The development of independent colleges and their separation from their parent public universities in China

With the highest number of students in private higher education in the world, China is updating the governance system for this sector. This process involves independent colleges, which were founded by and remain associated with public universities, but which are privately funded. As one of the strategies to improve the development of independent colleges, in 2008 the Ministry of Education asked these colleges to separate from their parent public universities. However, by the end of 2020, over half of the 2008 colleges had still not separated but, over the next year, the outstanding figure suddenly dropped by one-third. This paper analyses the factors affecting the separation from the viewpoints of different stakeholders. Private funders have an interest in making use of the parent universities’ resources and controlling and gaining financial returns from the colleges; for the parent universities, the management fees paid by the colleges are an important priority, while, for local government, more and better higher education places with less public finance is a key goal. Currently, there are few studies in the English language literature on independent colleges. By disseminating experiences of higher education reform in China, our findings could have important implications for government policymakers and for senior and practicing managers in universities.