The idea of the public good of higher education is closely related to the political, social and educational cultures in which higher education is embedded. It varies across contexts. However, widely used notions of the 'public' aspects of higher education, including the concepts of economic public goods and private goods, conventionally assume Anglo-American state/society/university assemblages. Anglo-American (and more generally, Western) discourses and terms are dominant in scholarship on public policy and higher education. This creates obstacles and lacunae in comparative studies, and employing solely Anglo-American notions can be especially problematic in non-Anglo-American contexts. This paper attempts to move beyond the conventional approach by conducting a lexical-based comparison of the Chinese and Anglo-American approaches to the public aspects of higher education. It identifies and explores key concepts of the public good of higher education in both the Chinese and English languages, establishing similarities and differences. The comparison contributes to a more balanced understanding of the public roles of higher education, illuminates new aspects of 'public', and may facilitate mutual understanding between scholars and between the Chinese and Anglo-American higher education systems.