and their ethnicity, race, or culture all at
the same time. It is difficult to understand the intricacies of multicultural education especially in a country
with 5,000 years of recorded history and with a population consisting of 90% Han and 55 nationalities.

Conclusion

China has an exceptional minority policy that could be considered as a hybrid product of Confucian
paternalism and Marxist economic determinism. The practice of ethnic regional autonomy could
be perceived as the means to uphold the Confucian principal of ‘Harmony with Difference’, which

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is designed to minimize the conflict between the Han and the ethnic minorities – which would
hence facilitate national unity. Although Chinese government attempted to override ethnic
group’s identities by uniting all ethnic groups under the common goal of development, Yet, the
lack of democratic practice together with the absence in effective monitoring system has greatly
undermined the effectiveness of ethnic regional autonomous practice. Legislative rights
guaranteed to ethnic minorities are always ignored or violated when coming into practice. In
addition, rapid economic development in the ethnic autonomous area has resulted in widespread
social and economic inequalities, which provides the breeding ground for social instability,
spread of separatism as well as hatred between the ethnic minorities and Hans in the ethnic
autonomous areas.

Western attitudes towards Chinese ethnic policy are negative. Yet, ethnic minorities in these western
countries have almost lost their languages, the case of aboriginal languages in Australia or Native-
American languages in America. Still, the worst situation is the total assimilation of African-Americans
into the mainstream white culture and the total annihilation of African languages brought over during the
slavery trade. Nowadays African Americans (100%) speak English and none knows any African language.

As a result, there is an urgent need for the Chinesegovernment to reform its multicultural practice
as to uphold national unity and harmony within the state.At the same time, ethnic minorities as well
should work for improving their languages and methodologies in preserving their culture and heritage,
same like the example of Tibet. Therefore, otherethnic minorities can and will have all these privileges like
the Tibetan too, provided they should involve and work for themselves other than only depending on the
Han in taking care of them.

Footnotes:
1. In fact, at the 6th Tibetan Work Forum, Xi added a fifth identification, the Chinese Communist
Party, thereby making the term his own (see People’s Daily, August 26).

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cdlxxxii
 References

Banks, J. A. (1988). Multiethnic education: Theory and practice(2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Banks, J. A., & McGee, C. A. (1989). Multicultural education. Needham Heights, M. A.: Allyn & Bacon.

He, B. (2005). Minority rights with Chinese characteristics. In Kymlicka, W. Multiculturalism in

Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hinton, S. (2011). Ethnic Diversity, National Unity and Multicultural Education in China. US-China
Education Review A: Education Practice, 1(10), 726–739.

Kennedy, K. J., Phillion, J., & Hue, M. (2000). Educational Provision for Ethnic Minority Students in
Hong Kong: Meeting the Challenges of the Proposed Racial Discrimination Bill.

Rong, M. (2007). Bilingual Education for China’s Ethnic Minorities. Chinese Education & Society, 40(2),
9–25.

Tim, Y. S. (n.d.). Ethnic Minority Policy of People ’ s Republic of China An overview.

Wang, Y., &Phillion, J. (2009). Minority Language Policy and Practice in China: The Need for
Multicultural Education. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 11(1), 1–14.

Wood,P.(2015). China Conducts Anti-Terror Cyber Operations With SCO Partners, 16.

UNESCO. (2009). Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural dialogue.UNESCO World Report.

Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2005), Regional
autonomy for ethnic minorities in China, retrieved January 01, 2017 from
http://www.gov.cn/english/official/2005-07/28/content_18127.htm

Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China (1999). White Paper 1999: Ethnic
Minorities Policy in China. Retrieved January 01, 2017 from
http://www.china-un.org/eng/gyzg/xizang/t420274.htm

BEIJING NORMAL UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

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COURSE: CHINESE HISTORY AND CULTURE (EDUCATION SYSTEM,
POLICY AND MANAGEMENT)

RESEARCH TOPIC: EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGES IN MINORITY

RIGIONS OF CHINA (A CASE STUDY OF THE ETHNIC MINORITY)
PRIMARY SCHOOLING
PRESENTED BY:
ID: 201629010065

SUBMITTED TO: PROFESSOR SANG GUOYUAN

JANUARY 8, 2017

Abstract
Education in Ethnic minorities regions has become a national concern as to how to provide
quality of education to ensure better and quality educational lifestyle of minority group. The
minority tribes of china covers 60% of the total landscape of China including major border
areas especially with Rusia and India, and with this, the government is obligated to putting
security measures to control its border (Snavely 2004).
This paper is intended to research educational challenges with specific emphasis on Ethnic
Minorities, and to contribute to other researcher’s work which will greatly enhance the
progress that had been made. The research questions which were investigated are: What are
the challenges faced by minority education in China? What are the negative impacts of
inadequate funding to minority education? What factors can be instituted to reduce minority
educational challenges?
This study employed qualitative research method specifically the use of document analysis to

cdlxxxiv
analyze educational challenges in Ethnic Minority in China. After the review and analysis, it
is recommended that quality and easy access to education be a priority to the Chinese
government to eliminate poverty amongst the minority children. Empowering the minorities
and matching them with the job market will give more compliments to China and will be
recognized for a great historic making.
Keywords: China, Ethnic Minority, Challenges, Education, Language, Curriculum

Introduction:
Purpose to this study is to understand the balance between the Hans and the Minority
when it comes to their educational distributions
The rationale behind this research is to understand how China administers the affairs of their
educational system with specific emphasis on primary education. The aim is to gain another
idea on China success(s) when it comes to the provision of education to the minorities which
could be a copy model for me applying it upon return. Being a Liberian, and working with
the Ministry of Education in my country, as county staff in the field of monitoring and
evaluation, working in minority district of school zones, It is same in my country that
minority kids, do not have easy access to quality of education. The reason to which others are
marginalized is highly politicized based on decision always been influenced and continue to
remain at the top level. It is a pity that in the twenty first century, many rural kids are denied
of educational rights and will end up being illiterate, having no voice or contribution to their
country.
Significance of the study: To understand the Impact of China’s 9 years of Compulsory
Education Law on the lives of Ethnic Minorities Students. Taking into account the usage of
curriculum and language of instruction, and the challenges that the minorities are faced with
when it comes to their educational attainment. This study will guide policy makers to revisit
previous policy concerning minority language of instruction in the interest of meeting up with
the demands of minority language being used as language of instruction. This research could
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be another project that I could explore working on upon return by writing a proposal to the
Ministry of Education of the Republic of Liberia, that key attention be added on eliminating
discrimination and social injustice to the minorities. That the ministry of education and its
stakeholders in China will take into account the future of Ethnic Minorities very cardinal.

Research questions:
What are the challenges faced by Minority Education in China?
What are the negative impacts of inadequate funding to Minority Education?
What factors can be instituted to reduce Minority Educational Challenges?
Methodology
This research employed the qualitative research method specifically with the use of document
analysis to analyze articles and published work on Ethnic Minorities in China educational
attainment. Numerous articles and books related to education inequality in the minority
regions of China was reviewed and climaxed to discuss and analyze the educational
distribution in China. In the review process, secondary data of tables representing the
disparity of education between the Hans and Minority were where taken into account, which
gives a broader explanation of education inequality of China giving specific ratio and
percentage.
“China is a unified country with multi-nationalities, and besides the Han Nationality, there
are 55 other nationalities with a population of 104.5 million, which accounts for about 8.41
percent of the total population” (National Bureau of Statistic, 2001 pg 1). These 55
nationalities in the ethnic regions are designated officially in China as minorities, referred to
as Shaoshu Minzu in Chinese who are deprived and live in poor and disadvantage conditions.
(Clothey, 2005 pg 1). The minority tribes of china covers 60% of the total landscape of China
including major border areas especially with Rusia and India, and with this, the government
is obligated to putting security measures to control its border (Snavely 2004).
In the late 1950s, among the total number of students in institutions of higher learning,
secondary and primary schools, those of Ethnic Minority origins accounted for only 0.9%,
0.4%. and 0.2% respectively (Chen, 1999).
Modernization had taken over many organic forms in China with the conglomeration of

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different ethnic groups during its two thousand years of historical development from the
dynasty period according to (Fei, 1989). What I do believe and argue is the name “Han
Chinese” was not given to a single group of people but due to the merger and re-merger of
other Ethnic groups including some minority tribes that gathered into a large ‘organic whole’
that became popular and resided in most prosperous regions from the olden days till the
industrial period. The Han language usage is a political ideology which had extended beyond
its bound that dominates the entire china that even the language of instruction continues to
control as a means of building a national identity and unity.
The minority regions are yet to harvest the flourishing of China’s economic growth and
access to quality of education and entertainment rates for minority children that are
amazingly low in academic performance (UNICEF, 2012). I argue that the wealth of China to
be distributed and enjoy by the minority is still a dream to come through in the life of the
ethnic minorities. My opinion to this is, until power can be share the harvest will be reap,
because power is the strength that man holds to decide the faith of every human kind.
Furthermore, power determines your better living standard, and it gives command to the one
that it favors.
When quality of education is provided across a country, it gives no doubt of benefiting the
minority including the disable, and girls as well (Clarke & Jha 2006). Education is the
doorway for every community and society to improve and develop. In line with this
presumption, UNESCO (2009) I argue that countries invest in education to help build a
diverse and inclusive knowledge society as well as to advance research, innovation and
creativity. Education helps people celebrate diversity and regards cultural and ethnic
multiplicity as strength rather than a criterion for discrimination and social intolerance.
Inkeles and Holsinger elaborated in their modernization theory looking at school as a key
context of modernization, taking education to be one of the important tools that a society can
use to better governed its citizens in modern, large-scale, and complex social order (Inkeles
and Holsinger 2001 pg 4)

Educational attainment for people (age 6 and over) by gender and types of regions, 1990

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 Han Minority
Population Male Female Population Male Female
Illiteracy 20.6% 12.7% 29% 29.9% 21% 39.2%
Completion of 6
yrs sch 42.3% 43.2% 41.3% 43.5% 46.7% 40.1%
Completion of 9
Yrs sch 26.5% 31.3% 21.5% 18.8% 22.8% 14.6%
Completion of 12
Yrs of sch. 9% 10.7% 7.3% 6.8% 8.1% 5.4%
Completing 13
Or more yrs of coll. 1.6% 2.2% 1% 1.1% 1.4% 0.7%
__________________________________________________________________________________
___

Source: State Statistical Bureau, Tabulation on the 1990 Population Census of the People’s
Republic of China
Educational attainment for people (age 6 and over) by gender and types of regions, 1996
Type 1 regions Type 4 regions
Population Male Female Population Male Female
Illiterate 8.2% 3.7% 12.5% 20% 12.3% 28.1%
Completion of
6 yrs Sch 23.8% 23.8% 23.8% 43.5% 44.4% 42.6%
Completion of 9
yrs sch 35.2% 37.7% 32.7% 26.4% 31.2% 21.4%
Completion of 12
Yrs sch 22.5% 22.5% 22.5% 8.2% 9.7% 6.7%
Completion of 13
Or more yrs coll. 10.3% 12.2% 8.5% 1.9% 2.4% 1.3%
__________________________________________________________________________________
___

Source: State Statistical Bureau, China Statistical yearbook 1997

Note: Type 1 region includes Beijing, Tianjing, and Shanghai, Type 4 regions includes Gansu, Guangxi,
Guizhou, Haina, Inner Mongolia, Jianxi, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shannxi, Tibet, Yunnan (for details see
Wang, Du and Liu, an analysis of the Unbalance Development of Chinese Education

However, the education system in China still faced many challenges and complexities
especially in rural and minority regions. Rong & Shi, argues that educational distribution had
not been equal between most urban and rural areas in China. With the educational
expenditures as a percentage of GDP still remained at a low level than 2.4% through the
1990s (Rong & Shi 2001 pg 14). I believe and argue that the disparity between the two
segments in economic and social development is base on their historical, geographical
location and socio-cultural differences. By this I mean that the expenditures distribution per

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capital were other regions were prioritized and more focus on development and infrastructure
building was somehow political.
Additional reasons for which education in the ethnic minority region still lags far behind
providing quality of educational services is also base on its policy provision and the
implementation process (Yang & Wu 2009 pg 1). I agree and argue that policy making and
implementation plays a very key role in every society, because if policy is made and the
implementation is weak there still remains a problem, my opinion to this is that, the
implementation should matter equally as well as the development where monitoring and
evaluation could become very cardinal to watch over stakeholders in charge of delivery.
According to Yang and Wu (2009), in their “Education for Minority article” it stated that in
order for ethnic minority regions to excel in education and development wise, there should be
special measures put in place that will properly guide China’s Ethnic Minority educational
system to treat every aspect differently by setting up goals, contents, approaches and
evaluation. Also, special attention should be paid to textbooks of ethnic languages, culture,
and training of ethnic teachers, as a result that school can be build according to various needs
of their local ethnic situations. In addition that the minority textbooks be printed in their own
languages, and the lesson be taught in those languages, and the mandarin language be offered
at special time for their own development (Yang & Wu 2009 pg 3). However, such privileges
are base on the following legal regulation which include organs of self government of
autonomous areas which determine the educational plan, the establishment of schools, school
system, the form by which schools are run, curricula, language of teaching and method. I
believe that education provided by people of such category, consideration of their local
language be taken into account that the minorities will create more interest in their education.
Generally, language is key to any learning process specifically Primary Education. At the
primary level of education (if language be considered and taught), it will bring out more
potential and retention for grade level students. It will be an easy process for minority
students to challenge every examination that comes their way.
Ethnic minority children constantly need to initiate a process of negotiating to deal with
conflicting sets of norms. The lack of representation of ethnic cultural traditions in school
curriculum prevents ethnic cultural traditions from being carried forwards. There is an urgent
need for more recognition of ethnic cultures as an integrated part of the Chinese culture, not
only at the legal level, but more importantly by education policy makers (Kelly, 2002, pg 12).
By this I mean that the minority culture is what they believe in and hold to, notwithstanding

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education policy makers should incorporate cultural traditions in school curriculum to create
more interest for learning.
The fundamental idea in the standardize curriculum projects the message that “China is a
unified, glorious country with a great past, an uncertain but improving present and brighter
future’’(Postiglione, 1999 pg 3). The idea was to promote unity among Chinese but the
national curriculum policy downplays the identity and culture of Ethnic Minority, which had
cause some practical problems in locality of the minorities. Some of the problem cause is that
minority student feel self- degraded when they see no reference in their culture and history of
school materials. When the minority students find no interest that makes them proud of being
a person of their own nationality, they lose attention of schooling and drop from school. And
this is one of the main course(s) of high dropout rate among the minority groups at the
primary level. I believe and argue that if the national curriculum had taken into account the
language of minority and identify their culture and history to be placed in the curriculum, the
number of dropout could had been reduce then increasing. Moreover taken into consideration
placing minority language as means of instruction will enhance retention at the primary level
of learning.
The difficulties that the minority students go through in facing exams is that, portion of
mandarin language is placed into their exam to test their mandarin proficiency, and these
exams are group into stages qualifying student to entering Junior High and from Junior to
Senior High, and it gives another serious setback to student passing the Mandarin because it
is not their spoken language of their region and with this linguistic minority students faced
serious challenges of excelling to secondary level (Postiglione 1999 pg 2). My position to
this is that the Chinese government taking into account the language of the minority will
create more awareness and excitement for education, because sociologically looking at their
region, and culture, their language is what they respect and value. And giving them that
opportunity will decrease the illiteracy rate and development will also follow. They will value
and embrace education as a change agent in their society, then always educating them in a
language that they do not understand and have no interest of learning.
Language Guidelines and Minority struggle in China
The Chinese law grants the minority language equal with mandarin language, but historically
speaking there is unequal distribution in the political and economic development of the
country (Sangay, 1998 pg 4). I argue along with Sangay that, if the Minority language is
consider equal with Mandarin, why is it that their curriculum isn’t printed in the language that

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they best understand, but instead allow the mandarin to dominate in every aspect of the
Chinese society? More to this, I see this law only on the (surface and not really in practice),
because a law gives one an authority to take on responsibility.
Recognizing the Chinese Government passage of Regional Minority Law in 1984 articles 36,
37, that stipulates that textbooks, and curriculum printing be relevant to minority language
follow by teaching and examination be given to minority students in their native languages,
however, this rarely occurs in practice (Sangay, 1998 pg 2). I believe and argue that it would
be a privileged for minority students to have access to education if this law can fully be
implemented at the regional levels. In the absence of this, minority students will always be
underrepresented in every aspect of their primary to secondary education and at the
University at large.
The policy of China towards its ethnic minority culture has always been criticized for being
unbalanced in terms of representations of ethnic minority cultures (Gladney, 1999). I agree
and argue along with Gladney that, the criticism of the policy is because the document is only
written and negatively influence at the implementation level where decision makers still
remain at the top and decide the faith of the ethnic minorities. The criticizing will continue to
live with china until the policy can affect the lives of the minorities rights.
Along this line, one contemporary Chinese scholar advocates a dialect between unity and
diversity in China’s ethnic education policy (Teng, 1996). However, the dialect has not been
well reflected in policy, and even less in practice. I agree and argue that the oversight of
policy implementation relating to the minority culture rights had brought great decline in the
minority regions when it comes to educational attainment and development wise. I see this as
a challenge to the minority when policy isn’t reaching to the end user.
Despite differences in many develop and developing countries, there is a consensus through
examining the global agenda on Millennium Development Goals and the current Sustainable
Development Goals that education is a linked to economic development and a means for
empowering the disadvantaged groups in the society. Both global agendas focus on ending
poverty at all levels and in all forms in the world. In both cases, education is cited as a
vehicle for breaking the vicious cycles of poverty which deprives people of human dignity
(Nigan, 2015; Singh & Rana cited Siaw (2009). I agree and argue that education reach out to
the under privilege group that poverty will be eliminated at all level in every part of the
world. The weapon one can use in eradicating poverty is education which will involve the
participation of every citizen demonstrating their right to learn. The goal is to balance the gap

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between the majorities and minorities, rich and poor, etc. education should be consider key
because it opens one eyes to development and socialization.

Literature review:
Educational rights to every child
Education is one of the key approaches to ensure children’s right to development, and it
should be accessible for all children, positively contributing to their development (Yang,
Yinfu 2014 pg). Protecting the rights of children and placing their education as a priority is
very key for very environment, for the reason that if protection is given to a child, free
movement as a value will be attached to that society. It is true that education should be
accessible to every child across a nation including minority group. While it is true that
educational needs and distribution maybe equally disseminated, the issue of equity is also
very important to consider. This paper clarifies that, the minority regions that are still
struggling with acquiring quality of education at the primary level, where language of
instruction is the main problem to be addressed, the lack of trained language teachers, and
translation of curriculum be given keen attention placing their education as a main concern.
Furthermore, that the minority should receive equal portion of the nation’s budget that will
work best to solve their educational problems.
President Xi Jinping acknowledges integrating of all Chinese that every child be offered an
opportunity of better life, and to live their dreams and prosper together with their country.
Living a prosperous life depends fully on education that is acquired by a person (Yinfu 2014
pg 7). My position to this paper is that, education nurtures the heart of every human being
and pursue everlasting endeavor. Education brings change to a society and opens many doors,
and it changes one’s destiny and its importance. I believe that if education is a change agent
pronounced by the Chinese President, then why many other regions such as the minorities are
not fully benefiting from such an opportunity? Are they going to live expected dreams and
prosper? My position to this is that every regions of China receive equal treatment when it
comes to their education, economic, and social development that there should be no
imbalance that causes other regions to be far ahead when it comes to development attainment.
And I think one of the strategic that should be put in place is to measure the level of
development in other regions and prioritize less develop regions.
Educational laws to guarantee minority education
The educational law of China guarantees every Child 9 years of compulsory education, while

cdxcii
the same government that agrees is limited by its economic and societal influences to
providing education across the country. Meaning that the Chinese government is limited in
resources to provide education across the country (Postiglione 1999 p2). This paper points
out that, the limitation of schools, trained teachers, curriculum guides, and better
infrastructures among the minorities is not actually base on limited resources, but the main
contributing factor is the bureaucratic process of Chinese Communist Party, that decision
making and implantation still remain at the top level which had deprived the minorities the
right to education and denied them of fully participating in the state decision making process.
In my mind if they were capture earlier by providing them education as compare with the
Hans regions, and other develop parts of china, they could have stand a better chance
developing their regions and creating more opportunities for younger ones to follow, instead
they were previously deprived of their educational rights forgetting to know that China
doesn’t belong only to the Hans but for all citizens that is capture under the People’s Republic
of Chinese.
An effective national student aid system has been established to ensure that no child drops out
of school for economic reasons. The main thought was to ensure compulsory education is
available to all children, which rural students were exempted from fees payment since 2006,
that benefited 48.8 million students and bringing about 200,000 thousand dropout back to
school (Yinfu, 2014 pg 2). My opinion to this is that the problem among the minorities is not
solely based on economic reasons of the family, it is because of the down play of the minority
language been placed in the curriculum which had gotten the minorities lost interest in going
to school. Their idea is that they are not Han Chinese (mandarin speaking group), and they
want to be taught in their minority language which they find more strength in doing things.
Since the declaration of “fundamental freedom for all without distance as to race, sex,
language, or religion” in the United Nations Charter in 1945 (some articles of which are
reprinted in Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 1994), the call for recognition of language and
cultural rights, particularly for minority or nondorminant groups within a country, has
attracted more and more support in various domains in different countries (Nunan & Lam,
1998 pg 13). I agree and along with Nunan & Lam that language and cultural rights should be
taken in consideration of the minorities. Moreover, for the minority receiving education in
their own language with the curriculum translated, while trained language teachers are send
to manage the affairs of school, will give them more strength in encouraging their children to
education.

cdxciii
Bilingual language as a means of instruction
Given that literacy is essential for achieving the goals of state schooling, scholars in China
advocated bilingual education for minority students (Lin, 1997). By this I mean that
maintaining teaching in minority language, students is essential for the development of their
intellectual ability, particularly for those living in remote areas that have little contact with
Han culture and who speak only their own native language. it will serves as an opportunity
for those living in remote areas with limited access to acquire education.
Scholars argue that bilingual education would build a bridge between home and school, and
could increase attendance and retention, and strengthen socialization into national ideologies
(Postiglione, 1999, Lin, 1997; Bass, 1998 pg 5). As scholars argue that socialization process
had not always resulted into obtaining national unity, while it is true that minorities had right
over their own language, regional and local officials who are mostly Han Chinese decide on
the usage of language and language of instruction. With this one sided decision in China, it
makes it difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the bilingual education programs in
minority’s areas. I believe that two languages taught in primary schools might at least
enhance positive impact on the lives of minorities, because it could be another way that they
will receive education and value it, in the absent of deciding on their stand for education they
will always be at the receiving end where policy might not always favor them.
Some pragmatic adjustments, however, could be made to create opportunities for minority
students to better engage in bilingual learning and demonstrate their academic capabilities in
examination. For example, translation of high-stakes examination paper into the minority Yi
language proved useful in the Yi region Sichuang (She & Luo, 2001 pg 278). I agree along
with Shen & Luo that, this practice has clear potential for enhancing bilingual education in
china, as minority languages are given equal status as to mandarin language, and purposely
for empowering learners, because, they are given the chance to exercise some degree of
control of their environment.
No matter how challenging it might cost, sufficient opportunity should be created for the
minority children to develop adequately linguistic competence in their home language and
knowledge of their own culture so that they can affirm their identity and become cognitively
and socio-culturally competent. Only on this basis can minority children avoid ‘cultural
discontinuity’ (Ma & Xaiao, 2002 pg 277). By this I mean that, it is true that there will be
some difficulties of providing bilingual education to the minority due to financial attachment,
but more emphasis should be put in place that the minority will develop some level of

cdxciv
proficiency of their own cultural language, and the minority language could served as an
added advantage of them taking examinations. In the absence of this the problems still
remain.
It is very important for minority groups to keep their language as teaching language in
schools. “Schooling is the principal institution which produces ethnicity as linguistic
community” (Balibar, 1996 pg 7). I mean this by, providing education in language creates
more awareness to learning environment. Moreover, the traditional perspective of the
minority is by giving them education in their mother tone which will be highly appreciated
and accepted.
According to Gang Guo research (2007) from Asian survey, Primary education being the
foundation to every learning process should not be overlook but prioritized. In that, education
is often regarded as the ultimate equalizer, creating opportunities for better employment and
income. Moreover, primary to secondary schooling, and professional education system are
especially beneficiary for poverty alleviation because they mostly educate local people and
thus accumulate human capital for years to come. Besides, the sheer need for primary
education in minority regions for example: the number of school –age children may be
greater due higher average of fertility rate. (Gang Guo 2007, ). My position along with Gang
Guo that, in rural areas the fertility rate is high where many children are eager to schooling,
more attention should be placed on primary education, because it is the base line to acquiring
knowledge that prepares one’s ability to comprehend the subject matter. In this light, extra
focus and resources should be added on preparing primary school kids especially the minority
environment and the poorest communities who could serve as future leaders to the society.
As education becomes more widespread, human believe and value school attendance against
the probability that schooling will lead children to becoming cadre or stakeholders that could
pursuit higher education and develop into decision making. (Du 2006 pg 105). By this I
mean that, it is true that education is widespread by Du (2006), but I do see spreading and
providing in a different perspective. In this line my position to this is that, by it being
widespread, “is it provided or distributed accordingly”? Furthermore, education to be
distributed equally that the minority will have their portion to share. In this light, when
distribution is equally gone across and people are becoming aware of education, minority
region will stand at the advantage of taking state power and the rights to decision making that
will best suit their geographical location which will be key to them.

cdxcv
Discussion
As china had been praise of its educational provision by the world and scholars, as cited by
Rong & Shi (2001), that the educational system of China had made significant progress in
contributing to the economic and social development as well as securing basic human rights
in 1950s. I agree and argue along with these scholars that, china had made numerous
development that is recognized by the world today, and for which some of the policy placed
China in the third ranking of providing education to the world at large by creating
multicultural learning environment, it must be commended for its great effort for undertaking
such a huge task by providing knowledge and bringing out potentials that best suit the labor
market. Notwithstanding, by China being praise by its standardize curriculum projects which
the message is: “China is a unified, glorious country with a great past, an uncertain but
improving present and brighter future’’(Postiglione, 1999 pg 3). Which the idea was to
promote unity among Chinese that the national curriculum policy downplays the identity and
culture of Ethnic Minority, which had cause some practical problems in locality of the
minorities, China should prioritize special policies to offer support to the underprivileged
and minority groups by building schools according to their needs that will narrow down
educational gab. Moreover, in order to build a national education system, the Chinese
Communist Party along with the Ministry of Education should take into account the language
of instruction of the minority that the educational attainment will have a balance. Even as
years passed on, the reform policy which stated minority language be used as a medium of
instruction equal with mandarin (Sangay, 1998 pg 4), which is just on the surface, the
indicator prove minority regions are still under developed, depicting low enrolment rates and
inadequate provisions of quality educational facilities.

Conclusion
The policy of China towards its ethnic minority culture has always been criticized for being
unbalanced in terms of representations of ethnic minority cultures (Gladney, 1999). As China
had received this critic in and outside of having unbalance representation, In my

cdxcvi
understanding if educational investments are strategically managed taken into account the
views of various target groups and stakeholders, and valuing their participation in phases of
implementation with particular attention levy on minority children’s education can increase
access rate and reduce inequality and levels of poverty amongst these population.
Furthermore, this study unveiled pointer out educational differences between the minority
regions and mandarin or wealthy regions. As a researcher and candidate of Masters Degree in
Higher Education and Student Affairs, I will recommend that quality and easy access to
education be a priority to the Chinese government to eliminate poverty amongst the minority
children. Empowering the minorities and matching them with the job market will give more
compliments to China and will be recognized for a great historic making. I see this as a
challenge also in my country where seminal situation is in existenced and the process to
elimination had become the concern to every Liberian citizen.
Decentralization: educational policy making and finances should be localized to give more
autonomy to local government to make preeminent contributions to Ethnic Minority
Education. I argue that empowering the local level people taking on responsibility and in
accordance to their needs and wants by decentralizing, it gives more accountability and
transparency where monitoring system is fully guided. For instance with the decentralization
policy crafted 2011 in Liberia which took effect 2012, Educational Stakeholders decides the
faith of the county when it comes to educational attainment. It has boosted rural educational
financing and reduce school dropout, and encourages completion rate and increases literacy
rate in rural areas.
Thank you for the knowledge impacted.

Balibar, E. 1996. “Fictive Ethnicity and Ideal Nation”, John Hutchinson and A. Smith, eds.
Ethnicity. Oxford Univ. Press, pp.164-167.
CLOTHEY, R. 2005. China’s policies for minorities in higher education: Negotiating
national values. Comparative Education Review, 49 (3), 389-409.
Clarke, P. and J. Jha (2006). ‘Rajasthan’s Experience in Improving
Service Delivery in Education,’ in Chand, V.K. (ed.) Reinventing
Public Service Delivery in India. Sage, New Delhi
CHEN, L. P. 1999. Some reviews and forecasts of the development of ethnic minority
education in China. Guizhou Ethnic Studies, No. 1, 135-144. (In Chinese)

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Du, S.Y (2006) A study on the Development of Gansu –Qinghai Tibetan Modern Education,
National Education Press
GLADNEY, D. 1999. Making Muslims in China: Education, Islamicisation and
Representation. In G. A. Postiglione (Ed.), China’s National Minority
Education: Culture, Schooling, and Development (pp. 55-94). New York &
London: Falmer Press.
KELLY, P. 2002 Defending Some Dodos: Equality and/or Liberty. In P. Kelly (Ed.),
Multiculturalism Reconsidered (pp. 62-80). Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishers Inc
Lin, J. (1997b). Policies and practices of bilingual education for the minorities in China.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 18 (3), 193-205.

Postiglione, G. (1999). China's national minority education: Culture, schooling and

development. New York: Falmer Press.

Snavely, Andrea E., A Review of the Chinese National Minority Education Program, Stanford
Journal of East Asian Affairs (2005).
Sangay, L. (1998). Education rights for Tibetans in Tibet and India. In J.D. Montgomery
(Ed.), Human rights: Positive policies in Asia and the Pacific Rim (pp. 285-307).
Hollis, NH:
Hollis Publishing Company.
TENG, X. 1989. The Crux of Overall Educational Reform in China’s Minority
Regions. Qiushi, No. 7 (April), pp. 19-22. (In Chinese)

TENG, X. 1996. Unity, Diversity and China’s Bilingual Education. Journal of

Research on Education for Ethnic Minorities, No. 4, pp. 42-49. (In Chinese
United Nations International Children’s Fund [UNICEF]; Children in China: An Atlas of
Social Indicators, 2014
YANG, R. 2006. The Commodification of Education and Its Effects on Developing
Countries: A Focus on China. Journal Für Entwicklungspolitik, Vol. XXII,
No. 4, pp. 52-69.

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 Beijing Normal University
Faculty of Education
International MA Program in Comparative Education
Education Systems, Policy and Management in China

Topic:

Chinese Teachers’ Barriers in integrating ICT into

Classroom Teaching
cdxcix
 Review Research Paper

Conducted by:

ID : 201629010073

Abstract:
This study reviewed qualitative studies that focus on Chinese teachers’ Barriers in
integrating ICT into classroom teaching. A meta-ethnography approach was utilized to locate,
critically appraise, and synthesize the results of these studies. Based on the extensive search
in Xueshu Baidu, Web of Science of Beijing Normal University’s library, Google Scholar,
Springer and Google, 10 articles were included in this synthesis. There are four main themes
regarding to Chinses teachers’ barriers of integrating ICT into classroom teaching, such as
gender, culture, inadequate support in terms of insufficient ICT facilities and Continuing
Professional Development (CPD), and instructional approaches. The results were quite
limited since there were few research studies on barriers of Chinese teachers in integrating
ICT into classroom. However, the barriers founded were not much different from the barriers
existing in other countries.
1. Introduction
Education around the world is experiencing major paradigm shifts in educational
practices of teaching and learning under the umbrella of ICT enabled learning
environment(Majumdar, 2006).ICT means Information Communication Technology and it is
widely used in education.ICT in education includes avariety of tools, such as computers, CD-
ROMs,projection TVs, word processors, image graphicsoftware, email, and Internet-based
communicationtechnology(Hafiz Mudasirh, Ab Waheed Shah, 2015). With the integration of
ICT in the class, it has remarkably changed the role of teachers and students, pedagogy, and
material used in the classroom. It has changed from traditional instruction to virtual learning
environment. Current research has indicated that ICT assists in transforming a teaching
environment into a learner-centered one (Castro Sánchez and Alemán 2011).Classrooms used
to have only a whiteboard for a teacher to write and allow students to record. Remarkably,

d
with the rapid development of modern technology in these past three decades, a number of
electronic devices has been installed and used in the classroom in order to facilitate and serve
different way of teaching method to suit different needs of students.Effective integration of
technologies helps students become capable information technology users, information
seekers, analyzers, and evaluators, problem solvers and decision makers, creative and
effective users of productivity tools, communicators, collaborators, publishers, and
producers; informed, responsible, and contributing citizens (ISTE, 2002).At this point, ICT is
considered to be effective tools to optimize students’ learning. A number of previous studies
have shown that an appropriate use of ICT can raise educational quality and connect learning
to real-life situations (Lowther, et al. 2008; Weert and Tatnall 2005).Among other factors,
teacher-related variables are the most powerful predictors of technology integration

(Becker ， 2000). In this case, teachers play an important role in integrating ICT in the
classroom.
In reality, however, established curricula and teaching approaches still remain
essentially unchanged, while technology is usually underused and poorly integrated
into the classroom (Cuban, 2001; Ofsted, 2004).That is, there is a gap exists between what
pre-service teachers are taught in their courses and how teachers use technology in a real
classroom (Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Glazewski, Newby, &Ertmer, 2010; Pope, Hare, & Howard,
2002).
The groundswell of interest in using ICT in education does not apply only in western
educational countries, but also other countries around the world. In particular, China, is also
one of many countries in the world, which is making an effort in integrating ICT into the
classroom.
2. Literature Review
In 2000, the Chinese Ministry of Education (2000) issued a policy document entitled
“Information Technology Curriculum Guide in Primary and Secondary Schools”. This ground
breaking document stipulates that primary and secondary schools should offer information
technology courses to students. Major goals of the information technology curriculum
include: a) to cultivate students’ interest in and awareness of information technologies; b) to
acquire basic ICT knowledge and skills; c) to develop an understanding of the impact of ICTs
on human lives and conditions; d) to develop competence in locating, communicating,
processing, and utilizing information; e) to use technologies in responsible and ethical

di
manners; f) to use technologies to support life-long learning and collaborative learning. The
guide also calls for the integration of ICTs into the teaching of other school subjects.
The effort of Mainland China to introduce ICT into the educational system
startedmuch later than developed countries (Liu, Toki, Pang, 2014).At the same time, the
country has faced many barriers of introducing this modern technology into classroom.
Barriers to ICT integration in teaching can be defined as conditions that do notsupport the
integration of ICT in teaching practices (Searson, Laferriere, Nikolow,2011).Ertmer (1999)
classified general barriers of ICT integration into two groups: first-order barriers andsecond-
order barriers. First-order barriers refer to the barriers which are external toteachers,
including lack of access to hardware and software, lack of time, lack ofsupport, and lack of
teacher training. Second-order barriers are internal to teachers,involving teachers’
willingness, beliefs, competences, and established classroompractices.In recent years, Tsai
and Chai (2012) proposed the “third order barrier”-“design thinking”, which was defined as
the ability to “seek to changeand improve current situation and create what is desire”. They
also believed thatteachers who were equipped with this type of ability would cope with both
first order and second-order barriers.
There are some other factors which are considered to be barriers preventing teachers
from using ICT into classroom teaching. Firstly, Brennan, McFadden, and Law (2001)
emphasize that cultural differences need to be taken into account when studying
instructionalinterventions. For instance, Chai, Hong, and Teo(2009) argue that culture plays a
mediating factor that influences how teachers relate their beliefs to ICT use. Secondly, gender
can be an influential factor affecting teachers’ belief in using ICT into the classroom. A study
of Blackmore et al., 1992 found that males appear to be more positive in their attitudes
toward computers than females. However, other researchers have reported the lesser impact
of gender when the interaction between avariety of variables is taken into account; e.g.,
teacher efficacy, computer efficacy, and computer attitudes of pre-service teachers
(Gencer&Cakiroglu, 2007; Liao, 1998; Riggs, 1991). What’s more, teachers with a strong
sense of self-efficacy are open to new ideas and more willing to experiment with new
strategies, seek improved teaching methods, and experiment with instructional materials
(Allinder, 1994; Guskey, 1988). In this case, teacher self-efficacy has also been found to be
correlated to ICT integration in classroom (Albion, 1996; Compeau, Higgins, & Huff, 1999;
Hasan, 2003; Potosky, 2002). Furthermore, attitudes towards computers influence teachers’
acceptance of the usefulness of technology, and also influence whetherteachers integrate ICT

dii
into their classroom (Akbaba&Kurubacak, 1999; Clark, 2001). According to Myers and
Halpin (2002), a major reasonfor studying teachers’ attitudes is that it is a major predictor of
future classroom computer use. Moreover, research has shown that teachers need
organizational support to motivate them to integrate ICT in the curriculum (Martin, 2000;
Yee, 2000). Organizational support needs to be understood as not only the technical but also
the pedagogical support that teachers require when integrating ICT into their classrooms
(Mumtaz, 2000; Tondeur, Keer, Braak, Valcke, 2008). Such support may be provided by a
variety of people, such as school leaders, school administrators, ICT coordinators or peers
(Manternach-Wigans, 1999; Moseley et al, 1999; Tearle, 2003).Other studies (e.g., Barron et
al., 2003; Tearle, 2003) present evidence that an increase in classroom use of ICT in
classroom can be linked to a favorable policy environment. School-level policy produces the
desirability to build a coherent and supportive community of practice associated with
effective, regular, and consistent ICT use (Dawes 2001; Hennessy, Ruthven & Brindley,
2005).
ICT integration seems to remain limited when thereis no focus on teachers’ own theories
and beliefs aboutteaching and learning (Mumtaz, 2000). Romeo and Walker (2002)
summarize two perspectives on ICT use in education. The first, influenced by behaviorist
learning theories, focuses on thecomputer as a mechanism by which to deliver information.
The second, influencedby constructivism, focuses on the use of computers as a system to
enhance teachingand learning. This latter view is about ‘exploiting technology’s versatility
anduniqueness’ to help the teacher establish powerful environments for students’ learning (p.
323). In this case, the belief of teachers toward ICT plays a crucial role in determining how
he or she would like to integrate ICT into classroom teaching. In addition, some ICT-related
factors are also recognized influencing ICT integration, such as computer motivation (e.g.,
Marcinkiewicz, 1996), computer attitudes (e.g., van Braak, 2001), perceptions on ICT-related
policy (e.g., Barron, Kemker, Harmes, &Kalaydjian, 2003).
3. Purpose of the Study
A range of research studies have centred on barriers hampering ICT integration into
classrooms and its solution in general, mostly in western countries. However, little is known
about barriers of ICT integration in Chinese educational context. Thus, the aim of this
research study is to synthesize the available research studies regarding common barriers of
ICT integration into classroomteaching which commonly happen in China and examine

diii
possible solutions to this issue. The advantage of such a systematic review is that it produces
a holistic view of the issue. Systematic review can facilitate understanding of a topic, identify
common threads across studies, and/or develop theory (Hammersley,2002). Thus, the guiding
research questions can be stated as follows

Research Questions
1. What are the main barriers hampering Chinese teachers in integrating ICT into
classroom teaching?
2. What is Chinese teachers’ view toward those main barriers?

4. Research Method
In this study, a systematic review of the previous research study and journals was
conducted to find out what previous researchers have found about barriers of ICT integration
into classroom in China. In order to find the previous research study and journals, I have to
firstly think which database can give me a reliable and valid finding. Thus, I decided to
choose Xueshu Baidu, Web of Science of Beijing Normal University’s library, Google
Scholar, Springer and Google as a way leading me to find reliable research paper like
ResearchGate. In order to find those document, some key words were applied, such as
Barriers, ICT integration, classroom, teaching, and China.After using the database mentioned,
I have found 10 research studies which are related to barriers of ICT integration in many
countries and China. Thus, I described barriers of ICT integration in many countries aside
from China to give some general picture of the issues in general in the literature review. The
results section in themes depict main barriers of ICT integration into classroom which
commonly happen in China.
5. Result
5.1 Sample Characteristics
10 research studies were included in the review and incorporated data from pre-service
teachers, teacher educators, and other faculty members. The studies included in the meta-
ethnography were conducted in different educational setting in China.
5.2 Synthesis Findings
Based on the synthesis, the result showed four key themes regarding to barriers of

div
Chinese teachers in integrating ICT into classroom teaching. The four main themes are
gender, culture, inadequate support in terms of insufficient ICT facilities and Continuing
Professional Development (CPD), and instructional approaches.
5.2.1 Key Themes related to Chinese teachers’ barriers of ICT integration
into Classroom Teaching
5.2.1.1Key Theme 1: Gender
Most research studies raised a conflicting argument of gender in limiting teachers’ ability
in integrating ICT into classroom teaching. Some studies mentioned that gender can be a
cause in preventing teachers in using ICT into the classroom. For instance, in a study of Liao
(1998) in Chinese Taiwan showed that male teachers scored significantly higher than females
in term of using computers in the classroom. However, since technologies have become a
normal part of the workplace setting, a number of researchers argued that computing should
no longer be regarded as a male domain (King, Bond, & Blandford, 2002; North & Noyes,
2002). To reflect, in educational setting, all Chinese teachers have to be prepared integrating
ICT into their future teaching activities, it is not surprising that gender of student teachers has
no direct effect on their prospective ICT integration.For example, Yuen and Ma (2002) who
studied 186 pre-service teachers in Hong Kong also found no significant gender differences
in undergraduate trainee teachers’ attitudes towards computers.Likewise, Hong and Koh
(2002) also found no significant differences between male and female teachers in overall
computer anxiety levels and overall attitudes.
5.2.1.2 Key Theme 2: Culture
Apart from gender, some researchers mentioned the term “culture” and proposed that
culture plays a vital role in interfering and determining whether Chinese teacher should use
ICT in the classroom. To reflect, Chinese culture is regarded as part of Confucian-heritage
and reflecting particularities ofa collectivist society (Biggs, 1996; Ho, 1993). At this point,
Confucian teaching emphasize the role of learning in a teacher approach, which means
teachers play a significant role in passing on knowledge to students in the classroom. Another
reason of using this approach is that teachers are afraid of losing control in the
class.However, one of the main reasons of using ICT in the classroom is to introduce student
approach in teaching to students.By using student-approach, Chinese teachers can lose their
power in controlling students in the classroom. This conflicting belief greatly influence on
Chinese teachers’ belief whether he or she should adopt ICT in the classroom or not. If we

dv
take another key term “teacher self-efficacy” as an example, studies of Chinese teachers’
personal efficacymight reflect the self-effacing tendency in personal (re)presentation in
collectivistic societies as well as the strong emphasis on teacherresponsibilities and teacher
performance in the Chinese cultural context (Ho &Hau, 2004). For instance, Lin and Gorrell
(2001) explored pre-service teacher efficacy in Taiwan and clearly argued that teacher
efficacy and beliefs are largely shaped by culturally and socially shared experiences and
values.
5.2.1.3 Key Theme 3: Inadequate Support in terms of Insufficient ICT
facilities and Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
Inadequate support is regarded as one of the main barriers in hampering Chinese teachers
to integrate ICT into classroom. The study conducted by Hu and McGrath(2011) found
thatChinese teachers initially held not only positive attitudes towards but great enthusiasmfor
ICT use in English teaching and the nation-wide College English reform.It also indicated that
teachers had a general awareness of the principle that teaching should become more student-
centred and students would be more responsible for their own learning. However, their
enthusiasm was waning in the light of “inadequate support” interms of insufficient ICT
facilities and Continuing Professional Development (CPD)opportunities.The teachers
mentioned that they have limited ICT knowledge and skills, and difficulties in changing
traditionalpedagogy.The following is the quote of one interviewee teacher
ICT sometimes scared me for I had not grasped it at all. My limited ICT skills made

me

lose face in front of my students. I was used to the traditional teaching methods which

made me confident in class, and was fearful of the change to ICT-based pedagogy.

(Individual interview with Teacher 4, 29 September 2007)

A Similar finding was also found in the study of Liu and Pang (2014),the leading
barriers perceived by early childhood teachers in Beijing, Shengyang, and Siping on ICT
integration inteaching included lack of content /material, lack of pedagogical models, lack of
laptops /notebooks, and lack of computers.In this case, support and facilities should be
provided at the same time in helping Chinese teachers to successfully integrate ICT into
classroom teaching.

dvi
5.2.1.4 Key Theme 4: Instructional Approaches
There are some research studies stressed on the importance of instructional approaches
which is considered an obstacle to adapt teaching methods and integrate ICT into classroom
teaching. One of many participants in a research study of Zhou, Zhang, and Li (2011), who
has just signed a contract for a teaching position and would soon commenced his or her job
provided a wonderful statement regarding the above mentioned researchers’ question about
challenge, he or she said that
My biggest challenge in the use of technology is to choose instructional approaches

that best meet students’ needs and interests.Because I don’t haveexperiences, I do not

know which kinds of technology are effective. To deal with thischallenge, I need to

try out various kinds of technology… Of course, this needs strongbelief and courage

as it could be risky to use technology. If the use is appropriate,students will benefit;

however, if the use is inappropriate, my classes will fall behindother classes. But I

have the courage to try.

A research study of Zhiwen and Ian (2010) also found instructional approach to be a
difficulty of teachers in using ICT in the classroom. The result indicated that the teachers
admitted to difficulty in adaptingto the technologically enhanced materials and student-
centred classroom teachingbecause in traditional modes of teacher learning, student teachers
just learned subjectssuch as philosophy and teaching methodology (normally teacher
centred), and thelatter did not include the application of technology to education. The
following statement is the quote of one of many participants in a research study of Zhiwen
and Ian (2010), she was newly promoted to be an associate professor and she showed her lack
of confidence in the new teaching model:
I found what I learned before was out of date and couldn’t meet the new requirements

of

the national reform, and I have little knowledge about how to teach in the new

teaching

model. (Individual interview with Teacher 4, 16 October 2007)

dvii
6.Discussion:
The review centred on Chinese teachers’ barriers in integrating ICT into classroom
teaching. The barriers which Chinese teachers faced comparing to other teachers’ barriers in
other countries are not much different. Chinese teacher’s barriers were parts of the barriers
mentioned by Ertmer (1999), which are first-order barrier and second-order barrier. Also, it
was also included in Tsai and Chai (2012) of thethird-order barrier. Teachers who possess this
third-order barrier consist of the first-order and second-order barriers of Ertmer (1999). These
teachers have to think of methods to adapt their teaching with ICT use in the classroom so
that he or she can adopt ICT successfully. In this section, it’s going to discuss (1) how
Chinese teacher can integrate ICT in the class successfully and (2) limitation of the study for
the future research.
6.1 How teachers can integrate ICT into classroom successfully
In order to integrate ICT in the class successfully, not only teachers but also school
leaders and other related stakeholders must take these following factors into careful
consideration., such as actual needs of teachers of using ICT in the class, Continuing
Professional Development (CPD), constructivist belief, culture, barriers, and ICT optimism.
Based on the previous literature, Chinese educators do not pay much special attention to
the actual needs of teachers in integrating ICT into classroom teaching. Even though many
schools in China has already installed ICT in schools, they still fail to provide continuing
professional development (CPD) on how to use ICT in the class; especially, in-service
teachers who has used traditional method of teaching for many years. They realized ICT as a
new subject matter, not a new teaching aid which can help them to improve their existing
teaching method. If they do not know how to integrate ICT in the class well, ICT will
definitely affect their teaching. For example, they can feel embarrassed in front of students in
the class because of their limited ICT knowledge. If they use their traditional method in
teaching, they feel more confident than ICT usage. In this case, it can demotivate in-service
teachers to use ICT in the class. Regarding to pre-service teacher, although they obtained
training before their actual teaching of using ICT in the class, they still faced many
challenges. That is, they know how to use ICT, but they are not aware of how to connect ICT
usage with their teaching pedagogy. At this point, it refers to new instructional methods
which teachers in this new modern technology must know how to use it properly. They have

dviii
to know how to make ICT and their teaching pedagogy go hand in hand so that they can
enjoy the benefit of using ICT in the class. This point is vital importance which educators has
to pay special attention in order to obtain successful ICT integration in teaching. What’s
more, school leaders as well as school administrators has to provide continuing professional
development (CPD) of ICT for teachers so that they can keep receiving supportin integrating
ICT in their class. This will definitely provide motivation for teachers and feel enthusiastic to
use ICT in the class even though they face many challenges. In addition, teachers who are
integrating ICT in the class should be the ones who hold a constructivist belief. Particularly,
teachers should hold a belief that students should be provided chance to learn by themselves
rather than receive knowledge directly from teachers. That is, by using ICT in the class, the
way of learning is changed from teacher-centred to student-centred, which students can
construct their knowledge by themselves. Moreover, culture also plays an important role in
integrating ICT in the class. For instance, as I have mentioned in the study ofLin and Gorrell
(2001) in the result section, they explored pre-service teacher efficacy in Taiwan and clearly
argued that teacher efficacy and beliefs are largely shaped by culturally and socially shared
experiences and values. Chinese culture is regarded as part of Confucian-heritage and
reflecting particularities ofa collectivist society (Biggs, 1996; Ho, 1993). Furthermore, school
leaders have to pay special attention to two well-known barriers which are consistently
happening not only in China, but also in other countries. Those two barriers are first-order
barriers andsecond-order barriers. First-order barriers refer to the barriers which are external
toteachers, including lack of access to hardware and software, lack of time, lack ofsupport,
and lack of teacher training. Second-order barriers are internal to teachers,involving teachers’
willingness, beliefs, competences, and established classroompractices.Also, in recent years,
Tsai and Chai (2012) proposed the “thirdorder barrier”-“design thinking”, which was defined
as the ability to “seek to changeand improve current situation and create what is desired”.
They also believed thatteachers who were equipped with this type of ability would cope with
both firstorder and second-order barriers. Lastly, teachers should be optimistic about ICT
integration even though they face many challenges of integrating ICT into their classroom
teaching. They should seek help from school management teams or their fellow teachers.

6.2 Limitations of the study and directions for future research

dix
 The majority of the research studies I have found in the previous literature is more
focused on ICT integration in general, not much research studies were conducted in China.
Thus, this review provided limited results. However, the Chinese barriers of ICT integration
into classroom is not much different from other countries in the world. For example, they still
faced two common barriers of Ertmer (1999) and one last barrier proposed by Tsai and Chai
(2012) mentioned above. One more thing, the finding I have found about the barriers of ICT
integration in China was from different educational setting. That is, it reduced the importance
of the conceptuality of the result. In this case, more research studies of Chinese Teachers’
barriers in integrating ICT into classroom should be more conducted.
7. Conclusion
Because of limited research of ICT integration in China, there are only four themes
emerging from the previous study, such as gender, culture, inadequate support in term of
insufficient ICT facilities and Continuing Professional Development (CPD), and instructional
approaches. However, there are more barriers future researchers should do more research on
to give more general pictures of this issue.

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41-59

北京师范大学
BEIJING NORMAL UNIVERSITY

The student-teacher relationship factor affecting students’

motivation and Academic achievement

BY

Submitted to:

Professor: Dr. SANG GUOYUAN

Professor: Dr. LI JIAYONG

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 A Research Paper submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the requirement
For the Course of Education systems, Policy, and Management in China
at Beijing Normal University

January 2017

The student-teacher relationship factor affecting students’

motivation and Academic achievement

ABSTRACT

The goal of this study was to determine the value and impact of
student-teacherrelationship/interactions affecting student motivation and achievement. This
paper was further intendedthat the results of this study would add to the body of knowledge and
resources availableto enhance the learning experience and influence student success.In order
for this to happen, student perceptions of their interactions were analyzed, as wellwhether or not
this interaction significantly impacted motivation and achievement. Qualitative method was
employed in this study and semi-structured interviews were used to gather the data.Based on the
data analysis proved that positive student-teacher relationship is very important for learning and
success. The results also suggest the need for teachers to beprovided with appropriate
resources and assistance to meet the needs of their studentsbeyond academic instruction.It also
suggests applying student-centered approaches in the classroom is very crucial to create good
rapports and engagement between the students and teachers. Furthermore, the data from this
study showed that these respondents believe that there is value in forming and maintaining
positive and supportive relationships with their teachers in providing for their academic
achievement and success.

Keywords: relationship, students’ motivation, academic achievement, International Students

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1. INTRODUCTION
Teacher’s classroom practices and their interactions with their students are seen to have the
greatest effect on student learning outcomes (Hayes et al., 2006). Connor et al. (2005), examine
research that indicates that teachers’ regard for their students, their responsiveness to student
questions and interests, the emotional climate of the classroom and their expectations, have all
been related to student achievement. These expectations developed by teachers potentially
influence their approach to particular students, which can ultimately affect the performance of
those students.

A sizable literature provides evidence that strong and supportive relationships between teachers
and students are fundamental to the healthy development of all students in schools (Birch &
Ladd, 1998). Positive student–teacher relationships serve as a resource for students at risk of
school failure and success.Therefore, when teachers interact with, and learn more about their
students. These interactions lead to establish a positive relationship. Teachers can establish a
positive relationship with their students by communicating with them and properly providing
feedback to them. Respect between teacher and student with both feeling enthusiastic when
learning and teaching. Having established a positive relationship with students will encourage
students to seek education and be enthusiastic and to be able to handle the school work
promptly.

Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting
implications for both students' academic and social development. Solely improving students'
relationships with their teachers will not produce gains in achievement. However, those students
who have close, positive and supportive relationships with their teachers will attain higher levels
of achievement than those students with more conflict in their relationships.[ CITATION Sar17 \l
1033 ]
Drawing on the literature, there is a dearth of research in student-teacher relationship affecting
student’s motivation and academic achievement in China in general. Especially, when we talk
about international students who come and study in Chinese university. Therefore, it shows that
previous studies have been done on the other educational domains in china, addressing issues
such as: the level of competency, achievement, ICT and education, teacher training and so on.

Therefore, the purpose of this study was twofold. First, it was to study relationships between
student and teacher in one Chinese university. The students are from different countries and
educational background. They are the master students majoring in comparative education at
University A. Secondly, it was to examine effects of theserelationships on student’s motivation,
and academic achievement.

The significance of the study is that the research findings can provide insight toward the
understandings of student-teacher relationship that effects students’ motivation and academic
achievement. The results would contribute to the field of teacher education and teaching and
contribute to the theoretical knowledge of student-teacher relationship. This study will encourage
and stimulate the teacher to formulate the new teaching techniques and reconsider their views
and strategies to build positive relationship with students.

In order to identify the student-teacher relationship that effecting the student’s motivation and
academic achievement in Chinese Language classroom at University A, this research seeks the
answers to the following research question:
- What are the Chinese language students’ perception on student-teacher relationship
affecting the student’s motivation and academic achievement?

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2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Relationship and interactions

The relationships between teachers and students also affect classroom environments; teaching
and learning, including regulation, classroom disciplines, the use of approaches and methods to
learning, interacting with the students in the classroom. Indeed, many researchers have
emphasized teacher relationship with learners as a salient factor to establish important base and
impetus for the teaching and learning process and bolster learners’ motivation to take an active
part in the classroom to portray teacher caring and creating a positive learning environment to
support student learning.[ CITATION Har14 \l 1033 ]. If teachers make their classroom a “good
place for students to be, then they will want to be there, and will generally be both on task and
well behaved.” (Churchill et al., 2011)

In addition, students care about their relationships with their teachers and they respond
with greater engagement and effort when they think that their teachers care more about them
and teachers are supportive. One way that teachers convey these qualities is through their
interaction and engagement with their students in the classroom. The teacher–student
relationship is one of the most powerful tool within the learning environment. A major factor
affecting students’ development, school engagement and academic motivation, teacher-student
relationships form the basis of the social context in which learning takes place (Hughes & Chen,
2011).

Unfortunately, it is also easy to recognize relationships that do not work well in the
classroom. Students are late for class, sullen, rude, unfriendly, unresponsive, unprepared, and
disaffected from learning - that is, they are uninterested, rebellious, anxious, or burned out with
academics (Skinner, Kindermann, Connell, & Wellborn, 2009)

Moreover, Kathy Paterson (2005) has expressed that “Rapport is that wonderful bond
that allows teacher and students to work well. The powerful teacher creates this relationship
early in the year and works to maintain it. When good rapport has been established, students
and teachers enjoy one another and the class, and students feel more motivated to do

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well.”Pianta (1999), Positive relationship foster student’s self-discipline and social skill
development and lower levels of internal and external behavior problems.

For instance, the study of upper elementary teachers found that students had positive
perceptions of the teacher when teachers were more involved with students within the social
environment (Skinner & Belmont, 1993). A reciprocal association was found between teacher and
student behavior: Teacher involvement fostered students’ classroom engagement, and that
engagement, in turn, led teachers to become more involved. This study and others suggest that
students who are able to form strong relationships with teachers are at an advantage that may
grow exponentially as the year progresses.

2.2 Motivation

Thus, it is the job of the teacher to generate students’ motivation and help them build positive
attitudes towards Learning. Teachers can achieve this aim of generating students’ motivation
through implementing various strategies. There are two types of motivation. Extrinsic motivation
refers to the pressure or reward from the social environment to learn a language. Extrinsically
motivated learners aim to obtain a better career opportunity, a teacher’s praise or recognition or
even to prove that one is a good learner. However, a characteristic of external motivation is that it
implies some kind of external pressure which, once removed, may result in the language learner
quitting the L2 learning (Noels, Clement, & Pelletier, 2001). Intrinsic motivation, on the other
hand, is more self-determined and refers to internal factors such as enjoyment and satisfaction
for oneself. Intrinsically motivated learners perform an activity for the feelings associated with
exploring new ideas and developing knowledge, the sensations related to attempting to master
the task or achieve a goal. According to Deci and Ryan (2000), the feelings of satisfaction in
intrinsic motivation come from a sense of competence, autonomy, and relatedness.

Many empirical studies of teacher’s motivation were conducted to identify how teachers
influence learners’ motivation. Dornyei and Csizer (1998) have studied the use of teaching
strategies to motivate learners among Hungarian teachers of English. The researchers assigned
51 motivational strategies and studied the significance attributed to each strategy by the teachers
and how often teachers employ each strategy in their classes. This study leads to ten
commandments for teachers to motivate language learners: teachers should set a personal
behavior example, make sure that the class atmosphere is relaxed and pleasant, present task
properly to the learners, have good teacher-student relationships, work on increasing learners’
self-confidence, ensure that the language class is interesting to the students, promote as much
as possible learners’ autonomy, personalize the learning process, increase learners’ goals, and
make sure that learners are familiar with the target language culture.

According to Gardner motivation theory (1985) students are motivated to learn and
achieve when they perceive their teachers care about them. Teachers who care were described
as demonstrating democratic interaction styles, developing expectations for student behavior in
light of individual differences, modeling a "caring" attitude toward their own work, and providing
constructive feedback.Motivation has been broadly recognized by scholars, researchers, and
teachers as one of the major variables that determine the level and success of the students

2.3 Academic achievement

Brown and Medway (2007) concur that teachers form expectations about student performance
based on income, race, and other factors and add that these expectations play a role in
influencing level of student achievement.Cooper and Tom (1984) also emphasize that although
factors that influence student performance are multiple and complex, teacher expectations do
play a role in how well and how much students learn. In other words, high teacher expectations
have been identified as one of the salient and principal characteristics that differentiate more
effective from less effective schools.

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 Another important aspect affecting students’ academicoutcomes in the learning
environment is when teachers are able to form positive student relationships and engage their
students, learning becomes an enjoyable experience – taking place in a balanced classroom
atmosphere (Krause, Bochner& Duchesne, 2006).When students are given a chance to
participate in their learning in learning-friendly environments, they are likely to be more motivated
and to feel positive towards their schoolwork, also working more cooperatively in teams
(UNESCO, 2004).

2.4 Theoretical Frameworks underpinning the study

2.4.1 Attachment theory

Attachment theory explains how students use their positive relationships with adults to organize
their experiences (Bowlby 1969). Central to this theory is that students with close relationships
with their teachers view their teacher as a "secure base" from which to explore the classroom
environment. In practice, students with this "secure base" feel safe when making mistakes and
feel more comfortable accepting the academic challenges necessary for learning. Strong
teacher-student relationships can even act as a buffer against the potentially adverse effects that
insecure parent-child attachment can have on students' academic achievement (O'Connor &
McCartney, 2007).

2.4.2 Social cognitive theory

Social cognitive theory posits that students develop a wide range of skills simply by watching
other people perform those skills. Thus, modeling behavior can be a positive and effective
modality for teaching (Bandura, 1986). Applied to the classroom environment, teachers play a
critical role as live models from which students can learn social behaviors and positive
communication skills. Social cognitive theory also sheds light on the importance of feedback and
encouragement from teachers in relation to student performance. Teachers serve as role models
and help regulate student behavior through interactions and relationships.

2.4.3 Self-System theory

Self-System theory emphasizes the importance of students' motivation and by doing so, explains
the importance of teacher-student relationships (Harter, 2012). Students come to the classroom
with three basic psychological needs - competence, autonomy and relatedness - all of which can
be met in a classroom through students' interactions with teachers and with the learning
environment (Deci & Ryan, 2002).Classroom practices that foster the feelings of competence,
autonomy and relatedness are likely to produce the engagement and motivation required for
academic learning and success.

Teachers who establish a personal and caring relationship and foster positive social
interactions within their classrooms meet their students' needs for relatedness (or social
connection to school). Taken together, effective teacher-student relationships confirm to students
that teachers care for them and support their academic efforts.

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3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
FigureRelationship

3.1 Rationale for qualitative method

1. Theoretical framework

This research study adopts a qualitative research approach in order to seek the answer to the
above research questions. The advantage of a qualitative approach is that it allows the study of
the phenomenon more deeply and clearly based on the fact that the researcher has engaged in
the empirical study. Further, a qualitative research method enables the researcher to produce or
generate the new ideas and insights into the phenomenon, in order to build up a conceptual
theory. This methodology is in contrast to a quantitative research methodology, which researcher
has to assume the hypothesis in advance before conducting the research study. Additionally, the
qualitative research method focuses on collecting and analyzing data with the purpose of deeply
understanding the phenomenon.

3.2 Research Paradigm: Social Constructivismand interpretive analysis

Social constructivism is such a perspectiveseen as the approach to qualitative research. Social

constructivist holds the assumption that individuals seek understanding of the world in which they
live and work. The meanings are varied and multiple, leading the researchers to look for the
complexity of views rather than narrowing meanings into a few categories or ideas. The goal of
the research is to reply as much as possible on the participants’ views of the situation being
studied. In this study, interpretive perspective is applied to guide the meaning making process.

dxxii
Denzin and Lincoln (2008) argue that there is no single interpretive truth. The essence of
interpretive research is to understand reality as constructed by the people from a particular
context as they engage in interactions. Interpretive research is often referred to as telling the
story(Denzin & Lincoln, 2008) and it brings meaning and coherence to the themes, patterns,
categories, developing linkages and a story line that makes sense (Marshall & Rossman, 2006).

3.3Sample and Population

The sample size plays a significant role in conducting the research study. Without an appropriate
sample size, the researcher is not able to form, generalize, or to conceptualize on the research
phenomenon or problem statement of the study project. There are 5 participants selected for
interviewing. They have been selected based on the convenient sampling method. All of them
are the master students from different countries. These international students are taking one
Chinese class inone university.

3.4Data collection

In-depth interview is the method that is used in this research study. The in-depth interviews will
be conducted with students who have studied Chinese language from the target subject areas.
With this kind of method, this study would be able to uncover the perspectives of students
attending Chinese class with regarding to their relationship with teacher. Related to the structure
of the in-depth interviews, this study project will conduct face to face interviews using the semi-
structured approach. The reason behind this technique is that it will allow the researcher to gain
more detailed of information. This offers a good chance for the researcher to obtain clarification
in case where the interviewer has doubt or is not clear about the interviewee’s responses.The
face-to-face interview method that is adopted in this empirical study will last for 25 minutes for
each interview. On the day of the interviews, the researcher will ask permission from the
interviewee to record and take notes during the conversation, so the researcher will seriously
write down the relevant information, impressions of the interview process, what issues are not
answered, and what the researcher wants to further study in order to improve his or her
understanding. Last, the interviewer will transcribe the conversation and highlight the important
quotations in order to use for data analysis.

3.5Data analysis

In this study, the framework of analysis was developed on the basis of the data analysis
processes of Auerbeach and Silverstein (2003). These are the s teps in analyzing the data:

• Data Preparation:The interviews were copied from the tape recorder to the
computer. The interviews were conducted in one Chinese university. The
interviews were therefore transcribed into English.
• Exploring the data and identifying relevant texts: the relevant texts were
selected and relevant texts were sorted out for coding.
• Coding and categorizing: This step for creating repeating ideas (sub-themes)
started with the first selection of relevant text. Ideas that seemed related to the
starter idea were copied and placed into the file containing the sub-theme .Keep the
codes that you think are important and group them together in the way you want. Then the
researcher can create new codes by combining two or more codes

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 • Develop construct and answer research question: The construct is an abstract
form of a group of themes. The researcher goes through all the codes created in the
previous step. The final stage of the data analysis process as used in this research
was the construction of narration that led the study towards addressing the
research concerns. Under the heading results, describe the categories and how they are
connected. Use a neutral voice and write out interpretations and discuss the results.
Interpret the results in light of, for example:results from similar, previous studies published
in relevant scientific journals and theories or concepts from the field.

3.6Ethical Consideration

Conducting interviewing as a means of data collection can have a great deal of risk attached, as
the interview questions might cause harm to the people involved (Patton, 2002). In this sense,
the researcher wished to make clear that this study did not intend to cause neither potential harm
nor physical risks. In this empirical research, the interest of the participants has been protected:
privacy and anonymity, not pressuring to provide information. Participation is voluntary based on
“Consent form”. Prior approval for data collection will be also obtained from the participants.

4. RESEARCH FINDING AND DISCUSSION

4.1 The evaluations of student-teacher relationship

dxxiv
The interaction between the students and teachers are extremely important during the school
year. Most of the respondents rated their favorite teachers based on their experiences. Some
said they are much freer to ask questions and the teacher is more open and always smiling. And
some teachers are really hard to approach, because they look so serious. They prefer the
teacher who doesn’t look too serious. If the teacher who is so serious, and we have to listen to
him or her. We need to stay awake some time, because we are scared and tend to be quiet and
no interactions.
According to respondent 1, he mentioned that “Chinese teacher is very interactive, she
came to me and assisted me whenever I ask the questions. And she is more willing to help the
students. I would say I like the Chinese class teacher. I also like my professor in Critical theory
for education class because of interaction style. I think at this level, it is not good for teacher to
stand in front and talk to you. I like the way the teacher lets the students to sit in the circle, so
there will be more discussion and people will come up with their mind. She let us express out
opinion and ideas after reading the document.”

“If I have any problems, I can contact her. Sometimes I want to get the documents or
lessons from the teacher, I can contact through email, then she sends me the links to
find more information about the lessons. She is friendly and helpful, and she gives me a
lot of advice and guidance.” (respondent 2)

In consistence with O'Connor and McCartney (2007), they indicatedthat the students with
positive relationships with their teachers perceive and view their teacher as a comfort zone from
which help the students to interact and explore the classroom environment. In addition to this,
some participants mentioned that they preferred the teachers who are very friendly and have
good teaching styles. They also expressed the good characteristics of their favorite teachers
such as: sense of humor and helpfulness, prompt and constructive feedbacks and
straightforwardness.

4.2 The importance of student-teacher relationship

The overall finding from the interview entirely showed that the student-teacher relationship is very
important for learning and teaching. According to their responds, positive student-teacher
relationship contributes to the student’s motivation and classroom interactions both teacher-
student and among students in the classroom. According to self-system theory, Harter(2012)also
empathized that student’s motivation is very important in learning; therefore, student-teacher
relationship must be promoted in the classroom. Moreover, the students purposefully attend the
classroom with three basic psychological needs which can be fruitfully achieved in a classroom
through students' interactions with teachers and with the learning environment (Deci & Ryan,
2002). Besides, the study also indicated that studentsgive more value and responsibility on the
teaching style of the teacher that enhances more classroom interaction. One of the respondent
mentioned that if there is a good student-teacher relationship, he means it is like the friendship.
Another respondent also highlighted the need for the teacher to be interesting and fun when
teaching. According toPianta (1999), high quality relationship between students and teachers
potentially bolster student’s behavior and discipline in both inside and outside the school. These
effects are resulting in low student’s behavior problem and academic turbulence.

“It is much more inspiring to learn from a friend. The teacher is more approachable.
I treat my teacher as my friend, when the teachers are open up and become so
friendly, and that is a positive-teacher relationship. And the interaction also
improves.” (respondent 1)

In fact, the students had positive perceptions of the teacher when teachers were more
involved with students in the classroom (Skinner & Belmont, 1993). Most of the respondents
claimed that positive relationship gives them motivations and devotion to learning and
performance(Churchill et al., 2011) and this relationship make them want to perform well and
they are always ready for every class. In accordance to the interview, they did not actually devote

dxxv
their time and did not even devote their psychological level and they will not commit to that
course when they had negative relationship with the teacher. For instance, in critical theory class
he read a lot of books and articles which were given, because he like the course. When time is
approaching for the course, he was always ready and very eager for him to meet the professor.
Because he knew that they were going to argue and they were going to express their ideas.
Each and every time, when it is time for the course he was not bored and wanted to be in the
class longer. The situation is consistent with (Kathy Paterson, 2005) that rapport is a very
significant ingredient that allows teacher and students to work and interact well together. The
best teachers always establish this kind of relationship in the early year of the class and they
recurrently reflect on theirpractice in the classroom to maintain it. Therefore, after good rapport is
established, teaching and learning are eventually more productive and mutually benefited in the
classroom.

“So, this relationship gives me motivations to do and to start readings etc.…

because before that I was a very bad reader and a very bad writer. But in the end, I
was very motivated to be writing up more. Right now, writing is not a problem for
me anymore, because of this particular course. I have learnt a lot, and it was a kind
of motivation that makes me study hard until now.” (respondent 1)

Some participants also mentioned that teaching experience also affects the student
performance too. when they have negative relationship, the students really don’t want to study.
they mentioned that good relationship can create an interactive classroom environment for
learning and teaching.

4.3 Attendance and student-teacher relationship

Teachers who experience close relationships with students reported that their students were less
likely to avoid school, appeared more self-directed, more cooperative and more engaged in
learning [ CITATION Sar17 \l 1033 ]. However, most of the respondents in the study claimed that
their attendances are not affected by the student-teacher relationship.

“Not in my case. I wouldn’t say that. Every teacher is not the same. Some you would
like to be in their classes maybe a little bit longer because the way they do things. He
said “there is no affect as you are attending the class. Even I don’t like her or his
methods I have to come to class. I go to class because it is what I have to do. I go to
class or my attendance has nothing to do with the relationship with student and teacher.
He said “I have to attend the class, because there is a percentage for class attendance,
it will affect the grade, so I have to go there even if I don’t like the ways the class is
handled. But for me, I wouldn’t say I just go there for the grade, it is my obligation to go
to class. And the relationship here whether they are good or bad, has no impact on me.
I have to go to class.” (respondent 1)

The data also showed that if the students didn’t come to class, it is really hard for the
teacher to know about their strengths and weaknesses. And even if they hate the teacher, they
still have to go to class. If not, they will get bad grade because of class attendance. So, student-
teacher relationship is not the factor that affects their attendance.

“…Not really. Because the majority I attend every class, even if maybe sometimes I
don’t really like the class very much. But I still arrive there and I still value the
attendance. I’d still be there,so I can get some ideas from the professor but not all
professors. I attend the class, because I like the contents of the course, generally even
I find the professor does not deliver lessons the way I wanted but still I like more about
the concept within that course. Example, I don’t like the way I learn Chinese language
and culture, but still the concepts there are very important and I should know about
Chinese history and culture and education systems...”. (respondent 4)

dxxvi
4.4 Teaching methodology and motivation

Other studies, which propose that teachers are an important influence on learners’ motivation,
include Dornyei’s 1994 study. The key indicator of student motivation happened when teacher is
more competent and skillful in teaching and facilitating the learning process. Teaching techniques
is another factor that contributes to student’s motivation and performance within the classroom.
One of the participant (respondent 1) said that he likes the teacher when the teacher involves
everyone in group discussion and some kind of arguments.

“I like the course, because I am able to be part of the class. But if the teacher just
talks to himself and I am not involved. I don’t really like that kind of class. I prefer the
teacher that uses variety of techniques and make uses of sources such as slide,
pictures, videos…” (R 4)

According to respondent 3, Teaching method does affect the student-teacher relationship.

It effects on motivation, achievement, performance. If the teacher has more experiences, he will
teach the students well. And he can handle the lesson effectively. Furthermore, Teaching
techniques get the students attention on the lessons. If the teacher uses the old styles of
teaching or teaches the same styles, these will make the students bored and demotivated (R 2).

Similarly, one research had found that teachers who use more learner-centered practices
(i.e., practices that show sensitivity to individual differences among students, include students in
the decision-making, and acknowledge students' developmental, personal and relational needs)
produced greater motivation in their students than those who used fewer of such practices
(Daniels & Perry, 2003). In this study, the respondents also stressed more on teaching
approaches. They learnt best when the teacher use student-centered approach (debate and
discussion) in the classroom.

“I like professor in critical theory class. Because he applied interesting teaching

approaches. He always involves all the students in the classroom. He almost wanted to
hear every student’s speech. So, we express our ideas kind of concepts which were
brought into class, so the class is always lively and competitive. Most of the time, the
students can debate and argue and the idea which is come up with something tangible.
So, if we’re just arguing without good logics. We could be criticized and a lot of critiques
could improve my well thinking and the way I am presenting my argument. The same
with prof. Li, she also did a lot of connecting the theory and practice. So, when she
taught the theory, she was actually asking every student to relate to their lives.”
(Respondent 5)

The positive teacher-student relationships help students meet their educational and social
needs. Teachers offer feedback to students to support their feelings of competence (Harter,
2012). Therefore, teachers who know their students' interests and preferences, and show regard
and respect for these individual differences, bolster students' feelings of autonomy and
motivation in learningand social development (Skinner &Belmont, 1993)and this relationship can
enhance the student’s academic achievement.

This study also investigated the cultural differences of the international students in the
classroom. Existing research suggests that cultural differences can have a negative effect on
students’ participation. Reeder, Macfadyen and Chase (2004) found that different cultural
communication patterns increasedmiscommunication, and that the greater the perception of
cultural differences between the participants in an activity,the greater the incidents of
miscommunication.Based on the interview data, some claimed that it still has some marginal
impacts on learning and communication between students and teacher.

Yes, it is affected. Many times, students contribute in class depending on their

cultural backgrounds, so this helps me to have a broader view of the world. I can

dxxvii
 understand the similarities and differences among cultures of the world (Respondent
4). …. Because culture is part of language, even vocabulary can be culturally
loaded. It may be difficult to understand non-verbal messages because different
cultures have different expectations (Respondent 3).

According to Hofstede (1986), He further stated that many perplexities could arise when
teachers and students come from different cultures. Theseperplexities can occur due to
differences in the social positions of teachers and students in the two societies,relevance of the
curriculum within each of the societies, profiles of cognitive abilities and expected
teacher/student and student/student interactions.
Nonetheless, this study demonstrated that cultural differences have no effect on their interaction
and learning in the classroom. As they stated below:
In my opinion, cultural difference won’t affect my learning. Because I had my own
strategies of better learning. And every student may have different ways of learning
in the classroom (Respondent 2).My learning has not been affected by the cultural
differences in any way possible. I don’t see how cultural differences could possibly
have anything to do with my learning. (Respondent 1)

4.5Motivation and the increase in academic achievement

Supportive and positive relationships between teachers and students ultimately promote a
“sense of school belonging” and encourage students to “participate cooperatively in classroom
activities” (Hughes & Chen, 2011). And motivation has been broadly recognized by scholars,
researchers, and teachers as one of the major variables that determine the level and success of
the students

“…It actually affects the student achievement. If it is positive, it means that the students
like the course. If the students like course, they devote more time. They have the high
chance of performing well. But if the students have negative relationship, it means the
student does not commit to the course psychologically, and then at the end, the student
cannot perform well. Because they didn’t spend much time on that course...”
(respondent 4)

Additionally, the students are likely to trust their professor more, they show more
engagement and interaction in learning, they behave better in class and achieve at higher levels
academically. Positive teacher-student relationships draw students into the process of learning
and promote and enhance their desire to learn. [ CITATION Sar17 \l 1033 ]

“…Learning is through getting feedback from professor and I can upgrade my

knowledge and ways of understanding. As a student, we need help, feedback,
comments from our experienced professor. When I have good relationship with teacher,
in the end I have confidence when I submit my assignment. I am sure of the result I get
after I submit it to the professor. The outcome is good when the relationship is good. I
couldn’t say if the relationship is bad, the outcome would be bad…” (Respondent 1&5)

Furthermore, when teachers play their roles effectively and create positive relationships
within the class and engage every student, so learning performance will cooperatively be
enjoyable, motivating, and encouraging. These will also affect the students ‘academic outcomes
(Krause, Bochner& Duchesne, 2006; UNESCO, 2004).

Moreover, based on the interviews data, it indicated that the outcomes of positive student-
teacher relationships resulted in boosting motivation and also increasing in academic
achievement enhancement. Most of the interviewees claimed to achievegood grades (GPA) in
the courses that were taught by their favorite teachers. It was likely that close relationship with
theteacher helps motivate the students in their learning in school. As one respondent claimed

dxxviii
that:

“...I got grade A in one subject in my BA program because the teacher encouraged
and motivated me and then we become closer…I gain more confidence in
learning…” (Respondent 1)

All of the five respondents stated that they mostly got good grades since the courses
taught by their favorite teachers. For instance, one respondent recently claimed to get good
grade in Chinese language Class as he was more confident and determined with his
performance throughout the term because of his positive relationship with the teacher.

5. CONCLUSION
The empirical evidence does show that student-teacher relationships are very important for
students and teachers both learning and teaching. Furthermore, teachers must use activities and
employ a teaching methodology that encourages the growth of intrinsic motivation and bolster
the integrative motivation of learners.It is also important to recognize aspects that foster internal
motivation in learning; however, it is also important for teachers to take into consideration
extrinsic motivation, by promoting student-centered approaches, sense of humor, rapports, and
caring (promptly feedbacks, guidance...). Furthermore, future studies should be derived from
other motivational models and theories and explore different learning approaches, which may
allow teachers and researchers to fully enhance learning and teaching.

6. LIMITATION AND FUTURE RESEARCH

In interpreting the findings of this research, some limitations should be taken into account. The
results are based on a sample of international students studying Chinese language at one
University. Therefore, the results should not be generalized to other students with different
educational backgrounds. Another limitation is lack of factors and settings. The Study focused on
student’ s perception. There are a lot of factors effecting student’s motivation and academic
achievement. 5 participants are invited to be interviewed. it is not possible to generalize that the
findings of the research would necessarily be applicable to all learners.The main focus is on
student-teacher relationship. The study opens numerous new and beneficial avenues for the
future research.Therefore, these factors should be discussed in the future study.

7. REFERENCES

dxxix
Auerbach, C. F., & Silverstein, L. B. (2003). Qualitative data: an introduction to coding and
analysis. New York: New York University Press.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory.
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Birch, S. H., & Ladd, G. W. (1998). Children’s interpersonalbehaviors and the teacher-child
relationship. Developmental Psychology, 34, 934–946.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Volume 1. Attachment. New York: Basic Books.
Brown, K. E., & Medway, F. J. (2007). School climate and teacher beliefs in a school
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Churchill, R., Ferguson, P., Godinho, S., Johnson, N.F., Keddie, A., Letts, W., Mackay, J.,
McGill, M., Moss, J., Nagel, M.C., Nicholson, P. & Vick, M. (2011). Teaching: Making
a difference. Milton, QLD: John Wiley & Sons.
Connor, C.M., Son, S-H., Hindman A.H. & Morrison F.J. (2005). ‘Teacher qualifications,
classroom practices, family characteristics, and preschool experience: Complex
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Psychology, 43 (4), 343–375.
Cooper, H. M., & Tom, D. Y. H. (1984). Teacher expectations research: A review with
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Daniels, D. H., & Perry, K. E. (2003). "Learner-centered" according to children. Theory into
Practice, 42(2), 102-108.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and
the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4). 227–268. Retrieved
from
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Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2002). Overview of self-determination theory: An organismic
dialectical perspective. In E. L. Deci & R. M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of self-
determination research (pp. 3-33). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (2008). Collecting and interpreting qualitative
materials (3rd ed. ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Dörnyei, Z. (1994). Motivation and motivating in the foreign language Classroom. Modern
Language Journal, 78: 273-284.
Dornyei, Z., & Csizer, K. (1998). Ten commandments for motivating language learners:
Results of an empirical study. Language Teaching Research, 2, 203-229.
Gardner, R.C. (1985). Social Psychology and Second Language Learning. The role of
attitude and motivation in Second Language Learning. London: Edward Arnold.
Haron , B., & Said, K. (2014). Teacher-Learner Rapport Impact On EFL Leaners’ Motivation.
International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities, 546-554.
Harter, S. (2012). The construction of the self: Developmental and sociocultural foundations
(2nd. ed.). New York: Guilford Press.
Hayes, D., Mills, M., Christie, P. & Lingard, B. (2006). Teachers and Schooling Making a
Difference: Productive pedagogies, assessment and performance.Crows Nest, NSW:
Allen & Unwin.
Hofstede, G. (1986). Cultural differences in teaching and learning. International journal of
Intercultural Relations, 10, 301-320.
Hughes, J.N. & Chen, Q. (2011). ‘Reciprocal effects of student–teacher and student-peer
relatedness: Effects on academic self-efficacy’. Journal of AppliedDevelopmental
Psychology, 32 (5), 278–287.
Kathy Paterson. (2005).55 Teaching Dilemmas: Ten powerful solutions to almost any
classroom challenge. Pembroke Publishers. Ontario, Canada.

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Krause, K., Bochner, S. & Duchesne, S. (2006). Educational Psychology: For learning and
teaching (2nd ed). South Melbourne: Thomson Learning.
Lia, S., & Sara Rimm, K. (n.d.). Improving Students' Relationships with Teachers to Provide
Essential Supports for Learning. (University of Virginia) Retrieved January 05, 2017,
from American Psychological Association:
http://www.apa.org/education/k12/relationships.asp
Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (2006). Designing qualitative research (4th ed.). Thousands
Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Noels, K. A., Clement, R., & Pelletier, L. G. (2001). Intrinsic, extrinsic, and integrative
orientations of French Canadian learners of English. Canadian Modern Language
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Research Journal. 44(22): 340-369.
Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3 ed.). Thousand Oaks,
California: Sage Publications Inc
Pianta, R. C. (1999). Enhancing relationships between children and teachers. Washington,
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December 25, 2016 from:
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Skinner, E. A., & Belmont, M. J. (1993). Motivation in the classroom: Reciprocal effects of
teacher behavior and student engagement across the school year. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 85, 571–581.
Skinner, E. A., Kindermann, T. A., Connell, J. P., & Wellborn, J. G. (in press). Engagement
as an organizational construct in the dynamics of motivational development. In K.
Wentzel &A. Wigfield (Eds.). Handbook of motivation in school. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
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environments. URL: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001375/137522e.pdf

dxxxi
PRIVATE EDUCATION IN CHINA 532

YYY

8. APPENDIX
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Topic: “The student-teacher relationship factor effecting students’ motivation and Academic
achievement in Chinese Language classroom at University A”
Research Question: What are the Chinese language students’ perception on student-teacher
relationship affecting the student’s motivation and academic achievement?
Name: ……………………
Gender: …………………
Educational Status: 1. Bachelor 2. Master 3. PhD 4. Other …………….

Student-teacher Relationship
1. Who is your favorite teacher?

2. What is your evaluation of the current relationship between student and teacher?

3. Do you like your teacher? What makes you like about his/her?

4. Do you agree that positive student-teacher relationship is very important for learning? Why?
Why not?

5. Based on your experience, is your attendance affected by student-teacher relationship?

Motivation and Academic Achievement

6. Is your learning affected by cultural differences within the classroom? Why? or why not?

7. Do you think that the student-teacher relationship can affect the academic attainment either
positively or negatively? Why?

8. Based on your experience, what are the outcomes of a positive student-teacher relationship
within your classroom?

9.
10. Do you think that teaching techniques influence the learners’ motivation and academic
achievement?

CONSENT FORM
Private Education in China 533

You are invited to participate in a research study conducted by Mr. BE BOREY, at the Faculty of
education, Comparative education, China.
The purpose of the study is to carry out a research for educational study at University A. The area of
study is to know about student-teacher relationship effecting the students’ motivation and academic
achievement.
In this study, I will interview you (by semi-structured interview) about your perception on the Chinese
language students’ perception on student-teacher relationship effecting the student’s motivation and
academic achievement.
I must protect your anonymity and confidentiality of your response to the fullest possible extent. Your
real name will be removed and changed to a pseudonym during the data analyzing and reporting. I
shall remove any references to personal information that might allow someone to guess your identity.
I further promise that the information be obtained in this study will be used for academic research
purpose only.
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact me, Mr. BE
BOREY, at International Student Dorm No. 1, room 2303. I can be reached via my email:
boreybe@gmail.com or Tel: 15901111318. Thank you for your valuable time and participation.

Signature
I……………………………………… (Name of participant) understand the procedures described
above and agree to participate in this study.

__________________________________________
Participant’s Signature

201639010056_Version 2
EQUITY ISSUES IN CHINESE EDUCATION: ADDRESSING GIRLS’ EDUCATION AT
HIGHER SECONDARY EDUCATION LEVEL- A POLICY GAP

Introduction
China has instituted a number of education policies and laws in order to improve access, quality
and equity in education. These include the Education Law (1995) and the 9-year Compulsory
Education adopted in 1986 and amended in 2006. In addition, the government of Peoples
Republic of China (PRC) has put deliberate policies and programs which have targeted specific
groups and regions in China such as ethnic minorities, language policies, and education
programs targeting rural areas and migrant workers, just to mention a few, (Xu and Mei, 2009).
The Compulsory Education Law has made it possible for China to achieve the 100%Education
for All (EFA) goals by the year 2011, (Yuan, 2013). Despite these strides in achieving EFA goals
through Compulsory Basic Education, studies indicate that disparities still exist in Chinese
Education system especially between rural and urban areas and more importantly between boys

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 534

and girls particularly in rural areas ((Zhang, Pang, Zhang, Medina, & Rozelle, 2012, Hannum et
al 2009, Rong and Shi 2006). These disparities between girls and boys mainly manifest
themselves in rural areas at higher secondary education where among other things, students are
supposed to pay for their education (Song et al, 2006). Literature, however, point towards a lot of
benefits in educating girls.
The social and economic benefits of educating girls have been well articulated and
acknowledged by many both at national and international level. That is, a lot of research done on
girls’ education has outlined the social and economic benefits of educating girls (Klasen 2002,
Song et al 2006). For instance, Song (2006) explains that investment in female education is
frequently seen as a key policy for social and economic development. Kadzamila and Rose
(2000) in particular cite improvement in agricultural productivity and health, as well as reduction
in infant and child mortality rates as some of the social benefits associated with educating girls.
However, despite all these benefits to girls’ education there are continued disparities between
boys and girls in education world over which in most cases are to a disadvantage of girls.
Williams (2001) observed that, “while enrolment for girls has increased drastically world over, of
the 130 million school aged children who are out of school, 56% of them are girls.” In China, the
2015 Education Statistics indicates that out of the total enrolment of 403 76 929 in senior
secondary school education sector there are 193 30 020 girls representing 47.87%, (Ministry of
Education of the PRC, 2015). The problem is more significant in rural areas where girls comprise
only 43.8% of the total enrolment in senior secondary education. In addition, statistics also
indicates that of the 56 255 no schooling children in China 39492 of them are girls representing
almost 70% (National Bureau of Statistics in China 2015). This indicates that despite that China
has made progress in improving access and quality of education among its people (Zhang et al
2012), there is still more which needs to be done in order to achieve equity and equality in
education.
A number of reasons have been identified as factors contributing to the gender disparities
between boys and girls in education in China. which manifest themselves in high dropout rates
and low achievements rate among girls. While some of these problems can be categorized under
social, cultural and economic constraints (Hannum2003, Hannum et al, 2009, Rong and Shit
2006, Tsui and Rich, 2002) others like Wang, Burris and Xiang (1996), Connelly and Zheng
(2002) and Hannum et al, (2009) categorize the barriers into policy related, infrastructure related,

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 535

household and family resource related and community beliefs related problems. Culturally in
some traditions in China, educating boys is taken seriously whereas girls are taken as household
keepers in the home and do not require education. These beliefs have had diverse effects on how
families support girls’ education that consequently has resulted into high dropout and low
achievement among girls in school. For Instance, Hannumet al (2009 p. 475) quotes a common
Chinese traditional saying that “sending girls to school is useless since they will get married and
leave home”.
The theoretical framework guiding this study is based on the liberal feminist theory which calls
for the state’s intervention in the cause of equity. The theory argues that women share the same
rational human nature as men do and so should be given the same educational opportunities and
civil rights as men are given. It therefore, aims at finding means for the removal of barriers that
prevent women operating effectively in public sphere on equal terms with men. The advantage
with the liberal feminists is that they work with both women and men in order to change in
addressing the issues of legislation and organizational structure in order to achieve equity
between men and women in society. Thus, in this case, the interventions and policies if any
which may target girls’ education in China need to work within the existing structure but
deliberately targeting girls or women in the society. Literature indicates that developing policies
which deliberately target girls is one important technique to make governments to pay a
particular attention to girls’ education, (Alim et al, 2007, Chitrakar, 2009, King and Winthrop
2015, UNGEI, 2010, and Johnson, 2011). This may help to deal with problems which girls
especially in rural China are still experiencing in education especially at senior secondary school
level.

Problem Statement
Despite that China has achieved a lot in education especially through the 9-year Compulsory
Education policy, studies indicate that disparities exist between boys and girls at senior
secondary level especially in rural areas. Literature on girls’ education indicates that enactment
of policies which deliberately target girls in education allows governments to pay closer attention
to girls’ education. However, it is not clear whether there are deliberate policies targeting girls’
education in Chinese Education System or if the existing laws and policies in Chinese education
addresses the issue of girls’ education. Hence, this study, which aims at investigating if existing

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 536

laws and policies in Chinese Education System addresses the issues and problems affecting girls’
education.
Purpose of StudyThis study aims at investigating whether the existing laws and policies in
Chinese Education System addresses issues concerning girls’ education in China.
Research QuestionsThe study aims at answering the following two research questions:
 How have the existing laws and policies in Chinese Education System addressed the
issues of girls’ education in China?

 How do studies done on girls’ education in China addressed the issues of policy towards
girls’ education?

Significance of the StudyThe study is significant to all stakeholders who have interest in girls’
education in China. As the Chinese government has in the past made decisions targeting specific
groups in the country which they feel deserves specific attention on education matters, such as
ethnic minorities, rural areas and immigrant workers, this study may be important to policy
makers as the findings of the study may be used as a basis in considering the development of
policies target girls in the Chinese Education System. The findings may also be of importance to
international organizations such as UNICEF which are working in promoting girls’ education in
China.
The findings may also be of importance to scholars who focus on issues affecting girls’ education
in China as they may now diversify their focus of study to look at issues of policy.
Literature ReviewThis section discusses the related literature around the world and within
China which have focused on issues of girls’ education. It begins by presenting the education
system of China and then looks at the studies which have focused on girls’ education. The
discussion focuses on challenges and importance girls’ education, mechanisms and policies that
target girls and finally the importance of policies which target girls in education. Efforts are
made to critically identify how these studies have addressed the issue of policies targeting girls’
education.
Chinese Education System
The Chinese Education system is understood differently by different authors who have written
about education in China. Others have categorized it into three categories namely; basic
education, higher education and adult education (China Education and Research Network, 2013)

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 537

while others like Zhou and Zhu (2006) categories it into two categories comprising of basic
education and higher education. However, despite this different categories, in terms of levels,
Guiren (2013) has outlined that the education system has four levels; pre-school for 3-5 year olds
and takes 3years, elementary school for 6-12year olds and takes 6 years, secondary school which
is divided into junior secondary school and senior secondary school and takes 6 years with
3years junior and 3 years senior, and higher education. It must be noted that China has a 9-year
Compulsory Education which covers the six-year elementary education and junior secondary
education. However, upon reaching secondary education, students are supposed to pay school
fees. It is at this stage of education where gender disparities begin to emerge especially in rural
China. For instance, Song, Appleton and Knight (2006) in their study about the reasons why girls
in rural China have rural enrolment concluded that there is no discrimination below 14 years but
gender gap becomes apparent beyond 14 years. Hence, the focus of this study is on senior
secondary education.
Importance of Education Policies that Target Girls EducationThe importance of policies that
target girls’ education in education have been emphasized by many studies and governments
around the world. Most studies mainly done in conjunction with international organizations that
promote girls’ education such as UNICEF, USAID and UNGEI have found that policies targeting
girls are key in achieving gender equality in education (Chitrakar, 2009, USAID, 2012, Pennells
1998). For instance, Chitrakar (2009) explains that it is important to have constitutional
provisions, legal frameworks, policies and plans in place with reference to providing
primary/basic education to both boys and girls as well as gender equality. Other studies have
emphasized the importance of having national policies framework that target girls and women in
education. A study by the Global Campaign for Education in its 2014 Women and girls
Education Policy Brief explains that “local initiatives to get girls into schools work best when
they are part of national policy frameworks that recognizes the challenges that girls face in
getting into and staying in schools,” (p.7). Above all, studies done in five countries in 5 countries
in South Asia found that where policies such as compulsory education, like Thailand and
Indonesia, the gender gap was being closed, as compared to countries where no policies targeting
girls existed such as India, Lao PDR and Nepal, (Pennells, 1998). For China, policies in
education have played an important role in shaping decisions in education. Zhou and Zhu (2006)
explains that,

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 538

“the government (of China) has been using education legislatives (along with grants
allocation, planning, evaluation, policy guidance, information services, monitoring in
execution of related legislatures, and administrative measures) as instruments in micro
management of education, to ensure implementation of state education policy, right
direction of schooling, standards-based infrastructure/facilities development, education
equity and equal rights to education and to safeguard the lawful rights of the schools, the
teachers and the pupils,” (p.6).
As such, since 1980, more than 80 education laws, and regulations have been developed and
implemented in China, (ibid). It is not clear however, that these policies have addressed issues
affecting girls’ education in particular, hence this study aims at investigating some of these
policies.
Policies that work in promoting girls’ educationStudies indicates that policies that make
education free and compulsory and those which increases the hiring of more female teachers
have had greater impact in achieving improving girls’ enrolment and retention in schools, (Amil
et al, 2007, Global Campaign for Education, 2014, Pennells 1998). For instance, compulsory
education policies in Thailand, Indonesia, Afghanistan has resulted in zero gender differences in
9- year basic education in these countries (Pannells 1998). In China, the 9-year compulsory
education has also achieved to eliminate gender differences at elementary and junior secondary
level, (Tsui and Rich, 2002, Song et al, 2006, Guiren 2013). On the other hand, Alim et al (2007)
explains that, there is evidence from many countries to show a correlation between the number of
female teachers and girls’ enrolment. They explain that in countries where there are more or less
equal number of male and female primary teachers there is a close to gender parity in student
intake. In contrast, in those countries where only 20% of teachers are female, far more boys than
girls enroll in schools.
Other policies which have been highlighted as working towards girls’ education include;
improvement in rural education infrastructure to reduce distance (Alim et al 2007), safety in
schools and gender sensitive curriculum, (King and Winthrop 2015), teaching in local language,
and allowing young mothers to come school (Global Campaign for Education 2014).
Thus, in China, while the 9-year compulsory education has improved gender parity in education,
it is imperative to find out which other policies are being championed by the education system in
order to improve gender quality especially at senior secondary level.

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 539

How policies targeting girls are incorporated in education systemLiterature indicates that there
are a number of ways in which policies targeting girls’ education are addressed by different
governments. In some cases, the policies are vivid while in some cases the policies become clear
through the policy interpretation process. In studies done with five South Asian countries
Pennells (1998) and Chitrakar (2009) found that some countries in the region have policies
targeting girls enshrined in the national policies. For example, in India, there is a specific chapter
in the National Policy of Education while in Thailand it is included in the Education for
AllMaster plan, (Pennells 1998).These policies have problems in that sometimes the issues of
girls are not specifically planned and budgeted for as is the case with India.
Policies which are specifically put are the ones which are being encouraged and have proved to
effectively achieve their purposes. A vivid example is the 9-year Compulsory Education Policy
in China, (Guiren 2013). Another example is Lao PDR which in 1998 put in place a specific
policy commitment for increasing girls and women education, (Chitrakar, 2009).
This study, therefore, also looks on the other national plans apart from policies in education to
see how gender issues have been addressed in these plans.
MethodologyThe study has purely utilized document analysis in the process of collecting and
analyzing data. As observed by Bowen (2009), “while document analysis has served mostly as a
complement to other research methods, it has also been used as a stand-alone method,” (p.29).
For instance, Chitrakar (2009) utilized documents mostly from the internet in his study about
overcoming barriers to girls’ education in South Asia. Above all document analysis has an
advantage of being less costly as the documents are readily available in public domains. In
addition, it is less time consuming. It must be noted however, that the method has some
limitations, as sometimes may provide insufficient detail to answer the research questions.
However, as pointed by Creswell (2014, P.232), the idea behind qualitative research is to
purposefully select participants or sites or documents that will best help the researcher
understand the problem and the research questions. As such the policy documents and research
documents which are analyzed in this study have been purposively selected informed by
literature about what policies work in promoting girls’ education.
The documents being analyzed in this study comprise of education laws and policy documents in
Chinese Education and some studies which have been conducted on education policies in China
as well as studies on girls’ education retrieved from the internet. On research articles, only those

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 540

articles which have been retrieved will be reviewed. The documents were first grouped into two;
those with focus on girls’ education and the other group was those who have looked at policy
issues in China. Again, the consideration about authenticity, credibility, representativeness and
comprehensiveness of the documents as highlighted by Flick (2009) has also guided the selection
of the documents and research articles being evaluated in the study. For instance, to ensure
authenticity of the policy documents, the laws and policies were retrieved from the Ministry of
Education of the People’s Republic of China website www.moe.edu.cn.
The analysis process involved three main stages for each and every article reviewed. In the first
place, I read through the policy document or the article in order to get its overall understanding.
The second stage involved coding based on main concepts in the research questions and
literature, (laws, policies, girls’ education, address issues of girls’ education, women education,
sex, gender, gender and education, teacher allocation, female teachers, free education,
compulsory education, school construction) in order to organize the data and identify important
information. It must be noted that some codes were generated in the process of reviewing the
documents in addition to the pre-set codes. The third stage involved the developing of the
categories and development of themes in relation to the research questions of my study. As
already alluded to, the purpose of the review is to investigate how the existing laws and policies
in Chinese Education System have addressed issues concerning girls’ education and how studies
done on girls’ education discusses the issues of policy.
Results of the Study This section presents the findings of the study. As already
alluded to the purpose of the study was to find out if the existing education laws and policies
have provisions which address issues concerning girls’ education in China.In line with the liberal
feminist theory, it is assumed that the government of China should have instituted laws and
policies which will empower women and girls’ issues to be heard in education. To achieve
thispurpose, two research questions has guided the study; how have the existing laws and
policies in Chinese Education System addressed the issues of girls’ education in China? And,
how do studies done on girls’ education in China addressed the issues of policy towards girls’
education? The study, therefore, conducted analysis of policy documents and previous studies
done on girls’ education and education policies in China.

Existence of Provisions Which Address Issues that Concern Girls’ EducationFive policy

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 541

documents; Education Law of the PRC (1995), the Compulsory Education Law (1986/2006), the
Teachers’ Law of the PRC (1994), the Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long
Term Education Reform 2010-2020, and the 2015 White Paper on Gender Equality and Women
development in China by the State Council Information Office of the PRC were reviewed. The
results indicate that the Education Law, the Compulsory Education Law has some provisions on
issues of girls’ education and the whitepaper has also highlighted more achievements done in
promoting women’s education in China. On the other hand, the Teachers Law and the Outline of
China’s National Plan for Medium and Long Term Education reform 2010-2020 has no any
provision on issues concerning girls’ education. The following subsections provides the findings
from each document which was analyzed.
The Education Law of the PRC 1995In order to understand if the law provides for issues about
female education, the analysis focused on article provisions which contains words associated
with issues affecting girls’ education such as; female, sex, equality in education. However, during
the analysis, another concept, citizens, come out, indicating inclusion of all people so it was also
considered as one of the terms to be used. Analysis of the Education law of the PRC indicates
that the issue of issues of female education have been addressed in the Law. The issue is more
clear in article 36 of the law which state that; “Schools and relevant administrative departments
shall guarantee that females enjoy equal rights with males in enrolment to school, admission to
higher school, employment, conferment of academic degrees and being dispatched to study
abroad.” Other articles which indicates consideration of girls’ education in the law are articles 9,
which talks of provision of citizens enjoying equal opportunity to education regardless of their
ethnic community, race, sex, occupation, property or religious belief, articles 19 and 23 which
have used the word citizens and more importantly article 18 which is about the provision of
compulsory education.

The Compulsory Education Law of the PRC (1986/2006)The same concepts associated with
girls’ education were used in the analysis of the Compulsory Education Law. However, other
new terms indicating inclusion of all children in education were discovered in the law namely;
“all children” (articles 4) and “all school-aged children” (articles 1,2 and 5) and “any child who
has attained the age of 6 (articles 11 and 4). In short, the results of the analysis indicate that there
is provision in the Compulsory Education Law of the PRC. In particular, article 4 of the law
states that, “All children and adolescents who have the nationality of the People’s Republic of
China and have reached the school age shall have equal right and have the obligation to receive

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 542

compulsory education, regardless of gender, nationality, race, status of family property or

religious belief, etc.”

Teachers’ Law of the PRC (1994) The focus in analyzing

the Teachers’ law was to find out if there is a provision in the law about a deliberate policy of
hiring more female teachers, and posting the female teachers to rural disadvantaged areas of
China. The result of the analysis indicates that there is no provision in the Teachers’ Law
targeting hiring of female teachers let alone posting of female teachers in rural areas of China.

The China’s National Plan for Medium and Long Term Education Reform 2010 – 2020
The analysis of the plan was aimed at finding out if the plan has put deliberate provisions in
terms of policies, themes and strategies aimed at dealing with issues affecting girls’ education in
China. The same terms and concepts related to gender such as sex, equality in education etc.
were used in analyzing the document. Results indicate that there is no direct mention in terms of
policy, theme or strategy about issues affecting girls’ education in China.

The 2015 White Paper on Gender Equality and Women Development in China by the State
Council Information Office of the PRC The analysis of the White Paper was aimed at
understanding the political stand of the government on issues concerning girls’ and women’s
education in China. The results of the analysis indicate that the government has put a number of
policies and initiatives in improving girls’ and women’s education. The paper make reference to
the compulsory Education law, establishment of special fund to reduce the number of illiterate
women, and special education programs for girls such as building of boarding schools and
inclusion of principles and concepts of gender equality in education content, teaching methods
and research.

How Studies Done on girls’ Education in China Have Addressed the Issues of Policy Towards
Girls’ Education in ChinaThe second research question was aimed at finding out if the studies
conducted about girls’ education have focused on the issues of policy towards girls’ education in
China. To achieve this, a number of studies conducted over the years since 1990s were analyzed
with focus on four major areas; the study topic, the purpose of the study, the study findings, and
the recommendations of the study if any. In addition, studies which have focused on any
education policy were also analyzed in order to understand the focus of interest of policy studies
in education in China. The results from the research articles reviewed indicate that no study on
girls’ education has focused on issues of policy. The analysis indicates that most of the studies
done have focused onanalyzing the causes and problems of gender inequality in China especially
in rural areas (Hannum 2003, Hannon et al, 2009, Rong and Shit 2006, Tsui and Rich, 2002)
while others have concentrated on identifying the status gap between girls and boys in China,
(Connelly and Zheng, 2002, Zhang et al, 2012, Maimaiti and Siebert 2009). On the other

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 543

hand,those which have looked at policies in education have focused on; one child-policy and
education (Lee, 2011, and Tsui and Rich 2002), ethnicity and language policy (Adamson and
Feng, 2009,Hu, 2005, Chern, 2013) and special education and inclusion education policy (Deng
and Poon-Macbrayer, 2004 and Deng and Gao 2007). In short, no study focused at issues related
to girls’ policy either in its topic, object, results found and recommendations made.

Discussion of FindingsThis section discusses the research findings with reference to existing
literature on policy provisions towards girls’ education.

Existence of Provisions Which Address Issues that Concern Girls’ EducationThe results from the
analysis of the five documents indicate that there are provisions in 3 out of 5 policy document
which were analyzed in the study. However, apart from the Compulsory Education Law where
the purpose of achieving education for all is emphasized, and article 36 of the Education Law
which talks of ensuring that females have rights to education, there is no specific mention of
girls’ education in these documents. This in in contrast with the attention other vulnerable groups
like ethnic minorities, remote border regions and disabled people in China have received in the
Laws. These other groups have article provisions in the Laws, for instance, article 10 of the
Education Law, and the Strategic goal number 2 of the China’ Plan for Medium and Long Term
Education Reform 2010-2020). It must be noted, however,that literature indicates that policies
which are explicitly stated in the laws or specifically put in place have proved to effectively
achieve their purposes, (Chitrakar, 2009). Chitrakar (2009) emphasize that it is important to have
clear constitutional provisions, legal frameworks, policies and plans in place with reference to
providing education to both boys and girls as well as gender equality. Even in China, the success
in primary and junior secondary education is attributed to the Compulsory Education Law,
(Guiren, 2013).

The absence of clear policies on girls’ education can also be explained by lack of studies being
conducted targeting girls’ education policies in China. As Bowen (2009: p.33)points out, “the
absence, sparseness or incompletion of documents or studies might suggest something, what it
might suggest for example is that certain matters have been given less attention or that the voices
have not been heard.” In case of China, this may imply either that, the issues of girls’ education
are being given less attention due to the fact that, as observed by Zhang et al, (2012), gender
inequality has been narrowing over the years, or it may be that because of the absence of the
policies, the voices of women and girls in education are not being heard.

Policies that Work in Promoting Girls Education

Literature indicates that policies that target making education free and compulsory for all and
those which increases the hiring of more female teachers have had greater impact in achieving
improving girls’ enrolment and retention in schools, (Amil et al, 2007, Global Campaign for

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 544

Education, 2014, Pennells 1998).

Results of this study indicates that China has a 9-year compulsory education system provided in
the Education Law of 1995 and the Compulsory Education Law 1986/2006. This covers 6 year
of elementary education and 3 years of junior high school. Through this policy, China has
managed to achieve almost 100% literacy rate and equity in education. However, senior
secondary education requires students to pay fees. As expected, most studies done on girls’
education in China have identified that disparities between girls and boys exist at senior
secondary level (Maimaiti and Siebert 2009, Zhang et al, 2012, Zhao and Hu, 2007).
Unfortunately, the results indicate that there is no any provision or deliberate policy which has
been put in place in education targeting girls at senior secondary education.

As already alluded to, female teachers play an important role in enhancing girls education in
terms of enrolment, retention and performance in schools. However, the results indicate that
there is no any legal or policy provision of instituting deliberate policies to hire and post female
teachers in rural and poverty stricken regions in China where the problems of girls’ education are
high. This is in contrast with what literature has shown that, there is a correlation between the
number of female teachers and girls enrolment. As Alim et al (2007, p.14) observes, “in countries
where there are more or less equal number of female teachers, there is close to gender parity in
student in take, in contrast, in those countries where only 20% of teachers are female, far more
boys and girls enroll in schools.”

It must be noted, however, that the results indicate that China is doing well in terms of school
construction,improvement in curriculum content which literature has also indicated that it also
promotes girls’ enrolment in schools as it reduces distance to school.

Conclusions and Recommendations

ConclusionsThe results indicate that the laws governing education in China has some provisions
which target issues affecting girls’ education in China. However, these provisions are not
explicitly stated in these documents apart from the Compulsory Education law. The results also
indicate that there are no policies which have targeted hiring and posting of female teachers to
rural areas in the Teachers’ Law, which is in contrast with literature on girls’ education which
indicates that availability of female teachers increases enrolment, retention and performance of
girls in schools. Thus, there is a policy gap in education in China to address problems affecting
girls at senior secondary school level. These policies, as the liberal feminist theory explains, are
needed if the women’s and girls’ education expectations are to be fully achieved and women are
fully empowered in China.
1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 545

Recommendations
The study provide the following recommendations based on the study findings:
 The government may consider instituting specific deliberate policies towards girls’
education in line with the existing laws governing education in China

 Deliberate policies should be put in place for hiring female teachers and posting female
teachers in rural areas of China

 The government may consider extending the free education policy being practiced with
the 9-year compulsory education to senior secondary education for girls only.

It must be noted, however, that the study has relied much on electronic policy documents most of
which would have been translated electronically from Chinese. As such, it is envisaged that some
translation may have changed the original meaning of some worlds in the original documents
which was written in Chinese. However, the documents were proved to be official documents as
they are presented as official English format of the official Chinese documents by the relevant
ministry websites. It would also be good if the relevant policy makers would have been consulted
in the study. However, due to time factor and the scope of the study this cannot be possible, so
that I only documents are being used in this study
Finally, this study focused on policy documents and studies written in English languageonly. A
wider study can be done covering both English and Chinese written documents in order to have a
wider understanding of issues affecting girls’ education in China.

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that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
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1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 548

fileadmin/user_upload/COPs/Pages_documents/Comparative_Research/
EduReformChina.pdf on 16/12/2016

Determining the Reasonableness of Reasonable Returns: Article 51’s Effects and Implications on
Private Education in China
Education Systems, Policy, and Management in China
January 6, 2017
Dr. Li Jiayong and Dr. Sang Guoyuan

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China 549

Determining the Reasonableness of Reasonable Returns

In November of 2016, the Chinese government made a declaration that likely drew the
attention of private-sector educational institutions throughout China. The Chinese Ministry of
Educationannounced an official ban on the operation of for-profit primary and junior high schools in
the Eastern economic powerhouse (Linder, 2016) 1. Additionally, instructors in private schools learned
that their lesson plans were not beyond the reach of regulatory interference with rhetoric that affirms
the Community Party’s intentions to mandate the integration pro-socialist curriculum. A news release
by the Ministry of Education calls for a curricular paradigm that ensures private schools are ran “from
start to finish in a way supportive of socialism” (Chen, 2016, para. 6). Still, perhaps the most brow-
raising actions of the MOE’s end-of-year regulatory changes was the removal of a provision in the
legal code that allowed all private schools (from levels of “primary” to “higher education”) to make a
“reasonable” rate of return. This paper will explore whether “reasonable rate” is an untenable
standard from both a legal and entrepreneurial vantage or, rather, a reflection of hidden social and
market complexities. Additionally, this paper will cover China’s rocky, if not contradictory, history with
the reasonable rate of return provision and speculate on the impact the removal of the provision will
mean to the country’s private education institutions.
Timeline: Post-Cultural Revolution Private Education Policy-Making in China
China first encouraged the establishment of private schools within its borders in 1982. This year
marked the first time in 30 years that private education could be a reality in the Eastern sovereignty.
Yet, the vague constitutional categorization of “other entities” that permitted this a new, non-state
funded avenue of education for inhabitants of China left private education “vulnerable to ambiguities
and threats” (Yan & Levy, 2003, p. 9). Some of these complaints

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what schools will be
affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many established privately-run school
that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China

include the accusations of arbitrary levying of fees by governmental agencies, lack of

access to public transportation discounts (that public university students can avail of),
and absence of a mandate that private schools refund tuition fees upon filing for
bankruptcy.
The question may arise as to why China would allow private schools since this
action essentially weakens the government’s ability to monitor and control how gaps in
human capital are filled and how “in harmony” the curriculum of the schools may be with
the government’s sociopolitical philosophy. Yan and Levy (2003) posited that China’s
move to allow privatization of education stems from “the belief that China needs to
expand enrollments rapidly, yet not at the public expense” (p. 9). This expansion was
facilitated by a policy adopted in 1999 which empowered provincial governments with the
authority to accredit non-degree-granting institutions. Change was slow, however,
becauseby 2002, only about 10 percent of private colleges were allowed to award a
bachelor’s or sub-bachelor’s degree—meaning the vast majority of private sector higher
education lacked official government authorization. Considering accreditation is quality
control process that aims at the “improvement of academic quality and public accountability”
(CODA, n.d., para. 1),it is noteworthy that 2002 was also the year that China
implemented legislationthat permittedfor-profit interests to guide the stewardship of
privatecolleges that overwhelmingly still had not answered to quality expectations implied
from attaining accreditation. The 2002 education law, called the Promotion of Privately
Run Schools,and its inclusion of the of phrase “reasonable return” cast a shadow of
ambiguity on the Chinese government’s recurring stance that education should be non-
profit.
Analysis of the “Promotion of Privately Run Schools” Law: A Literature Review
Controversy over “reasonable returns” has its roots in even the drafting stage of the
Promotion of Privately Run Schools. Shui Bing (2009) noted that the draft for the
contentious education law was passed even though there was strong opposition—and
only after “three consecutive reviews and deliberations” (p. 7). Article 35 of the law
allowed operators of privately run schools to obtain reasonable returns after school-
running costs and expenses were deducted. Strangely enough, Article 35 seemingly
contradictsArticle 25, which stipulates that “no organization or individual may run a school
or other educational institution for the purposes of making a profit” (Shui, 2009). Drafters
of the Promotion of Privately Run Schoolsbelieved that allowing for operators of privately
run schools to collect returns was necessary because it there would otherwise be no
incentive to encourage forces in society to run educational endeavors. However, the
proponents of the law believed that adding “reasonable” in front of “returns” would
discourage the establishment of private schools whose main objectives were profit
making. Shui goes on to say that opponents to the law in the National People’s Congress
(NPC) argued that “reasonable” was not a legal term, evaded the clarity needed for
regulation, and unfairly allowed private schools to render profits while enjoying the same
preferential taxation polices as publically run schools.
Contention within the NPC in regards to the Promotion of Privately Run Schools law
began in late June of 2002. After being disputed heavily a second deliberation was held

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what
schools will be affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many
established privately-run school that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns
clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China

later in the year which, according to Shui (2009), “failed to reach any results” (p. 7). At
the third deliberation, a proposal was made that “reasonable returns” be removed from
the law and replaced with new language (“appropriate compensation”) that still did not
clarify exactly what proportion of funds from a surplus of a private school could be
distributed to investors. Shuirevealed that opponents saw “compensation” as term usually
used in regards to (unfair) losses and “reasonable returns” as nothing more than
disguisedprofits. Because proponents and opponents of the law were deadlocked, the
draft was sent to the then chair of the NPC, Li Peng, who determined “privately run
educational is of a special nature, and the investors in privately run education should be
allowed to obtain a given and reasonable amount of return in terms of economic benefit”
(Shui, 2009). Li went on to say that profits should not be the main objective of investing
privately run schools. Thus, during the fourth deliberation, the contradictory wording
Article 25 was effectively struck from the books and “appropriate compensation” was
replaced with the original “reasonable returns” in what is now Article 51 of the Law on the
Promotion of Private Run Education—passed by the Ninth NPC Standing Committee in
December of 2002.
Methodology
To fulfill the research requirements of this paper, the author gathered sources from
both Eastern and Western authors to ensure a cultural balance on the context of the
analysis.References from peer-reviewed academic literature and professional-reliable
materials were allocated to support claims.Most of the author’s sources were written in
the last 20 years with the majority written in the last ten years. All sources were analyzed
so that relevant data and findings could be extracted to piece together a scholastic work
that gives a comprehensive view of thehistory, legal framework, theories,and public
sentiment regarding reasonable returns.
Profit vs Non-profit
When discussing non-profit organizations,focus on “returns” on the funds collected
and generated seems out of place. After all, “returns” is a term more associated with
investment. “Traditional colleges are funded primarily through donations while for-profit
institutions get the majority of their funding directly from students, usually from students who
have taken out loans from the government” (Morse, 2015, p. 586). Also, while a non-profit
institution is run by elected officials (such as a county board of education) or governor-appointed
individuals (such as board of regents in University), for-profit institutions have a traditional
corporate organizational structure (at least on the top end) of being managed by a board of
directors who answer to shareholders (instead of principles established in a charter or notions of
the public welfare).
What “Non-Profit” Means in China
A strong argument could be made that the denotations and expectations of
nongovernmental entities should collect and handle funds are derived from a Western
take on the role of non-public-sector organizations. The universal applicability of the
Western basis for the development of private education intuition, which relies on an
established wealthy class to behave philanthropically and donate to have schools built
(much in the way that Yale and Harvard got its start in the American colonial period), is

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what
schools will be affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many
established privately-run school that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns
clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China

questionable. So, perhaps before judging the for-profit nature of China’s nominally non-
profit private education sector too harshly, one should consider the “strong particularities
and distinct…characteristics” of China’s economic path (Wu, 2009). Thus, the
uniqueness of China’s path in relation to private education necessitates further
examination with the sociopolitical context brought to the fore.
China’s centralized control of public education meant that the country’s funds were
stretched in the early years followingXiaoping’s movement ofGǎigé kāifàng or “reform and
opening up” (Brand &Rawski, 2008).Wu (2009) outlines three “no haves” during these
formative years: “no capital, no school buildings, and no teaching staff” (p. 62). Thus, the
absence of a wealthy elite and the extant circumstances of having neither the
infrastructure or human capital available that would make potential donors feel secure
about the utility of their donations meant that a “start-from-scratch” model of education
was established. With this model, nongovernment education institutions responded to
market gaps resulting from the “vigorous demand for education and the shortage of state-
owned educational resources” (Wu, 2009, p. 62). Hence, with no government
sponsorship or donations for a wealthy class, these nongovernment educational
institutions were forced to depend strongly on tuition fees. However, the nature of this
dependence was undoubtedly influenced by the strong demand for education that the
government could not, at the time, supply. With these peculiarities in mind, it is then less
surprising that investment interests took hold in a market environment where there was
strong demand for a “service” and relatively secure stream of liquid income in the form of
tuition fees. Still, even a high demand, short supply market does not, per se, guarantee
success. Factors leading to the success or failure of investment-funded private education
in China are dependent upon which of the three waves of investmentinvestors made their
stake.
First Wave: The Education Reserve Fund System and Economies of Scale
The first wave of investment in private education kicks off in 1982 with the
succession ofamendmentsto China’s constitution which gradually expanded recognition
of a nonpublic economy serving as a complement to public sector (Brandt &Rawski,
2008).As already mentioned, one of the main reasons that investment-funded private
education became a reality in China in the early years following Gǎigé kāifàngwas due to
three “no haves”.Consequently, starting from scratch required a level of funding that may
have been beyond the amount that even a willing investor during that time may have on
hand. Thus, these schools had to establish a special form of financing to overcome this
deficit. An Education Reserve Fund( jiaoyuchubeijin), represents a market-driven
allocation of money that private schools could borrow from to meet the initial capital
outlay for starting a privately-run school.
Education Reserve Fund is a special form of tuition fees. Students who
are admitted into the schools have to deposit [large sums of money] into
the school’s fund. The operators of the schools then borrow from the
school fund at medium term saving interest rate for purposes of either
development of the schools or outside economic activities. Interest
income derived from the fund is used to cover operational expenditure of

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what
schools will be affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many
established privately-run school that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns
clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China

the schools and all students-related expenditure (e.g., tuition, meals,

accommodation, travelling and medicine, etc.). The deposits would be
returned in full but without interest to the students upon graduation or
when they leave the schools. (Zhu &Ip, 2002, p. 76).
The need to amass large amounts of deposit money to reap the most of interest gains
results high-tuition schools. However, because the fund is market-driven, the availability
of this financing source depended on the strength of the economy (A lagging economy
could mean interest rates returns that do not offset the discount rate, no return at all
considering investments were made in the private market, and less studentswho can
afford to enroll).Operators during this “first wave” of private school growth therefore had
to ensure that development plan would have reasonable returns to payback the deposits
as well satisfy investors within a relatively short time frame. Since these funds are
deposits, the risk falls on the students as opposed to a financial intuition. As clarified by
Wu (2009), the “‘education reserve fund system’ merely resolved the problem of start-up
financing when the schools were first founded but provided no fundamental solution to
the problem of funds needed for the institutions’ development” (p. 63). Therefore, the
private schools who wished to survive during this first wave of development had to seek
alternative solutions for growth. The solution that proved to be most effective was
derivative of the benefits of “economies of scale”.
Economies of Scale
Economies of scale is the term applied to the idea that the more an organizational
entity produces of a product or service, the less it costs (per unit) for those products or
services to be produced. Using a magazine company as an example, “it might cost $3,000
to produce 100 copies of a magazine but only $4,000 to produce 1,000 copies”, with the average
cost per magazine only increasing ten dollars because the main costs of producing a magazine
(editorial and design) do not vary in direct proportion to increases in production (Economies of
Scale and Scope, 2008). Since the legal costs of starting the school are relatively static, teaching
materials can be re-used annually (and purchased at a lower cost per unit once enrollment
increases substantially), teachers can be simply given larger class sizes to reduce new wage
expenses, etc., schools that reinvested their reasonable returns to start other schools were more
likely to succeed in the first wave. On the other hand, “virtually all the schools that did not
complete their expansion as quickly as possible and did not have the support of a profit-making
industry faced financial difficulties” (Wu, 2009, p. 63). Thus, failure was still rampant in the early
days of private school development even though it occurred via “for-profit” initiatives.
Second Wave: The School-and-Bank Coalition
With prestigious colleges in China like Peking University, Tsinghua University, and
Fudan University all being state run, private colleges in China may be viewed as inferior
by many Chinese citizens. This idea of inferiority could have discouraged private
investment. Deng Xiaoping spurred the second wave of private education development
when he made his 1992 tour of South China and gave speeches that encouraged such
investment (Brandt &Rawski, 2008; Wu, 2009). Prior to Xiaoping’s tour, however, there
had already been a governmental push to encourage investment in private schools to
supplement state-run education (Whiting, 1991). Consequently, private education

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what
schools will be affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many
established privately-run school that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns
clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China

became a new investment domain that was facilitated by the strong finance and capital
markets of the 1990s. Bank loans, shareholding systems, and education companies
became the safer replacement of the Education Reserve Fund that took a large part of
the risk away from the students and placed it in the hands of financial institutions. The
emergence of a mutually beneficially union between private schools and financial
institutions is referred to by Wu as the “school-and-bank coalition”. This coalition meant
that the investors could avail of a faster start up cycle and quicker returns. With a higher
intensity of investment and greater access to financing, start-up conditions in the second
wave were distinctly better than the first wave. With the third wave, the “for-profit”
realities of Chinese private schools became, perhaps, the most manifest.
Third Wave: Corporate Investment
In the third wave of private education development in China, listed companies joined
the fray of those making “reasonable” returns in the nongovernment sector. At the time of
his writing, Wu (2009) identified around thirty corporations (including Pacific Insurance,
NeuSoft, and Da Hong Ying), that spearheaded the process of investment in
nongovernmental higher education. However, Wu portrays this incursion as both another
form of investment and an exploitation of the lack of clarity of Article 51. Still, since there
are no clear rubricsoutlining what counts as “unreasonable” in the Article 51, and
investment-funded education is the rule, not the exception in China, we will discuss three
areas of inquiry that stem from this rule and consider how they bolsteror weaken the
justification for reasonable returns.
1. Does Public Benefit Have to Mean “Non-profit”?

2. When weighing costs versus benefits, are returns on for-profit education better

viewed as“premiums” on the value of education provided when compared to

nonprofit education?

3. Is there a viable alternative to reasonable returns?

Discussion
Profiting from Public Benefit
Presumptions on whether an organization acts for the common good (and what
counts as the “common good”) may vary by country and time period. Japan, wrangled for
over a hundred years over whether organizations railroad companieswere public benefit
until the term was legislatively categorized under of “non-profitmaking”—which left little
room for misinterpretation (Shui, 2009). In the Western World, the enactment of the
Charities Act in England and Wales meant that the educational institutions transitioned
from being understood as public benefit to being cast into an undetermined status where
public benefit must be proven (Harding, 2015). German civil law avoids the ambiguities
of the termpublic benefit and focuses directly on whether or not an organization “has
plans to provide products or services in the long term or for payment” (Shui, 2009, p. 13);

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what
schools will be affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many
established privately-run school that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns
clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China

hence, non-profitability takes center stage and is not a subcategorical item of discussion.
Portugal, on the other hand, has six subcategories of private corporation that still leave
doubt as to classification of specific activities (such as sports clubs as a “non-economic
type corporate person”).
A thorough analysis on a country by country basis of corporate terminology in
regard to public benefit is likely to continue this trend of unique, and sometimes
confusing, interpretations of public benefit. Therefore, it should follow that the question of
whether or individuals should profit from education institutions in China (even if they are
perceived to be for the “public benefit) is a question that carries flawed assumptions of
standardized acceptance of what “public benefit” means. Moreover, the varied nature of
interpretation of “public benefit” and “for profit” on an international comparative scale
suggests that China’s lack of decisive legal wording on these fronts is reflective of not
only by unique characteristics of its culture and ever-developing but also of underlying
philosophical complexities that demand observation before reaction.
Quality of For-Profit Education: Comparative Analysis of US and China
United States
One angle of determining the “reasonableness” of reasonable returns would be to
measure the quality of the for-profit (or “return generating”) services rendered compared
with equivalent services rendered in the public sector. That is, if for-profit schools do a
poorer job preparing students for continued education or the workforce than nonprofit
schools, then there would be greater justification for regulating or doing away with for-
profit schools. In the US, for-profit education accounted for so little of the market (0.02
percent) in that few recognized the term but that changed in 1994 when the success of
the for-profit institution, University of Phoenix, went public (Hanford, n.d.). As of 2012,
for-profit colleges account for 12 percent of enrolled American college students. However,
with the success for profit colleges have come criticisms. Deming, Goldin, and Katz
(2013) describe for-profit US colleges as the “fastest-growing postsecondary schools in
the nation, enrolling a disproportionately high share of disadvantaged and minority
students and those ill-prepared for college” (p. 137). Criticisms also include over-reliance
on federal financial aid (and thus taxpayer’s dollars) for tuition, lack of physical
classrooms (most are online), lower accreditation standards, higher loan default rates,
and relatively inferior employment outcomes (Morse, 2015).
Nevertheless, there have been benefits ascribed to pursing for-profit education as
well. In reference to online education, the most salient benefit isaccess to education
personal obligations would otherwise prevent. For example, a mother of school-age
children working a full-time job may not be able to physically attend a traditional school
(assuming a school providing the program she seeks is within commutable range).
Additionally, for-profit colleges may not have as strict of admissions standards (such as
minimum standardized test scores) which grants a larger number of students access to
higher education. The federal government also benefits from tax revenues generated by
for-profit colleges (in the case of University of Phoenix, which has around 230,000
students,around $625 perstudent) (Morse, 2015; Gillespie, 2015).Other benefits of for-
profit schools are indistinguishable from general benefits of non-profit education and

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what
schools will be affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many
established privately-run school that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns
clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China

include increased average income (about six percent) of student who attend (even if they
do not graduate) (Morse, 2015), increased productivity (including the increasing the
productivity of those who work near educated workers), decrease likelihood of engaging
in criminal activity, improved civic behavior (such as more informed voting).
China
Determining the costs and benefits of for-profit education in China is a process
that brings to light points made in the previous section of the paper. Namely, China’s
economic path and societal realities precludeconclusions that can be easily extracted by
comparative analysis with other countries. However, since the US has a more well-
established economy (and an older one in terms of being market-driven) and since it also
has citizens who question the combination of the words “for-profit” and “education”, there
are similar precursors to cost-benefit analysis that are comparable.
Major benefits to for-profit education in China have been outlined earlier in this
paper. For-profit education (or private education with reasonable returns) encouraged
investment in infrastructural lags and gaps in the implementation of the education-for-all
policy that came into existence in the Post-Cultural Revolution era. It catered to a
societal need that the government could not at the time satisfy due to lack of financial
capacity. However, there are other benefits to private education in China that are
dependent on student demands. In the case of Sino-Foreign Cooperative, which are
“joint ventures between a Chinese owner (typically providing the land and financial
investment), and a foreign education company or school that provides the learning and
teaching and, frequently, an educational reputation” (ISC Research, 2016, p. 49),
students are given the opportunity to prepare themselves for postsecondary education in
the West (if desired) (Jinhui, 2016) or get access to a more diverse curriculum that does
not include compulsory classes like “morality” (Alsop, 2015). With tuition fees that make
the schools less accessible to lower or even middle income Chinese families, it would
seem unlikely that these Sino-foreign cooperatives would exist without investment from
clientele who realize there is much to be gained by catering toward the demands of the
wealthier classes. Additional benefits, from the vantage of the China’s fiscal stability and
economy is the amount the government saves on not having to pay for the education of
citizens who choose to attend privately-run schools. China, a country that, according to a
2011 figure, has never devoted more than 4 percent of its GDP to education compared
with average 5.5 percent of developed economies and 4.8 percent developing
economies, is, relatively speaking, not in the position to do away with this advantage
(Shanahan, 2003). Moreover, private collegesimprove the employment rate by providing
over two million teaching positions and diverting millions more from the labor market
because students traditionally do not count as “unemployed” when determining the
employment rate) (Wu, 2009).
Notwithstanding, not all privately-run schools are Sino-foreign cooperatives and
there are shortcomings aplenty when concerning all forms of private education in China.
Besides out-of-pocket tuition expenses that can create class restrictions, many private
schools, such as schools for children of foreign workers (SCFWs), due to Chinese
curriculum policies, are not allowed to enroll Chinese students(ISC Research, 2016).

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what
schools will be affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many
established privately-run school that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns
clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China

Teachers of private schoolsare not allowed to obtain the same benefits packages as
public school counterparts (which means that average 40-percent higher pay of a private
school teacher is greatly offset and even falls short of the monetary equivalent of the pay-
plus-benefits package of a public school teacher. In fact, Wu (2009) calculates that it
would take a wage that is 185% of the salary of public school teachers for private school
teachers to be on a level playing field. One final disadvantage to shareholders, teachers,
and students alike of private schools in China is the vulnerability to unpredictable policy
changes, such as those that will affect curriculum based on the November 7, 2016
government announcement. Policies changes such as this shape private schools to be
nothing more than objects to be protected for market reasons but dispensable in terms of
their perceived cultural value. From this perspective, the incongruousaction of
reemphasizing the position thateducation should be nonprofit (as found in the 1982,
1995, 1997, 2002 education laws and decrees [Yan & Levy, 2003]) while permitting
drafting and passing legislation that allows for reasonable returns could be seen as a
surrender to an economic reality rather than active acceptance of it.
Alternatives to Reasonable Returns
Perhaps the strongest argument that a proponent for reasonable returns could make
is that there is no perceivable alternative to reasonable returns in private education.
There may have been an opportunity to retract or clarify the wording of “reasonable
returns” or “for-profit” in a meaningfulway when the original privately-run schools were
surfacing in response to economic gaps, but now with so many investors, parents, and
students in existence who have a stake in the success of privately-run schools, there is
arguably little hope of divesting the country of the real or perceived benefits. The
government, of course, has the power (though arguably not the authority from an outside
investor’s perspective—who may naturally value property rights) to do away with
privately-run schools and take on the monumental task of making budgetary adjustments
for revenue losses, herding students into new centrally-controlled schools, and all the
while, dealing with major blows to public opinion about the communist party, but the
author would opine that this is unlikely to happen. Therefore,if further research regarding
the legal framework and policymaking concerning education in China should take the
default position that “reasonable returns” are inextricably ingrained characteristic of
privately-run schools. So, even though the Chinese government has removed the
provision that allows for private schools to make a reasonable rate of return as part of the
November 2016 pronouncements, de facto realities may prevent any practical
enforcement of undefined “public benefit” criteria.
Conclusionof Findings
Several major takeaways are derived from this paper’s analysis on reasonable
returns. First, from an administrative standpoint, an implicit cost of allowing for privately
run schools was presumably that the government surrenders some control over the
curriculum. However, the November 2016 announcements makes it very clear that China
it is willing to reclaim this control when it deems necessary.So, reasonable returns may
play a role in adjusting for the vulnerabilities of operating in a political environment that is
only permissive rather than accepting. Secondly, reasonable returns fit the context of a

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what
schools will be affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many
established privately-run school that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns
clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China

unique economic path China; a path that diverges from those of western private
educational institutions such as Harvard or Oxford. Meaning, determining the
reasonableness of reasonable returns is apt to be laden with bias if viewed through a
western lens. Thirdly, vastly wavering inconsistences in the meaning of terms like “for-
profit”, “nonprofit”, and “public benefit”on an international scale makes the analysis of
“reasonable returns” not a matter of precedent but a matter of curiosity. Fourthly,
reasonable returns were a necessity to encourage investment in private education and to
fill gaps in demand that could not be filled by the Chinese government’s centralized
education system. This necessity justified the reasonableness of profits being earned on
“start-for-scratch” labor-intense efforts. Fifthly, reasonable returns were necessary to for
privately-run schools to build capital quickly and make use of the economies of scale to
avoid imminent failure. Nevertheless, reasonable returns could have a dangerous effect
oneducation quality; investors are naturally focused on profits and the quality of the
“service” rendered to consumers mayonly be as important as the quality relates to the
preservation and increase of profits. Still, it may be unreasonable to ask investors to set a
limit to their profits or think that investors will accept that setting a limit on their profits is
ever “reasonable”.
Final Notes from the Author
As of the date of this paper, there appears to be no example of the Chinese
government on any level shutting down private school for making “unreasonable” returns.
It may be more fair to view China’s government as being in a transitional or
“brainstorming” phase in relation to how to legislatively deal with private education (as
opposed to being in a stubborn state of negligent inaction). This transitional phase may
naturally include laws that are imperfect and seemingly incomplete because the state of
private education in China and its effect on (and acceptance by) the public’s human
capital is unclear. Thus, laws (like the November 2016 laws) that express restrictions
and freedoms on what running a private education institution means are bound to
continue to appear until China can determine what benefits its own public in terms of its
economic history and projected path— instead of playing roulette with a notional
standardized meaning of “public benefit” that is neither philosophically answerable nor
consistently interpreted among first-world sovereignties.

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what
schools will be affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many
established privately-run school that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns
clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China

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schools will be affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many
established privately-run school that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns
clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China

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1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what
schools will be affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many
established privately-run school that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns
clause(seeChen, 2016).
Private Education in China

1
Ironically enough, there are no schools in China that are classified as “for profit” so it will be interesting to see what
schools will be affected by this new rule and the criteria used to determine “for profit” status in the face so many
established privately-run school that have benefited and/or could not exist without the reasonable returns
clause(seeChen, 2016).