중국 교육의 시장화와 사립학교의 성장

Abstract

This paper examines the development of Chinese private schools in the context of educational decentralization and marketization. China has a long history of private schools since the Confucian school. It played an important role along with government schools in traditional education which was a crucial passage of social success in China. Yet, all the private schools were either closed or nationalized after the socialist revolution. It was the early 1980s when private schools began to reemerge to meet the diverse educational needs in rapidly growing Chinese market economy. Marketization of education accelerated as the government decentralized the educational financing and regulations and allowed the school to diverse its revenue. In China, the first choice for most excellent students is public “key schools” which usually shows good performance in the university entrance exam. It is the elite private school that appears in Chinese education market to meet the needs of the student who came from wealthy family but had not get enough score to enter those key schools. Receiving expansive tuition, elite private schools try to provide students with quality education such as English immersion program or study abroad opportunities. In contrast, private schools for migrant workers' children emerged to meet the educational needs of poor migrant workers who have to bring their children to urban areas. Migrant workers choose this school for their kids not only because of its cheap tuition but also of lack of discrimination against their kids in ordinary public schools. Private colleges are also growing in China. In many cases, newly established private colleges called “independent colleges” borrow the name and resource from a public university, which receives a part of the college's profit in return. This study also suggests that the dichotomy between the socialist state and capitalist market is impossible in Chinese education. As shown in the cases of key schools which marketize their fame and build their own private schools, the border between private school and public school are blurred. The state run public schools no longer aims to educate socialist citizens. Public schools also have become an active agent in educational market in China. In all, this research shows that the boundary between the state and market are increasingly blurred in education.