Le Lin, UHM, Assistant Professor of Sociology (author of the book)

Yan Long, UC Berkeley, Assistant Professor of Sociology

Baoyan Cheng, UHM, Professor of Comparative and International Education 

Xu Peng, UHM, Assistant Professor of Theatre & Dance

This book is an in-depth examination of the regulatory, entrepreneurial, and organizational factors contributing to the expansion and transformation of China’s supplemental education industry. Like many parents in the United States, parents in China, increasingly concerned with their children’s academic performance, are turning to for-profit tutoring businesses to help their children get ahead in school. China’s supplemental education industry is now the world’s largest and most vibrant for-profit education market, and we can see its influence on the US higher education system: more than 70% of Chinese students studying in American universities have taken test preparation classes for overseas standardized tests.  This book examines how opportunistic organizations thrived in an ambiguous policy environment and how they catalyzed organizational and institutional changes in this industry.

A former insider in China’s Education Industry, UHM sociologist Le Lin shows how and why this industry evolved to become a for-profit one dominated by private, formal, nationally operating, and globally financed corporations, despite restrictions the Chinese state placed on the industry.

In conversation with:

Yan Long, UC Berkeley, Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her research centers on the interactions between globalization and authoritarian politics across empirical areas such as civic action, health, development and technology.

Baoyan Cheng, UHM, Professor of Comparative and International Education at the Educational Foundations Department, College of Education. Her recent research focuses on the international mobility of Chinese students.

Organizer & Moderator: Xu Peng, UHM, Assistant Professor of Theatre & Dance. She specializes in theater and performance studies, women and gender studies, and premodern literature. 

Co-sponsored by the UHM Departments of Educational Foundations, Sociology, and Theatre & Dance.

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