China closes scores of Sino-foreign joint programmes

The Chinese government has closed about a fifth of joint institutions and programmes with foreign partners owing to their “poor teaching standards”, the Ministry of Education has announced.

In a statement, the ministry said that it had terminated 234 of 1,090 “Chinese-foreign joint education institutions and programmes at undergraduate level or above”. These include five jointly managed institutions.

A high number of the programmes were joint courses with institutions in the UK and Australia.

The ministry said that there has been “remarkable progress in the field of educational cooperation between China and foreign countries” in recent years. However, it added, “concerns have been raised over a small number of underperforming joint initiatives, which were found to have poor teaching standards and to be lacking in educational resources, thereby failing to meet students’ demands and thus unable to attract new students”.

“Building a sound and effective winding-up mechanism for such institutions or programmes is an important part of the [ministry]’s work to better regulate and improve the quality of the joint running of schools between China and foreign countries,” it said.

The five jointly managed institutions that have closed are: the University of International Business and Economics, International College of Excellence; Hebei Institute of Science and Technology, European and American College; Xi’an Jiaotong University-Hong Kong University of Science and Technology School of Sustainable Development; Sino-German College of Shanxi Agricultural University; and Zhengzhou University Shengda Economic and Trade Management College.

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com