[photopress:MBA_Yushi_Mao.jpg,full,alignright]The Chinese government’s oft-stated goal of constructing a ‘harmonious society’ has given way to increasing focus on five core issues, or the ‘five haves’.
These are universal access to education, employment, housing, social security and healthcare.
In the 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, these new focus areas were set in President Hu Jintao’s Party report.
In 1986 the Chinese government implemented its nine-year compulsory education system, which called for six years of elementary and three years of junior high. The costs were very high. As an example in Dangyang, a city in central China’s Hubei province, debt had reached RMB30.1 million yuan by 2003.
Mao Yushi, seen in our illustration, is a renowned Chinese economist specializing in micro-economy. Asked if China would make higher education accessible to all he replied:
‘That is impossible. The country lacks such financial capacity. The country’s financial capacity is unable to put everyone through higher education but I am in favor of making senior high school part of compulsory education.
‘Raising tuition fees is not meant to ease responsibility of the government, which should invest more in education. I am proposing to impose higher tuition fees on the richer ones and then use the extra money to subsidize the poorer ones, providing more opportunities for poor students to access higher education.’
‘Around the world, the standard practice is to let public and private universities co-exist. Eventually, the Ministry of Education loosened the restrictions on private education. Nowadays, we have a healthy growth of private higher learning institutions, the number of which has increased remarkably in recent years. . . .
‘Higher education has a special role in our society, when it provides students with skills that the economy needs, students can expect better jobs and earnings. . . .
‘It is an injustice for those who are qualified to attend university to be held back due to financial reasons. They deserve the assistance of the government and society as a whole’ To read the whole quite fascinating article click on Source.
Source: The Economic Observer Online
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