| Author: | Qiu, Guoxiong |
| Title: | Neoliberalism and entrepreneurship in Chinese higher education : a case study of an English-medium program |
| Advisors: | Hu, Guangwei (ENGL) |
| Degree: | DALS |
| Year: | 2025 |
| Department: | Faculty of Humanities |
| Pages: | 1 volume (various pagings) : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Due to the fervent global movement toward higher education internationalization, English-medium instruction (EMI) is high on the agenda in many non-Anglophone countries (Galloway & Ruegg, 2020). The instructional mode is often implemented as a top-down political policy aimed at making graduates more competitive in the global market (Lasagabaster, 2022). The Chinese mainland (hereafter China) is one of the staunchest supporters of higher education EMI. However, the introduction of EMI in China has been criticized due to insufficient empirical evidence that verifies its effectiveness (Hu, 2021a; Jablonkai & Hou, 2021). Also, little research has attended to the eco-political nature of language education (Block et al., 2012) and the neoliberalist motivations behind the rapid rollout of EMI (Block, 2022). This thesis contributes to the limited discussions of neoliberalism and Chinese higher education EMI by investigating whether and how neoliberal ideology affects a transnational EMI program in China. The conceptual lens adopted in the study is entrepreneurship (De Costa et al., 2016, 2019, 2021; Holborow, 2012a), a key construct that views neoliberalism as “the formation and transformation of subjectivities” (Park, 2021, p. 2) and captures a range of qualities valued in neoliberal competition (e.g., resourcefulness, flexibility, accountability for self-care and self-management, and willingness to take risks). Entrepreneurship can characterize both individual learners and institutions – two groups of actors facing immense pressure to perform in the neoliberal world through various means (De Costa et al., 2016, 2019, 2021). This study examined how a Chinese transnational EMI program and its students enacted entrepreneurship, as well as the tensions between their entrepreneurial motivations and reality. The research questions that this study sets out to answer are: 1. How is entrepreneurship enacted on the student level within the Chinese EMI program? 2. How is entrepreneurship enacted on the program level within the Chinese EMI program? 3. How does entrepreneurship create tensions for the Chinese EMI program and its students? To develop an in-depth understanding of neoliberalism in the EMI program, the study adopted an embedded single-case study design (Yin, 2018) and drew on four types of data: program documents, semi-structured interviews, observations, and artifacts. Specifically, I collected and critically analyzed three sets of documentary data: the program’s prospectus, its learning goal plan, and 25 student stories published on its social media account (WeChat). The documents were supplemented by 24 semi-structured interviews with 21 participants (students, staff, and faculty of the EMI program) and classroom observations of 21 lessons that totaled 25 hours. Additional documents and artifacts (e.g., the EMI program’s student handbook, course syllabi, and student notes) were also examined to corroborate the findings. Drawing from the different data sources to obtain a comprehensive view, the thesis revealed that entrepreneurial motivations and practices existed and were often normalized in the EMI program. Students approached learning in the EMI program as a way to enhance their career prospects, showing their entrepreneurial motivations for education. However, their insufficient linguistic abilities often compelled them to resort to coping strategies to gain good grades while circumventing meaningful learning. They also actively accrued human capital, sometimes by opportunistic or even unethical means, to fashion themselves for the competitive educational and job markets in China. Their grade-oriented mindset, superficial learning modes, single-minded pursuit of personal advancement, and precarious subjectivity illustrated how individual-level entrepreneurship could unfold in a Chinese EMI program and reshape learners’ higher education experience against the backdrop of nationwide hypercompetition in China. Program-level entrepreneurship was manifested in its uncritical adoption of EMI, an Americanized curriculum, and accreditation to strengthen its market competitiveness. The lack of localized and student-centered curricular content resulted in a multitude of academic challenges for students, teachers’ simplification of curricular content, and an ineffective assessment system that served reporting purposes rather than students’ actual needs, suggesting that there are often considerable misalignments between stakeholders’ entrepreneurial visions and reality. Furthermore, individual and institutional entrepreneurship were shown to interact with each other, strengthening the affective regime of responsibility and precarity. The findings of this study show how neoliberalism and EMI in Chinese higher education can be intertwined and how both individual and institutional entrepreneurship can compromise students’ learning experiences and universities’ teaching quality. The study calls for a more critical investigation into EMI in the context of Chinese higher education to emancipate stakeholders and institutions from the hegemonic regime of neoliberalism and dismantle entrepreneurial ideologies that are subtly embedded and naturalized in the higher education sphere. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8788.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 7.78 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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