The Life of "Internet Colleges": Policies, Problems, and Prospects of Online Higher Education in China

• Published in: EDUCAUSE review Vol. 41; no. 6; pp. 48 - 54
• Main Authors: Zhao, Yong, Zhang, Gaoming, Li, Ning
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: EDUCAUSE 01-11-2006
• Subjects: Academic Standards; Access to Education; China; Educational Change; Educational History; Educational Policy; Educational Quality; External Degree Programs; Foreign Countries; Internet; Nontraditional Education; Online Courses; Politics of Education; Program Design; Program Development; Program Implementation; Social Change; Technology Uses in Education; Virtual Universities; China
• ISSN: 1527-6619

For the past two decades, China's economy has grown rapidly, averaging an astonishing 9 percent every year. One result of this growth has been the demand for more and better educational opportunities at the postsecondary level. In response, the Chinese government, which holds a tight control over its highly centralized education system, introduced a number of drastic measures to expand access to postsecondary education, including the formation of "Internet Colleges"--or "wangluo xueyuan," in Chinese. These colleges, which are units within existing universities, are dedicated to offering postsecondary-level educational programs online. Other than the China Central Radio and TV University (CCRTVU), they are the only institutions approved by the government to offer online postsecondary education. The Internet College initiative was a bold experiment for the Chinese education system, and as such, it has gone through a number of changes and modifications since its inception. These changes and modifications partly reflect the government's struggle to strike a balance between tight regulation and flexibility, between tradition and innovation, and partly reveal the current social, political, economical, and educational realities in China with regard to online education. In this article, the authors examine the short evolutionary path of Internet Colleges in China to provide a glimpse into the larger aspects of online higher education in China. (Contains 1 table and 9 notes.)