II. Analysis: Challenges to International Cooperation and Exchange within China’s Open University System

In 2010, the National Outline for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020) was promulgated by the Chinese government. Several ways to expand open education were clearly defined in Chapter 16, including strengthening international cooperation and exchange, introducing high quality educational resources, and expanding intergovernmental recognition of academic degrees. To this end, higher education in China includes open education, which is committed to developing on an international level. In 2015, a top national strategy was proposed: the Belt and Road Initiative. The initiative symbolises China’s ramping up of its commitment to globalisation. It also provides major strategic opportunities to further promote the internationalisation of China’s higher education, to deepen its overall reform in the field of higher education, and to improve education quality. Influenced by national policies and international environment, international cooperation in China’s open education is no longer restricted for national open universities to go abroad to seek exchange and learning opportunities. Furthermore, international universities also come to China to seek Sino-Foreign cooperative education. How to develop the opportunity of jointly running schools is a major issue before the OUC and its system in carrying out international cooperation and exchange (Wang Xinyan, 2015).

In line with explorations into Sino-foreign cooperative education made by the OUC and its system centered on open education over the past years, this paper summarises the challenges as follows.

Policy Barriers Difficult to Break Through

Open universities in China are faced with a major policy barrier for them to deepen their cooperation with foreign universities. In 2001, China became a member of the WTO, a great event for China join international competitions and adapt to global practices that was years in the making. The WTO divides services trades into 12 categories, with one of them being educational services. Education is split into four divisions: cross-border supply, consumption abroad, commercial presence, and movement of personnel. Richer educational resources and more developed educational industries bring developed countries stronger international competency. In addition to their lower birth rates, educational resources are relatively abundant. Therefore, education markets in these countries are able to be fully open. However, China is a developing country. Whether from the perspective of educational level or educational resources, it is still lagging behind developed countries in competency. Moreover, it still must actively protect its own national education service industry (Cheng Jinkuan, 2008). As such, China hasn’t committed to fully opening its educational industry, including in the context of a cross-border supply of education service. A cross-border supply means that one party offers service to consumers of other parties in its own territory, such as offering such educational services by way of online education and correspondence education (Li Wentian, Wang Jiehong, 2002). It means that neither foreign open university recruits in China, nor Chinese students’ acceptance of overseas degree by way of distance learning, is permitted by our government. For instance, academic degree certificates obtained by a Chinese student after completing a master’s degree from the OUUK - by way of online learning - is not recognised by the Chinese government. Employers in China will not accept the degree certificate, and the student can’t leverage the certificate to find jobs corresponding to their education degree. Open education in China can only offer degree education up to undergraduate level, though an increasing number of students hope to receive national and international education above the undergraduate level by way of open education along, with further societal development. Therefore, open universities also hope to cooperate with foreign countries in degree education, especially at or above a master’s degree. At the current stage, neither individual students nor open universities themselves can surpass restrictions from policies.

Second, Great Differences in Educational Systems

As previously mentioned, the OUC system has tried introducing resources from foreign open universities to jointly develop curriculum. However, one of the biggest problems in joint curriculum development is that the length of schooling is different, thus it is difficult to match credit transfers. Let’s take the OU as an example. Its open majors are made up of courses with different lengths, which earn students 10, 15, 30, or 60 credits. Generally speaking, compulsory degree courses are made up of 30 and 60 credit course modules. Each credit is equal to 10 class hours. So, 600 class hours need to be spent on a 60-credit course, which includes the time for all learning activities, such as students getting book materials, taking examinations, and submitting test papers. Students’ learning time each week involves 16-20 class hours （The Open University UK, 2016）. The class hours and credits are the same as those of traditional universities, and they can be successfully transferred, in line with requirements by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education in UK. Majors in open education in China are also made up of different courses. There are courses of different lengths with 2, 3, 4, and 6 credits respectively. The credits for the same courses in different universities may not be exactly the same, and the class hours listed by the schools are usually guided learning time spent by tutors of each course instead of students’ learning time.

When courses are introduced to Chinese open universities from abroad, full considerations should be given to the schooling systems of both China and the foreign country, including learning loads, and credits. Only when course resources are matched on this basis, can both parties’ school systems properly align.

A Great Gap Between the Educational Products at Home and Abroad

Generally speaking, open education students inside the Commonwealth of Nations pay by course module. They don’t have to pay fixed annual tuition fees, nor for the entire period of the diploma or degree ahead of time. Using the OUUK as an example, if a student studies part time for a bachelor’s degree, it takes six years to complete the schooling, and completing 60 course credits each year. The student only pays tuition fees for those 60 credits each year, which equals about 2,800 pounds. In Australia, students receiving higher education can defer payment of tuition until their income from work reaches a certain balanced level, at which point the sum of tuition fees will be automatically deducted from their taxes（Wikipedia, 2016）. In China, payment is somewhat different from that in foreign countries in both the OUC headquarters and local open universities or other branches. For example, students pay tuition fees for the credits actually completed each term. Take the Administration major, for example. If each credit is 120 yuan, and a student can complete about 12 credits a term, the student should pay 1,440 yuan for the term.

It’s easy to see from the above analysis of the different ways in which tuition payment is made at Chinese and foreign open universities that tuition standards are quite different. The annual tuition fee for a 60-credit course at the OU equals to roughly 26,600 yuan. By contrast, annual tuition fees for the open university system is between 3,000-5,000 yuan in China’s developed areas, such as Beijing and Shanghai; in central and western China, the price can even be lower.

It’s easy to see there is a challenge in aligning prices to introduce foreign course resources. Addressing these cost problems must also be considered and solved for open education in China to seek international cooperation.

Language Restrictions

Besides the above mentioned difficulties for the OUC in exploring Sino-foreign cooperative education, another obstacle that cannot be ignored is the restriction of language. In fact, as long as the OUC cooperates with foreign universities, there will be language problems, including English, Japanese, Korean, and so on. As we all know, most of the students in open education in China are on-the-job adults, including those in remote areas. They have one thing in common, that is, their academic foundation is slightly less developed than that of students studying in regular universities, who have passed the national college entrance examination. Therefore, there must be certain reading and comprehension obstacles in foreign language curriculums. When introducing foreign curriculum resources or cooperating with foreign institutions, open universities need to consider the language of curriculum resources. One way is to translate all the introduced curriculum resources into Chinese. Of course, it will take longer time to prepare for the project, and the process involves not only Chinese translation, but also localisation. The other way is to establish a language threshold by having language proficiency tests, and only those who meet the standards are admitted, which is contrary to the aim of open education to promote equal access to education. This is a difficult obstacle for the OUC and its branches when cooperating with foreign open universities.