Universities in China

In the past ten years, the higher education system in China has exploded, with an estimated 700 percent increase in total student enrollment during that timeframe. Today China has by far the largest system of higher education in the world, boasting nearly 30 million students divided between 2000 public universities and approximately 1000 private institutions.

The entire Chinese system of higher education is under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Education, which is responsible for all education-related policy making, legislation, planning, funding and evaluation.  However, since the educational reforms that took place between the mid 1980s and early 1990s, more and more of that authority has been devolved to the local communities and the member institutions, giving them greater autonomy and freedom to make necessary changes and adaptations when needed.  However, despite this newly found partial sovereignty, the President of each university still works directly under the leadership of the Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, rather than any local agency or institution.

Since the educational reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, higher education in China has been restructured to more closely resemble colleges and universities in other countries, such as the United States and Europe.  This newly adapted 3-cyle system of education, which includes bachelor, masters and doctorate degree programs, has accounted for much of the enrollment boom in China over the last ten years.   Of the almost 2000 public institutions of higher learning in China, more than 800 offer at least the first cycle bachelor degree in a number of different academic fields.  Many of these also offer both Master’s and Doctorate-level programs, the latter of which is where the majority of scientific research in China is initiated and performed.  The remaining public institutions offer 3-year associate degree programs, most of them geared towards vocational education in careers that directly benefit the community and nation as a whole.

Prior to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when enrollment numbers were but a fraction of what they are today, the universities in China did not charge students tuition for their education.  This was largely because only the brightest academic students were permitted to attend these universities, and it was understood that graduates would more than pay for their education by the contributions they would ultimately make to China’s development.  With reform, however, came greater access and increased demand, prompting the Chinese government to implement the “dual track system” in the latter years of the 1980s and early 1990s.  Under this enrollment policy, students scoring below the cut-off line on the national college entrance exam would have to pay for their tuition, while the rest were educated free of cost.  As you might imagine, this didn’t sit well with some people, so to avoid any future rifts, in 1997 the dual track system was completely abandoned, and now every student pays tuition fees.
 
Despite its slow start, the higher education system in China is rapidly becoming one of the best in the world.  In fact, according to last year’s prestigious “World’s Best Universities” rankings, put out by the esteemed publication U.S. News and World Report, two Chinese universities, Peking University and Tsinghua University, are among the top 50 in the world, and another, Fudan University, cracked the top 100.