A Basic Legal System Study Of Chinese For-profit Higher Education Institution

The basic legal system of for-profit higher education institution refers to the fundamental legal systems related to the establishment, operation, management and disappearance of the organizations. It is a necessity for the organizations and relevant parties to set up these systems which are not specified by other legal departments but meet the special needs of the organizations’relevant main body, otherwise the imbalance of rights will occur. The advantages to construct these basic legal systems can be seen from the following aspects. Firstly, it is helpful to provide basic system arrangement for the smooth promotion of current private colleges’ classified management. Secondly, it is conducive to protect and balance the interests of the involved parties. Thirdly, it is beneficial to promote the scientific development of the private higher education in China.Aiming to provide foundation for government’s intervention, basic terms for private contract agreement and fundamental security for the colleges’ order, this study conducts the system design from the aspects of subject qualification, market access, the property variation, the market exit, corporate governance, government supervision, social supervision, legal responsibility etc. And it is conducted according to the principle of meaning autonomy, honesty and credibility, protection of students’(consumers) rights and interests, and the basic legal system definition of fundamentality, necessity and particularity.The Introduction gives a brief explanation and elaboration of the research background, significance, current research status and the research approach of this study.Chapter One is an exploration of the basic theory. First of all, it demonstrates the legitimacy of the for-profit higher education institutions’ existence from the perspectives of legal basis, realistic foundation and foreign practice. Compared with nonprofit higher education institutions, the for-profit ones are more concerned about investors’ profit, and most of them take the form as joint-stock enterprises; their financing is more dependent on marketing channels, and they put the students need to a more prominent position. What’s more, their service standardization degree is higher, and they put more emphasis on management. Compared with the common service companies, the service of the for-profit higher education institutions is knowledge exchange, their basic value orientation which is inseparable with national ideology lies in education. Based on this, the basic legal system construction should use the chain "civil society-economic organization-the political country" of civil society theory as the guiding framework, and be comprehensively designed with the help of norms’ specialties, such as arbitrariness, mandatory and so on. This chapter plays a general role for the following analysis. Chapter Two is about the discussion of legal system on subject qualification. The for-profit education institution is a special legal person agency and it is different from the non-profit institution in the aspects of legal person’s category, rights, performance and responsibility. In the Civil and Commercial Law, it mainly possess the rights of property, management and financing. While in the Administrative Law, it not only has all rights as being an normal administrative counterpart, but also has particularity in administrative licensing, supervision and assessment, administrative award, administrative payment, administrative collection, administrative regulation and the governmental treatment. In the Education Law, the status of for-profit education institution can be reflected in three legal relations including macroeconomic regulation, independent management and equal relationship.Chapter Three is the analyses about access legal system and withdrawal legal system. It is necessary to know clearly about the minimum registered capital amount for the construction of access legal system. The educational qualification should strict to rules, and the academic qualifications should be approved. Meanwhile, it needs to provide channel for the establishment of network colleges and improve the prepositional procedure of access. The conversion of existing private higher education institutions to for-profit one must be in accordance with the conditions of public welfare, voluntary change, government permission, and it also needs to go through the procedures of shareholdings’dispersion, classification of property registration and management, tax payment and the payment of regular fees. The withdrawal legal system mainly includes the reasons of extermination; the procedure of extermination; the rules to handle the remaining property; the protection of main parties’ rights, especially teachers’and students’ interests and the legal consequences of extermination, etc.Chapter Four is the analyses of corporate governance structure. Corporate governance is the basic system guarantee of corporations’ steady running, and the separation of the institutions’internal decision-making power, executive power and the power of supervision. It achieves the well common governance of various parties’ interests through internal checks and balances. In the for-profit higher education institutions, the corporate governance has some special features which are reflected in the following principles:the unification of general and special attributes, the unification of public welfare and market rentability, the unification of institutional autonomy and moderate government mandatory norm, the unification of the power centralization and power balancing, the unification of institutional autonomy and the heteronomy, and unification of rules’ mandatory and flexibility. In order to build a relatively perfect governance structure, it is necessary to pay attention to the following issues:the grasp of the matters mandatorily recorded in the regulations, the independence of corporations’ property rights, the relationship between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders, the set up of independent director, the guarantee of principal’s independence, the prevention of the internal control between president and managers, the set up of a supervisor, a limited democracy among teachers, students and staff and the connection with party-related organizations’ current system.Chapter Five is about the analyses of exterior supervision and legal responsibility system. Compared with general legal person, the regulatory structure of for-profit higher education institution has certain complexity, its regulatory approach puts more emphasis on specialty, and there are differences in its regulatory difficulty levels, meanwhile, the regulatory content is more about managerial behavior. In comparison with non-profit institution, the for-profit one has higher standard duties in the supervision of following aspects:distribution of profits, directors’ and managers’ payment, finance operation, information disclosure, finance usage, supervision subject, risk control, protection of students (consumers) rights. This study proposes that it should build some systems, such as "government-market-society" multi-pronged regulatory network system, target order system, regulatory content system, regulatory means system, responsibility system and legal basis system. Meanwhile, this study discusses the following issues:conditionally limit tuition standard, the expenditure ratio of teaching activities, the construction of financial risk supervision system, provisions of the employment rate and average pay of graduates, information disclosure, third-party quality certification assessment system, system to support the students (consumers) litigation and the Safeguard Mechanism of teachers, students and staff interests.