Commercialization in education is Ethical or non Ethical

Commercialization of education has been a fairly recent trend in China resulting from the educational reform in the last two decades. It mainly materializes itself in mushrooming private schools at different levels and public and private universities at high education level. In a sense, it has added a financial element to the qualifications of attending private schools and public and private universities. Undoubtedly, it affects millions of families. As a result, it also changes the traditional concepts of education in Chinese society, including student-teacher relationship, educational purposes, and attitudes towards knowledge. While it is difficult to predict its future, we would certainly benefit from examining the current status of commercialization of education in China. Theoretical probing into it should also shed light on various factors involved in education commercialization. Commercialization of education comes at a time when China is experiencing fast economic development over the recent two decades. Undoubtedly, education commercialization requires structural adjustments, organizational reshuffling, accountability shifts, reconceptualization of whom education is serving, and market oriented running mechanisms.2 This should not be in any substantive way different from commercialization in other areas such as entertainment and service institutions. However, unlike commercialization in other aspects of social life, education commercialization is running against two fundamental concepts in China. First, education in its Confucian and therefore Chinese cultural tradition has never been for profit and profit only. Second, education in China is designed to create opportunities for upward social mobility for those who aspire. Simply put, the first would involve re-thinking of the traditional roles of teachers, students, and purposes of education. The second pertains directly to the role money plays in getting into education in the first place, which may block opportunities for many aspiring poor to start with. ommercialization of education can and will happen at two different levels: administrative and instructional. The administrative level would require running the institute like an enterprise, focusing on budgetary cost-effect, seeking resources, product evaluation and corresponding adjustment, new hiring policy, and new relationship between teachers and students. Instructional level commercialization would treat the whole process of teaching and learning as cost-effect driven, focusing on learning/teaching as a necessary step for producing a product, re-adjusting the purposes of learning and teaching, depersonalization in the whole process of learning/teaching, and utility oriented curricular objectives. It is usually unwise to predict the future. However, if history is of any use, we know that the future is created through what we do and are doing today. It is a continuum of the present. The commercialization of education in China faces a similar future in the sense that we are shaping it through our participation and non-participation today. While this commercialization is more than an educational phenomenon, it certainly is going to affect generations to come as far as their education is concerned. To be both responsive to this relatively recent phenomenon in education and responsible for our future generations" education, we are obligated to explore the issue from both an immediate and distal perspectives. An immediate perspective would focus on what it means to us now and to education. Distal perspective would allow us to consider beyond ourselves into the future and beyond education into its ramification in other related and affected fields such as economy, sociology, politics, etc. Instead of offering impossible answers, we ask some questions that could be both immediate and distal in perspective. " Why was the photographer in the video so vehemently against the commercialization of education? As a stake-holder, what might be his reason for criticizing it? How will a sociologist and an economist respond to his criticism? " If you were a student in a Chinese high school (as is the photographer"s daughter), what would be the biggest concerns you would have in continuing your pursuit of education in universities? Are these concerns related to any issues beyond education? " As a teacher caught in this commercialization of education, what has changed in your relationship with your students? Their parents? Your administrators? What kind of ramifications would this have on your instructional practice and ideals? Why? " Who would benefit most from the commercialization of education? Who would suffer most? How can these problems be solved within the framework of commercialization of education? Or should they be resolved in other larger framework of reference? " Is there an issue of equity regarding access to education in this commercialization of education development? If so, how can this be resolved? Or could it be ever resolved when today"s limited resources in China put constraints on the number of youths who can be educated? " What are some of the Western experiences that China can learn about running education? Can they serve as points of reference for China"s education? Or should China"s education only be understood and run within its distinctive social and organizational structures? " What"s the role of knowledge in education commercialization? If we can put a price tag on learning and knowledge, how are the market values of education decided across disciplines and over time? What are the implications of such practice for teaching and learning? " Examining the past of education in China, we would notice the strong tendency of utilitarianism in obtaining education. Is that the same as commercialism? Why or why not?