On 19 May 2015, the second meeting of the Deans’ Association of Chinese-foreign Cooperation in Running Schools was held at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Hubei province. The theme of the meeting was Quality Assurance and Development of Sino-foreign Cooperative Institutions.
 
Attendees at the meeting heard speeches from a range of organisations including the Ministry of Education (MoE). At the meeting, Mr Wang Yi, Deputy Director, Division of Cross-border Education Partnerships, Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges, MoE, said that there are currently nearly 600 Chinese colleges and universities working with more than 400 foreign higher education institutions from 25 countries and regions to provide a total of 2,058 joint programs and joint institutes.
 
These 2,058 joint programs and joint institutes include 8 Tier 1 joint institutes and 40 Tier 2 joint institutes (of which three Tier 2 joint institutes are Australian). There are also 2,000 Tier 3 joint programs (of which 146 are Australian), covering more than 200 courses across 12 major disciplines including science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, humanities and social sciences. There are around 550,000 students studying in these joint programs and institutes, and more than 1.5 million students have graduated from these joint programs and institutes.
 
The MoE spokesperson confirmed earlier advice to foreign providers that China will strengthen its assessment process to control the establishment of new Sino-foreign joint programs and joint institutes. This assessment process will focus on high quality educational partnerships with prestigious and elite foreign universities, in disciplines in areas of identified skills demand. 
 
For example, China will focus on providing support for universities to run joint programs and institutes in science, engineering, modern agriculture, medicine and other natural sciences, advanced manufacturing and in emerging industries. China will strictly control the number of “chain” or “franchise” programs and institutes of foreign universities.
 
The MoE also stated that it will strengthen the quality assurance systems of Sino-foreign cooperation in running joint programs and institutes by carrying out regular quality assessments, simplifying and clarifying the approval process for joint programs.  It has also committed to improving the management of penalties and mechanisms for institutions to exit programs.
 
The MoE will also close those joint programs and institutes that do not meet the statutory requirements, that fail to put in place education resources according to their cooperative education agreements, and that are assessed to be of poor quality.
 
The statement from the MoE builds on some of the messages that were delivered at the recent Sino-Australian Forum on Transnational Education and Student Mobility hosted by the Australian Embassy in March 2015.
 
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