Higer Education in China

The Opportunities of Higher Education on Different Income Quintile

1. Introduction

Higher educational system in China has been developing recently over the past years, making enrollment more competitive especially for better quality universities. A variation of institution ranges from a low-level, medium-level, to elite universities is offered in china for any income quintiles across the region. For more equitably opportunity, Chinese government implemented a cost-recovery policy for those who seek a financial support towards higher education such scholarships, grants, loans, work-study earning based on family background. This would benefit most to university students with low-income family in search of higher education and reducing the gap of enrollment opportunities between individuals from poorer and wealthy background. Moreover, this would solve an institutions’ budgetary increase problem. Low-income families effected most from the tuition increases despite the financial aid policy offered by government amid short-term financial barriers and long-run factored associated with family background.

2. Objective of Study

This study is attempted to determine on the probability of access to higher education in China from the different household financial status and to examine the relationship between short-term financial barriers and long-run families factor. On the long-run families factors, this study examined the individual characteristics and families background have a significant role in higher education attendance decisions, which factor has the strongest on access decision. Also examined the role of higher education financial policies such as tuition, lodging fee and student loans at the different university (elite university, medium-level university, low-level university) have a relative influence for the university enrollment on a different income family, in removing the short-term financial barriers. To find the effects of Chinese higher...