The educational authorities are trying to curb random fee charges by universities. As part of this move, it is reported that the Ministry of Education will re-examine tuition standards based on costs. This has sparked much discussion in the media, including the following excerpts.

Beijing News: It is hard to curb random fee charges by only examining the operational costs of universities.

According to the authorities, there should only be charges for two higher education expenses, namely tuition and boarding fees. The boarding fee is around 800 to 1,200 yuan ($100-148) per student per school year, while tuition is decided by the operational costs of each school. Since the year 2000, the tuition level has been kept at about 25 percent of the routine operating cost per student.

If reform had been fully carried out in the university and college logistics sectors, the market would decide the boarding fees. The administration would only have to supervise their collection.

The major issue is still the setting of tuition standards.

The routine operational costs of a university actually include rational and irrational expenditures. If the total expenditures were not controlled, it would not make much sense to set a proportion of only 25 per cent for tuition. It would be easy for schools to increase expenses in order to collect more. Also, it would not work to just make a list of unacceptable random charges, as there would always be new items.

In the future, the government should conduct public hearings to increase the transparency of tuition and fee charges for higher education.

Daily Sunshine: Operational costs of universities should be decided according to our national income level.

1

2

(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)