John Francis

A Query on Quality: Massification through Privatization in Chinese Higher Education

Abstract

In China, the number of private higher education institutes (HEIs) has increased rapidly

in recent years from 4 private colleges in 2002 to over 800 private universities in 2015 that are

authorized to award bachelor’s degrees. The concept of suzhi jiaoyu, normally translated as

“quality education”, is a focal point for discussing education in China. Scholars such as Andrew

Kipnis argue that suzhi jiaoyu has become central to Chinese governance as way of justifying

and propagating social and political hierarchies of all sorts.1 However, the decades-old concept

of suzhi jiaoyu has yet to engage with recent trends in the massification and privatization of

China’s higher education system. This paper puts the old and the new in conversation, with

special attention to the conflicting goals of the Chinese government and actors within China’s

private universities. In this project I will be examining how students at Hangzhou Wanxiang

Polytechinic University, a private university in Hangzhou, conceptualize suzhi jiaoyu in contrast

to the stated laws and remarks of government officials. Additionally, I will explore how India,

another developing nation attempting to navigate the recent trends of massification and

privatization in higher education, attempts to solve many of the same issues facing higher

education in China, and through this the potential alternative approaches China can take in

improving governance through suzhi jiaoyu within China private universities. I argue that the

massification of education in China through privatization is conflicting (how?) with the Chinese

quality education policies of suzhi jiaoyu, as well as paradoxically contributing to widening

social inequality in China. In conclusion, this paper will examine how and why Chinese private

1
Kipnis, Andrew. Suzhi: A Keywork Approach. The China Quarterly, No. 186 (Jun., 2006). Cambridge University
Press.
Higher Education Institutions are unable to produce the same type of quality in their students that

is preached by the Chinese Government, and thereby contribute to a widening of social class

inequality.

Research Question and Problem

Questions:
How does Chinese governance through suzhi jiaoyu work within and through Chinese private
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)?
What are the goals of the government, students and their families, and the financial backers of
private HEIs?
What unique problems does the privatization and massification of higher education pose to
Chinese governance (specifically through suzhi jiaoyu)?
As education continues to be internationally commodified2 what are the stakes for China as a
nation and Chinese students in private HEIs because of conflicts over quality education (suzhi
jiaoyu)?
Problem:
As developing nations become integrated into the global economic community, the

nouveau riche of developing nations are beginning to see educational opportunities for their

children that were not available to the previous generation. A UNESCO report shows that while

in 1970 there were only 28.5 million students in tertiary education worldwide, this number had

grown to 181 million by 2010, with Asia showing the most significant growth from 41 million in

2000 to 105 million in 20123. Parents now view a university degree as an achievable status

symbol that their children can bring to the family. In China, the number of private higher

education institutes (HEIs) has increased rapidly in recent years, as of 2002, only 4 private

colleges had been authorized to award the bachelor’s degree and 129 a “sub-bachelor’s” degree4,

whereas in 2015 over 800 private universities were authorized to award bachelor’s degrees5..

2
Altbach, Phillip. Knowledge and Education as International Commodities: The Collapse of the Common Good.
International Higher Education. 2015.
3
UNESCO. “Draft Preliminary Report Concerning the Preparation of a Global Convention on the
Recognition of Higher Education Qualifications” Paris, 2015. Pp 6.
4
Yan, Fengqiao. China’s New Private Education Law. International Higher Education. 2002.
5
Chinese Ministry of Education
Private HEIs provide a vital service to many developing nations filling an educational desire in

the population that governments lacking in resources cannot always provide as many more

parents now have the means to send their children to college than the open spots in public HEIs

allow. While these private institutions provide opportunities to students unable to attend public

universities, these institutions are selling a product, a product in the form of an accredited degree

whose value may not be as great as parents, students, or the Chinese government are hoping for.

In China the price of attending a private HEI is much higher than that of attending a

public university, however the quality of education received is generally much lower as “private

universities are found at the lower end of the prestige hierarchy.”6 This means that while China is

catching up to the demand for higher education, many students are overpaying for college

degrees. Private Chinese universities have been accused of becoming diploma mills, with

students not caring about acquiring knowledge or skills, but only caring about the college

experience and obtaining a degree. By overpaying for a degree that is potentially not even

providing students with transferrable skills, if students are being trained for highly specific jobs,

the gap between China’s elite class and the middle class is widening not shrinking, as students

are being pigeon-hold into positions that do not allow for social mobility. Students from private

universities are not being raised into the upper echelons of society by obtaining their college

degree, but rather their place in society is being solidified with a lower quality degree. While a

higher education degree should be providing students with a better life than their parent’s

generation who did not have the opportunity to go to college, private HEIs are neither raising the

social status or the suzhi of students7.

6
Altbach, Philip. “Asia: Trends and Developments in Private Higher Education.” International
Higher Education, no. 29 (2015).
7
Altbach, Phillip. The Private Sector in Asian Higher Education. International
Higher Education. 2015.
 Another puzzling component of this discussion is that this is all taking place within

China’s Communist society. Although the CPC believes there are many contradictions in

capitalist society, it seems as if capitalist forces have taken control of China’s higher education

system. In 1985 the CCP Central Committee declared that "raising the suzhi of the people of the

nation was the basic goal of education system reform,” and in 1986 a new compulsory education

law stated that “education must improve education quality in order to improve the suzhi of the

nation's people.” Additionally, in 1999 the phrase “suzhi jiaoyu” formally entered the nation's

education policy, and since then, all proposals for education reform, no matter how

contradictory, are described as suzhi jiaoyu. 8 For a government that believes strongly in

governance through education and has many education quality policies in place, it would seem

that China’s private HEIs in their current form are not conducive to governmental goals of suzhi

jiaoyu The interwoven forces of a developing country, a socialist society, and a growing nouveau

riche class have created an atmosphere in which private HEIs in China contain pressure from

many conflicting parties that results in neither raising the quality of education nor shrinking the

gap between the middle and upper classes. From a more global perspective, private HEIs are

failing to raise the suzhi of college graduates, which in a global economic community that

continues to commodify education while lacking international educational standards for

university degrees, undermines the intrinsic value of university degrees.

8
Kipnis, Andrew. Suzhi: A Keywork Approach. The China Quarterly, No. 186 (Jun., 2006). Cambridge University
Press.