The path toward mass higher education in China

Abstract

In the last 30-odd years, higher education system in China has witnessed unprecedented changes, including rapid expansion of enrollment, systematic innovation of structural re-organization, institutional mergers inside the system of higher learning, the improvement of teaching quality, and so forth. A newly-released statistic indicates that China’s higher education institutions (HEIs) had enrolled over 29 million of the eligible age group of population by 2009 and GER had increased to 27 % in 2012. The figure marks the entry of Chinese higher education into the "massification" stage. Issues regarding the path toward mass higher education deserve further examining. This chapter aims to adopt a descriptive approach to examine the relevant issues in order to help readers understand the mass higher education in Chinese context.