THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SQA-HND PROGRAMME IN CHINA: ITS STATUS QUO AND PROBLEMS

With the development of economic globalization and educational internationalization, and the fast growth of economy and higher education massification in China since the end of the 1990s, there is a rapid increase in Chinese-foreign cooperation in running schools. According to the official website of Ministry of Education of P.R.C., up to December 2009, there are all together 289 institutes and programmes at undergraduate level in Chinese-foreign cooperation in running schools. This paper thus will take an example of CSCSE-SQA-HND, which stands for programme of Higher National Diploma of Scottish Qualifications Authority introduced by Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange in 2003, and analyze its model of the cooperation and model of running. Based on that, this paper will also analyze the status quo of the SQA-HND programme and make comparison with the model in Scotland. Main conclusions from the research are as follows: (1) The SQA HND programme is a favored by Chinese families at the middle income level and above. (2) The management of SQA HND programme is via a third-party to help overseas organizations and domestic higher education institutes to be linked together. This model can on the one hand, simplify the heavy and complicated work that may be involved in the collaboration between domestic institutions and foreign organization. On the other hand, it also reduces the quality assurance risk of domestic institutions in the collaboration. This management model is quite unique among all current international collaboration programmes in China. (3) After the SQA-HND programme was introduced into China, although it is CSCSE to carry out a unified management, different centres have established their particular operation modes according to local social demands and their organization cultures and characters. Finially, this paper also put up some problems which should be solved or balanced in order to let the programme have a long, healthy and sustainable development in China: the conflicts between professional and academic, international and local, and profitable and public benefitable.