Chinanews, Beijing, Jan. 15 – Over the past 18 years, college tuition fees have risen 26-fold, making education the largest item on Chinese people’s expenditure list, overtaking pension and housing payments, Beijing Youth Daily quoted a report released Jan.10.
The report, titled "Report on Chinese Youth Development during the Tenth Five-Year Plan Period and Prospect for their Developmental Trend during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan Period", was released by China Youth & Children Research Center, or CYCRC.
In this report, CYCRC says that at present, tuition fees in most colleges and universities are around 5,000 -10,000 yuan, 26 times the education costs in 1989. During the same period, Chinese people's annual income has increased only 5-fold, or actually 3.3-fold allowing for commodity price rise. The rate of increase in education costs is nearly 11 times the growth rate of people's income.
A CYCRC researcher quoted a survey made by People's Bank of China, saying that depositing savings to pay for education costs has now become the prime goal for most bank depositors. In China, tuition fees have risen at a much faster speed than the increase of state fiscal input in education.