China's Tertiary Enrolment Rate

With jobs increasingly hard to come by for new Chinese graduates during the current economic slowdown, the reality that China's tertiary enrolment rate is lower than most countries does take some getting used to.

In an article titled China's Booming Higher Education (Interpreting China's Development, Ed. Wang Gungwu and John Wong, World Scientific Publishing, 2007), Quan Xiaohong and Zhao Litao noted that from a long-term perspective, China has yet to produce enough college graduates for its growing economy.

Although the gross enrolment rate at the tertiary level increased to 19 per cent in 2004, it was still far behind many countries.

Middle income countries typically have a gross enrolment rate of 29 per cent, while high income level OECD countries averaged 71 per cent in 2004.

China's tertiary enrolment rate was even lower than some developing countries like Mexico (23 per cent), the authors noted.