Developing Meaningful Higher Education Evaluation Systems: Putting China in Context

This paper firstly reviews how issues of accountability and transparency have become some of the key drivers of government policy over recent years. It finds that the drive for greater higher education accountability and transparency has encouraged the growth of an international evaluation industry. It secondly discusses issues related to different types of policy and evaluation instruments across Europe, as well as the importance of rankings. It finds that traditional approaches have relied on collegiality, expert judgment, and peer review, and there is a growing focus on indicator-led systems in the belief that indicators are value-free and statistically robust so that leads to rankings have a significant part of development. The paper finally discusses and compares trends and developments of accountability and transparency in China’s higher education. It finds that China is now pursuing “World-class Universities” (WCUs) establishment and China’s experience reflect the challenges and tensions around quality and accountability.