试论中国高等教育的大众化

On the Popularization of Chinese Higher Education

面临知识经济与信息社会的到来,中国的高等教育如何改革与发展,才能适应21世纪经济、科技与社会发展的需要,使中华民族跻身于世界强大民族之林,这是中国领导人和每一个公民都必须思考的问题.本文试就在教育改革与发展的新形势下中国高等教育大众化的问题作一探讨.

As indicated by the concerning materials, Chinese population of students aged for medium and higher education has peaked early or late at the end of 1990s. On the condition that only limited education fund can be provided, opportunity for education, especially that for higher education, has somehow become a rare resource of society. In 1998, Chinese population aged between 18 and 21 was 76.3787 million, and those receiving higher educa-tion at school (the graduates, postgraduates, and two - or three - year graduates of both conventional and adult universitities all included) totaled 6.4299 million. Thus, the gross rate of higher school attendance was 8.42% . According to the international universal stan-dard, Chinese higher education is still at the 'stage of elite', and it involves much efforts to reach the 'stage of popularity' . Challenged with such a tough task, by what means should we develop the higher education of our country in order that we can achieve the goal, pro-posed by the State Council of reaching 15% gross rate of school attendance in 2010? The author thinks that there are merely two ways. One is that there should be various educational sponsors; in other words, with the nation as the major sponsor, the pattern of the joint sponsoring of the country and citizens should be established. The other is that various forms of education should be developed, including conventional higher education, higher educa-tion for adults and the national degree-granted education. The essay emphasizes that the na-tional degree-granted education is a kind of higher education system suitable to the condition of China and, it is unreasonable and unscientific for the concerning departments to neglect it when counting the gross rate of school attendance. The essay states that over ten years' practices of the national degree-granted education have proved that, when examination of self-learners for higher education, examination for degree and diploma, and the open two-year graduates (according to 3.5% of 1997) are included, the gross rate of school atten-dance that year has come to 11.3% and by 2010, it may reach 21.5% .