U.S. and Non-U.S. Scholars

Fulbright New Century Scholars Program
Overview • Previous NCS Programs • NCS Scholar List • NCS Brochure • 2005-2006

Ma, Wan-hua

• Associate Professor
  
• Peking University
  
• The Graduate School of Education
  
• China

In conjunction with her research, Wanhua Ma has been serving as coordinator for UNESCO Chair program in Higher Education in Asia since 1999. She was a Freeman Foundation visiting professor at the School of Education, UC Berkeley in spring semester of 2003; affiliated faculty for the Center for International & Development Education, UCLA since 2003; and education consultant for the East-West Center, Honolulu, in September 2004.

Selected Publications

• From Berkeley to Beida and Tsinghua: The development and governance of public research universities in the US and China. Beijing: Educational Science Press, 2004 (awarded Second Prize by the Association of Education in China in 2005).
  
• "Economic reform and higher education in China", "The policy base and external environment of building research universities in China"
  
• "Historical development and current situation of women' s higher education in China."

In reviewing what has happened in the last twenty-five years in China, one cannot help asking the question: when China was at the edge of economic bankruptcy, how could it successfully overcome the ideological disputes and redirect the country on the track of reform in the late 1970s and get through the financial crisis in Asia during the 1990s to keep its economy in a stable growing speed faster than any other country in the world? (1) The question has been widely discussed from political and economical perspectives, but the discussion of the role higher education plays in China's economy reform is missing. My research will focus on higher education paradigm change with economic transition in China from a comparative perspective, and I hope the research project can help to make some clarification of the question mentioned above.

Since 1978, when China began its economic reform, higher education has gone through a series of changes, which are framed with the terms of system expansion, diversification, massification and commercialization. Within each of those four frameworks, one can find political, economic and social implications to each stage of China's economic reform. When the first "Minban" college (2) appeared in Beijing, it showed to the general public that different resources could be used for education and higher education could operate in a different way instead of being solely sponsored by the government.

It is true that China's higher education reform is pulled or pushed with multi-dynamics, but all of these changes are accompanied with globalization and internationalization as the final goal. The reform itself provides people with an impression that higher education in China has come to its golden age, for it had never experienced such changes before. To examine the change and reform, one can easily note that higher education reform in China is after the model of American higher education system such as the restoration of degree program, the introduction of tuition and fees to undergraduate education with loan programs, the appearance of non-governmental institutions, the establishment of comprehensive universities, the building of "world-class" research universities, etc. But after more than 20 years of reform, many of the inherited problems of higher education in China are still there (e.g., over-centralization, lack of transparency in decision-making, low efficiency in university governance and lack of concern for the access of higher education to the disadvantaged groups). A comparative study to address these issues will be the focus of the research.