A study on regional disparities of cost-sharing in China

Abstract

This study aims at exploring regional disparities of cost-sharing in China by addressing following questions: What is the relationship between the amount of governmental funds per student and level of local economic development; What are the relationship between individuals‟ share of costs, public share of costs and local economic development; What is the relationship between tuition fee and residents‟ affordability? A quantitative research strategy with secondary analysis of official statistics is utilized for this study. Four indicators are used in this study to analyze regional disparities of cost-sharing, namely per capita GDP, tuition fee, per capita disposable income in urban areas and net income per resident in rural areas. There is description of the data collected, and followed by statistical analysis by using Pearson‟s correlation coefficient. This study finds out that all those four indicators have influence on cost-sharing in China. Local economy plays an important role in cost-sharing of higher education. To some extent, the imbalance of economic development leads to the imbalance of higher education development. During the process of data analysis, some special cases are found, which are influenced by political preference. However, the general trend is that higher education development goes in line with its local economic development.