RESOURCES

 QUALITY ASSURANCE (QA) IN CHINESE HIGHER EDUCATION

China has a heterogenous higher education system with no fewer than 2,956 HEIs. These include public degree-granting universities and research institutes, junior colleges, vocational colleges and universities, medical colleges, private universities, and adult education institutions.

Amid the massification of Chinese higher education, the Chinese government has since the 1990s issued a series of policy directives to strengthen the quality control of the rapidly growing number of HEIs in the country. After piloting different forms of evaluation schemes in the 1990s, the MOE in 2002 mandated that HEIs which offer undergraduate programs undergo periodic external assessment in five-year evaluation cycles and proceeded to evaluate 589 institutions in a first round of quality assessments between 2003 and 2008. While these institutions continue to be audited today, the MOE currently prioritizes the evaluation of newer institutions that were not assessed in previous reviews. Generally, China’s QA drive since the 1990s first focused on undergraduate education and, more recently, the evaluation of graduate programs.

The main QA authority is the MOE, which sets the overall quality standards for higher education. Its Higher Education Evaluation Center (HEEC) is tasked with evaluating and auditing HEIs at the undergraduate level, as well as coaching HEIs on best QA practices, and collaborating with QA agencies in other countries. It also gathers statistical data on HEIs and maintains a database on academic institutions approved to offer benke and zhuanke programs.

On the other hand, the China Academic Degrees and Graduate Education Development Center (CDGDC), a semi-autonomous body under the purview of the MOE, is responsible for the evaluation of graduate-level institutions and programs. In addition, provincial accreditation committees are tasked with evaluating and auditing vocational HEIs and private institutions within their jurisdictions under central guidelines.

Beyond external quality control, HEIs are mandated to create internal self-assessment and QA systems. Most HEIs, thus, have established committees made up of senior teaching staff that monitor quality at the departmental or discipline-specific level, and make recommendations on how to improve teaching practices. The peer review of specific courses by instructors is common as well, as are student surveys. Based on these self-assessments, HEIs are then required to produce and submit annual quality reports, which are key reference documents for governmental evaluations.

The QA Process and Criteria for Undergraduate Education

In order to award credentials that are officially recognized in China, HEIs, both public and private, must be approved by Chinese government authorities. To qualify for assessment, institutions must have graduated at least three student cohorts and fulfill other criteria, such as having operating budgets approved by the Ministry of Finance.

The process of institutional accreditation begins with the institutional self-assessment, submitted to an evaluation committee appointed by the HEEC. The HEEC then dispatches a team of evaluators to conduct on-site inspections, review university documents, and interview administrators, faculty, and students. The final report of the HEEC inspection team is submitted to the accreditation committee which renders the final decision. Under the current evaluation scheme, HEIs are assessed in three categories: pass, deferred pass, and not passed. The HEEC publishes these results in media outlets.

Those institutions that pass are audited again in five years to measure whether they have made the suggested improvements, but no new grade assessment is rendered based on these audits. Institutions that do not pass or receive a deferred pass, on the other hand, must rectify shortcomings before they get reassessed within two or three years. They are not allowed to establish new programs, and their enrollment quotas are restricted or reduced. Further penalties may technically be imposed if institutions again fail to pass the assessment the second time around.

The criteria the HEEC takes into consideration when evaluating HEIs include the mission statement, uniqueness and social contributions of the institution, student-to-teacher ratios, the level of education of teaching staff, curricular design, infrastructure, budgeting, growth strategies, the strength of internal QA mechanisms and student services, employment outcomes of graduates, and student feedback, as well as the provision of sufficient physical education and ideological education.

QA in Graduate Education

While the HEEC assessment focuses on undergraduate education, there is a separate QA process for graduate education through the CDGDC, which is responsible for approving postgraduate degree-granting institutions, university departments, and research institutes that award master’s and doctoral degrees. Assessment of graduate programs involves the review of selected dissertations and appears to be relatively strict. In earlier reviews by the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, the body that conducted the reviews before this function was transferred to the CDGDC, several doctoral and master’s programs were either terminated or lost their right to award degrees in the mid-2000s.

 Since the early 2000s, the CDGDC has also evaluated graduate programs in specific academic disciplines of national priority to provide a comparative ranking of institutions that offer programs in these disciplines. Rankings are based on factors like faculty and resources, research output, and academic reputation, with institutions being rated on a scale from A+ to C-. Participation in this ranking exercise is voluntary, but the rankings are well-regarded in China, so that it’s in the best interests of top institutions to participate. Most recently, the scope of CDGDC rankings was extended to professional degree programs in fields like accounting, education, law, clinical medicine, or dentistry. A pilot program in 2018 ranked more than 293 institutions in these disciplines.