writing paper

Interrogating institutionalized establishments: urban–rural inequalities in China’s higher education

Mei Li • Rui Yang

Received: 8 June 2012 / Revised: 22 March 2013 / Accepted: 13 April 2013 / Published online: 23 April 2013

� Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 2013

Abstract China’s urban–rural disparities are a funda-

mental source of China’s overall educational inequalities.

This article addresses the issue with data collected through

interviews with members at various Chinese higher edu-

cation institutions. It interrogates China’s current policies

together with the socio-political institutional arrangements

that underlie them and assesses the effectiveness of exist-

ing schemes to support higher education students. Based on

China’s experience, it challenges market transition theory’s

claim and debates the classical economic theory which

postulates that expansion of education will reduce

inequality. Believing that the educational gap is only part

of China’s urban–rural disparities, of which many resulted

from social institutional arrangements, it calls for changes

to established institutions and a reconsideration of the role

of private financing mainly through tuition fees.

Keywords Urban–rural disparities � Educational inequality � China � Higher education

Introduction

Since the economic reform started, two major changes in

China’s higher education system have been enrollment

expansion and tuition hike. While increased opportunities

for higher education have raised the benefits for those who

attend colleges and universities, an increasing financial

burden of tuition fees has greatly hindered higher education

for some college-/university-worthy youth. There has been

recent outcry over growing disparities in higher educa-

tional equality, especially between urban and rural areas.

Higher education attainment closely relates to earlier

access to publicly and privately supported education at

lower levels as well as to the capacity of borrowing money

to pay direct and indirect higher education costs. Equity

challenges in China’s higher education finance need to be

addressed urgently, as sustaining China’s rapid economic

growth in the future depends in large part on the quantity

and quality of its human resources.

Educational inequalities are manifested in various forms

in China. Yet, urban–rural disparities are a fundamental

source of China’s overall educational inequalities (Qian and

Smyth 2008). Discussions tend to be confined to the matters

at issue without much theoretical orientation, although

Rawls’ (1971) principles of equality of opportunity are

frequently cited. Focusing on urban–rural disparities, this

article examines such a gap in the literature by interrogating

China’s current policies together with the socio-political

institutional arrangements that underlie them. Based on

national and institutional statistics and Chinese and English

literature, it investigates the extent and trend of China’s

higher education inequalities, with critical discussions on

the concentration of wealth in urban centers and the impacts

of this on higher education provision. It incorporates

empirical data collected through interviews with academic

and administrative staff at Chinese higher education insti-

tutions of various types: Shanghai Jiaotong University

(hereafter SJU, one of China’s oldest and most prestigious

national flagship universities in Shanghai), Anhui Medical

M. Li (&) Institute of Higher Education, School of Educational Science,

East China Normal University, No. 3663 North Zhongshan

Road, Shanghai 200062, People’s Republic of China

e-mail: [email protected]

R. Yang

Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong,

People’s Republic of China

e-mail: [email protected]

123

Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. (2013) 14:315–323

DOI 10.1007/s12564-013-9262-0

University (hereafter AMU, located in the capital city of

less developed Anhui province), and Maanshan Teacher’s

College (hereafter MTC, a 3-year tertiary institution at a

medium-size city in Anhui). These institutions were selec-

ted because they belong to different categories of research

universities, provincial higher institutions, and regional

junior colleges, respectively, representing the larger sce-

nario of China’s higher education system. They were

accessible to the researchers during their fieldwork.

Both focus group interviews and individual semi-struc-

tured interviews were conducted during June–July 2010 to

elicit views from academic and administrative staff on

urban–rural (in)equities in higher education. In each insti-

tution, seven to eight staff were interviewed, including two

administrators at the institution level in charge of student

affairs and finance, one to two managers at the school/

faculty level in charge of student affairs and recruitment

and four academic staffs. Therefore, there were three focus

group sessions in every case institution.

This article first reviews the social and policy contexts

to investigate the status of disparities with China’s recent

major institutional reforms. It then assesses the effective-

ness of existing schemes to support higher education stu-

dents. Through some critical analyses of the underlying

values of and responses to China’s longstanding urban-

biased policies, it critiques the priorities unfairly given to

urban populations by Chinese public policy-makers.

Locating China’s current practices into historical, social,

and policy contexts, it argues that Chinese contemporary

policies are becoming increasingly inappropriate in a

transition from redistributive to market economy.

Social and policy contexts

China’s current educational disparities are resulted from its

long-term policy options. When the communist republic

was founded in 1949, its new democratic education policy

was in principle for the masses, representing the funda-

mental values of education equity. Yet, as a country with

poor financial conditions and a huge population, educa-

tional development was not only confined to the political

system and ideologies, but also hindered by its socio-eco-

nomic development level and ready resources. Under the

guidance of the new political ideologies, with aims at fast

industrialization, China was confronted with a number of

dilemmas and had to make hard policy choices.

Elite education versus mass education

Education for the broad masses was the basis for China’s

policy-making in the early 1950s. In addition to the

expansion of working people’s educational rights, another

urgent task of the new republic was to train professionals

badly needed for economic development and national

defense (People’s Daily 1950). The dilemma faced by

education was vacillation between equity and efficiency, a

matter of mass or elite education, with implications for

educational policy-making to decide the priority between

basic and higher education. During the 1950s and 1960s,

China’s actual policy opted to elite education. National

investment concentrated on higher education. Distribution

of institutions and disciplinary structure were heavily

imbalanced with particular emphases on major capital cities

and science and technology subjects. A number of institu-

tions were selected by the government to invest focally,

designated as key-point institutions under the jurisdiction of

the Ministry of Education or other ministries.

The most obvious advantage of such a policy option was

to provide strong intellectual and personnel support for

industrialization and national defense. Its major problem

was the imbalanced distribution of educational resources,

causing longstanding ignorance of basic education, dam-

ages to the majority people’s educational rights, and a huge

educational gap between urban and rural areas. The allo-

cation of educational resources was based entirely on

national development goals that prioritized fast industrial-

ization (People’s Daily 1952), with little consideration of

local needs, causing regional disparities. Few national key

institutions were in Central and Western regions. The

monopoly of educational resources by and the limited

financial capacity of the central government determined the

unfortunate combination of stress on higher education and

weak rural education.

Mao Zedong’s ‘‘educational revolutions’’

During the initial days of the republic, the broad masses

were endowed with educational rights directly by political

revolution. Popularization of education was idealistically

expected to rapidly change the educational outlook of

Chinese workers and peasants, an emphasis on basic edu-

cation for the majority people that immediately con-

tradicted with the goal to train specialists to develop heavy

industry. As the leaning to the Soviet Union went further,

the Soviet model of planned economy and a highly cen-

tralized higher education system were established.

Mao Zedong, however, opposed the overwhelming

dominance by Soviet-style education and initiated ‘‘edu-

cational revolutions’’ in the 1960s, based on his educational

ideals and values. With his main attention to the educa-

tional rights of working people’s children especially in

rural areas, he tried to achieve these goals through

smashing up examinations, shortening length of schooling,

relaxing the limits for university entry, and devolving

administrative power to lower levels of government to

316 M. Li, R. Yang

123

utilize multiple sources and methods to develop education.

The actual effect was a great damage to the majority

people’s educational rights. His personal obsession with

family origin led to wide-ranging deprivation of non-

working class people’s educational rights and created

injustice of other sorts.

Dengist discriminatory xianfu theory

China’s rapid expansion of inequality is directly resulted

from the economic reforms since 1978. With the reforms,

economy was redirected to the market, and its opening was

limited to specific areas, such as special economic zones in

coastal regions. Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour Lectures

in 1992 gave further impetus to the transition from redis-

tributive, egalitarian to market-based, meritocratic system

(Hannum 1999), leading to substantial changes in the

income inequality structure. The reforms prioritized mac-

roeconomic growth, even if it sacrificed equality of income

distribution and opportunities, as illustrated by Dengist

xianfu theory, which states, ‘‘Allow some people and areas

to get rich first.’’ Such discriminatory treatment justifies

income disparity, embraces the penetration of the market

mechanism into the Chinese economy, and accelerates

income gap between urban and rural areas. The xianfu

theory encourages marketization (Okushima and Uchimura

2005) and treats urban and rural areas unevenly.

A cost-sharing financing mechanism

Until the late 1990s, China’s public spending on higher

education was high by international comparison. Govern-

ment allocation per student was generous until the mid-

1990s. During the past years, the government has imple-

mented a series of reforms to reach a financing mechanism

where higher education cost is shared between central,

regional, and local governments, as well as with society

and individual students. Public spending per student has

been decreasing while educational costs per student have

increased substantially. Public funding of higher education

accounted for 29 % in 1984 and 19 % in 1994 of total

public education expenditures (World Bank 1997). Gov-

ernment subsidies declined as a share of total financing

from 64.6 % in 1990 to 53.1 % in 1998. The share of

financing contributed by tuition fee rose from 15.06 % in

1996 to 29.29 % in 2003 (Du 2007).

Policies of marketization, decentralization, and privati-

zation since the 1980s have significant equity implications

and increase inequalities in access across regions, espe-

cially as the poor regions have reduced capacity to finance

education at all levels. The private cost of higher education

is substantial. The average cost per student to study and

live on campus for an academic year far exceeds the

average family annual income of the country. In 2004,

higher education tuition fees grew to 5,000 RMB, accom-

modation costs increased to 1,000–1,200 RMB, a student’s

living costs rose to 4,000–5,000 RMB, making the total

expense of university study around 40,000–50,000 RMB,

which amounted to 4.2 and 13.6 years net income for an

urban dweller and a rural resident, respectively (Guo

2010).

Manifestations of inequalities in China’s higher

education

Inequalities in China’s higher education remain structural,

reflected in various dimensions of China’s higher education

system (Li 2011; Wang 2011) and caused by a number of

factors (Wang 2010; Liu et al. 2012).They are manifested

strikingly between urban and rural areas in terms of access

to higher education. Recent changes in public financing and

increasing reliance on tuition fees further reinforce this

trend. Urban students are over represented in higher edu-

cation while their share in the population is the opposite.

With better-educated parents in high-skilled occupations

and better family economic situation, they are more heavily

weighted to the upper social strata than their rural coun-

terparts. Students from better-off urban families are well

prepared to enter high-quality public universities which are

also the cheapest, while much disadvantaged rural students

are more likely to attend poor-quality second-tier or private

institutions which charge high fees.

Opportunities for receiving higher education

China’s urban–rural inequalities in higher education are

directly resulted from its urban–rural dual social structure,

a political institutional arrangement built on an unfair

household registration (hukou) system. They are also an

accumulative result of those in primary and secondary

schools. For decades, higher education opportunities

remain highly controlled by the central government, and

their distribution has been extremely imbalanced. The

planned enrollment figures of higher education institutions

are distributed with privileges given to major centers such

as Beijing and Shanghai nationally and to the capital cities

within provinces (Zhang and Kanbur 2003).

The admission system of higher institutions remains

centrally planned and segmented based on the administra-

tive and geographic unit of provinces/municipalities. Each

institution is designated a quota of students by the central

government. The nationwide admission system is divided

by province/municipality, with a quota unevenly distrib-

uted to each province/municipality. In 2004, for instance,

provincial enrollments reached 26.82, 51.94, 67.29, 53.85,

Interrogating institutional 317

123

20.81, 20.81, and 39.12 % at Peking, Fudan, Zhongshan,

Wuhan, Central South, and Sichuan Universities, respec-

tively (Wang 2011). 1

Research repeatedly confirms the negative impacts of

reforms on educational opportunities for rural population in

China (Hannum 1999; Tsang 1994). While the disparities

are widely acknowledged, the actual situation has been

described differently. A large-scale study, undertaken

jointly by the World Bank and the Ministry of Education in

1998, surveyed 70,000 students enrolled in 1994 and 1997

in 37 universities at various levels (Zhang 2004). It showed

that on average, the difference of educational opportunities

between urban and rural areas was 5.8 times nationwide,

with 8.8 and 3.4 times, respectively, in national key and

provincial universities. This was bigger than the income

disparity of 2.8 times. Fan’s (2008) research shows the

urban–rural access opportunity differences in various

higher education institutions after the expansion of

enrollment (see Table 1 below).

Zhang and Liu (2005) reveal an inverted pyramid shape

of the disparities among different social strata in Chinese

higher education, based on the data of the undergraduate

students in the 1990s collected from Peking and Tsinghua

Universities shown in Table 2 below. They found that the

more prestigious the institutions are, the lower percentage

of rural students is. The trend continued until the mid-

2000s, as shown in Fig. 1.

As family financial situation becomes increasingly

important in determining young people’s access to higher

education, the number of students from rural background

decreases in both the peak and the bottom of the hierarchy

of Chinese higher education institutions, as shown by

Tables 3 and 4 below:

This trend was also frequently confirmed by our

respondents. Interview-1 from SJU pointed out that about

20–30 % of our students were from countryside. Interview-

3 from the same institution further explained that more than

half of their students were from Shanghai.

The situation is different in provincial institutions. Both

the other selected case study institutions have a high pro-

portion of rural students. Interview-1 from AMU pointed

out that the regional university had the bulk of its students

from rural, workers, and peasants families. This was con-

firmed by Interview-3 based at MTC where ‘‘most students

are from rural, less developed areas.’’

A closer scrutiny of the situations shows some inter-

esting changes to the proportion of rural students in relation

to their peers from urban family background: While AMU

has managed to maintained its high percentage of rural

students (see Table 3), the proportion of rural students at

MTC has substantially dropped from 60 % in 1995 to 30 %

in 2010, as shown by Table 4.

Enrolled students from poor rural families

The issue of university students from impoverished rural

areas began to catch people’s attention since 1997 when

Chinese universities began to charge students tuition and

accommodation fees. Rising tuition fees have substantially

increased the difficulties of poor rural families in sending

their children to universities. The total private cost of one

student for a year in university during 2000–2001 exceeded

an urban resident’s annual income and was 4 times that of a

rural dweller. In 2006, undergraduate programs in science

and liberal arts in independent colleges charged 12,217 and

12,034 RMB, respectively, and 11,100 and 10,500 RMB in

private institutions, doubled those by the nation’s most

prestigious institutions (Zang and Shen 2010).

For those already enrolled, it is extremely difficult to

complete their university education. According to a survey

conducted by China Youth Development Foundation in

2006, about 26 % (4.05 million) of the total national

enrollment of 15.61 million by August 2005 were from

families with financial difficulties. The average amount

needed for a student’s basic living was around 6,780 RMB

while the average income of their families was 4,756 RMB

(Zhang 2008).

The Chinese governments at various levels and higher

education institutions have worked together to have some

policies on stage. However, within a globalized context of

corporate culture in higher education worldwide, ‘‘effi-

ciency’’ has been given the highest priority in China (Yang

2004). Such a policy orientation seems to be justified when

Table 1 Urban–rural access opportunity differences in various higher education institutions after the expansion of enrollment, 2004

University type Urban-rural access

opportunity rate

Project 985 institution a

2.42

Public key institution 1.85

Public ordinary institution 1.41

Public specialist institution 1.56

Private institution 3.85

Private specialist institution 2.76

Independent institution 4.97

Source Fan (2008). Cited from Wang (2011) a

Project 985 institutions refer to the first tier public universities, and

project 985 is a Chinese government policy launched in May of 1998

at the centennial anniversary of Peking University

1 The striking differences of percentages of local students between

Peking and Fudan are mainly due to China’s unbalanced distribution

of national flagship universities. Although Shanghai is the nation’s

financial center, its concentration of higher education resources is far

behind Beijing. Beijing hosts 8 ‘‘985’’ and 26 ‘‘211’’ universities,

while Shanghai has only 4 and 9, respectively.

318 M. Li, R. Yang

123

the central authority decides to hand responsibility to other

tiers and new actors, especially individual institutions and

local governments (Bray and Borevskaya 2001).

It is worthwhile mentioning that in the tough competi-

tion with their peers of urban family background, rural

students remain disadvantaged throughout their entire

education including their employment at graduation, as

illustrated by Interview-6 from AMU, ‘‘Most students from

countryside have much more limited chance to compete

with their fellow students from cities to find employment at

graduation because they do not have the same social and

family connections in cities.’’

Existing schemes to support higher education students

According to the Higher Education Law brought into effect

in January 1999 (Standing Committee of the People’s Con-

gress 1998), students from families with financial difficulties

may apply for subsidies or reduction in or exemption from

tuition fees (Article 54). The state establishes scholarships

and encourages higher education institutions, enterprises,

organizations, and individuals to establish scholarships in a

variety of ways in accordance with relevant regulations to

award students of good character and academic performance

(Article 55). A range of financial assistance measures have

been introduced nationwide.

The loans system was piloted in 1996 and fully imple-

mented in 1999, 2 years after the official unitary tuition

charge. Endorsed by the State Council, the Ministry of

Education, the Ministry of Finance, and the People’s Bank

of China launched loan programs. A total of 700 million

RMB were set aside to help cash-poor students in 136

institutions, but only in urban centers including Beijing,

Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Wuhan, Shenyang, Xi’an,

Table 2 Percentages of rural students of total undergraduates at Peking and Tsinghua Universities, 1990–1999

Years Peking University Tsinghua University

Total enrollments Rural students Percentages (%) Total enrollments Rural students Percentages (%)

1990 – – – 1994 433 21.7

1991 – – 18.8 2,031 385 19.0

1992 1,810 403 22.3 2,080 381 18.3

1993 910 168 18.5 2,210 352 15.9

1994 – – 20.1 2,203 407 18.5

1995 2,089 436 20.9 2,241 451 20.1

1996 2,164 425 19.6 2,298 431 18.8

1997 2,211 420 19.0 2,320 452 19.5

1998 2,240 415 18.5 2,462 510 20.7

1999 2,425 396 16.3 2,663 506 19.0

Source Zhang and Liu (2005)

Fig. 1 Ratio of new students by household registration in Peking University, 2000–2005, Source: Liu et al. (2012)

Table 3 Urban and rural undergraduate students at Anhui Medical University

Years Urban students Rural students

Enrollment

number

Percentages

(%)

Enrollment

number

Percentages

(%)

2000 2,871 54.98 2,351 45.02

2005 5,507 60.46 3,601 39.54

2006 5,856 59.52 3,983 40.48

2007 6,447 58.26 4,618 41.74

2008 7,006 57.12 5,259 42.88

2009 7,582 55.48 6,083 44.52

Source Based on on-site collected information in July 2010

Interrogating institutional 319

123

and Nanjing. They were expanded to more areas over the

next few years, targeting students from poor families and in

rural areas. Loan recipients were required to repay loans

with discounted interest within 4 years of graduation,

though the loan system offers students a 50 % discount on

interest. The amounts vary depending on the levels of

tuition fees charged by different institutions and regions,

with a maximum of 8,000 RMB for one student a year.

Implementation of student loan programs only started in

early 2000. By March, the loans taken had only absorbed

1.3 % of the 700 million RMB budgeted for the program,

and only 0.2 % of the total students with serious financial

difficulties received loans (Huang 2005). Actual start of

student loan programs and their detailed regulations dif-

fered among regions. In relatively less affluent areas, local

governments launched their student loan programs after

2001. The maximum amount of a student loan was reduced

to around 6,000 RMB per academic year, with an eligibility

quota of less than 20 % of student population.

Traditionally, Chinese people are reluctant to have debts

(Johnstone et al. 1998). While such values are still visible

as some students’ families try to avoid borrowing as long

as they can manage, a recent change in students’ attitude

toward debt is evident: They no longer think that ‘‘taking

loan is embarrassing’’ and exhibit confidence in their

ability to repay loans in the future. Huang’s (2005) study of

the Southwest Region showed that loan programs had

reached 32 % of the students and covered less than 50 % of

the costs of those students.

There have been problems with the implementation of

loan schemes because of the high default rate. Owing to high

subsidy element of the loans and the resulting low profit for

providers, the loans are poorly managed. Furthermore, banks

in Beijing and Guangzhou reported that at least 10 % and

38 % university graduates, respectively, were in arrears with

their payment (Du and Mao 2003). In 2004, a new system of

student loans was initiated to guarantee the continuation of

student loans. The government subsidizes the interest before

the student’s graduation from university. Students pay back

the loans within 6 years after graduation, but there is no

threshold for repaying. To mitigate the risk of bad payment to

the bank, the government and university jointly set up a risk

compensation fund for the bank, approximately 6 % of the

contract value. Government and university pay 50 % of the

compensation fund, respectively, to the contract bank. In

July 2006, the Ministry of Education and the Bank of China

finalized the financial arrangements between government,

university, and bank (Sun and Barrientos 2009).

China’s existing loan schemes are often criticized for the

small proportion of students they have covered and for

their low level of support (Huang 2005; Sun and Barrientos

2009). In 2008, enrollment in China’s regular higher edu-

cation institutions totaled 20.1 million. Among them, 4.74

million were from low-income families. Only 0.67 million

were able to receive loans (Cui 2012). Zang and Shen

(2010) reported only less than 10 % students were on

loans. Due to the lack of social trust and effective penalties

for dodging creditors, compensation for costs and risks for

banks cannot be guaranteed. There have been difficult

discussions and negotiations between higher education

institutions and banks. Moreover, loan schemes favor the

enrollments in public regular higher institutions. They are

less accessible for those students in private institutions and

independent colleges.

Another major part of the support system is scholarship

schemes established for all undergraduate candidates in

1986–1987 and later extended to postgraduate candidates

in 1991. Compared with loan programs, the impact of

scholarships is more limited especially for rural students.

This is due to the number and amount of available schol-

arships which reach only to a small number of best aca-

demic performers. Introduced in May 2002, the National

Scholarship Scheme targets 45,000 students annually and

provides up to 6,000 RMB per year per student, with

academic merit rather than family financial difficulties as

its foremost criterion. Scholarships are more a subsidy than

a grant, often beyond the reach of many in bad need of

support.

Table 4 Urban and rural students enrolled at Maanshan

Teacher’s College

Source Based on on-site

collected information in July

2010

Years Urban students Rural students

Enrollment number Percentages (%) Enrollment number Percentages (%)

1995 274 40 411 60

2000 262 52.09 241 47.91

2005 2,177 59.99 1,452 40.01

2006 2,962 60 1,975 40

2007 3,402 60 2,268 40

2008 4,259 70 1,825 30

2009 4,546 70 1,948 30

2010 4,510 70 1,933 30

320 M. Li, R. Yang

123

Findings from fieldwork

Our data show that while expansion has overall created more

opportunities for some students to receive higher education,

China’s contemporary higher education policies are based on

established institutional arrangements and have led to some

further inequalities between jurisdictions and urban–rural

areas. Tuition fees are causing great financial burden to many

rural students, despite that loans and scholarships amend

urban–rural inequality to a limited extent. The following

serves as a summary of major findings:

Impact of expansion on higher education access

While it is generally more difficult for rural students to

enter universities, some students have successfully man-

aged to get there. As remarked first by SJU Interview-1,

‘‘Our annual undergraduate admission is around 4,000.

About 20–30 % is from rural poor families. While one can

question the percentage as still a minority, we believe this

is quite substantial already.’’ This was confirmed by AMU

Interview-2: ‘‘Access to higher education for rural students

has been considerably increased after the expansion.’’

Impact of admission policies on higher education

access

Equality has generally been better achieved in undergrad-

uate admissions based mainly on scores of the national

entrance examination. However, some question the justice

of the examination, especially because there have been

regional variations and disparities. For instance, students in

Jiangsu and Zhejiang tend to score much more highly than

their peers in other provinces. Meanwhile, students in

major cities such as Tianjin and Shanghai can get into

universities with much lower entry scores. As commented

by SJU Interview-7 in a defensive way, ‘‘These (local,

enrolled with lower entry scores) students have their own

strengths such as better English proficiency and a higher

level of all-round development.’’

In contrast, AMU Interview-2 complained that ‘‘It is true

that equality in higher education remains a tough issue.

Within a national context of expansion, different situations

are in different areas. In our province, if one scores over

500 in the national entrance examination, she/he can never

enter the good universities in Beijing or Shanghai. She/he

can only choose low-tier institutions instead.’’

Impact of tuition fees on aspiration of rural students

to higher education

With the great difficulty in receiving high-quality tertiary

education, there has been wide-spread common practice in

rural areas that tertiary studies are useless, as explained by

SJU Interview-7: ‘‘There is a huge imbalance between

investment and return. If young rural people cannot get

admitted into good universities, they would rather give up

higher education and travel to cities to find jobs. Otherwise,

it would be difficult for them to get satisfactory return from

the education they receive from low-tier institutions.’’

Interview-2 from AMU echoed this judgment with more

positive view about China’s financial support system:

‘‘Tuition fees have little impact on those from middle-class

or above, but more on the very poor. However, with the

(financial) support policy, things are getting much better.’’

Effect of loans and scholarships on higher education

chances for rural students

Although students’ opportunities to secure their scholarships

and other forms of financial assistance vary, such schemes

have enhanced higher education chances for some rural stu-

dents. The positive signs of China’s existing support schemes

are well acknowledged first by SJU Interview-1: ‘‘In our

University, those eligible for financial assistance never have

problems in getting them;’’ then echoed by AMU Interview-3:

‘‘Due to the financial support measures such as student loans,

scholarships, aids and grants, and part-time work arrange-

ments on campus, all students enrolled in this university could

manage to pay their tuition fees;’’ and further confirmed by

MTC Interview-1: ‘‘Loan schemes are very helpful to support

our rural students and those who are from poor families.’’

The situation varies from institution to institution.

Financial issues are generally much less serious for those

admitted into the most prestigious universities, as SJU

Interview-1siad, ‘‘Due to our status, we promise our stu-

dents their educational opportunity wouldn’t be affected by

tuition charges.’’ The same view was expressed by Shang-

hai Jiaotong Interviews 2–7 who further pointed out that

inequalities are not a serious issue there as the institution

provides every student with sufficient financial support.

It is not surprising that our two other case study insti-

tutions are in very different situations. AMU Interview-2

said that ‘‘Scholarship opportunities are too limited. Insti-

tutions like us are very different from those major ones in

Beijing and Shanghai. Most of our students are from rural

background. We don’t have enough scholarships to meet

their need.’’ Institutions at the bottom of the Chinese sys-

tem are in an even more different situation, with much

heavier reliance on financial assistance.

Concluding remarks

In China’s long history, higher education belonged to high

class. Birth origin determined an individual’s social status.

Interrogating institutional 321

123

After a variety of radical actions taken by the communist

government to fight against such traditions for decades,

today’s Chinese higher education has once again become

an institution of social stratification. Mao’s attempt to

fashion a mass-based educational system catering to the

needs of the peasantry is being transformed into a triumph

of middle-class ideology (Kelly and Liu 1998). The

expansion of education in China has not reduced inequality

(Hannum and Xie 1998) and has thus failed to contribute to

income equality. Our study challenges the claim by market

transition theory that market will replace state redistribu-

tion as the primary allocative mechanism of resources (Nee

and Metthews 1996). It also debates the classical economic

theory which postulates that expansion of education will

reduce inequality by increasing the supply of skilled

workforce (Kuznets 1955; Gottschalk and Smeeding 1997).

The educational gap between urban and rural segments

reflects both the widespread disparity in the level of eco-

nomic development and the longstanding historical and

socio-cultural differences between cities and countryside.

Students from rural areas face strong structural inequality

in educational opportunity (Postiglione 2006). It is insti-

tutionally legitimized and further enhanced as reforms go

on. As part of China’s urban–rural disparities, it is resulted

especially from the longstanding dual structure featured by

the great divide between cities and countryside and inher-

ited from the planned system.

This study has evident implications for China’s future

reform policies for marketization and privatization. The

growing educational inequality especially at the upper level

of schooling will fuel greater earnings inequality between

urban and rural communities. The government has just

started to tackle this only because it sees the possible grave

consequences of political instability (UNDP 2005). How-

ever, how successful its response could be remains highly

doubtful as this is not only a challenge to its imagination and

administrative skills, but a challenge to the power of many of

those within the system. It calls for a reconsideration of the

role of private financing mainly through tuition fees.

Our discussion of China’s experience sheds light on the

practices in some other Asian societies with similar issues

of shortage of educational opportunities for rural popula-

tion and imperfection of institutional development in the

process of marketization. For such societies, there is an

urgent need for changes to established institutions.

Researchers are duty-bound to alert policy-makers to the

existence of widespread educational discrimination against

rural people. This becomes an arduous and pressing task in

a context of globalization, something always used by

governments to legitimize their emphasis on economic

growth over the development of new social relations,

including more equal distribution of goods and services

and educational opportunities.

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