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Diversification of Higher Education as Policy Diffusion: The Rise of the Non-university Sector in China

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Abstract

Over the past 40 years, global tertiary expansion has been driven in part by the rise of the non-university sector. The growth of this sector, which includes vocational colleges, also contributes to increasingly diverse national higher education systems. Prior research has focused on inter-state variation in national systems, while very few studies have explored intra-state variation in the expansion of non-university sector. Building on the policy innovation and diffusion model, this study uses event history analysis to investigate key drivers behind Chinese prefecture cities’ adoption of vocational colleges during the latest tertiary education expansion. The study employs a rich panel dataset from 273 Chinese cities between 2000 and 2014. Findings suggest that the socioeconomic and the politico-institutional contexts matter the most for cities’ policy adoption, and the influence of policy diffusion is negative but not significant. Moreover, there is substantial heterogeneity across time and region. The characteristics of early adopters significantly differ from those of late adopters, and the diffusion paths vary within and across regions. This study illustrates that the emergence of sub-national government affiliated non-university institutions is driven by a complex combination of socioeconomic, politico-institutional, and policy forces. Results highlight the regional contextual factors that may override coercive pressure from national strategies to promote the non-university sector expansion and the structural diversity in the context of less developed economies.

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Notes

  1. In 1999, there were 823 regional HEIs (77% of total HEIs), including 474 vocational colleges (44% of total HEIs). In 2016, the number of regional HEIs increased to 1737 (94% of total HEIs), with 1341 vocational colleges (73% of total HEIs).

  2. China has five levels of government, including national, provincial, prefecture, country, and township government. The State Council formally granting provincial governments the authority of approving and accrediting 3-year vocational colleges in 2000.Thus, prefecture cities can sponsor their own vocational colleges with the permission of provincial educational authority.

  3. In 2006, China’s Ministry of Education imposed an enrollment growth rate restriction upon all tertiary higher education institutions in China, which kept annual enrollment growth rate below 5%. From 2007 to 2018, the average annual growth rate was 2.3% for vocational colleges and 3.7% for 4-year HEIs. Hence, this study defines the peak days of Chinese latest tertiary expansion as from 1999 to 2006.

  4. Choropleth maps can document how the higher education policies such as college saving accounts, merit-based financial aid programs, and performance-based funding diffuse across state lines over time (Doyle et al. 2010; Hearn et al. 2008).

  5. Since four Chinese municipalities of Bei**g, Shanghai, Tian** and Chongqing do not have a local municipality level, cities in these four regions are dropped from the sample.

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Funding

Funding was provided by BNU First-Class Education Discipline Plan (Grant Number YLXKPY-XSDW202211).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Economics of Education, Peking University, Bei**g City, China

    Po Yang

  2. Faculty of Education, Bei**g Normal University, No. 19, **nJieKouWai St., Bei**g, 100875, China

    Yunbo Liu

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 3, 4 and 5 and Fig. 6.

Table 3 Cities adopting a vocational college by year (2001–2014)
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Table 4 Definition and descriptive statistics of variables
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Table 5 Characteristics of early and late adapters in western and eastern regions
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Fig. 6
figure 6

Kaplan–Meier Survival Estimates for policy adoption by region

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Yang, P., Liu, Y. Diversification of Higher Education as Policy Diffusion: The Rise of the Non-university Sector in China. High Educ Policy 37, 167–190 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-022-00299-5

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