Research On The Development And Evolution And The Optimization Of Regulatory Policies Of China’s Private/Minban Higher Education

Since reform and opening-up, China’s private/minban higher education has been developing rapidly, and has become an important constituent part of China’s higher education system together with public higher education. Private/Minban higher education is a special quasi-public goods as well as an experience product which needs rational government regulation. During more than thirty years development of private/minban higher education, China’s government regulation, to some extent, has played a positive role in promoting the development of private/minban higher education. However, some wrong positions and offside of control has hindered its healthy development. Therefore, how to optimize the regulatory policies of China’s private/minban higher education is a hot topic worth of deep study. Through a review of relevant literature, based on the institutional economics theory and reputation theory, this paper will analyze the development and evolution of China’s private/minban higher education, then discuss the situation of government regulation. By the experiences and lessons of developed countries, this paper will try to study the optimization of regulatory policies on the private/minban higher education.Firstly, this paper will define the special connotation and characteristics of China’s private/minban higher education, elaborate its three development stages and analyze the development features on the basis of the perspective of induced institutional change. Meanwhile, this paper will use the reputation theory and its classical model-KMRW Model to analyze the path dependence of private/minban higher education, proposing that the reputation mechanism is vital for its development.Because of the specificity of China’s private/minban higher education, this paper holds that the implementation of the government regulatory policies is a need to promote the development of private/minban higher education. This paper will describe the current situation of government regulation on private/minban higher education from the regulatory policies and regulatory instruments, exploring main problems existing in present regulation that the offside control infringing the autonomy of private/minban higher education, the lack of government control procedures, the non-performance and lag of regulatory laws and policies and the deficiency of incentive regulation. Then, this paper will try to analyze the issues regarding the inefficient regulation, the incomplete regulatory laws, the unsound regulatory mechanism and the lack of a supervision system.Secondly, this paper will interpret the government regulation of Japan and the United State on private higher education and analyze the unique regulation experiences, then summarize the applicable revelations for the China’s government, including perfecting legal system, ensuring the autonomy of private/minban higher education,-attaching importance to the application of incentive regulation and striving to develop intermediary organizations of private/minban higher education.At last, this paper will design some regulatory policies matching the rule of the development of private/minban higher education. To perfect the legal and institutional environment is the premise. The China’s government should not only guarantee the equal legal status of private/minban higher education as public higher education and introduce supporting laws and regulations, but also aggravate the punishment for illegal activities of private/minban universities. The government should also deregulate on the right of awarding degrees and the setups of majors and courses, thus allowing much more funds entering into the field of private/minban higher education and enlarging the autonomy of private/minban universities. Furthermore, the government should vigorously support and develop intermediary organizations, establish perfect reputation evaluation mechanism for private/minban universities to motivate their self-regulation, implement differentiated price regulation and form the corresponding mechanism of government subsidy.