Research On The Government’s Policy Support For Private Higher Education In China From The Perspective Of Social Welfare

Since the late1980s, private higher education in China has beenbooming, and great success has been achieved. The new PRC lawon private higher education promotion has been officially issued andimplemented since September1,2003. In March of the following year,as the state issued the implementation codes for the PrivateEducation Promotion Law, private higher education has become animportant component of higher education in China. Compared topublic higher education, private higher education shows no significantdifference in terms of serving objects and contents, since both ofthem belong to social welfare and build the components of socialeducation system.However, whether the government officials, private schooladministrators, or the scholars who pay attention to private highereducation field, all think that the current private higher educationdevelopment still faces many serious problems to break through thebottleneck problems. The generation of these problems, the mostimportant reason is that the governments’ support policies have notbeen effective implementation.This paper uses the basic theories on public products, privatehigher education and the "new public service" shows that private higher education is public welfare undertakings, the government hasinevitable responsibility to carry on the policy support the privateuniversities; Through summarizing the general situation andcharacteristics of the government policy support during the differentdevelopmental stages of private higher education since the China’sreform and opening, induct the cause of the problem and reason onresearching the difference of the local government policy support,adhere that the public welfare perspective is an important guaranteeto the private higher education during its sustainable healthydevelopment. And based on this view, this paper puts forward thework mechanism and the suggestions of government’s policysupport.This paper also put forward the typical practice of Shanghai as anexample with private higher education government policy support,analyses a number of policy support raised by the Shanghaigovernment. Among them, the financial support was discussed as akey problem.The main significance lies in: Firstly, to cause social attention andequal treatment on private higher education from the point of view ofthe related theory, let the private higher education return to the natureof public welfare; Secondly, to provide positive reference on thegovernment policy support system behavior through the longitudinalcomparison of the private higher education development combinedwith the practice of Shanghai outstanding cases.