Job seekers access recruitment information and mingle at the Zhejiang Provincial Job Fair for College Graduates. Due to China’s college enrollment expansion, it has become increasingly difficult for college graduates to get a desirable job.

 

Advancing the development and governance of higher education in China is a top priority in its reform under the “new normal.” As China’s economic development has entered a new normal, higher education must be adjusted to new changes. The external environment requires higher education to fit in with the new normal as the intrinsic development of higher education exhibits new-normal characteristics.
 

On one hand, the expansion and growth of higher education have both decelerated, which has made the transition of the development pattern imperative. On the other hand, the traditional management system and mode can hardly sustain deeper development of higher education, presenting an urgent need for the modernization of governance capacity and transformation of governance mode for higher education.
 

At present, comprehensive reforms are already in full swing in the higher education sector. In the face of multiple tasks, we must hold tight to the critical task of transforming the modes of development and governance of higher education.

Diminishing demographic dividend
Since the college enrollment expansion plan was implemented in 1999, China has adopted an extensive development mode for higher education. As a result, it succeeded in progressing from an elite to mass model of higher education within a short period of time.

However, this mode only attaches importance to scale expansion and growth rate, and has brought about many problems. The future development of China’s higher education will be impacted unless timely adjustments are made.
 

The most immediate impact of the current development mode stems from the “disappearing” demographic dividend. Due to a decline in birth rates, registration for the gaokao (national college entrance examination) has decreased annually since peaking in 2008. There are two main reasons for the drop in the registration.
 

The first noticeable reason lies in the decrease of the gaokao-age population. According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the national family planning policy has caused the birth rate to plummet.
 

China’s newborn population reached a record high of more than 25 million in 1990. Since then the number of newborn babies has steadily dropped. In the next few years, the number of students aged 18, the average age of gaokao takers, will continue to fall and hit a record low between 2018 and 2020.
 

The second reason is the big increase in the number of Chinese students studying overseas. In recent years, the slide in gaokao participants has stood out in contrast to the skyrocketing growth of students choosing to pursue overseas studies, especially middle school and high school students. The average age of students studying abroad is getting lower, which directly contributes to the continuous decrease in gaokao takers.
 

As the demographic dividend diminishes, the expansion of higher education will be reduced. The new normal, characterized by slower expansion and growth, signals increasingly intense competition among Chinese colleges and universities for would-be students.

The fundamental way of coping with the new normal is to transform the extensive development mode to realize the full potential for development of higher education.
 

In March 2012, the Ministry of Education unveiled its Opinions on Comprehensively Improving the Quality of Higher Education, clearly stating that the undergraduate enrollment scale of general state-run universities will remain relatively stable and “the path that places the improvement of education quality at the core” will be followed. This marked an end to the extensive development model that primarily aimed to increase enrollments.
 

Furthermore, the Report of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) National Congress also made it explicit that “we should bring out the full potential for development of higher education,” indicating that China’s higher education has gradually headed into a transition period with quality enhancement as the core task.

Therefore, efforts should be made, theoretically and practically, to raise the level of higher education, enforce quality education and optimize the structure of talent orientation in order to steadily maximize the potential of higher education.
 

Excessive government control
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, particularly its introduction of reform and opening-up, China has been committed to catching up with developed countries on various fronts, including economy, education and culture, with the government, or “visible hand,” providing strong backing.

However, in regards to higher education, this “hand” has been a double-edge sword.
 

Owing to the government’s strong intervention and support, China’s higher education has set out on a different path from the West. In particular, after the reform and opening-up policy was carried out, higher education achieved as miraculous development as economic growth, displaying astonishing rises in a wide range of datasets and indicators.
 

Nevertheless, excessive government control has not only weakened the autonomy of universities, but also dwarfed their spirits. For a long time, China’s top-down management system for higher education, a unitary and one-way management style, has made universities too administrative to forge China into a higher education leader in the world.
 

After decades of chasing Western countries and pursuing development, China has topped the world in terms of the scale of higher education, declaring itself as a veritable higher education power. In the new development stage, it has been adequate enough for more steady construction of higher education.
 

Externally, the connections between China and the outside world are expanding in the higher education sphere. The country’s higher education system has become increasingly complicated, playing a bigger and bigger role on the international arena. Under these circumstances, the simple one-way management mode will be unsustainable, because no government is able to get all facets of higher education under control.
 

Therefore, both the development of higher education and changes in the external environment have pressed for the transformation of the governance mode for higher education.

Transformation needed
In this regard, the Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening the Reform stated: “We will further push ahead with the separation of government administration, school management and educational evaluation, delegate greater power to provincial governments in making their overall educational development plans and to schools to make their own decisions about school affairs, and improve the internal governance structure of the schools.”

Through this guiding document, the CPC Central Committee showed its resolve and pointed to the direction of promoting educational reform.
 

In the higher education domain, more specifically, the government should streamline administration and delegate power to lower levels, strengthen the autonomy of universities and build a higher education governance system with Chinese characteristics.
 

Under the new normal, the transformation of higher education management should be oriented towards multilateral, shared governance. Priority should be given to empowering all stakeholders of higher education to take part in governance through reasonable institutional design and procedural arrangements.
 

The building of the higher education management system and transformation of the governance mode in the new normal phase not only call for scientific and rational top-level design, but also require the grassroots to engage in mutually beneficial interaction. Meanwhile, the governance capacity should be upgraded through a multilateral and shared governance mechanism, thereby providing solid guarantee for substantive reform of higher education.
 

China’s higher education has now entered its new normal.How to adapt to the new normal and push forward the dual transformation of development and governance of higher education is a key test China should withstand to grow from a higher education power to a higher education leader in the world.  
 

Chen Xianzhe is from the School of Education at South China Normal University in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.