PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF CHINAset a system of national ratings of universities and colleges, helping to develop and assess the higher education system current status. The country introduced a unified system of state statistics for its higher education system – a database to accumulate, classify and analyze information about activities of universities. The database is operated by the Education Quality Assessment Agency of the Chinese Ministry of Education. A single database helps to quickly monitor quality of university work, and adapt university programs. The collected data relates to universities in general, individual faculties and each university student in Peoples Republic of China. The data laid the foundation for a system of monitoring higher education quality, at different levels: state, individual provinces, individual educational institutions. It currently covers more than 1,280 Chinese universities and colleges.
The database is aimed at three levels of users – authorities at the national level, regulatory authorities at the provincial (regional) level, and the university management. Currently, the database is available to more than 40 000 users.
The national database includes indicators for 10 years, providing basic information about operations of the higher education system, infrastructural conditions and development of higher education institutions, education quality and individual education programs, effectiveness to identify and develop gifted students, individual student data. The data is divided into the following categories:
Monitoring higher education quality is built on the national database and provides for an operational assessment in the following areas:
In particular, the national database makes it possible to constantly monitor such indicators as students to faculty staff ratio, number of credits (credits of academic hours) in practical training courses, share of faculty staff with engineering education, etc.
Monitoring system provides for publishing annual reports on higher education quality assessment in the country, reporting comparative analyses on university education quality at national and international levels, covering special various topics for government regulators.
The system helps to compile assessment-based ratings of national universities. User may select assessment plan depending on achieved results, current state and demands for future development. Based on the above parameters, all of 834 Chinese universities are divided into two categories:
The assessment provides for calculating comparative performance indicators of a particular university and benchmarks for national and global higher education systems, and for making information reports on academic performance and student achievements (training report) and data on faculty staff professional level (staff report). Thus, the benchmarking system helps to place any particular university (by one or several indicators) in comparison with other Chinese or foreign universities.
Finally, monitoring and assessment data are used to standardize higher education programs in the country, bringing the standards closer to the best international practices. Actually, the results are used to accredit educational programs for universities and colleges at the level of the country.
According to Dr. Jingjing HE, Director of Department of Information Technology, Education Quality Assessment Agency, Ministry of Education, PRC), the national database can lay the foundation for assessing Chinese universities and should be used to prepare university ratings in the BRICS countries.