Tracing the policy shift to new engineering education in China: An analytical lens of historical institutionalism

The global landscape of higher engineering education (HEE) is changing rapidly in response to and alongside the sci-tech revolution and industrial global transformations. Echoing such trends, China is transforming its HEE through new engineering education (NEE) initiatives. China has contributed to the largest scale of HEE worldwide, and its economic power and strategic impact has significantly grown at the global stage. Developing a comprehensive understanding of the evolutionary path of HEE to NEE in China higher education is increasingly important at both the domestic and global scope. However, there has been a lack of research efforts in this regard. Historical institutionalism, an integrated approach examining structural, institutional, and actor contextual factors with the view of gradual change, provides a powerful analytical framework to fill such research gap. Based on an analytical review of policy documents and scholarly research since the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, this paper aims to investigate the structural and institutional factors that facilitate the policy shift to NEE in China's HEE, and the intertwined relationships among these factors. The results of this research depicted the big picture of path evolution concerning the policy shift to NEE in China's HEE, thus contributing to the current gap in literature regarding HEE in China as a socio-historical phenomenon.