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Impact of Globalization on the Higher Education in China

“Globalized policy discourses in education attempt to reconstitute education as

an element of economic policy for the production of the requisite human capital in the so-

called knowledge economy and learning society”.

(Ngo et al., 2005, as quoted in Nguyen, 2007)

Globalization being the globalized phenomenon has affected all the international

stakeholders, nation-states and China is no exception. Since the 1980s, the accelerated

integration of China into the world economy has resulted to put pressure on policy

makers to reassess policies pertaining to socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-

cultural domains including the higher education in order to meet the global market

demands of skilled workers (Nguyen, 2007). Efficiency, competence, and productivity

have been key elements holding the cords of globalization. As it has been rightly put by

Martin Carnoy, ‘globalization enters the education sector on an ideological horse, and its

effects in education are largely a product of that financially driven, free-market ideology,

not a clear conception for improving education’ (Carnoy, 2000).

As a result, the higher education in China has been found to be moving towards

decentralization, privatization and commercialization thus becoming ‘an element of

economic policy’ (Nguyen, 2007). This is because of the fact that market-driven

fundamentals of the higher education in China have been found to be creating more

challenges than opportunities as the Chinese higher education cycle appears to be

neglecting the fact that positive results cannot necessarily be produced by the market

forces to establish local autonomy (Yang, 2003). However, only by determining and
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shaping local agendas inthe context of globalization keeping in view indigenous social

demands, the impact of globalization on the higher education can be balanced.

Therefore, the impact of globalization on the higher education in China can be

seen as a paradigm shift from ‘interventionist state model’ to the ‘accelerationist state

model’ that can be interpreted as pragmatic and instrumental strategies being adopted by

the state in order to strengthen its underlying capacity to deal with the persistent demands

for higher education rather than a genuine ideological shift from socialism to a

philosophical commitment to the neo-liberalism values of the market economy (Mok,

2005). Hence it is evident that globalization may have a dark side but if the way it

functions involving local and international entities side by side can essentially be

analyzed in context of internationalist discourses on one hand and the indigenous socio-

economic, socio-political and socio-cultural discourses on the other a perfect equilibrium

in a wider social construct can be established.

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References

Carnoy, M. (2000). Sustaining the New Economy in the Information Age: Reflections on

our Changing World. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Mok, K. H. (2005). Globalization and educational restructuring: University merging and

changing governance in China. Higher education, 50(1), 57-88.

Nguyen, H. T. (2007). The impact of globalisation on higher education in China and

Vietnam: Policies and Practices. Author. Available online at: http://www. ece.

salford. ac. uk/proceedings/papers/07_07. pdf.

Yang, R. (2003). Globalisation and higher education development: A critical

analysis. International Review of Education, 49(3-4), 269-291.