Change of governance: China’s shrinking higher education in Textiles

Through a tightly structured educational administration, the Communist regime centralized the governance of higher education institutions in 1949. Based on the state-control model, the Chinese state government extended its control by a two- tier system composed of vertical and horizontal components. Both components ran their own groups of higher education institutions meeting their manpower needs. The institutions in the vertical structure came under the leadership of central ministries serving their particular sectoral needs. Since educational provision was designed to match the occupational structure of the respective sectors, it developed highly specialized institutions of higher education. Those in the horizontal component were run by regional governments to meet local needs. Policies regarding the balance of the two components in the governance system have shifted. Educational reform since the 1980s has reduced state intervention and removed the vertical component from governance. This change has fundamentally altered the relationship between state, education institutions, enterprises and students, and eventually the value of specialized higher education. The experience of specialized textile higher education illustrates the way institutions have responded to this. © 2003 International Association of Universities.