The Chinese government has recently completed its annual report on the enrolment ratio in tertiary education institutions. According to the data, the enrolment ratio in China has increased by around three percent (2.4%) to reach forty-eight percent (48.1%) overall.
The report detailed that during 2018, there were about thirty-eight million university students in China. The Chinese government also emphasizes on the fact that more than three hundred thousand (389,500) of these enrolments were for doctoral programs.
More than two-thirds of all enrolled students entered either an undergraduate program or a junior college program.
Gross enrolment and teachers
While the rise in the number of students enrolled in higher education institutions is good news, there are aspects of these changes that may not be so beneficial to the educational system.
The fact that more students are entering higher education should be a signal to the government that more teachers should be employed in universities. According to recent statistics, the student-teacher ratio in China is currently about nineteen to one. However, this is one of the most inferior scores globally. Only India has more students per teacher with a ratio of twenty-four to one.
If the number of available teachers remains the same, while gross enrolment continues to increase, this might lead to a severe crisis in the educational system in China. If there are not enough teachers per student, the quality of education will decrease, while the pressure on teachers will increase several times.
Considering this, the Chinese government should not only work towards attracting more students to higher education but also towards securing enough teachers in employment.
