China, as many other emerging and developed nations,  is catching up in higher education especially in the number of adults gaining college degrees. However, that does not mean the United States is losing its advantage in higher education. As a matter of fact, the majority of Chinese people, including me, still believe that America as well as Europe have the best higher education in the world nowadays.

The situation for higher education in China now is that the number of adults with a higher education degree is increasing greatly in recent years, but the overall quality of higher education is decreasing. I think you are right to mention that China has a much higher population than the US, therefore, the number of students attending universities in China cannot say everything. But let’s consider the historical context of this issue. Because of Cultural Revolution which lasted from 1966 to 1976, the resumption of higher education system in China took place in the year 1977. Therefore, the majority of Chinese people in my parents’ generation do not have college degrees. For the young generation, the situation has been changed dramatically. According to the article you mentioned, China now has 12 percent of all college graduates, but among young adults, its share is much higher, which means the Chinese government has managed to make such progress within the last 30 years. That is a great progress! However, the other side of the coin is that the quality of higher education is decreasing with the rapid expansion of the scale of colleges and universities. We can construct as many new facilities as we need for colleges and its increasing students within 30 years, but we could not increase the number of teachers within such a short time. Not to mention that there are a lot of other problems within the higher education system in China such as  academic plagiarism, no academic independence from politics, etc..

There are some field for Chinese universities to be among the top levels of the world. But the overall quality of the higher education in China is not comparable with that in America and I do not think we can catch up within a short time because it takes time for us to have sufficient qualified professors and college teachers. With the rapid development of  higher education, new tendencies and phenomenon have arisen in China, which makes the issue related to higher education more complex.

More and more top students in mainland China choosing to study in the universities of  Hong Kong is one of the new tendencies. Since after the return of Hong Kong to China, universities of Hong Kong have been enrolling students from the Mainland. Students, especially the top students in the Mainland, are attracted by these universities in Hong Kong mainly because of two reasons. First, the majority of Chinese students think that the quality of higher education in Hong Kong is better than that in the Mainland, and it is much more easier for the college students in Hong Kong to have  international study experience since they have extensive contacts with universities abroad. Second, many universities in Hong Kong provide scholarships to the top students in the Mainland in order to attract these talents.

There is another phenomena that is drawing more and more attention in recent years in our society.  According to a recently published report in China, among the newly enrolled college students, there are less and less students who are from the rural area. The different levels of  development of economy in cities and countryside and the wider and wider gap between the rich and the poor in our society nowadays are the social roots for this new phenomena. If more and more young people from the rich families are gaining college degrees while less and less young adults from the poor family and rural areas are doing the same because of their economic situations and because of  the imbalance of educational resources, the development of higher education in China is questionable – are we really making progress?

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