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The Chinese government has closed?about a fifth of joint institutions and programmes with foreign partners owing to their ¡°poor teaching standards¡±, the Ministry of Education has announced.

In a statement, the ministry said that it had terminated 234 of 1,090 ¡°Chinese-foreign joint education institutions and programmes at undergraduate level or above¡±. These include five jointly managed institutions.

A high number of the programmes were joint courses with institutions in the UK and Australia.

The ministry said that there has been ¡°remarkable progress in the field of educational cooperation between China and foreign countries¡± in recent years. However, it added, ¡°concerns have been raised over a small number of underperforming joint initiatives, which were found to have poor teaching standards and to be lacking in educational resources, thereby failing to meet students¡¯ demands and thus unable to attract new students¡±.

¡°Building a sound and effective winding-up mechanism for such institutions or programmes is an important part of the [ministry]¡¯s work to better regulate and improve the quality of the joint running of schools between China and foreign countries,¡± it said.

The five jointly managed institutions that have closed are: the University of International Business and Economics, International College of Excellence; Hebei Institute of Science and Technology, European and American College; Xi¡¯an Jiaotong University-Hong Kong University of Science and Technology School of Sustainable Development; Sino-German College of Shanxi Agricultural University; and Zhengzhou University Shengda Economic and Trade Management College.

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com