private universities

(minban daxue)

Minban daxue, or non-governmental universities, first emerged in China in the early 1980s, a product and integral part of the reform programme. Today, there are minban daxue in almost every province of China. There are two major categories of minban daxue: those that can grant academic degrees and those that cannot. In 2002, there were only 105 minban daxue in the first category. Students who study at those that cannot grant academic degrees have to take government-sponsored examinations in order to get a degree. Minban daxue are quite different from the private universities that existed in China before 1949 in their subjection to tight government control. The government maintains the right to approve the founding of a minban daxue. Before 1949, there were many churchaffiliated private universities in China.

Today, the government will .not permit any religious group to get involved in the founding of a minban daxue. The government also decides what kind of students a minban daxue can admit, what programmes they can offer, and finally, whether or not it can grant degrees to its students. What makes the minban daxue non-governmental or private is mainly the fact that they do not receive money from the government.

Generally speaking, minban daxue are much smaller in size than public universities. Most of their students are those who fail to get into a public university. Most faculty members are temporary or part-time: many of them are retired professors or professors of public universities who want to earn extra income. Their campuses and buildings are less fancy than those of public universities, and their programmes are limited to technical and professional studies at the undergraduate level. Despite these obvious deficiencies, the rise of minban daxue signals, at least nominally, the end of the total government control over higher education, and the future of minban daxue looks bright.

Further reading

Deng, Peng (1997). Private Education in Modern China. New York: Praeger.

HAN XIAORONG