A Research About Monopoly In Chinese Higher Education

Known as the last fortress of planned economy, Chinese higher education has been taking on some characteristic of "government and university incorporating each other", in which public universities monopolize the market with educational administration acting as the backup force. While educational resources still under rigorous control and government monopoly untouched in substance, collocation of higher education would be bound to become malformation and lack of vigor. There is no possibility for the "absolute competition" model of higher education market structure to exist theoretically and practically. Chinese higher education market could be classified as highly-monopolized structure in terms of the classical SCP analyzing pattern, in which the scale economy is deficient and the interaction among various universities is scarce, leading to excess in administrative monopoly rather than economical monopoly which results from educational resources optimization .The rights of ownership,management together with administration are so centralized that it's quite difficult to distinguish between public authority and individual universities. The administrative monopoly consists mainly of two aspects: misusing predominance of public universities and abusing public might of administration. Administrative influence plays a indirect but essential role in the former, while acts as direct and distinct host in the latter. In light of "barrier to entry" of economics, administrative monopoly in Chinese higher education market origins from economical barrier and administrative barrier respectively, which include scale economy, necessarily minimum capital, monopolization of scarce resources, difference of educational product, barrier to retreat of public universities and institutional factors such as historical surroundings, political ideology, financial consideration, system setting and legal system as well. But it's hard to differentiate the two barriers definitely, because the economical barriers derive from the support and intervention of administrative power in nature. As a result of administrative monopoly, Chinese higher education would suffer from severe detriment in that industry structure is out of order, resources are disabled, equity will be forfeited, the social status and credibility has been impaired, and essence of higher education has undergone distorted. As far as universities are concerned, they would be partitioned into two unconnected markets : major market and minor market accordingly. In a word, anti-monopoly is systems engineering which call for relevant legislation , innovation of higher education administration system ,establishment and promotion of a healthy market.