Date of Award
8-21-2024
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Doctor of Policy Studies (DPS)
First Advisor
Prof. LAU Ka Wai Maggie
Second Advisor
Prof. Angela HOU Yung-chi
Abstract
China’s higher education has experienced a stage of rapid development since its popularisation over the past two decades. According to the ‘2020 National Statistical Bulletin on Education Development’, China is home to 2,738 general universities. The total number of higher education students reached 41.83 million, and the gross enrolment rate of higher education was 54.4%. Driven by such rapid expansion, the classification management in higher education system become a global issue, it is particularly urgent in China and has increasingly become an important topic in theoretical research and policy practice. Classification management and evaluation of universities to promote the classified development of universities is an important feature of the development of higher education from popularization to universalization. Different classification development standards and directions reflect the different value orientations, interest preferences and demands. The main forces affecting the classification of universities include the government, the universities themselves, and the education and teaching assessment centre. They try to guide and influence the development of universities by constructing corresponding classification standard systems and evaluation results. When multiple value subjects such as governments, universities, and society participate in the game of classification management at the same time, the involvement of different values will cause conflicts and contradictions between the different subjects. Since the reform and opening up, China's higher education has established the "211", "985" projects, and "double first-class" projects, which are the development trends of macro-level classification. At the same time, the overall scale of China's private higher education has continued to expand, and the quality of teaching has been effectively improved, promoting the formation of a diversified higher education pattern and meeting the people's diverse higher education needs. On 2016, the Private Education Promotion Law, clearly proposing from for-profit and non-profit classification management of private higher education. After classification management policy, for-profit private universities appeared for the first time in China's private higher education institutions. Under the influence of China's basic national conditions and market economy characteristics, the development background and development process of China's for-profit private universities have their own uniqueness and complexity, and their educational goals are constantly changing between "for-profit" and "public welfare" balance. From a micro perspective, for for-profit private universities, whether they respect the reasonable interest demands of all stakeholders, especially teachers and students, as the most important stakeholders in universities.
This study aims to explore the impact of the implementation of classification management policy on teachers and students in for-profit private universities. As the most important stakeholders in universities, whether their interest demands have been met, and explore their choice of for-profit Issues such as the motivations of gender-based private universities will become the key to testing the success of the higher education reform. At the same time, through the analysis of the demands of teachers and students in for-profit private universities, we can better balance the relationship between various stakeholders, meet the individual needs of the public, and promote the "public welfare" and "profitability" balance.
Guided by stakeholders’ theory, this qualitative study used the 16 student participants and 10 teacher participants and 2 senior managers from two different for-profit universities in Shanghai to understand their motivation to choose the for-profit university and explore the changes and impacts to compare the experiences and feelings of the students and teachers and to analyse whether for-profit private universities meet their needs or not in a micro perspective.
Results show perceptions of profitability among both teachers and students are lacking. By contrast, the teachers have mixed perceptions of for-profit private universities, but ‘for-profit’ is not a sufficiently strong deterrent for students to choose to enrol in a college or for teachers to choose to work there. Students' motivation to study is a combination of many factors. After the implementation of the classification management policy, the changes produced by the for-profit private universities are primarily reflected in the three aspects of university governance, students' academic experience and teachers' work experience. In terms of stakeholders' demands, the interests of teachers in for-profit private universities are diversified with the most important interests focusing on the sense of belonging and identity, followed by insufficient self-worth realisation and lower salaries. On the other hand, the student group puts extra emphasis on the transformation and practicality of knowledge and pays attention to the cultivation of personal ability and the enhancement of personal value.
The contributions of this study lie in its use of semi-structured interviews with students and teachers to the literature on stakeholders’ theory. It also bring some discussion about emergence of for-profit private universities reinforces the existence of inequality in the higher education market, although emphasis of for-profit private universities on the development of speciality education is somewhat in line with students' interest in knowledge transformation, it also exposes quality assurance issue, also, developing of for-profit private universities cannot be separated from the support of government policies, especially the teaching staff.
Language
English
Copyright
The copyright of this thesis is owned by its author. Any reproduction, adaptation, distribution or dissemination of this thesis without express authorization is strictly prohibited.
Recommended Citation
Lin, M. (2024). Exploring China’s for-profit private universities from a stakeholder perspective: Two cases from Shanghai (doctoral thesis, Lingnan University, Hong Kong). Retrieved from https://commons.ln.edu.hk/otd_tpg/15/
