An in-depth examination of the regulatory, entrepreneurial, and organizational factors contributing to the expansion and transformation of China’s supplemental education industry. Like many parents in the United States, parents in China, increasingly concerned with their children’s academic performance, are turning to for-profit tutoring businesses to help their children get ahead in school. China’s supplemental education industry is now the world’s largest and most vibrant for-profit education market, and we can see its influence on the US higher education system: more than 70% of Chinese students studying in American universities have taken test preparation classes for overseas standardized tests. The Fruits of Opportunism offers a much-needed thorough investigation into this industry. This book examines how opportunistic organizations thrived in an ambiguous policy environment and how they catalyzed organizational and institutional changes in this industry. A former insider in China’s Education Industry, sociologist Le Lin shows how and why this industry evolved to become a for-profit one dominated by private, formal, nationally operating, and globally financed corporations, despite restrictions the Chinese state placed on the industry. Looking closely at the opportunistic organizations that were founded by marginal entrepreneurs and quickly came to dominate the market, Lin finds that as their non-compliant practices spread across the industry, these opportunistic organizations pushed privatization and marketization from below. The case of China’s Education Industry laid out in The Fruits of Opportunism illustrates that while opportunism leaves destruction in its wake, it can also drive the formation and evolution of a market.

During the past decade, transnational education has grown rapidly and become a key initiative of internationalization of higher education. In China, one of the main forms of transnational education is Chinese-foreign Cooperation in Running Schools (CFCRS). In May 2017, there were 2545 CFCRS institutions and programs approved by the Chinese government. There are about 560,000 CFCRS students nationwide, among which 460,000 are in higher education, while graduate numbers have exceeded 1.6 million. CFCRS has attracted more and more attention, and related studies have been increasing over the years. This book contains a comprehensive introduction and in-depth study on CFCRS; and includes comparative studies on the development of international branch campuses of several countries. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Chinese Education and Societies.

This book presents a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the educational governance reform trajectory and the latest issues in China, addressing several important topics such as administration, internal management, provision, enrollment, employment, financing, examinations, evaluation and quality assurance. In addition, this important and timely book discusses the educational system at all levels, from primary and secondary schools to colleges and universities, and each chapter ends with a discussion of the status quo, problems facing China and coping strategies for further reform. The past 68 years (1949-2016) have seen a sea change in social, economic, cultural, political and educational fields. Systematically describing the educational landscape in China, the book also reveals how the massive changes in China have shaped education, and how education has responded to the new demands placed on it. Offering essential insights into educational reform in China, the book represents a valuable resource, especially for researchers and graduate students in the field of education.

This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the cross-border mobility of Chinese students and addresses the questions of who in China chooses to study overseas, why they want to do so, and what the impacts of this mobility are on China’s social stratification. In addition, it explores the challenges that these students face in terms of adaptation and identity formation once they have arrived in the destination country. Adopting a push-and-pull framework to analyze the data, it offers a unique and insightful resource.

Globalization has brought dramatic changes to the character and functions of education in most countries around the world. However, the impact of globalization on schools and universities is not uniform. One public-policy strategy that has been widely adopted is decentralization; but there is no consensus on whether centralization or decentralization is more effective to improve organization and management in education. This book is contextualized in the literature on globalization, and examines how policies of decentralization have affected the running of education in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Shanghai, Singapore, Macau and Mainland China. It analyzes the strategies that the governments of the selected societies have adopted in reforming the structure of education systems, mobilizing different forces to create more educational opportunities, and devising new measures to assure quality in the education sector.

There is a flourishing literature on citizenship education in China that is mostly unknown in the West. Liberal political theorists often assume that only in democracy should citizens be prepared for their future responsibilities, yet citizenship education in China has undergone a number of transformations as the political system has sought to cope with market reforms, globalization and pressures both externally and within the country for broader political reforms. Over the past decade, Chinese scholars have been struggling for official recognition of citizenship education as a key component of the school curriculum in these changing contexts. This book analyzes the citizenship education issues under discussion within China, and aims to provide a voice for its scholars at a time when China’s international role is becoming increasingly important.