Students majoring in education at East China Normal University will see their tuition and accommodation fees waived should they elect to teach for several years in China's underdeveloped western reaches following graduation.

The program will open this fall, offering students two possibilities: the above package or paying their tuition fees and working in Shanghai after graduation. Those electing to take the latter option will bear the full weight of their tuition fee repayments. A further "motivation" towards choosing the tuition fee relief will be avoiding the black mark added to the credit records of any who fail to volunteer for the scheme, university officials announced yesterday.

 

This policy will be implemented by six universities nationwide.

 

"The purpose of this policy is clear -- to encourage more elite young people to work as teachers," said university President Yu Lizhong, stating that a lack of qualified teachers was severely impairing the improvement of China's education system.

 

The university will cover all fees for undergraduate education and living expenses, averaging around 50,000 yuan (US$6,250) per student, before sending education graduates to selected western regions. However, the schools will be reimbursed by the central government.

 

Currently, the university has around 1,400 education majors a year on its books, making up around 40 percent of its student corpus.

 

However, Yu revealed that the university will soon double, or even triple, its admission quotas for applicants from western China. In this way, the policy will attract more applicants from the West who may be keener to help their home regions than Shanghai high school students.

 

"It sounds like a crazy policy," complained high school student Star Zhang. "Most dream of finding a well-paid job after four years of university, but education majors are now faced with a hard life teaching in the countryside."

 

(Shanghai Daily March 7, 2007)