The Higher Educational Transformation of China and Its Global Implications

This chapter documents the major transformation of higher education that has been underway in China since 1999 and evaluates its potential global impacts. This has involved major, new resource commitments to tertiary education and significant changes in organizational form, reflecting China’s commitment to continued high growth through quality upgrading and the production of ideas and intellectual property, as set out in both the Tenth (2001–2005) and Eleventh (2006–2010) Five-Year Plans. The number of undergraduate and graduate students in China has been growing at approximately 20% per year since 1999, and the total number of graduates at all levels of higher education in China has increased by more than a factor of six in the last decade. Entering class sizes and total student enrolments have risen fast too, approximately quintupling. Prior to 1999 increases in these areas were much smaller. Much of the increased spending is focussed on elite universities, and new academic contracts differ sharply from earlier ones, which lacked tenure and often used annual publication quotas.