Unlike most developing economies, China’s educational policy focuses on upgrading higher education.
Since 1999, there has been an emphasis on sophistication on higher education in China which has resulted in a major transformation.
This has involved major new resource commitments to tertiary education and significant changes in organisational form.
The number of undergraduate and graduate students in China has been growing at approximately 30% per year since 1999, and the number of graduates at all levels of higher education in China has approximately quadrupled in the last six years.
Entering class sizes and total student enrollments have risen even faster, approximately quintupling. Much of the increased spending is focused on elite universities, and new academic contracts differ sharply from earlier ones, which lacked tenure and often used annual publication quotas.
These changes have already had large impacts on China’s higher education system and are beginning to be felt by the global educational structure. Skilled labour supply in China now equals around 40% of that in all OECD countries, and the growth rate of student numbers is much higher than in the OECD.
Again it should be stressed this is but a slight summary of a well-researched and documented paper which can be read HERE.
Source: Vox