Private colleges must be monitored

By Bai Ping (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-09 11:07

Thousands of international students have found themselves stranded in Australia after the collapse of a private education company.

As Australian education departments scramble to find places for many students to sit their end-of-year exams, people here may be wondering: what's happening to Australian higher education? What lessons can Chinese private colleges draw from the experience?

Education is a huge and successful business in Australia. Hundreds of thousands of international students, including 120,000 from China, are studying in Australia. They contribute about A$15.5 billion to Australia's education sector, helping make education its third-largest export industry.

However, the commercialization of education that encourages a fee-for-service business model has always been under public scrutiny. The Australian experience has shown the damage that can be done when private colleges are left to market forces.

In China, many private colleges have also been set up to help accommodate students who failed national college entrance exams. Private institutions are expected to provide market-driven curriculums to train technical workers for the job market.

Parents are willing to pay fees several times higher than public universities if private colleges will award a degree or if their junior college diplomas will lead to degree studies in China or overseas.

In the face of intensifying market competition, many Chinese private colleges exaggerate or lie about their faculty strength and job prospects in order to enroll more students.

Every year during private colleges' summer recruitment exercises, local authorities publicly shame some schools for marketing scams and poor teaching standards, with punitive measures such as halting or limiting student enrollments. For example, in July the Beijing municipal education commission criticized 25 private colleges for lying during their ongoing student recruitment exercises.

Elsewhere, it's not unusual that some Chinese private colleges suddenly close due to poor management or financial difficulties.

The Australian education company's collapse and its grim consequences show the necessity of greater public and government supervision of education institutions.