China’s higher education system is improving in quality according to a comprehensive report released by the Higher Education Evaluation Center of the Ministry of Education in Beijing on April 7.

Higher education in China will hit a major milestone in 2019, the year when official estimates predict gross enrollment at Chinese universities will reach 50 percent, according to a comprehensive report released by the Higher Education Evaluation Center of the Ministry of Education in Beijing on April 7.

The report is greater in depth and broader in scope than any other papers released on the topic, said scholars in attendance at the press release, adding that it will help to guide the development of global and domestic higher education in the years to come.
 

In addition, three reports on specific topics were released: a report on engineering education, an assessment of teaching quality at newly founded national universities and an evaluation of 100 new universities.

The report judged the quality of higher education based on five criteria: adaptation to social needs, fulfillment of education goals, equipment and facilities, teaching effectiveness, and the satisfaction of students and other stakeholders.

According to the report, higher education has been growing rapidly in China, supplying the talent and intellectual resources needed to fuel economic and social development. In 2015, China had more students enrolled in universities than any other country in the world. That year, the total amount of students reached 37 million, more than three hundred times the number enrolled in 1949, the year when the People’s Republic of China was founded.
 

At present, at least one out of every five college students in the world is studying at a Chinese university. Since 1949, the national higher education system has cultivated more than 84 million professionals for economic and social development.
 

The report emphasized that China’s higher education system is improving in quality. Chinese universities are becoming more globally influential and moving to the forefront of research on certain disciplines. Some universities included in Project 985, a nationwide higher education project launched in 1998, have been equipped with world-class facilities.
 

The research for the latest report began in 2012. The Higher Education Evaluation Center under the Ministry of Education compiled the series of reports through collaborations with a number of well-known Chinese universities, including Xiamen University and the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Beihang University). The final report incorporated big data research methods while referencing the findings of more than 4,000 education experts and education quality reports from more than 700 higher education institutions as well as other national data. In addition, the report included analysis based on more than 200,000 questionnaires and hundreds of interviews.

Tang Hongli is a reporter at the Chinese Social Sciences Today.