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Problems of Higher Education Expansion in India and China
1. Introduction
Massification of higher education is an important objective in many developing countries. As two of the largest developing countries boasting fine traditions of learning and education as old as their histories of civilization, India and China have attached great attention to the improvement of higher education, and have witnessed tremendous expansions on their way to the stage of mass higher education.
In the span of 55 years after independence, India has built up the worldfs second-largest system of higher education. The demand for human resources to set up a new socio-economic system, the wish to promote democracy and justice as well as the popularity of the concept of human capital have contributed to the phenomenal rise in higher education since its independence. According to the official statistics, the number of higher learning institutions rose dramatically from 780 in 1950-51 to 9917 by 1996-97, with a 24. ... The three decades (the 1950s-1970s) after the founding of the republic experienced the so-called unbridled tremendous expansion with a rapid annual enrolment growth rate of 9. ... With the soaring unemployment and some restrictions from the government, the expanding speed though still remaining comparatively high has been slowed a great deal since the late 1970s, and more concern has been paid to the problems emerged during expansion.
Higher education in the Peoplefs Republic of China has also been greatly enlarged but its course was not smooth. The excessive expansion in the late 1950s together with the following painful contraction inflicted great suffering on Chinafs higher education system, which was then severely destroyed by the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and was rebuilt only in the late 1970s. It is since then that the higher education in China has been developed gradually and the student enrolment increased by 282. ... Under the impact of globalisation and international competition and with a move to spur economic development through educational consumption as well as to satisfy the increasing public demand, the 1999 government policy requiring an enrolment boost set up a new surge of expansion, and launched the Project of Higher Education Massification in China. ... 44% (Ministry of Education, 2000: 9) to 29.2% (Ministry of Education, 2002: 10). Such a great expansion is extraordinary in China and is as tremendous as that was in India, and also gives rise to several problems and meets with obstacles.
As two populous developing countries, India and China have experienced respectively the most significant expansion of higher education in history, which has exerted profound influence with great benefits. However, such large-scale rapid expansions also have encountered difficulties and led to many severe problems deserving great concern. As it is impossible to elaborate on all the problems and difficulties, this paper presents a modest attempt to examine three important common issues, namely quality, financing, and unemployment. ... Problems
2. ... Problems of quality
To begin with, although quality and quantity may not necessarily be in contradiction, unfortunately when facilities and faculties fail to be improved to keep pace with the quantitative expansion, the quality of education is bound to decline. In India, as a consequence of the incessant huge intakes of students regardless of the inadequate faculties and resources under the mounting pressure for access, g standards of teaching and of evaluation compromised in order to accommodate demand h (Chitnis, 2002). ... In China, the 1999 expansion policy which should have been scheduled earlier to give the universities and colleges adequate time for resource preparation, and the three successive years of large-scale rapid enrolment increase which allowed them little breathing space to get replenished, strain the already limited resources and make many schools overloaded, negatively influencing the regular teaching and learning. ... Since many colleges in India were badly dependent on the part-time teachers from other universities, the teachers therefore were busy dealing with large amounts of work with little extra time and effort to improve or even maintain their teaching quality. Many teachers in China also have to shoulder heavy teaching tasks, and the shortage of faculties makes some universities employ at-school postgraduates as an expedient. ... The widened recruitment scope provides more youths with opportunities to receive higher education, which is certainly laudable. However, it is worth noting that the students admitted who are academically unprepared for higher education usually end up with poor performance or academic failure.
Approximate Word count = 3556
Approximate Pages = 14.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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