A great leveller

Tsung-Mei Cheng:  

Tsung-Mei Cheng outlines China's policy challenges in providing the type of education for the increasing number of urban residents that both meets market needs and increases, rather than decreases, social mobility

Employment was one of the major issues addressed by this year's National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing. A well-functioning system of tertiary education will be the key to job creation and economic growth.

It is an important topic; failure on this front could lead not only to popular disappointment, but to social unrest.

This was one of the major conclusions of this year's Emerging Markets Symposium, an annual meeting at Oxford University, which this year focused on tertiary education. An earlier symposium focused on health care and there are, in fact, striking parallels in polices on both health and education. The same concerns abound over equal access and the burden of financing; there are similar problems in measuring quality; and they share issues about the mismatch of supply and demand.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 19, 2012 4:51 AM
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