Chinese are known worldwide as top students and scholars, but intellectuals were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, and now only recently has attending college education been possible for the majority. China is transforming its higher-education system, now the largest in the world, to include collaboration with Western scholars and to provide history and contemporary educational access to students in rural areas. Education in China provides unique coverage of learning at all levels.

The first reference book to introduce the concept and development of service-learning in China, Service-Learning as a New Paradigm in Higher Education of China provides a full picture of the infusion of service-learning into the Chinese educational system and describes this new teaching experience using case studies, empirical data, and educational and institutional policies within Chinese context. The text demonstrates how students learn outside the classroom through service-learning with valuable feedback and reflection from faculty members and fellow students about the meaning of education in China. Though service-learning was initially developed in the United States, the concept is rooted in Chinese literatures and values. This book will help readers understand how service-learning is being used as a pedagogy with Chinese values and philosophy in Chinese education, filling a niche within the worldwide literature of service-learning.

Transformative market reforms in China since the late 1970s have improved living standards dramatically, but have also led to unprecedented economic inequality. During this period, China’s educational system was restructured to support economic development, with educational reforms occurring at a startling pace. Today, the educational system has diversified in structure, finance, and content; it has become more market-oriented; and it is serving an increasingly diverse student population. These changes carry significant consequences for China’s social mobility and inequality, and future economic prospects. In Education and Reform in China, leading scholars in the fields of education, sociology, demography, and economics investigate the evolution of educational access and attainment, educational quality, and the economic consequences of being educated. Education and Reform in China shows that economic advancement is increasingly tied to education in China, even as educational services are increasingly marketized. The volume investigates the varying impact of change for different social, ethnic, economic and geographic groups. Offering interdisciplinary views on the changing role of education in Chinese society, and on China’s educational achievements and policy challenges, this book will be an important resource for those interested in education, public policy, and development issues in China.

New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice; Real Simple Best of the Month; Library Journal Editors’ Pick In the spirit of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Bringing up Bébé, and The Smartest Kids in the World, a hard-hitting exploration of China’s widely acclaimed yet insular education system that raises important questions for the future of American parenting and education When students in Shanghai rose to the top of international rankings in 2009, Americans feared that they were being "out-educated" by the rising super power. An American journalist of Chinese descent raising a young family in Shanghai, Lenora Chu noticed how well-behaved Chinese children were compared to her boisterous toddler. How did the Chinese create their academic super-achievers? Would their little boy benefit from Chinese school? Chu and her husband decided to enroll three-year-old Rainer in China’s state-run public school system. The results were positive—her son quickly settled down, became fluent in Mandarin, and enjoyed his friends—but she also began to notice troubling new behaviors. Wondering what was happening behind closed classroom doors, she embarked on an exploratory journey, interviewing Chinese parents, teachers, and education professors, and following students at all stages of their education. What she discovered is a military-like education system driven by high-stakes testing, with teachers posting rankings in public, using bribes to reward students who comply, and shaming to isolate those who do not. At the same time, she uncovered a years-long desire by government to alleviate its students’ crushing academic burden and make education friendlier for all. The more she learns, the more she wonders: Are Chinese children—and her son—paying too high a price for their obedience and the promise of future academic prowess? Is there a way to appropriate the excellence of the system but dispense with the bad? What, if anything, could Westerners learn from China’s education journey? Chu’s eye-opening investigation challenges our assumptions and asks us to consider the true value and purpose of education.

This pioneering book offers a unique constellation of essays focused on the important social and economic changes affecting educational institutions in China. It provides an in-depth examination of the potential and obstacles for business and management education in the world's second largest economy and most populated country.This volume is an essential resource for anyone with an interest in teaching, developing a new program, or entering into a joint venture in China. A wide range of topics, such as economic transition, pedagogical issues, professional training and alliance formation, are discussed from the standpoint of deans, educators, directors and consultants of educational institutions hailing from both the East and the West.

A rare insider's view of educational development and problems in China since economic reform began in 1978, this volume critically examines the issue of political socialization through curriculum and compares the curriculum used during the Cultural Revolution with that compiled and used throughout China in 1988. Also explored are problems with student dropouts and teacher motivation in rural education and government-supported nonformal education; the tracking system and vocational education development in urban schools; problems that came about with economic and political reform; and the issue of inequality existing between and within rural and urban schools. Turning to recent decentralization efforts in school administration, Jing Lin analyzes evidence suggesting that educational policy is politically controlled. Additionally, the development of educational research in the 1980s and 1990s constitutes the topic of one chapter, based on hundreds of published books and papers. Finally, Lin reflects on the massive student movement that arose in the spring of 1989 and delineates the social, economic, and political changes that sparked it. This final section treats these educational changes as an interconnected whole that underlay the movement and gave it such distinctive characteristics as nonviolence and a rational, constructive outlook.

The effects of the de-regulation of the Chinese university system have been nothing short of spectacular. For the first time since 1949, students possessing neither gifted intellect nor political connections have been able to share in the benefits of higher education, while a flood of international educators have opened up a previously cloistered and politically sensitized academic world. This fascinating book examines China’s higher education system, and how it’s new and unique blend of foreign and Chinese perspectives impact on both the lives of students and academics and wider Chinese society. Viewed with suspicion as a new type of Chinese by the older generation and by the government, they are at the same time the very entrepreneurs driving the economic and social revolution sweeping the country. Using a range of in-depth interviews and unique research, it provides open and often frank accounts of life, work and education in China, from the Cultural Revolution to the creation of its market-focused entrepreneurial generation. Candid and illuminating, this is a book no serious reader of Asian studies, comparative education or Asian sociology will want to be without.