Q: At institutions of higher learning in almost every
country, there are some students who have to give up their studies
because of poverty.?Is this the case in China? What measures
have been taken to help poor students finish their
studies?
A: The kind of poor students you mentioned also exist in China,
as China is a developing country. To help them continue their
studies, China has worked out and launched a series of policies to
aid students at institutions of higher learning who have financial
difficulty. These policies include setting up scholarships and
loans for students, introducing work-study programs, providing
subsidies to students with particularly difficult financial
situations, reducing and remitting tuition fees and allowing
schools to proportionally take some money from the tuition fees
they have received to aid students with financial difficulty.
However, higher education in China has developed too quickly,
especially since the country adopted a policy of expanded
enrollment in 1999. At the end of 2004, there were about 13.34
million undergraduate students enrolled in regular institutions of
higher learning, with a 17 percent gross enrollment rate of higher
education, entering the internationally recognized stage of
popularized development. But the number of students with financial
difficulty is also rising rapidly. According to government
statistics, there are 2.4 million students with financial
difficulty in regular institutions of higher learning, accounting
for 20 percent of current students, among which 1.6 million are
students with a particularly difficult financial situation.
With regard to this, China started to promote state-granted
loans to help students. During students' stay at school and within
the term of repayment of the loan after graduation, the government
will pay half the interest. Since this policy was implemented, the
country has examined and approved 1.15 million students for loans,
with the total amount of approved loan contracts amounting to more
than 9.6 billion yuan (US$1.16 billion). There have been 1.08
million students receiving 6.98 billion yuan (US$844.01 million) in
successive loans, which helps a large number of poverty-stricken
students successfully continue their studies.
But the promotion of student loans is followed by such problems
as an imperfect social credit system, students' weak awareness of
paying back the money, and the banks getting no indemnity for risk.
To address these problems, China has made some adjustments to its
student loan policy. First, it has introduced the market method of
inviting bids in determining the rate of indemnity for risk for
commercial banks. Second, it has established both national and
provincial-level administrative centers for student loans, and
strengthened the cooperation between banks and institutions of
higher learning. Third, students with student loans are to pay back
all the interest themselves after graduation while the state pays
the interest for them while they are in school. As well, the
government has adjusted the designated time for repaying loans from
immediately after graduation to within a year or two after
graduation if students do not find jobs, and the term of repayment
has been extended from four years to six years. For the students
who voluntarily go to work in arduous areas or industries for a
certain period of time after graduation, the state will pay the
principal and interest for them in the form of scholarships.
To share the risk of providing student aid loans, the national
administrative center for the loans has also established an
indemnity fund for risk, which is borne half by the central finance
and half by institutions of higher learning. The fund will give
banks indemnity for risk in certain proportions to the loans that
the banks have provided during the year. And the 50 percent of the
fund borne by the institutions of higher learning will be linked
with the situation of students' repayment of the loan or breach of
the contract. If a high number of students fail to pay back the
loan, the schools have to give more money to the fund. This will
increase the schools' management responsibility before and after
the loan is provided. With these policy adjustments,
poverty-stricken students can set their minds at ease since their
financial difficulty is solved, while at the same time, the risk of
providing student aid loans is reduced.
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The local government of Longsheng, an
impoverished county in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, has
established a boarding school for pupils from remote mountainous
areas. Pictured are girls having dinner in their
dormitory.