In 1993, China’s Ministry of Education (MoE) published the “Outline for Education Reform and Development“ in which it announced to increase its annual budget to 4% of GDP by 2000. A glance at The National Bureau of Statistics‘ yearbook of 2001 reveals that China missed this ambitious target by about 30%.
Evidently not satisfied with the overall development of the education sector, China’s leaders sat down once more in 2009 to draft the new “National Outline for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020)” proposing to raise the 2012 educational budgetary bars to 4% of GDP, again. With the second and final public review of the education reform already closed and the reform paper being finalised, a closer look into what Chinese leaders aim to achieve with a projected educational budget of roughly 200 billion USD deems appropriate.
Guiding theme of China’s education reform 2010 to 2020 is to build the foundation for a learning society by modernising the current educational system in its entirety. Main goal for a modernised Chinese education system is to be able to surrender globally competitive human resources to the working world. Education reform will be carried out on all levels of education, namely, pre-school, compulsory, high school, vocational, higher, continuing, minority, and special education. The education reform program will be thoroughly overhauling the way education is delivered, examined and administered in China – across all educational levels.
Having learnt from past lessons, the reform agenda 2020 comprises built-in measures aiming to assure a successful and smooth reform implementation. Measures named in the final revision of the education reform paper revolve around cultivating existing and training new teachers, guaranteed funding over the whole term of education reform, the informatisation of the educational system, enforcing education management according to current law, and conducting pilots to test areas of education reform that require fundamental changes. The agenda also stresses the role international educators play during the reform process: not only does China want to further stipulate existing cooperation on higher education level, but it plans to pilot jointly-run schools across educational levels.
As with most official documents in China, clear answers to specific questions, such as to which extend cooperation with international educators will be encouraged and financially supported, are not given in about 80 pages of reform agenda so as to retain flexibility for incremental changes during the process of implementing the reform. However, we have extracted and listed below some of the most striking key words which could help international educators understand the basic concept of China’s education reform 2020 and derive opportunities for their engagement with China’s education sector during the decade ahead.
Reform on all educational levels
Pre-schools
- Guarantee universal access to pre-school education
- Make pre-school education integral part of urban and rural planning
- Encourage social participation and public-private-partnership
- Focus on development of rural pre-school education
Compulsory education
- Consolidate and enhance the level of nine-year compulsory education
- Migrant children’s education to be managed by the city governments and to be operated by full-time public schools ensuring equal access to compulsory education; improve the quality of compulsory education
- Reduce students’ academic burdens
High Schools
- Increase number of high school students
- Improve quality of high school education: conduct curriculum reform; promote research-based study, community service and social practice; develop education quality evaluation system; establish student development guidance system
- Diversify high school education: specialised courses
Vocational education
- Establish modern vocational education system which can adapt to economic changes and restructuring demands
- Quality improvements take priority
- Industry to provide guidance on how to operate schools
- Accelerate the development of vocational education in rural areas
- Improve vocational education: introduction of free secondary vocational education system; improve financial assistance to poor students
Higher education
- Accelerate the development of internationally renowned colleges and universities with a number of universities at or near the world-class level (programs 985 and 211)
- Improve quality of teaching
- Raise level of scientific research
- Further develop higher education for graduates to become more diversified; increase support for higher education in Central and Western regions; encourage the eastern regions to take the lead in the development of higher education
Continuing education
- Accelerate the development of continuing education and establish learning society
- Establish institutional mechanisms for continuing education
- Build a flexible and open system of lifelong education: Schools, research institutions, enterprises equally to participate; community educational institutions and network building; promote distance learning; promote communication among all levels of education
Minority education
- Improve level of education for minorities and in ethnic areas; Both central and local government to increase investment
- Promote bilingual education: local language and Chinese language
- Other provinces to support minorities and ethnic areas
Special education
- Improve overall quality of disabled students; Governments at all levels to include development of special education into economic and social development plan
- Improve special education system
- Improve safeguard mechanisms: the state government to develop basic educational standards for special education schools; local governments to improve standard for each student; increase investment; improve cultivation of teachers teaching disabled students; increase support for poor students; gradually implement free higher school education for disabled students
Thoroughly overhauling the way education is delivered, examined and administered
General education system
- Integrated development; everyone can become a talent; diversified talents; lifelong learning; systematic training
- Combine learning and thinking; Unify knowledge and practice; teach according to individuals’ needs
- Reform of education quality evaluation and personnel evaluation systems focusing on performance including character, knowledge, ability and other factors
Examination and enrolment systems
- Diversify admission systems
- Improve secondary school enrolment and examination system
- Improve higher education examination and enrolment system: introduce entrance examination according to level and broad field of education
- Improve examination information disclosure; strengthen government and community supervision
Building a modern school system
- Separation of government and schools: Establish self-management, democratic supervision and social participation
- Expand schools’ autonomy
- Improve modern university system: deans of colleges and universities to take overall responsibility; strengthen regulations; expand social cooperation; introduce academic program evaluation system
- Improve management system of primary and secondary schools: headmasters to take overall responsibility; expand schools’ autonomy; establish Parent Council
- Encourage cooperation between secondary vocational schools and enterprises
Setting up new schools
- Government to encourage industry to collaborate with public schools
- Support private education: clean up discriminating policies to improve the perception of private schools in public; public finance to provide support
- Government to supervise private schools
Operating existing schools
- Enforce segregation of duties
- Improve planning activities of provincial governments to develop policies suitable for different educational levels
- Reduce unnecessary administrative intervention from governments and move toward providing guidance to and supervision of public education
- Foster external education services to improve professional level of education
Education system internationalisation
- Strengthen international exchange and cooperation
- Introduce high-quality educational resources: Attract international schools, educational and research institutions and enterprises
- Mutual recognition of credits and degrees; exchange of teachers and students; Chinese schools to open overseas schools; improve scholarship mechanism; increase number of foreign students; strengthen cooperation with UNESCO and other international organisations
Measures assuring successful and smooth implementation of education reform
Cultivation of Teachers
- Further cultivation of Qualified Teachers
- Strengthen teachers’ morality
- Improve teachers’ professional level
- Improve teachers’ compensations
- Improve teacher evaluation system
Guaranteed funding
- Government main responsibility with other channels also providing funding
- Increase investment in rural, remote, poor areas and ethnic areas
- Improve the system of state-sponsored policy
- Reinforce funds management
Education informatisation
- Complete construction of digital education system covering both urban and rural areas
- Strengthen development and application of high-quality education resources; strengthen online teaching resources; strengthen application of information technology
- Establish a National Education Management Information System
Enforce education according to the law
- Improve legal system in education
- Enforce school administration according to law
- Promote school management according to the law by continuously improving both teachers’ and students’ law awareness
- Improve supervisory systems and accountability mechanisms: establish independent supervisory institutions; strict implementation of accountability system
Piloting reform activities
- Quality Education Pilot
- Compulsory education reform pilot
- Pilot of Vocational Education Model reform
- Pilot for building life-long education system
- Pilot of teaching graduates toward innovation
- Pilot for examination and enrollment system reform
- Modern university reform pilot
- Pilot for reforming the financing of education in rural areas
For more in-depth or segment-specific research on impacts of China’s education reform agenda 2020, please contact us directly.
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China’s enormous economic output can be attributed – to a notable degree – to an army of about 300 million migrant workers. It is therefore hard to believe that Chinese leaders forgot to build migrant children’s entitlement to compulsory education into their policies. In the 1990s, this policy hole led to a patchwork of privately operated migrant schools, many of them poorly managed, and with their headmasters caring more about generating profits than providing education. The education reform agenda 2020 is still being finalised, but a pre-released version reveals that the focus is now shifting toward equal education by explicitly entitling migrant children to compulsory education.
Private migrant schools tried to solve one problem and created another
By declaring that “the colour of a cat does not matter so long as it catches mice“, Chairman Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, once encouraged his fellow Chinese to hunt for money, by hook or by crook. Driven by their leadership’s decree, and with opportunities arising from a lack of government-sponsored education for migrant children, some entrepreneurial Chinese set out to catch their mice by setting up private schools, taking concepts such as curricular quality, public hygiene, and food safety off their educational agenda altogether. With a student-teacher ratio of 1:35 and more and with teachers lacking formal training, many of these schools developed into low-quality children’s homes. However, there are a growing number of exceptions to this model, such as the private elementary school operated by Rural China in Shanxi province. The school applies locally-relevant teaching methods that develop rural children’s self-confidence, communication skills, independent thinking, empathy, and awareness of social issues.
Shanghai World Expo opening marked date for largest-ever merger of compulsory education institutions
Plastering “Better City, Better Life” in inconceivable variants and places all over Shanghai, Expo organisers have taken up the cause of sustainable society. A public, wholeheartedly led debate on 400,000 migrant children ailing in improperly managed private schools could have severely damaged the targeted Mister-Clean-image of the city. As a result, officials decided to spearhead the government-decreed movement in 2008 and started to take over or raze a large number of private grass-root schools. According to Corinne Hua, director of Stepping Stones, retired headmasters of public schools were asked to return to the educational workforce replacing their out-of-favour private counterparts. Schools doomed to be closed transferred their pupils to public schools “if there were enough places and children scored high enough to catch up with their to-be classmates”, concludes Hua. Stepping Stones aims to improve the quality of migrant children’s education in Shanghai by sending native speakers to migrant schools to teach English language.
On the flip side of the shiny Shanghai Expo coin, another activity was carried out potentially threatening the education of thousands of migrant children: In an attempt to clean Shanghai’s urban roads from street vendors – usually migrants -, around 50,000 street stall operators were forced out of business over night. Fruit vendor Zhou may be indicative of the impact of the one-size-fits-all decision making of local authorities: “We were selling fruits here for more than 7 years”, says Mr. Zhou who has been trading high-quality fruits all his professional life. He further states that he was given only one day notice by local authorities before his booth was demolished. He then describes the seriousness of his family’s situation: “We cannot afford renting a store on this street, and if we don’t find a solution soon, we might have to return to our hometown”. According to Zhou, this scenario would result in their two children being cut off from their classmates, and they would also not be able to further benefit from the free private tutoring two foreigners provided to them every weekend.
China, once again, approaches a serious societal issue in its education sector pragmatically. But as with other cases, the one-size-fits-all approach taken by local authorities not only stops those unjustifiably benefiting from their compatriots’ difficulties: schools, as the one operated by Rural China, will likely be closed down destroying the organisation’s foundation for delivering their innovative educational concepts, degrading it to an advisory agency, or forcing its headmasters out of the education business altogether. We hope that local authorities start thinking holistically, acknowledging the fact that Potemkin villages do not take precedence over education.
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Are business schools to blame for the financial crisis? Is there a model explaining the economics of China? Do we need a new global economics framework? And, are Chinese business schools ready to go international? Titled “Challenges for Global Business Schools”, this Shanghai World Expo workshop was to shed light on these and other questions.
Shanghai is host to the 2010 World Expo which is expecting its many exhibiting national and theme pavilions to not only receive about 70 million visitors during operation but also host some of China’s leading education experts to reason about challenges China has to master on its way to becoming a truly global player. Deans of two of the world’s leading business schools, the Spanish ESADE and IE Business School, recently took this opportunity to compile a high-profile panel of China management education experts to convey their views to a sophisticated audience of higher education professionals and management students gathering at the Spanish Pavilion.
The world needs a new paradigm for global economics and for doing business
In his opening statement, Beijing University’s Guanghua School of Managment Dean Zhang Weiying described the role of his school as mainly educating managers of large-scale enterprises, with more importance attributed to executive management education (EMBA). He further narrowed the scope by saying that China’s many entrepreneurial and start-up companies were not envisaged targets.
Leonard Cheng, Dean of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Business School, foresees a “differentiation in program scopes and curricula for business schools to be able to meet the needs of the economy”.
Professor Rolf Cremer, Dean of the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, pointed out that economies around the world “lack of an intellectual framework to accommodate the current world which has changed compared to 20 years ago”. According to Cremer, a new platform needed to be created which would support business in its role as driving factor for change. “We still employ the old methods, and we still use liquidity to solve liquidity issues – as seen in the recent Greek case”, said Cremer.
This view was shared by the Associate Dean of Fudan School of Management, Yin Zhiwen, who further demanded the development of a theoretical framework for explaining the Chinese economic habitat. In contrast to the Guanghua School of Management Dean, Mr. Yin sees merit in developing “specific programs targeting entrepreneurs and start-up company leaders in China”, a statement he turned into action later during the subsequent networking session by suggesting to evaluate the opportunity to develop a pilot program for international entrepreneurs.
Where were Chinese business schools with their perspectives when Harvard portrayed their view on Google pulling out of China?
When asked about the next steps in internationalising his school, Leonard Cheng stressed that HKUST Business School already had an international framework catering to international students: “This framework was jointly developed by my school and two existing international partners, and we are in discussion with another prospective partner from mainland China”, said Cheng. He further revealed his school’s plans to export management education to the Middle East and other Asian countries.
Chen Guoqing, Associate Dean of Tsinghua School of Economics and Management, sees internationalisation of his school still at an early stage, with enroling more international students, diversifying the program and adding international staff to the faculty portfolio being the major challenges ahead. He further envisages to start conducting academic research into management subjects. “Globalisation means a singular market with diversified clients, and our business schools need to be globally compatible.”
“It is an obligation to be global”, proclaimed Guanghua School Dean Zhang Weiying. According to Zhang, his school will internationalise by offering executive training programs for company board directors while conducting board meetings in their China subsidiaries. “These programs will have a China specific curriculum which should be derived from research into China’s economy patterns”, said Zhang.
For Cremer, internationalisation is all about not making the mistake of being mere copies of existing international business schools, and from experience he suggested to achieve this target by recruiting a concise, international faculty which should be encouraged to “want to work together”.
Shanghai Jiaotong University’s Antai College of Economics and Management “already had its initial and unsuccessful internationalisation test”, reported the school’s Dean, Lin Zhou, and he further attributed the failure to the immaturity of faculty members at that time. With a declared goal of being a global player in management education and a change from “gain to give” within the next 20 years, Lin sees accreditation, curriculum design, international faculty, and governance as main ingredients for achieving this ambitious target.
According to Fudan School Dean Yin Zhiwen, a global mindset is key for successfully internationalising his school, a characteristics he hopes will be achieved by equally sharing the teaching load between local and international faculty members.
Wondering when Chinese business schools would start building an international profile, CEIBS Dean Cremer remarked: “International media still goes to Harvard in order to understand China. Two weeks after Google pulled out of China, the case was portrayed to the public by Harvard Business School. Where were Chinese business schools with their perspectives?”
Business Schools are not to blame for the global finance muddle
HKUST Business School Dean Cheng stressed that “business schools cannot be made responsible for preventing a global financial crisis; this is all about regulation and governance”.
Supporting Mr. Cheng’s argument, Shanghai Jiaotong University Professor Lin claimed that even though “business schools are not to blame for the financial crisis, they have the duty to lead by example in all ethics-related areas promoting academic honesty – particularly in China. By disallowing faculty members to use knowledge without properly quoting the source, business schools could set the mark instead of just adding moral or ethics courses to their programs”.
“Our role”, Beijing University Professor Zhang said, “is limited, and we still focus too much on conveying factual instead of integrated knowledge” which would enable future leaders to holistically understand the consequences of their decisions. Zhang advanced by saying that “management failures are nothing but smart people making stupid mistakes”. According to Zhang, Chinese business schools are to “become roles models in business behavior” incorporating ethics and moral education in their curricula.
Professor Cremer believes that “business leaders are leaders of the society, and China is the best example as it delegates actual power to the private sector. Standalone business schools have more autonomy and are less burdened by feeding their integrated counterparts. But, when it comes to being a role model in ethics education, they are disadvantaged as they do not have the integration with other faculties”.
This statement was confirmed by Mr. Yin who concluded that “Fudan Business School students benefit from humanity subjects being taught by other faculties”.
The daily horror show of bailed out enterprises and now even entire countries suggests the urgent need for a new global economic paradigm, and it is honourable for the panelists to publicly declare their share in the ongoing process. However, as critical review of the past is integral part of developing any new model, one may wonder why none of the eight deans present at this high-profile panel saw a necessity to impute the global financial crisis at least partially to business schools’ failure to educate those making ethically questionable decisions.
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Chinese universities will surrender about 7 million graduates to the working world in 2010, and even more in 2011. But where will they all go? More than 1.5 million of them were unable to find themselves permanent employment last year, a number that is expected to grow even further. In a recent post, we already sketched opportunities arising from loans being granted for entrepreneurial graduates to set up their own enterprises. If this does not apply, what else can a university graduate do to prevent unemployment?
Why not become a public servant, is what many graduates ask themselves about this time every year. But, before getting excited about this opportunity, the following two figures are worth a closer look: 15,566 and 1.4 million. While the latter describes the number of graduates who applied for a vacant position as a public servant in 2009, the former indicates the number of vacancies in this sector which, despite having grown by nearly 15% year-over-year, still says that there are about 90 candidates competing for one single government-sponsored desk. Besides escaping from the imminent danger of unemployment, graduates name the following motivations for applying for one of these rare vacancies: the craving for a direct contribution to the nation’s progress; an increased social status; reception of social benefits – even as a migrant; better payment and higher social benefits; life tenure and low stress level; the chance to create an extensive social relationship network. One group of applicants believes that sitting the national civil servant examination helps toughen them up for further recruitment activities. To find out what is behind this statement, a closer look into what it takes to pass the national civil servant exam seems appropriate.
Without going into much detail about the process, it is safe to say that there are four, consecutive hurdles to be taken on the road to becoming a civil servant in China: apply for and get admission to the written exam; sit the written exam; attend a face-to-face interview and assessment; undergo a physical examination.
The written exam is grouped into two parts, an administrative career aptitude test consisting of about 140 multiple-choice questions to be answered within 120 minutes and another part comprising a set of questions to be answered by writing several short essays within 150 minutes. To prepare for the test, one can either buy a pile of books or take online prep courses. Even though it is less likely that foreigners become eligible for a position as civil servant in China any time soon, a glance at the examination is worthwhile, particularly as it might shed some light on what skills and character traits the Chinese government envisages its prospective employees to have.
Items tested through the first part of the exam revolve around language skills and comprehension, quantitative analysis capabilities, the ability to judge and deduce, data analysis skills, and common sense. For further enlightenment, here are characteristic examples taken from 2009 actual exams and 2010 prep exams:
- For most citizens, professional career is very important. Only a handful of people are able to ___ operate their own businesses whereas most people have to rely on a ___ to build their career foundation for them. Choose the most appropriate from the following answer sets: (A) immediately organisation; (B) actively team; (C) independently colleague; (D) alone collective.
- Examine the following sequence of numbers: 1, 6, 20, 56, 144, ___. Fill the gap by choosing the most appropriate from the following numbers: (A) 256; (B) 312; (C) 352; (D) 384.
- The principle of in dubio pro reo refers to cases where doubts about an accused person’s guilt remain because of missing evidence or the costs being too high to find sufficient evidence. In these situations, a judge should rule a sentence favorable to the accused. Choose which of the following cases is in accordance with this principle: (A) The court decides that the criminal case at hand is too minor and therefore dismisses the case altogether; (B) The court found the accused guilty of several crimes, but for one crime doubts remain, and it decides to sent the case to a public security organ for further investigation; (C) Due to lack of evidence, the court acquits the accused for want of evidence; (D) If it cannot be assured whether the time allowed for a case by statute of limitations has already run out, then the criminal prosecution shall be waived.
- In April 2009, the Chinese Car Industry Association published a statistics showing that domestic car sales continued to rise. Sales reached 831,000 cars in April, an increase of 7.59% compared to March 2009. Compared to April 2008, this is an increase of 37.37%. How many cars were sold in April 2009? (A) 132,000; (B) 226,000; (C) 131,000; (D) 404,000
- The basic features of Chinas socialist ethnic relations are: equality, solidarity, mutual aid and ___. Fill the gap by choosing the most appropriate of the following terms: (A) cooperation; (B) prosperity; (C) harmony; (D) friendship.
With 120 minutes overall time to solve 140 questions of this caliber, candidates are required to spend no more than 50 seconds on each answer.
Tasks assigned in the second part – essay writing – are similar to the following example:
Lin, the owner of a shoe factory in Dongguan, came to Dongguan to set up factories in 2003. Before he came to Dongguan, he worked hard in Taiwan for over 20 years. He says that the current situation was terrible and that he recently lost a few hundred thousand yuan. Due to increased currency exchange risks, he was no longer able to process orders from US shopping malls and traders. According to Lin, because of the RMB appreciation, raw material and other prices had gone up, and the total cost had increased by over 20% in 2007. “I do not feel home in the Guangdong mountain area, and I don’t have much interest in the mainland either. It takes a lot of time to start again at another place.”, says Lin.
A friend suggested him to move his factories to Vietnam, but Lin responded vividly: “In Vietnam, labor shortage is serious, and tax paid there is similar to the tax paid here. Some of my friends moved there, but in the end were not much better off, so I guess they will leave in a few years.” When asked whether he considered growing out of the low-end production by increasing his research and development capabilities to launch high-end products, Lin shrugged saying with a smile: “No such capability.”
Analyse the mentality of managing director Lin according to the given materials and point out the essential problem his attitude shows.
This is immense, and it illuminates somehow why, out of 1.4 million applicants for the 15,566 vacant public servant positions, 30% did not show up to take the exam in 2009. Despite the large number of no-shows, the annual mass examination procedure needs to be carried out by someone. According to Central Party School professor Zhou Tianyong, an army of 70 million public servants had been amassed by the Chinese government to date. This figure could explain who processes 1.4 million applications and examines 1 million exams every year.
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As already indicated when initially discussing China’s public universities’ financial situation, a plan to overcome underlying problems is not in sight as yet. After analysing some of the most critical cases, however, key reasons for failure – most of them related to planning and control mechanisms – can be named:
- Dwindling enrolments due to the end of the baby boom: In 2009, university entrance examiners saw nearly half a million fewer high-school graduates compared to the year before.
- Economists attribute the debt problem to financial inexperience among university administrators and missing academic budgeting systems.
- Other than tuition fees, universities had no access to additional revenue streams, some entrepreneurial academics say.
- Risk managers see loans granted without control mechanisms in place as main contributor to the problem.
- Blind university industrialisation without having sought out areas of strengths is named by leaders of financially healthy higher education institutions.
- According to some, the fact that society paid too much attention to quantitative development helped create a university bubble and eventually debt entanglement.
- Others argue that the funding provided to universities was insufficient causing universities to face financial difficulties.
The topic at hand seems to be another good example of China’s approach to solving societal issues, particularly when related to education, namely, to wait for a discussion to arise in public before molding a plan. Below is an excerpt of the discussion held in the Chinese media.
- Zhou Ji, former Minister of Education, suggests that universities should resolve their crises through “land replacement” resulting in government-owned land becoming available to the private sector.
- Wuhan University Principal Gu Hailiang calls for universities to develop areas of strengths and maintain programs and enrolment rates matching the respective target industries’ demands. And he sees a possibility to adopt the “foundation” model utilised by many private universities in the US.
- The “foundation” model is also favoured by National Party Congress (NPC) deputy Hong Kezhu, who further proposes for all universities to introduce a sound budget and control system and to build roads to additional revenues.
- Applying Darwin’s theory of evolution, renowned populist Xiong Chuandong suggests that “only the fittest should survive” and that university bankruptcy was a valid means of building a strong and mature higher education system in China.
- According to Sun Yat-sen University President Huang Daren and NPC deputy Zhao Han, the federal government should bail out universities fighting bankruptcy.
- And from within the Ministry of Education (MoE), Planning Department Chief Han Jin says that universities’ financial risks could not only be mitigated by proper planning but by an increased investment from the federal government.
Until a sound budget and control system is in place, resolving the situation by further consolidation does not seem to be a solid path. To attract foreign partners, however, could kill two or even more birds with one stone: firstly, it could contribute to speeding up the process of maturing the teaching methodology. Then, it could help create additional revenues from both local and, increasingly, international students. Adopting the financial control mechanisms of a mature foreign academic partner could further stimulate the financial risk awareness of the academic leadership in China.
To induce a discussion on this topic with our readership, we asked one of the nation’s future leaders, a Tongji University MBA student with a professional career prospect in the education sector, to come up with suggestions on how to improve China’s public university finances.
Please find the student’s suggestions and join a constructive discussion at our Facebook page.
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It has been a known issue for more than a decade: Chinese universities’ insurmountable debts. And as the topic managed to attract public attention again just recently, a closer look into the matter deemed appropriate. Departments of statistics, both federal and local, would not go so far as to hard-wire figures leaving it up to Internet publications, such as the Guangzhou Daily, to reveal that debts accumulated by Chinese universities amounted to nearly 500 billion Renminbi (RMB), or roughly 73 billion U.S. dollars, in 2006.
The figure itself does not make China’s education sector leaders, employees and students think aloud about the way out of this situation. Many of them raise their voice, however, as evidence trickles in of loans too easily being granted for revamping academic infrastructures and merging institutes into mega-bodies, often under the assumption of ever increasing school enrolment.
Without attributing a rank or debt amount to any of the universities shown below, those are the ones repeatedly named as the top ten Chinese universities unable to pay their lenders off:
- Guangdong University of Technology: Debt as a result of a plan to become the largest university of Guangdong province; the payback period for loans needed to finance the ambitious plan was assumed to be 30-50 years in the school’s financial budget, with the bank’s maximum lending period being as short at 15 years; the school tried to compensate this by inflating their tuition fees, but this practice was halted by the Federal Ministry of Education in 2004.
- Guangzhou University: Debt as a result of an amalgamation of several regional universities and colleges in the year 2000.
- Jiangsu University: Debt as a result of an amalgamation of several regional universities and colleges in the year 2001.
- Jilin University: Debt as a result of an amalgamation of several regional universities in 2004 financed through loans from ICBC and Agricultural Bank.
- Nanchang University: Debt as result of an amalgamation of two regional universities; projected revenues through tuition fees did not materialise.
- Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine: Debts as a result of a massive infrastructure expansion project financed through bank loans; the combined government allocation and tuition fees only allow for interest payments, not for paying off the actual loan.
- Nanjing University of Finance and Economics: Debt as a result of a massive infrastructure expansion of several institutes and research centers.
- South China University of Technology
- Sun Yat-sen University
- Zhengzhou University: Debt as result of an amalgamation of several regional universities in 2007 financed through loans.
Universities listed above account for only a small percentage of the total amount higher education institutions owe to Chinese government departments and banks, leaving a long tail of borrowers unnamed.
Amalgamating or enlarging organisations does not lead to debt entanglement per se, and one would hope to see a thorough analysis followed by a strategic plan to overcome the situation. Research suggests that China’s education sector leadership does have some ideas and suggestions, but not a plan as yet. The Party Secretary of Sun Yat-sen University takes it with a good sense of humor and tries to push the ball back to the lenders saying that by imposing nearly no interest on loans, the government even “encouraged universities to spend tomorrow’s money”. For those cooperating or planning to cooperate with Chinese universities, it might be important to learn more about key reasons of China’s academic debt position.
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The National Outline for Education Reform stipulates an increase of the federal education budget to 4% of China’s GDP by 2012. Vice Minister of Finance Ding Xuedong calls this “challenging because other sectors such as agriculture, science and technology, health care and social security need investment, too”.
China’s education expenditure – central and local governments combined – has risen by an even more spectacular figure than its GDP: close to 22% year-on-year during the most recent reporting period. During the same term, the number of children not having access to primary education has fallen by only 1.6% to a still staggering 7.5% of all children aged 6 to 7 years. Looking at education quality indicators, the amount of teachers per student shows no notable improvement either, and on some educational levels, such as vocational schools and universities, even more students have to share one teacher.
Most Chinese will bank on both central and local governments to solve the surging inequality between those with abundant and others with no access to education. However, a small group of entrepreneurs decided to get involved in the subject matter by investing in disadvantaged Chinese citizens’ education to grow them out of their hopeless situation. Social entrepreneurship, particularly with focus on educating disadvantaged people, is a new but steadily developing concept in China. The following list is work in progress and aims to help social funds gain access to interesting investment opportunities in China and to give ideas to those planning to start their own social enterprise in education. The list is sorted by the year of establishment with the most recent foundation at the top.
Managers of the ventures we investigated were not always clear in their own definition of their organisations. However, we tried to spot indicators toward profit-orientation, even if only visible in the respective founder’s vision. Hence, some of them might, by strict definition, fall into the category of a classic NGO.
Please submit new entries or modifications to social AT totuba DOT com
Social entrepreneurs impacting China’s education sector
- Established: 2009
- Social entrepreneur: Richard Brubaker
- Scope: To improve the quality of student decision making over the long term with respect to CSR and sustainability; Aims to accomplish this through a multilayered platform of clubs, curriculums, internships and academic conferences; Already cooperating with several key participants; Aims to have 10 schools participating in the 2010/2011 school year, and 25 schools in the 2011/2012 school year.
- Headquartered in: Hong Kong; office in Shanghai
- Established: 2009
- Social entrepreneurs: Zhang Wei and Wang Sheng
- Scope: To develop and deliver supplementary courses to students (aged 5 to 22) with migration background or living in rural areas through a network of volunteers and the Internet; Courses revolve around social competencies, critical thinking and basic finance skills needed to become responsible citizens who act collectively for a better world.
- Headquartered in: Shanghai
- Established: 2008
- Social entrepreneur: Calvin Chin
- Scope: To provide loans to financially underprivileged students; Focuses on students of 3 or 4-year academic programs; Lenders are banks, companies, NGOs, non-profit organisations, philanthropists and individuals seeking investment returns.
- Headquartered in: Shanghai
- Established: 2007
- Social entrepreneur: Vincent Chu
- Scope: To educate disadvantaged people living in rural areas to manufacture handicrafts their provinces are known for and sell those with profit to visitors or corporate organisations.
- Headquartered in: Shanghai
- Established: 2007
- Social entrepreneur: Zhao Dongyue
- Scope: To train mentally disabled graduates from special education schools to become regular restaurant workers and lead an integrated live.
- Headquartered in: Beijing
- Established: 2006
- Social entrepreneur: Corinne Hua, a consultant with CSR&Company (a CSR consulting company), who brings to the programme 17 years of corporate, NGO and consulting experience in China
- Employees: 1 director, 3 paid employees
- Scope: A grass roots programme designed by local, long term volunteers in Shanghai to assist migrant school children in Shanghai with their English. Mission Statements: To assist students in migrant schools in Shanghai to gain confidence in their English language abilities; To help these students pass their key examinations; To offer volunteers a meaningful way to contribute to the education of under-privileged children.
- Headquartered in: Shanghai
- Established: 2006
- Social entrepreneurs: Carol Chyau and Marie So
- Employees: 15 full-time, 40 hand knitters, 260 herder families
- Scope: Shokay, the world’s first lifestyle brand focused on the yak, features adult and home collections made from fine yak down. Shokay prides itself not only on its classic and modern designs, but also its social impact. Yak down, comparable in warmth and softness to cashmere, is sourced from Tibetan herders in Qinghai which are trained how to comb the best fiber. Part of the product line is hand-knit by women living in rural areas of China, enabling marginalised populations to earn a sustainable living.
- Headquartered in: Shanghai
- Established: 2006
- Social entrepreneur: Liu Yiguang
- Scope: To provide distance learning (Open University model) to low-income citizens who cannot afford studying at a brick and mortar university.
- Headquartered in: Beijing
- Established: 2005
- Social entrepreneurs: Sara Lam, Diane Geng, Wei Ji Ma
- Scope: To partner with teachers in rural primary schools to develop locally-relevant teaching methods that develop rural children’s (grades 1-6) self-confidence, communication skills, independent thinking, empathy, and awareness of social issues; Staff who are based year-round in rural schools help local teachers to develop and document their teaching so that lessons learned and case studies can be used to train more teachers and organizations working in rural primary schools.
- Headquartered in: Yongji, Shanxi Province
- Established: 2004
- Social entrepreneur: Richard Brubaker
- Scope: Large platform for managing volunteers in Shanghai, Chengdu, Hong Kong, who participate in a range of activities related to children’s health, education, environment, and elderly care; Several large programs specific to education with migrant schools and street based organizations to deliver both educational content as well as programs that build confidence and character within the kids.
- Headquartered in: Hong Kong; offices in Shanghai and Chengdu
- Established: 2004
- Social entrepreneur: Caroline Watson
- Scope: Personal, social and economic empowerment of China’s migrant and rural population through participation in and leadership of inspirational, arts-based projects; To train migrant workers to be professional arts practitioners, project managers and branch leaders of Hua Dan, lifting them out of poverty and enabling them to participate equally in the mainstream society; Inspirational workshops delivered in partnership with community organisations and commercial enterprises; Cooperation with outstanding arts practitioners to ensure a constant commitment to innovation in how the arts can be applied to achieve personal and social transformation.
- Headquartered in: Beijing
- Established: 2003
- Social entrepreneur: Li Zhaowei
- Scope: To connect graduates of social science programs with potential employers.
- Headquartered in: Shanghai
- Established: 2002
- Social entrepreneurs: Mao Yushi and Tang Min
- Scope: Through vocational and social training, to help disadvantaged people from rural areas to get access to employment or reemployment opportunities; Collaborates with local offices of poverty alleviation and women’s unions; Charges tuition fee (borne by students) and agency fees (borne by employer); Tuition fee is lower than the actual cost and compensated by local governments’ poverty alleviation funds; Profits are re-invested in the organisation.
- Headquartered in: Fuping
- Established: 1999
- Social entrepreneur: Tori Zwisler
- Employees: 13 full-time, 1 part-time
- Scope: R&S provides after school environmental conservation and sustainability education to student groups in over 200 schools in the greater Shanghai area; Students learn to grow organic gardens, lead awareness campaigns in their schools, conduct environmental audits in their community, and fund raise to plant trees in desertification areas; Programs are informal education necessary to foster the future leaders of China who will have a deep understanding of the relationship of human actions and the environment.
- Headquartered in: Shanghai
- Established: 1998
- Social entrepreneur: Xie Lihua
- Scope: Aims to provide information, training and services to migrant women from rural areas and in cities to empower them to build capacity for self-development and achieve sustainable development; Three branches: the Practical Skills Training Center for Rural Women provides short-term training that will enable women from poor families to learn practical skills as well as to build their general abilities which will ultimately enable them to improve their social and economic development and participate fully in society; The Migrant Women’s Club aims to uphold migrant women’s civil and labour rights and improve their living qualities and abilities of self-development; The Rural Development Program aims to help rural women acquire basic skills, get psychological counselling to prevent suicide, and promote women’s participation in the government.
- Headquartered in: Beijing
- Established: 1993
- Social entrepreneur: Tian Huiping
- Scope: Dedicated to serving children with autism and related disabilities; Behavioural analysis-based training of autistic children and their parents; To enable parents to educate their autistic children; Fees subsidised by government, private organisations and the public; Established a fund for their teachers to receive professional training from foreign experts and to study in other organisations.
- Headquartered in: Beijing
Organisations dealing with social entrepreneurship in China
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In preparation for a research report named “China Offshore Education report – 2010″ we are collecting motivations and experiences from both foreign universities and students participating in offshore education projects in China. We are also evaluating (and publicising here) motivations of Chinese universities for cooperating with their foreign counterparts, as gaps – if considerable – could result in clashes during project operations.
We asked the dean of one of China’s many finance colleges about the school’s motivation to cooperate with educators abroad. “Ours is the same as the Ministry of Education’s motivation” said the college official initially. But, after revealing how Germany’s motivation has changed over the course of the past 10 years, she opened up by pointing out that “studying the philosophy of teaching” was the major reason for the school to cooperate with foreign universities nowadays. According to her, some French universities required students to study nearly half of the curriculum at partner universities abroad, a rule that helped students develop a global view on many important issues. She advanced by wishing that this model could be adopted in China as well – a request shared by others in China’s education sector.
Being in a long-term cooperation with a French university, the dean revealed that with regard to infrastructure, China was already at the same level with their Western counterparts. She commented that “when visiting the French university in 2003, I found that their Internet was very slow compared to ours here in China; the equipment for making presentations had to be rented and then towed from a remote storage to the classroom – very inconvenient. However, when it comes to the actual teaching, we still lag behind”. China started Internet-based teaching at about the same time as developed countries, and while the Internet needed to be integrated with already existing infrastructure and tight budgets in the West, China’s universities benefited from an almost free flow of monetary as well as top-notch technical resources. Elaborating further on the Western philosophy of teaching, the dean reasoned that “while Western teaching is a dialog and teachers act as enablers of students, Chinese universities still utilise a system of recite and listen” reducing students to mere knowledge acquisition machines rather than assisting them on their way to becoming reflecting individuals.
If, by trend, Chinese universities depend less on support to set up their infrastructure (hardware), but need the operational knowledge (software) to elevate students onto internationally comparable level, there seem to be ample opportunities for foreign universities or complimentary service providers to benefit from this situation.
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In an eye-opening article, book author and U.S. policy insider Catherin E. Dalpino reasons about China’s understanding and way of implementing democracy. Dalpino applies the term pop-up democracy used by U.S. policy makers to describe the myth of all repressive governments replacing their totalitarian by democratic structures. In her view, the pop-up democracy theory had failed in most countries. Referring to China she sees the country already on its way to democracy and suggests America’s only chance to contribute to China’s further democratisation as staying involved on practical rather than political level. That article was published in March 2000 – ten years ago. Pop-up democracy, however, can very well describe the Chinese way of democratisation: whatever pops up from the bottom is taken into some consideration; whatever pops up in considerable amounts is taken into serious consideration and may lead to incrementally improving the Chinese society.
The annual National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) may serve as one example: before, during and after these congresses, delegates, orally or in writing, submit their suggestions to the country’s leadership. Holding the stethoscope on this year’s NPC / CPPCC bodies, we did not only find suggestions but people really speaking up regarding improvements to be applied to China’s education sector:
Henan province delegate Hu Baosen, former President of Henan real estate conglomerate Jianye and among the wealthiest Chinese to date, sees a lack of moral education in the Chinese society. He suggests for primary and secondary school attendees to be taught in “reading historic books, reciting Confucius and Mencius, and in a certain amount of traditional Chinese characters” on a compulsory basis. “Educational departments”, he envisages, “should team up with private educators to review existing textbooks, train teachers and plan the curriculum”. Hu’s motivation for the proposal can be described as to rebuild national spirit and confidence.
The heated debate about China’s college entrance exam has called former Deputy Minister of Education, Zhao Qinping, on stage who vigorously vows against a request to abolish the system completely: “College entrance exam reform is necessary, but we need to carefully modify it, taking social development and national tolerance into consideration”. According to Zhao, haste or even abolishment of the current entrance examination system would lead to more unfairness. His suggestion is to redesign the selection criteria as they were “too simple”.
Luo Chongmin, Director of the Yunnan Provice education department and driver of the education reform process, sees a need to evolve the current 9-year compulsory system to become a 15-year universal education model. By adding three years of pre-school as well as three years of high-school education to everyone’s curriculum (by legislation), a wider audience would have access to what he calls “universal education”.
Another topic causing the education sector’s feelings run high is the proposed separation of the entrance examinations for undergraduate study and vocational training into two different types. Some delegates argue that the current system resulted in frustration among those failing the college entrance exam (gaokao) degrading them to going the vocational path. It was more appropriate to offer entrance examinations specifically for vocational schools that would be on a less academic and more practical level. In contrast to their academic counterparts, vocational entrance exams could be held under the auspices of each province. The biggest challenge discussed here seems to be how to adjust pre-examination scores which currently do not take practical skills into consideration.
German-educated delegate Zhu Tianhui, who is a senior researcher into biochemistry and molecular biology at Nankai University, has several suggestions to convey: She sees new challenges toward internationalisation of China’s higher education system arising from the fact that China had become the world’s largest student sender to other countries; According to her, education should emphasise more on social responsibility and practical issues around succeeding in life; As graduates of vocational schools were too young – oftentimes under the legally required age of 16 years – and not able to meet requirements of the industry, Zhu sees merit in expanding compulsory education onto the vocational training level; With the unemployment rate of Chinese university graduates on a constant rise and with more autonomy granted to academic bodies, Zhu demands a quality control system regularly evaluating school management and empowering teachers to train students toward what society really needs.
Dean of the School of Business Administration at the Zhejiang University of Technology, NPC delegate Cheng Huifeng pleads for more autonomy of Chinese schools by saying that “training should be market-oriented” and that universities should be enabled to hire teachers they need to develop excellence which could only be achieved by allowing different levels of tuition fees. High-quality educational institutions “such as Tsinghua and Peking University should be allowed to increase their tuition fees”.
The debate about incrementally improving China’s education sector is on and being held on various levels utilising the whole spectrum of communication means. It might not be visible to the culturally untrained eye, but democracy is on its way, and education is only one – though likely one of the most important and most challenging – societal aspects to shape China’s future and appearance in the world.
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The Ministry of Education has released a statement regarding the state of China’s international student market. We have tabulated the figures below to show the top ten Chinese universities by number of international student enrolments, and added three global ranking figures for reference.
Other notable facts:
- In 2008, China hosted 223,500 international students from 189 countries. This number represented a 14% increase on 2007 figures.
- Thirteen universities each hosted 1000 or more international students at degree level (Bachelor or higher).
- Twenty-four universities each hosted 1000 or more international students at degree and non-degree (such as language study) levels.
- 18078 international students were awarded Chinese government scholarships in the 2009/10 school year, up 33.8% from 2008
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