1990年代における中国高等教育機会の地域間格差 : 省別学生募集制度に着目して  [in Japanese] Regional Inequalities in Opportunities for Higher Education in China : Structure and Consequences of the Regional Distribution System  [in Japanese]

Promoting equality in opportunities for receiving higher education is one of the major goals of higher education policy. In China, regional equality has been maintained by a quota system in which the government allocates the numbers of university entrants to each of the Regions (Sho). Through the expansion of higher education, however, disparities in the levels of participation among Regions have expanded in recent years, reflecting the differences in levels of economic development. How has regional inequality grown, and why did the quota system fail to prevent it? By analyzing the changes between 1992 and 2001, this paper attempts to answer these questions. In the first section, it is shown by analyses of macro data that there were fairly large differences by Region in the participation rate in 1992. Moreover, the expansion of higher education in the 1990s brought about significant increases in the regional gaps. The second section examines how the present quota system functioned during the course of expansion. It is found that the expansion of universities under the control of Regional governments has been instrumental in increasing the supply of higher education in the economically advanced Regions. Moreover, the national universities, which tend to be located in urban areas, increased the number of entrants from their own Regions. These factors collaborated to the increase in the regional growth disparities. From these observations, it is concluded that the existing quota system is unable to rectify the pressure of both the demand for, and supply of, opportunities for higher education that reflect differences in the level of economic development.