Walter Hutchens’ Blog

More and more non-Chinese educational institutions are establishing programs in China, or at least exploring the possibility of doing so.

I’ve been teaching in and helping with the administration of such a program for the last couple of years. It’s been great fun but also quite challenging, in both predictable and unexpected ways.

I just re-vamped the web site where I keep links to the principal laws and regulations governing this sector.

While I don’t think many people (even many of those involved in these deals!) delve into the details of the regulations, lots of people are getting interested in the growing amount of foreign participation in China’s educational sector. The Beijing bureau chief of Business Week recently contacted me for a piece he’s writing about Chinese-foreign MBA programs. There are already a lot of joint venture MBA programs, and that’s just one strain of the activity.

This story from the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription reqd.) suggests the broad scope of what’s unfolding. Paul Mooney, now with the South China Morning Post, wrote it back in February.

A few weeks ago I got an invitation to be on a panel that will discuss what we might call educational entrepreneurialism in China. One of the panelists is from an institution in the heartland of the U.S. that is running fairly large scale distance education programs in China. Another panelists is a weed scientist (!) from Michigan State—there’s a U.S. program in weed science in China.

I’m thinking about adding a wiki or some other tool to my site on PRC education law, something that could work as a public scratch pad as I write an article about this area. I’d appreciate hearing from anyone with experience trying something similar.