Chinese higher education expansion and social justice since 1949

Abstract

There is a long tradition of education in Chinese civilization. Although China long had its own forms of higher learning institutions, the modern university was an import of the late 19 th century (Hayhoe, 1996). It was originally copied from Europe and later largely followed the mold of the American system, but in the 1950s this was succeeded by the Soviet Union Model. In the 1960s, Mao abandoned this latter model by initiating a revolution in the field of education, with the intention of establishing a proletarian-dictated system. His goal was not realized before he died in 1976, and his opponents, party reformers, abandoned his higher education policy (Tian & Zhang, 2001). It seems that Chinese higher education has experienced continual transformations shifting between these main patterns which have been prevalent in different parts of the world.