Making educational costs public is the only way to wipe out overcharging, say a signed article in Dazhong Daily. An excerpt follows:

At a press conference held by the Ministry of Education days ago, an official from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, promised schools of various kinds would make public their fee charges on local government websites by the end of the coming September, otherwise they would be regarded as overcharging students.

This was surely a positive move in adding transparency to schools collecting miscellaneous fees.

However, whether or not the move can achieve expected results remains in doubt.

In its auditing reports for 50 counties over the past year, the National Audit Office revealed that 60 per cent of unreasonable charges were by local governments, with the remaining 40 per cent by schools themselves.

The solution is to have in place a set of explicit charging standards based upon accurate calculations of education costs.

Publishing fee charges is in essence a kind of "sunshine" policy, and only when the costs are made public can clandestine operations be avoided in any kind of fee collection.

This is particularly the case for education, a public product.

Making public educational costs is not only a demand of students and families, but also a duty for schools and the government.

Only by putting educational costs into the light can we know whether government input is sufficient and whether schools overcharge students.

To heal random charging by schools, a scientific and reasonable fee collecting system should be framed in accordance with the law.

And efforts are needed to make perfect the accounting and monitoring system of educational funds.

(China Daily March 27, 2006)