China’s higher education enrollment rate reaches 42.7 per cent in 2016

A student shows her admission notice from Tsinghua University (file photo)

Enrolment in China’s higher education reached 42.7 per cent in 2016, a rise of 12.7 per cent compared to 2012, said a communiqué on the country’s educational development issued by the Ministry of Education (MOE) on July 10.

Statistics show that overall enrolment in China’s higher education respectively stood at 0.26 per cent in 1949, the year in which the People's Republic of China was founded; and 1.55 per cent in 1978 at the start of the reform and opening-up policy.

According to an MOE report on the quality of China’s higher education issued in April 2016, the country’s gross enrolment rate is expected to go beyond 50 per cent in 2019.

Currently, China has nearly 37 million university students distributed in 2,880 colleges. The number of postgraduate students was 667,100 in 2016, increasing by 22,000 over the previous year.

The number of faculties in higher education general institutes was 2.4 million, including 1.6 million full-time teachers. The country now has 229,800 compulsory education schools with 32.4 million students. The retention rate in compulsory education was 93.4 per cent in 2016.