With this year's college enrollment drawing to an end, millions of students and their parents are being engulfed with good news from the universities.

 

To those from poverty-stricken families, the national student aid system could be a double blessing. The central government is doing everything in its power to ensure every enrolled student can complete his or her college education.

 

In a notice issued on Sunday, the People's Bank of China, the central bank, urged all financial institutions to expand educational loans to college students from needy families in full and on time.

 

The financial parachute will help a good number of students from rural, remote or impoverished areas realize their college dream.

 

In a country where higher education is regarded as a route to success and a bright future, students from poor families have cherished the dream of earning a place in college so as to pave the way for a better fate after graduation.

 

To help these students achieve their ambition, the country started a pilot national loan system in 1999 and soon extended it to all places. As of June last year, more than 2.4 million college students had received national student loans, totaling more than 20 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion).

 

This year, the loan system will expand to cover a larger proportion of students as the State has vowed to invest an unprecedented 15.4 billion yuan (US$2.01 billion) to aid college students.

 

With the new school term starting in September, financial institutions, especially those in small and underdeveloped cities, should make the application procedure much easier and improve their work efficiency to ensure deserving poor students gain a college place.

 

In the long-term, the national student loan system itself needs improvement too as it is currently beset by two major problems. Its coverage is still not wide enough to meet the demand of all in need.

 

Worse, as the State student loan system requires no guarantee and offers a lenient six years for students to repay loans after graduation, banks face a high risk of recouping their money.

 

While a personal credit system is yet to be set up nationwide to restrict borrowers, it is still necessary to design less cumbersome loan schemes for poor students.

 

(China Daily July 31, 2007)