Feature: Free University for China’s Future Teachers (3)

Feature: Free university for China’s future teachers (3)

“It could save 40,000 yuan (5,128 U.S. dollars) in four years – a good choice as my family is poor, and to tell the truth, I really want to be a teacher,” said Xie Yulin, a student in his final year at Yiling High School in Hubei Province.

As for Jia, whose sister will take the university entrance exam later this year, she said her family would not make her sister choose a teaching school against her own will. “She has her own dream,” said Jia, “people should not abandon their dreams simply because of this (tuition waiver).”

Free education in teaching colleges had been in practice since the burgeoning of China’s modern education in the early 1900s. From the late 1990s, however, many teaching schools gradually started charging because of overwhelming education reforms. At the same time, growing numbers of graduates from the teacher-training schools began to choose non-teaching jobs after graduation.

China’s education has been under fire over the past decade for imbalances in rural-urban educational resources distribution, an exam-oriented teaching method, soaring fees, recruitment expansion and some deterioration in teaching quality.

“Many graduates from teaching schools can’t find a teaching job – there are too many people there,” said 24-year-old Du Jun, who graduated from Leshan Normal College in Sichuan Province.

Du failed to find a teaching job in Leshan when he graduated last year and is now working in Beijing as a salesman. “The training schools have been recruiting more and more students, but there are only a certain number of jobs. I hope the government could better study the supply and demand relationship,” Du said.

Huang Chunchang, director of the Tourism and Environment College of Shaanxi Normal University, said China is heavily burdened with its huge population and this situation can only be turned into an advantage by large-scale education.

“It’s necessary to increase university recruitment since many are hoping to achieve higher education after graduation from high schools, and thus high-calibre teaching staff are important,” he said.

However, despite many opposing opinions on the government’s new scheme, the move has been acclaimed as a prelude to China’s increasing investment in its education system.

Bi Cheng, a researcher with the Chinese National Institute for Educational Research, said: “The most impressive point in the new policy is that the government is finally playing its role in addressing the imbalances in rural-urban education resources – it’s a substantial and down-to-earth step in the government’s efforts to achieve a fairer education system throughout the country.”

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