Changing accountabilities in higher education as China ‘opens up’ to globalisation

Abstract

This paper focuses on changing accountability policies/practices in higher education as China rapidly ‘opens up’ to the global knowledge economy. It reports empirical findings from two case study universities, using respondents’ voices, and then raises issues for critical reflection. Increasingly prescriptive and punitive neo‐liberal accountabilities have come to prevail in Chinese higher education, although ‘new’ accountability mechanisms have not simply replaced the ‘old’ but, arguably, they have coalesced into a potentially unstable hybrid of accountability relationships. We argue the need to dislodge the hegemony of neo‐liberal accountabilities, and to continually—and critically—navigate ‘local’ needs within ‘global’ contexts, as policies evolve.

Notes

1. ‘Downwards’ accountability is where superordinates are accountable for providing an environment conducive to optimising the performance of subordinates and ‘inwards’ accountability relates to personal moral conscience (Corbett, 1992).