[photopress:Shanghai_students_sign_their_names.jpg,full,alignright]Officials at the Shanghai Education Commission have announced that 64 educational programs set up in Shanghai by foreign schools with local partners will probably shut down after they failed to meet quality standards.
The programs covered the range of education including both degree and non-degree courses ranging from vocational training to postgraduate research.
Most of the closed schools were facing financial difficulties before failing an annual assessment and being told to make changes or shut down.
At the Transnational Education and Quality Assurance China-Australia Joint Program Forum officials said that most of the closures have now been approved.
ommission vice director Wang Qi told the inter-country forum, ‘Joint education programs have experienced booming development in China in recent years, but the market is also confronted with quality problems.’
Since the city launched its first joint program with foreign schools in 1991, local schools have teamed up with educational institutes from more than 20 countries and regions to set up 254 sino-foreign programs.
The number accounts for about one-quarter of such programs across the mainland.
In 2003, the Ministry of Education issued a joint education program regulation, setting quality standards for such programs, which must undergo an annual audit and submit financial reports to education authorities. The city also adopted the country’s first accreditation system to distinguish unqualified joint programs from high-quality ones in 2005. And now it seems the rules are stringently applied.
The illustration is of Shanghai students. But definitely not students from the establishments that are closing.
Source: Shanghai Daily
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