The liberalization of the privateness in higher education: Transnational higher education and challenges for governance in China

Under intensified pressures for improving the global competence of university graduates, national governments across the globe have to expand higher education enrolments, on the one hand, and to assure high quality in teaching and research in order to make sure their higher education systems can compete globally, on the other hand. Many Asian states have been in the forefront of this effort to improve national competitiveness by raising their higher education enrolment rates. When trying to expand higher education with limited state resources, coupled with the growing impact of globalization and privatization, governments in Asia adopt more pro-competition policy instruments and increasingly look to the market / private sector in the running of higher education. Therefore, the private higher education sector has paid for much of the expansion in the higher education sector, thus leading to drastic changes and imparting a growing ‘privateness’ to Asian higher education systems. This chapter focuses on examining the socio-economic context for the rise of transnational higher education (TNHE) in China, with particular reference in exploring why and how TNHE has become increasingly popular in the mainland. More specifically, this chapter critically examines the different forms of transnational higher education institutions that were being established in the mainland, and what are the major governance approaches and regulatory measures that the Ministry of Education (MOE) of the People’s Republic of China has adopted in managing the growing prominence of these unconventional education institutions / programmes.