农村学生专项计划(nóngcūn xuéshēng zhuānxiàng jìhuà):Special college enrollment plan for rural students

China will continue to implement a special college enrollment plan for students from impoverished rural areas.

According to the special plan, key universities at the national and provincial levels will directly enroll students from targeted areas, which aims to enable students from these areas, especially those from poor backgrounds, get more access to quality higher education.

Recently top universities including Peking University, Tsinghua University and Fudan University released special enrollment plans for rural residents.

The percentage of rural students in universities has continuously declined in recent years, as it is more difficult for rural students to pursue higher education than before, largely because of disparities in schooling and education resources.

And for many rural families the tuition fees for higher education are a huge burden. Thus some rural students have to drop out even though they are good students.

The special college enrollment plan for rural students is conducive to helping rural students receive higher education, but it is only a stopgap measure that will hardly solve the real problem.

To make higher education fairer in the long run, China should further increase the money it puts into education in rural areas to eliminate the education gap between rural and urban areas.