(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-10-26 07:12

Colleges should enroll students according to the proportion of the urban-rural population, says an article in Oriental Morning Post. The following is an excerpt:

According to a recent report by Wuhan Morning Post, in prestigious higher learning institutions like Tsinghua University, only two of every 10 students are from rural areas. Generally, the college enrollment rate of urban students is more than 3.5 times that of their rural counterparts.

The rural population is still the majority in this country. But the overall proportion of rural students in college is only about 20 percent.

Public opinion regards it as unfairness in China's education system. The simplest method to solve this problem is to require colleges to admit students according to the proportion of urban-rural population. Thus the opportunity for rural students to receive higher education can be guaranteed and fairness realized.

The general trend of China's reform is the integration of urban and rural areas. The biggest challenge of the reform lies in bridging the huge urban-rural gap. And education is the most effective solution.

China's urbanization and industrialization in future years will bring about the biggest migration of the rural population in human history and the transition of a labor-intensive economy to a technology-intensive one. The key method to fulfill these goals is to train large numbers of farmers-turned migrant workers into highly skilled workers.

In the past two decades, China's higher education system seemed to have ignored this. Migrant workers could not receive assistance in education or training once arriving in the cities. And their children were discriminated against from attending urban schools. Their educational level and labor skills hardly improved. To favor the rural population in college enrollments will enable more of them to receive higher education and thereby turn out better skilled workers.

China is now in the process of fast urbanization. The rural birth rate is relatively high while some big cities are facing an aging problem. Today's rural youth will be the major labor force of China in 20 years. We cannot expect returns if we do not invest in them now.

(China Daily 10/26/2007 page10)