Calls and counter-calls for university reform

Nanjing University

Beijing Review reports that China’s 1999 Higher Education Law stipulated that universities were independent legal entities under democratic management.

Shao Hong, Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of the Jiu San Society, one of the major non-ruling parties in China said the recent trend to make universities quasi-governmental organizations goes against the Higher Education Law. He said stopping the trend is a pressing issue in higher-education reform.

Zhang Ze, a CPPCC member and Vice President of the Beijing University of Technology, said that designating government officials to manage universities would ruin the institutions. (Experience in other countries has shown that to be a general and universal truth.)

Zhang said universities should be managed by educators rather than government bureaucrats.