Chapter Six Chinese Higher Education during the Past Thirty Years: The Transformation of Public Policy

Abstract

Beginning with a restarting of the national college entrance examination, Chinese higher education has obtained great achievement since the reform era, nurturing lots of advanced specialized talents for economic development and modernization construction and improving the levels of teaching and research. At present, higher education has gradually developed into a multilevel, multiform, and multidisciplinary system suitable to the national economy and social development. Universities have constantly expanded the functions of talents nurturing, scientific research, and social service. Chinese education's development and reform in the past thirty years can be classified into four stages: from 1977 to 1985, recovering, reorganizing, and rebuilding period; from 1985 to 1989, comprehensive reforming of education system period; from the mid 1990s to 2003, economic period of education development; from 2003 to the present, carrying out scientific development viewpoint, promoting educational equality and fairness, and exploring a new education facing the future. Keywords:Chinese higher education; educational public policy; multidisciplinary system; scientific research