In a series of interviews conducted by China Youth Daily,
Vice Minister of Education Zhang Baoqing said college fees are too
high for many to afford, especially poor families in remote
areas.
On August 29, Zhang criticized eight provincial governments for
not working hard enough to guarantee national college student
loans, and has since kept the issue in the spotlight on China
Central Television and in People's Daily's
website.
Fees can now be tens or hundreds of times their level ten years
ago, and a survey of poor college candidates released days ago said
family incomes of about 1.6 million students were 3,000-4,000 yuan
(US$361-482), compared to four college years' costs of at least
28,000 yuan (US$3,374).
Zhang said that, though relatively expensive when compared with
average incomes, fees are small when measured against actual
investment in higher education, including that in building
construction and support for retired teachers.
Costs also vary widely depending on whether students are
undergraduates, postgraduates or adult students, and on their
particular major and institution. The annual education of a
Tsinghua University student can cost 52,000 yuan (US$6,265), while
that for a student at a less prestigious college may only cost
20,000 yuan (US$2,410).
Zhang said, "As the highest average annual cost of a university
student?may exceed 14,000 yuan (US$1,687) and the
lowest?is about 10,000 yuan (US$1,205). We set 3,500 yuan
(US$422) as the current standard fee."
He said individual colleges should be held responsible for
charging more than this, and condemned some for finding excuses to
get more money out of students.
There were only 3.4 million higher education students in 1998,
but the number is 14 million this year. About 400 billion yuan
(US$48 billion) is reckoned to be needed to run the country's
higher education sector smoothly, but actual input is only 80
billion yuan (US$9.6 billion) and colleges have already borrowed
over 100 billion yuan (US$12 billion) from banks.
In some schools, more costly postgraduates outnumber
undergraduates. Zhang said charges for postgraduates have been
examined for ten years and new policies are now being piloted in
nine colleges.
Zhang said there were two options for the future of China's
higher education: for government to bear all costs but the number
of universities have to be limited, or for access to continue to
grow as demand for learning increases and the costs shared between
government, students and parents.
(China.org.cn by Zhang Rui, September 12, 2005)