Private education

The law on Promotion of Private Education came into effect in September 2003. At that time, there were over 70,000 private schools of various kinds and at various levels, five years later, the number of private schools increased by nearly 50%.

A: Let’s talk a little bit about private education, you said that you believe private education could help bridge that gap.

Y: People have a mindset that public education is better than private education. And the truth is that for the last 30 years, it is the case, because people don’t have the money to support private education, so private education doesn’t have any sponsor from the government or any fund from the government, so they have to fight for themselves. Private education in China begins only 20 years ago. How can private education perform even much better than public education, it’s not the case. So government should have patience at first. The second is the government should understand that the private education actually is one important part of the whole education system. It will make the Chinese education healthier, in a long term will save government money so that you can use more money to support rural areas or poor students. And also private education is a good way to push up quality of education. I think it’s very important for China to have a private education system no matter on the kindergarten level or the grade level, primary or high school level or university level, because that’s kind of competition law I think.

A: The number I’ve seen it’s about only 10% of students enrolled in private schools.

Y: 10% I think it’s university students. Actually university students that kind of school actually can’t called private schools. Because most of the private universities actually are attached to formal public university, a big public university and the university give their students certificate, or graduation diploma, degrees, but these kinds of universities are run by private people, whose purpose is trying to make money out of students. So that’s why when I was talking about private high education in China about half a year ago, I said, well in China we don’t have any real private university in China, the only reason is that most of the private universities, when they established the universities even get the permission from the government to run the university. Their purpose is to squeeze money out of students.

A: So how do you convince parents and the government to invest more in private schools, to get your kid into private school?

Y: In my mind the real private education is an education which is a non-profit organization, which can have other resources to get money to sponsor students when they study. And especially to find those, at least a certain percentage of students are from poor family and you can find ways, money to sponsor these intelligent kids to study in your university, so that they can live a better life later. Actually in US, like Harvard, Stanford, or whatever university they do like that. The enrolled students do not depend on how much money you can pay. The standard is how intelligent and how good you are. Then they try to find money to sponsor you to support you.

A: Yes, the schools go after the kids who are intelligent that do well, then in turn the school looks good and the schools get more money.

Y: That’s right, and these intelligent kids when they graduate they become successful, they have money and come back to sponsor the whole school system. So that’s why government should give kind of policies or attitude to support private education toward a non-profit organization. That means if those entrepreneurs, the rich people, want to invest money or donate money into private education, the government should encourage them to do so. And even up to today in China, you are not allowed individually to set up charitable trust in mainland China to support education or other needed areas.