China's higher education system consists of more than 4,000 universities and colleges that offer non degree programs and degree programs including Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral Degrees. It is estimated that more than 2.5 million of the more than 25 million students attending colleges and universities in China are participating in some form of online learning in post-secondary programs. Many adult and online education programs are provided by more than 70 government approved schools for higher learning.
In 2000, China's Distance Learning program was extended to 31 universities and colleges that enrolled more than 190,000 degree seeking students. China's distance learning programs include:
- Correspondence education that is provided through regular mail and supervised by an instructor at the corresponding college.
- Broadcast/TV education programs that are broadcasted by the Chinese Central Television (CCT), state television broadcaster, in mainland China. More than 1 Billion residents have access to television. China's population also has access to cable, satellite and regional networks that are broadcasts in more than six languages (French, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, English and Chinese). Provision of educational programs using TV broadcast continues to have many opportunities for advancement. CCT is the countries largest and most powerful national television station and has progressively developed business relations with more than 250 television organizations in more than 130 foreign regions and many countries.
- Advanced Distance Learning Technology- The popularity of advanced distance learning is growing in China. Limitations for the advancement of distance learning technology are dependent on the transformation of the countries analog systems to digital television services by 2015. China has one of the largest digital television production industries in the world and is projected to reach more than $36.6 billion (USD) in annual sales.
Until 1997, Chinese students attending universities supported by the central government received free tuition and paid residency on campus. Recently, the Ministry of Education announced that all government funded postgraduate programs; at all 36 government supported universities will no longer receive free tuition fees. Since 2006 the central government has eliminated free tuition, on a trial basis, in some government funded programs. However, students with exemplary academic records will continue to be eligible for scholarships that include: tuition fees, limited research interests and on campus residence. The central government intends to use payment based tuition plans to improve the quality of postgraduate programs and create competition among students. The increase in student the number of students who are required to pay tuition costs has fueled increased interest in distance learning programs.
China has a population of 1.3 Billion people with a college age population of more than 11 million. Information available from demographics collected in 2007 indicates that 10 million Chinese students took the GaoKao (national college entrance exam) in hopes of obtaining college admission in one of the 5.7 million available university seats. China's Minister of Education's 2006 educational report identifies 444 adult learning institutions enrolling more than 5 million students, 994 campus based private institutions, almost 1,800 private institutions offering online distance learning programs in addition to the 19 million students attending post-secondary campus based universities and colleges. Despite the governments efforts to expand the availability of post-secondary programs, there continues to be millions of Chinese students that are unable to meet minimum score requirements on college entrance exams and for various reasons are not able to compete for the limited number of available annual admission seats to colleges and universities.
As a result of China's rapid expansion in post-secondary education and the global financial crisis, China's job market is flooded with unemployed college graduates. The unemployment rate for China's college graduates is at greater than 12 percent; this is nearly 2 million unemployed college graduates. The Chinese government has implemented a job placement program to place college graduates in rural villages to meet the needs of underserved populations. A Washington Post news release reports 78,000 college graduates are participating in a three-year rural placement program with plans to place an additional 3,000 more college graduates. These initiatives offer some relief for unemployed graduates but are also deeply rooted in political agendas, communist control, residents navigating through government residency policies and residence permits, and the opportunity for students to seek favoritism or acknowledgement for future civil service jobs.
