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Put quality above size

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-11 10:33

Congratulations to the Ministry of Education. It finally seems to have come to terms with the downside of the breakneck expansion in the country's institutions of higher learning.

Precious is its confession that the large-scale college enrollment expansion has been "too hasty". And, the vow to slow down.

There is no denying that the expansion was, and remains necessary.

In the first place, the country's ever-growing economy has made evident an increasingly acute need for properly trained laborers. The need appears even more imperative when sustainability and quality of growth is taken into perspective.

And this is not only about the country having a better-trained talent reserve. It is at the same time a matter of right to education, and equal access. Not to mention that it is also a logical result of the pro-active financial policy.

The 1999 decision to enlarge college enrollment was a sensible and timely one. The enrollment rate of institutions of higher learning has more than doubled since 1998, reaching 21 percent in 2005. In 2005, full-time four-year colleges nationwide admitted 5.04 million new students, 4.7 times the 1998 figure. Which means an enormous supplement to the country's pool of skilled workers.

But the strides have been too big, and too rapid to be sustainable. Institutions of high learning enrolled 48 per cent more in 1999 than they did the previous year. The dramatic increase immediately boosted the country's ranking on the global list of higher education popularization. Which explains in part former Minister of Education Chen Zhili's proclamation that we are now a "big country" education-wise.

But continuous expansion over the years has stretched many of our resources to their extremes. For most schools, the emphasis has focused on size, rather than strength. Inadequate matching facilities, compared with the universal lack of qualified teachers, as well as poorly constructed curricula, was nothing to worry about.

It is a pity that the concurrent complaints about the short supply of qualified talents and over-supply of college graduates are yet to make the authorities seriously reflect on the status quo.

If a factory's products pile up, we know it is suicidal to churn out more of the same. But few have bothered to look at things that way when our colleges continue to graduate students unable to land a job in the talent-hungry market.

Now is the time to put quality above size and speed.