Private Institutions Of Higher Learning: An Urgent Problem

Private institotions of higher Education first cazne into being in early l980's, withsome different chacteristics from regUlar instit'Utions of higher education inChina. Although it aroused research interest of researchers in higher education andmany rtcles werc written, yet problems remained as it was a comparaively ncwkind of inStitUtion.fos dissertation was initiated from historica1 persPective of private in5titUtionsof higher education befOre 1952 so as to illustrate similarities betWeen theprevious private inshtUtions and Private institutions, which haher proved thereasonability of emergence of Private institUtions in higher education. AfOllowed-uP comParative study was made arnong countries so that the featUrs wereshown Wonally. The classification was prtcu1arly exarnined to clarify thetyPe of private higher eduation. Based on previous study on classification, Privatehigher Wation was classified into tWo tyPes, matUr private higher education andforfore one, according tO some indicatOrs. As a result of comPndive Study it canbe concluded that the proPerty of Private inStitutions share sindlarities withhistOrical ones and intemational ones in terms of charateristics of founders,diversified finanial sources and featUrs of management. QUestioImairs weremade and distributed to collect data on the statUS of private institutions andfeasibility of changing regUlar institUtions into Private ones. Furthrmore,inveStigations were done to collect the trUth of status of private institutions in theviempint of different PersPectives. The objectS include educational dsnistalorsin govemment,tcarhers and students frOm both regular and Private instiwhons,middle school (mainly senior high school) graduaes and their parents. Upon thetWo pgh of comParaive StUdy and investigation, theoretical unnking was given onthe development isspe of privatc institUtions of higher education. Consequentiy,tWo methods were proposed tO solve the problem of development. One is to find theWays of private institutions existed so as to improve their condihon; the other is toabsorb force from oodide, tha is, to change some regUlar institutions into Privat6institUtions in tCrms of founders, managers and financial sources and so on.