LLAKES Research Seminar: Bringing the State back in – Privatisation or Re-Statisation of Higher Education in China?

Professor Ka Ho Mok, Hong Kong Institute of Education

Tuesday 13 March 2012, 3.00 pm, Room 642, Institute of Education

Over the past few decades, the Chinese government has concentrated on promoting rapid economic growth to improve the livelihoods of its people. During this period, policy issues relating to social development and human well-being received less attention, though attempts were made to impose neo-liberal ideas and practices on social services, with costs in these areas being transferred from the State and on to individuals.

After three decades of privatising and marketising Higher Education, questions have been raised as to the increasingly heavy financial burdens being imposed by these policies on the Chinese people. This seminar will address the social and political consequences of the privatisation of Higher Education in China; and it will also assess the strategies that the Chinese government has adopted recently to restore partially the role of the State in provisioning and funding Higher Education, in response to the perceived negative consequences of privatisation.

Ka Ho Mok is Professor of Comparative Policy, and Director of the Centre for Greater China Studies, at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. He has worked previously at the University of Hong Kong; and he established the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Bristol. He has published extensively in the field of social development in contemporary China and East Asia, and is a founding editor of the Journal of Asian Public Policy.

Attendance at the seminar is free, but places should be booked in advance via llakesevents@ioe.ac.uk