Later, in 2014, the General Office of the Chinese Communist Party and State Council of the People's Republic of China issued guidance on strengthening ideological education in colleges and universities.
[5][6] In 2015, a tertiary education development initiative called Double First-Class Construction designed by the central government of the People's Republic of China was launched.
It was the first government-run university in modern China where western science and technology was its main focus, and Sheng Xuanhuai was its first president.
It was founded as Imperial Peking University (京師大學堂) in 1898 in Beijing as a replacement of the ancient Guozijian (國子監), the national central institute of learning in China's traditional educational system.
; the impact of this shift can still be seen today insofar as Chinese higher education continues its struggle with excessive departmentalization, segmentation, and overspecialization.
The Provisional Regulations Concerning the Management of Institutions of Higher Learning, promulgated by the State Council in 1986, led to a number of changes in both administration and educational opportunities.
[13] Later, on May 4, 1998, President Jiang Zemin declared that "China must have a number of first-rate universities of international advanced level", after which Project 985 was launched.
[13] Project 985's aim was to promote China's educational competitiveness and establish a number of leading disciplines in the world.
[18] Regular HEIs are considered the cornerstone in China's higher education, but the development of private universities has not been trivial.
In addition, it has signed agreements with 54 countries such as the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, Australia, and Canada for mutual recognition of higher education qualifications and academic degrees.
[39] In 2020, five Chinese universities appeared in the global top 10 for number of international patent applications via the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)—more than any country.
[41] The top ten countries with students studying in China include South Korea, Japan, the U.S., Vietnam, Thailand, Russia, India, Indonesia, France, and Pakistan.
[42][43][44] According to 2014 data from Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, there were more than 377,054 foreign students from 203 countries or regions studying across the 31 provinces in China—an increase of 5.77% over the same period last year.
[47] While U.S. and the U.K. attracted nearly one-third of all globally mobile students, their leadership has been contested by the "Third Wave" of political turbulence and intense competition from English-medium instruction or English-taught programs in countries like China, as well as those in continental Europe.
[45] Some have claimed that western education will likely remain the leading choice for Chinese students due to its interdisciplinary fields and development of critical thinking.
[54] While the total number of enrollments in Chinese higher education institutions has been expanding for years, the unemployment rate among young people has also still been increasing.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the unemployment rate for urban residents aged 18 to 24 surged from 17.3% to 21.3%,[55] thus highlighting a significant challenge for the Chinese job market for new graduates.
Additionally, in recent years, Chinese university teachers have had low job satisfaction, showing emotional exhaustion and dissatisfaction with the current personnel system.