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Door to Universities Opening Wider
Students from poor families in Jiangsu Province will be able to realize their university dreams with financial assistance from universities, governments and other organizations.
The province will continue to make sure that all students who pass the college entrance examination but have financial problems will get to university, said an Education Commission official.
Over the last few years, university tuition has been increasing at an annual rate of about 30 per cent, which is far higher than the increase in the average family income. This has made it more and more difficult for poorer students to go to university, according to the official.
An investigation revealed about 10 per cent of university students, who are either from poor rural areas or whose parents are unemployed, have difficulties paying their tuition fees.
To solve the problem, universities have created scholarships, part-time jobs and allowances for those students, said Gong Fang, director of the higher education research institute at Nanjing University.
But this is not enough as there are not enough scholarships, part-time jobs and allowances to go round.
"We should mobilize the whole of society to help these students,'' said Gong. He added that other support schemes for poorer students, such as different types of bank loans, are being set up to allow more of them to go to university.
In Shanghai, the People's Bank of China has recently issued a new student loans regulation, which allows loans without security.
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Shanghai Branch has granted over 800 freshmen with more than 8 million yuan (US$960,000) in loans, said Liu Xiangdong, deputy president of the branch. (Chinadaily)
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