Balanced Development for Provincial-Level Coordination and Higher Vocational Education

Abstract

In the rapid development of Chinese higher vocational education, large gaps have appeared in the scale of development and resource generation among the provinces, among regions in the provinces, and among higher education institutions in the provinces. Balanced regional development and provincial-level coordination have become policy focal points, but a discussion of the relationship between the two has been lacking in the academic world. Based on 2009 data on vocational colleges in China, the quantitative analysis in this paper shows that there is a tension between the governance models of higher vocational education and balanced development of vocational colleges within provinces. Research findings show that school affiliation is related to the ability to attract public funding, appropriations for public schools are significantly higher than for private schools, and tuition for private schools is significantly higher than for public schools; school affiliation is related to output, and the new student registration rate and number of cooperating enterprises is higher for public schools than private schools; and there is a significant positive correlation between the ratio of prefecture-level city schools and the average number of cooperating enterprises for schools in a province, and a significant positive correlation between the ratio of private schools and the average tuition of schools in a province. This paper suggests that to achieve the dual objectives of balance and development, provincial-level governments should adjust their administrations and financing for higher vocational education and decentralize their authority to local governments, in order to build a diverse and flexible new model for higher vocational education governance.

Keywords:

• higher vocational education
• incentive mechanism
• provincial-level coordination

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank an anonymous reader and the lead editor for their opinions and recommendations for changes. Of course, all errors that remain are their own.

Notes

In 2014, China had 1,327 public and private vocational colleges and about 8.03 million students (Ministry of Education 2015b). In that year, the United States had 1,132 public and non-profit community colleges and 7.7 million students in degree programs (AACC 2014).

For the class of 2011, the employment rate half a year after graduation was 89.6%, and this rose to 91.5% in 2014; the monthly income for the 2011 class of higher vocational school graduates increased by 94% from half a year after graduation to three years after graduation. Vocational colleges’ average income from technical services and social training provided by vocational colleges to society in 2014 was 2.1 million yuan, and on average each college cooperated with 120 firms (Zhongguo Jiaoyubao, 2015).

In 2015, there were 1,329 vocational colleges in China, of which 76.3% were planned by provincial-level governments, including schools run by provincial education authorities and noneducation authorities (51.2%) and schools run by prefecture-level city governments (25.1%).

Liangsong (2013) summarized the mechanisms that can play a role in the division of financial power. For example, local governments are mainly concerned with economic growth and tax revenue, while overlooking long-term investment in areas such as education under fiscal decentralization (Fu and Zhang, 2007). The Tiebout model cannot play a role in China as it lacks systems of “voting with one’s feet” and “voting by hand.” Under political centralization, economic growth, tax revenue, and government performance are extremely important to the promotion of officials, but it is very difficult to make education a significant part of government performance.

As China has a unitary system, the Constitution does not divide control between the central and local governments; this includes control over higher education (Wei 2015).

This document proposes specific duties, content, and implementation mechanisms for provincial government coordination. Most of it relates to developing higher vocational education, including amending the charters for private associate’s degree schools and establishing associate’s-degree majors, adult higher education self-study and testing majors, the number of students recruited for associate’s degrees, the dynamic adjustment of degree sites, and tuition pricing.

Some empirical research has found that there is yardstick competition for education expenditures between Chinese prefecture-level city governments, and the division of financial power that is measured by financial autonomy clearly reduces the public education resources of local governments (Zhou et al., 2013). Some scholars have also found that in order to satisfy the demand for economic development and people’s livelihoods, prefecture-level city governments also actively assume responsibility for administering higher vocational education, and some economically backward regions even establish vocational colleges in pursuit of government achievements (Liu 2016). This shows that there is a certain endogenous nature of school affiliations. However, this paper looks at the impact of provincial administration on school funding and output, and affiliation is regarded as a result of provincial government arrangements and not the choice of prefecture-level city governments or social administration entities; therefore, the endogenous problem does not affect the main conclusions of this paper.

In 2014 the United States had 1,685 two-year colleges, of which 934 were public, 88 were private nonprofit, 663 were private for profit, and the ratio of private schools was 44.6%. In 2010 the ratio of U.S. private two-year colleges was 41.9%, and it was 44.4% in 2012 (Digest of Education Statistics 2015, Table 105.50).

As is well known, in the expansion of higher education that started in the late 1990s, provincial vocational colleges and provincial undergraduate schools both assumed the main responsibility for opening opportunities to higher education. In public schools that obtain high government subsidies and maintain low tuition, nearly 70% of the students come from rural or urban impoverished families, and more than 85% of students come from the same province (Zhong and Luo 2015b).

The new student enrollment rates for provincial schools are 1% and 6% higher than those of prefecture-level city schools and private schools, respectively (see Table 6), and the average enrollment rates of the latter two are 86.7% and 79.3%, respectively; their per-student budget appropriations are 1.37 times those of prefecture-level city schools and 11.8 times those of private schools (see Table 1).

This is manifested in provinces (regions, municipalities) that already use per-student appropriations generally having low per-student appropriation standards set by all levels of governments, which are far lower than the schools’ actual costs and can only ensure the basic operations of schools while clearly not giving enough support to school development. Furthermore, methods such as per-student quotas and personnel quotas prioritize ensuring school personnel expenditures and not the basic needs for construction and increment in per-student allocation.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by the National Education Science “12th five-year plan” 2015 key project (AIA150008) and Peking University China Institute for Educational Finance Research (CIEFR201601).

Notes on contributors

Yang Po

Yang Po is an associate professor at the Institute of Economics of Education in the Graduate School of Education, Peking University, China.

Liu Yunbo

Liu Yunbo is a lecturer at the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, China.