Establishment of Two-Way 'Educational Supermarket' UrgedA lawmaker from central China's Hunan Province has called for work to establish a two-way "educational supermarket" in which students and the school can choose each other.Liu Xiao, a deputy to the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, said that with such supermarkets, schools of various types can promptly adjust their majors in the light of market demand. Liu, president of the Hunan Civil Affairs Secondary Technical School, said that under the old educational system under which the state manages schools, various types of schools cannot adapt themselves to the market and hence their graduates have difficulty in finding jobs commensurate with their majors. He said, "To change this situation, the government should grant managerial authority to schools to enable them to operate independently on the basis of meeting market requirements." It is amid market competition that efficient schools will prosper while inefficient ones will be discarded, he noted. After the government sets up educational supermarkets, the students will become consumers, while schools will become producers. Liu said, "Then schools will be able to adjust their majors to cater for market demand, so that their graduates will not find it hard to find suitable jobs." Under the market pressure, schools will inevitably reform their distribution mechanism and competition mechanism, he said, adding that with a better mechanism, the teaching quality will rise accordingly. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |