Private Education

With its increasingly affluent and urban population, China has continued to upgrade its education capabilities in both quality and availability, helping it quickly emerge as a global education powerhouse. In the last decade, China has seen numerous universities hitting new heights in the global rankings, while its secondary education has topped the international comparative Programme for International Student Assessment study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Tremendous changes have also taken place in the private education industry during this time, in terms of not only the quantity and scope, but also its quality. Private schools have begun to play a key role, with a greater effect on the national education system. Private education has seen an increased elaboration of its service capacity on many fronts, including bilingual and English language offerings, access to international opportunities, vocational training, and after-school tutoring and online education. Private education is succeeding by not only satisfying a rising demand that is unmet by the public providers, but also providing a new and innovative educational service unavailable in the public sector. In higher education, China is the world’s largest market in terms of student numbers, followed by India and the United States. Total student numbers in higher education in China reached 37 million in 2016, with an enrollment rate of about 41%. While this figure is high compared with most developing countries, it still falls behind many developed nations. By 2018, China had more than 740 private colleges and universities, serving about 23% of the entire student population in higher education. The establishment of private institutions was encouraged after 1992, as the government gradually established a framework to govern public and private higher education. The Private Education Promotion Law (民办教育促进法, Minban Jiaoyu Cujin Fa) of 2002 established the conditions for operation. The private education sector has become one of China’s major service industries that investors, both foreign and domestic, see as particularly promising. According to research and analysis by L.E.K. Consulting, China’s private education sector is still underpenetrated compared with other global private education markets. If it had the same relative size as the U.S. market, China’s private education sector would be double its current size. The positioning and development of private education are not without challenge. How the term private education is rendered in China illustrates that it is a delicate matter. For school-based private education, the schools are usually referred to as Minban (民办), literally