Some Chinese Provinces Suspend College Mergers After Student Protests

Education authorities in China's eastern Jiangsu province have suspended a plan to merge independent colleges with vocational institutes after student protests led to a violent confrontation with the police. Chinese students clash with police over plans to force private colleges to merge with vocational schools. At one school in eastern China, students detained the college dean for 30 hours and tried to prevent police from getting close to him. pic.twitter.com/5oTQXYBdlW

Such protests are rare in China because authorities tightly control mass movements to maintain social stability. The Jiangsu students attending independent colleges, and their parents, see the merger as devaluing their attainment. They view a bachelor’s degree from an independent college as worth more in China’s highly competitive job market than a so-called professional bachelor’s diploma from the less prestigious vocational colleges, according to a Communist Party-controlled media outlet, the Global Times. What the Global Times described as “the merger fiasco” originated in May 2020, when China's Education Ministry announced a plan to restructure independent colleges by merging them with vocational schools.