Transnational higher education in China : current situations of Chinese-foreign cooperation in running schools

Abstract

Internationalisation of higher education (IHE) has become increasingly prominent in the past decade, with the surge of global economy around the world. Knight & De Wit (1995) defined internationalisation as the process of integrating international dimensions into teaching, research and service, which implied that the trend of internationalisation lies greatly in the filed of higher education. Yang (2002) further explained that from the perspective of university, internationalisation means the awareness and operation of interactions within and between culture. Haigh, M (2014) then explored IHE consists of eight layers, they are: (1) recruiting international students; (2) teaching international students; (3) growing the international enterprise university; (4) compliance with standards set by international accreditation agencies; (5) internationalisation at home; (6) education for global citizenship; (7) connected e-learning; and (8) education for planetary. In order to promote internationalisation, universities tend to establish international branch campuses (IBCs) as they -- at the same time -- recruit and teach more international students, conduct cross-border cooperative researches more easily and frequently, and win reputation from the other sides of the world.

The term transnational education has been brought into public’s focus with the development of IHE. Dos Santos, M. (2000) defined transnational education as higher education activities in which the learners are located in a host country different from the one where the awarding institution is based. Transnational education can take several forms, including distance education, franchised programmes, collaborative ventures and international branch campus (Wilkins & Huisman, 2012). Above all, the growth of international branch campus takes up most of the rise in transnational education.

Since its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, China has been undertaking prominent commitments of opening-ups in the field of education -- giving permissions to foreign institutions to conduct Educational Service Trade. As a result, Chinese-Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools (CFCRS) has been dramatically developed in the last decade. The cooperation, on one hand, has been bringing in innovative teaching methods, talent training mode, and school-running mechanism, stimulating the reforms of higher education in China. On the other hand, however, it has been witnessing a series of problems such as the low quality of educational resources, insufficient supervision, and non-equilibrium development of disciplines (Ministry of Education, 2014). The paper will firstly explore the emergence and development of CFCRS, attaching great importance to related policies and regulations; then discuss major challenges and problems CFCRS Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are confronted with; next present an overview of existing seven CFCRS HEIs, mainly from three perspectives – their organizational structures, curriculums and recruitment of staff. In the last part, the author will clarify whether the challenges and problems concluded by previous literature are real problems for respective institutions, and seek to generate suggestions for decision-makers from national, provincial, and institutional level.