Tertiary Education System in China

[ktness]

i'm not sure if this is the right section for this question. but i'm doing a research on the tertiary education system in china. the main research is on the current affordability of tertiary education in. i was wondering if anyone can offer some advice on what they know, and please comment on if i am on the right track here.

this is what i've heard and what i've learnt so far. please correct me if i'm wrong.

1) years ago around the 70-80 (post cultural revolution), the government encouraged people to attend university and receive higher education. therefore university entrants were given allowances for attending university either by their work or via a scholarship offered by the university

2) when the population slowly picked up its pace through the late 80s and 90s, university placings became harder, hence children from a young age were given the mentality that only hard work would get them a place in a good senior high and inherently a place in a prestigeous university.

3) late 90s competition intensified placing became scarce, and issues with university fees began, as people are finding that even money cant buy you a tertiary educated status. so some wealthy families started to send their children overseas.

4) today, the "trend of money can buy you a degree" emerged, and some parents are literally "buying" their child a place in a university because of their financial status. but those kids that have the real grades not no $$$ are missing out on a chance of higher education. and because china lacks a comprehensive social security system, the government does not offer any sorts of support to those children and families that are in financial difficulties i've found that a lot of potential university entrants are missing out.

5) i've heard that currently there are projects in china set up between students and certain industries where these industrial companies are willing to pay for university fees for those students that are in need, however, a percentage of students have taken these projects for granted and have left the initial agreement w/o repaying their "loans"

so, i would like to hear any comments that you know especially about these new projects that businesses are setting up for those students that are in need of financial help, both positive and negative outcomes.

hope i didnt bore you too much with my rant thanks!!!

[roddy]

That looks more or less right to me - you might want to look at the trends re. studying abroad, and also follow the links here if you can read Chinese.

Not sure about what you've got in no.5, but that could just be me not paying enough attention.

Roddy

[Tsunku]

I studied at a Chinese university, and then taught at the same university a year later. The school was an average uni in Kunming. You could go to worse schools, but there are a ton of better ones as well, although not so much in Kunming.

One of the things you might notice about Chinese unis is how many of them there are. Not just private unis, but loads and loads of publicly funded schools, especially teacher's colleges, which you can find in just about any moderately cized city. Getting into university is not as tough, nor as prestegious, as it used to be. Most of the graduates of these universities/colleges will end up as school teachers in the countryside. Then there are pay-your-way options for the students who completely flunk the entrance exams. For slightly higher fees, they can attend a school affiliated with a local university and attend classes to teach them how to be hotel managers and tour guides.

Chinese colleges are not really prohibitively expensive. Most of my students come from the countryside. The college expenses are definitly a burden, but few of them are on financial aid or scholarships. I haven't heard of any Chinese or foreign companies financing an education for a student at a local institution. Some companies will send employees abroad for training, but paying for a student to attend college in China would be pointless. There are college graduates looking for jobs all over the place

You are probably aware that Chinese college graduates face a pretty serious job-shortage when they finish school. There are simply too many students graduating college for all of them to find jobs. Even outstanding students can have difficulties. My good friend is a graduate from the second best school in the province and speaks near perfect English, and currently the only job she can find is teaching Chinese privately to foreigners, which is fine for extra money, but not exactly a profession.

Going abroad is becoming more of a solution, not for the truly talented students, but for the kids who have money. A friend of mine is a student at a truly second rate university here and has recently decided to enroll in an expensive program in Canada which allows him to study intensive English for one year in preparation to enter a Canadian university. His family is paying lord only knows how much for this privilage. Studying abroad is only an option for the wealthy mostly because of visa restrictions which make it impossible to receive the student visa if you haven't got the money to prove you're not planning to take up permanent residence in the country you study in after you graduate (the logic being that those wealthy enough back home wouldn't give it all up to become an illegal immigrant in a new country). So the rich kids can go abroad and go to a school that is quite possibly also second rate by the standards of its country, but come back with a degree which employers find much more valuable than one from a Chinese university. I've heard that this trend will change, or is starting to change already, as employers wise up to the fact that any old degree from the west doesn't automatically mean anything really.

Anyhow... yeah, Chinese tertiary education bugs me in a lot of ways. I could probably go on, but I gotta go to work now.

[CBC]

some comments

Chinese people have always firmly believed that education is the only way of changing and improving your life. "wan ban jie xia pin, wei you du shu gao". no matter it is in 80s or 800AC.

"buying education" usually happen when parents send thier children for highschool and universities overeas , much less within China.

Also as Tsunku mentioned, entering universities are not as difficult as before. It is believed as the government policy to keep the young chinese in unis better than being jobless which would cause more social problems.

[wiz_oz]

I might sound rough but I do not agree with the notion that it is better to keep young people (not just chinese but all) in unis rather than being jobless.

Such a policy will just produce a lot of dodgy unis and even more(qualitatively and quantitatively) dodgy graduates. Hardly assuring. The worst thing to do is to raise these young people's expectation when it is not possible for such expectations to be fulfilled.

Better to spend the money to provide more appropriate skills (eg trade skills) and creating jobs.

[ktness]

thank you for all your comments

[Tsunku]

I do tend to agree that sending underqualified high school graduates to universities as a way of keeping them occupied for four years isn't really a solution. Doing so not only unfairly raises expectations for young people, but also devalues the diploma itself, and in the end merely postpones unemployment, rather than avoiding it entirely. College education is not free in China either, and although it is not necesarrily prohibitively expensive, tuition costs are a strain for some rural families, who invest in their child's education expecting some kind of future returns.

On a related note, recent graduates of the English department at the school I used to teach at are now working in a top middle school here making a whopping 600 RMB a month, working 14 hour days 6 days a week. Not quite what they had in mind when they entered university.

[studentyoung]

Hi, ktness, I just want to commont your words, because I am a Chinese linving in China mainland, thanks for your attention first!

1) years ago around the 70-80 (post cultural revolution), the government encouraged people to attend university and receive higher education. therefore university entrants were given allowances for attending university either by their work or via a scholarship offered by the university

Yes, your are right that after the great cultural revolution, the government took some policies to urge some best students to receive higher education. The allowances were just mainly directly made in the fees, so the fees at that time were extremely low. Some part of allowances were directly given to the entrants. This part of money was not much, only enough to support lowest expenditure in those days. And these college and university students would be assigned to given work units (工作单位) by national or local governments.

2) when the population slowly picked up its pace through the late 80s and 90s, university placings became harder, hence children from a young age were given the mentality that only hard work would get them a place in a good senior high and inherently a place in a prestigeous university.

Yes, just from then on, you can see the presure of the Chinese boom generation was emerging. In those time, the national economy was not as strong as it is today, so the governments (neither national nor local) had no ability to invest in setting up new colleges or universities. Then the few high grade education recourses were competed hardly by students of the right age.

3) late 90s competition intensified placing became scarce, and issues with university fees began, as people are finding that even money cant buy you a tertiary educated status. so some wealthy families started to send their children overseas.

Yes. But the conditions in thoes days were the few best education resources were drastically competed by few extremely best, extremely rich, or extremely special (their parents or relatives are high grade gonvenmental officers) students. Some parents, with enough money to support the fees in overseas universities, just in order to give their children a better educational enviroment and a birghter future (they thought), sent their children to study overseas. In fact, just in late 90s, the problem of unemployment was deteriorated and has gone from bad to worse till today. Some parents had a superstition at that time that an overseas degree would bring about a high-salary job or even living in some rich countries.

(to be continued, it is really too long!)

[studentyoung]

4) today, the "trend of money can buy you a degree" emerged, and some parents are literally "buying" their child a place in a university because of their financial status. but those kids that have the real grades not no $$$ are missing out on a chance of higher education. and because china lacks a comprehensive social security system, the government does not offer any sorts of support to those children and families that are in financial difficulties i've found that a lot of potential university entrants are missing out.

In fact the "trend of money can buy you a degree" is just came from the officaldom not from the educational sector. In mainland China, if you are a common govenmental officer and have no hope to get a promotion in a short time, you can at least earn a higher degree to life up your "zhi cheng职称"(work grade) to get a salary rise. Then from some time, this terrible vogue got into the eduational sector. That's why you can see some one can "buy" a degree. Either citizens or officers can make it, only if you have the relations. All these money will go into the dealers involoved not a single peny will be used to support a poor students. Here we call it the gray income.

5) i've heard that currently there are projects in china set up between students and certain industries where these industrial companies are willing to pay for university fees for those students that are in need, however, a percentage of students have taken these projects for granted and have left the initial agreement w/o repaying their "loans"

Yes, there is a porject there, yet it is really a both funny and annoying one.On one hand, the poorest students can have a bit more chances to receive hihger education. On the other hand, it is really not a mature educational system, and the quality of these causes are not ensured. A lot of problems between the students and the donators rise. There is also another kind of loan offered by government in terms of a bank loan. Yet, because loanee are just so poor, almost all banks (including the gonvernmental banks) unwilling to give this kind of loan. Many poor students are so afraid to have a debt after graduate and dare not to ask for a loan. Don't misunderstand me, the interest rate is rather low compared with those commercial loans. For I mentioned before, the unemployment today is so terribly that the idea "graduate is equal to unemployment " is so popular in students' mind. So maybe you can make a conclusion that the measures the government takes are not so thoughtful. But the poor students have no choice any more!

:shock