The Chinese Ministry of Education's New Year message offered fresh hope for students as it stated it would do its best to improve educational management and, in particular, stop random overcharging.

 

The past year has proved to be one of controversy for China's educators as problems with overcharging and standards of college tuition, among other issues, continued to draw public criticism.

 

These problems tarnished the image of education as serving to promote the well-being of the nation with quality and affordable schooling for the country's children.

 

From the message given by Education Minister, Zhou Ji, at the New Year's ministerial meeting, there's a determination to take action to calm the public.

 

Zhou said that this year the ministry would help poor students tap financial channels to gain access to education and ensure colleges improve management to provide better and accountable services.

 

Whether these political promises are fulfilled will largely determine public confidence in the ministry. The difficulty is that they've made similar pledges in the past and conducted repeated nationwide checks to curb overcharging but unfortunately these initiatives haven't been particularly successful.

 

This time round the ministry must find some new and more effective methods to bring home to the public that it's able to undertake what it has promised.

 

What is new in its working plans for 2007 is that it'll draft a unified system of cost accounting to govern college tuition payments. Without such a clear set of standards the collection of tuition fees has continued to arouse public questions.

 

Educators admit that it's challenging to determine how much they should charge their students. Ironically the current tuition standards, lacking a solid accounting basis, have been in place for many years despite ongoing public disquiet.

 

The ministry must improve its pace in drafting the accounting system to redress past irregularities. And more importantly the draft versions of the new system must be made public before they're finalized to assess whether they're an accurate reflection of what's actually happening.

 

And efficiency-centered reform of universities must be accelerated to enable them to operate at lower costs.

 

(China Daily January 5, 2007)