ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the restoration of the higher education system from the end of the Cultural Revolution to the mid-1990s, a period during which tertiary education remained the preserve of a small elite. It discusses the structure of higher education during the 1980s and focuses on debates over reform. The chapter reviews changes in curriculum and the conduct of research, and analyses shifts in the broader intellectual climate – leading up to, and following, the Student Movement of the late 1980s. Market-oriented reforms, by contributing to labour mobility and affording opportunities for some institutions to tap new funding, also contributed to the growing systemic inequalities. Marketisation of higher education in post-Mao China arose both from a need to make up for shortfalls in public funding, and from an official desire to direct scholarly energies towards areas likely to promote economic growth and away from more speculative terrain.
