Analysis on the Higher Education Sustainability in China Based on the Comparison between Universities in China and America

Yong-Ming He, Yu-Long Pei, Bin Ran, Jia Kang and Yu-Ting Song
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Yong-Ming He: School of Transportation, Northeast Forestry University, 26 Hexing Road, Harbin 150040, China
Yu-Long Pei: School of Transportation, Northeast Forestry University, 26 Hexing Road, Harbin 150040, China
Bin Ran: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 57305, USA
Jia Kang: School of Transportation, Northeast Forestry University, 26 Hexing Road, Harbin 150040, China
Yu-Ting Song: School of Transportation, Northeast Forestry University, 26 Hexing Road, Harbin 150040, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-19

Abstract: To find and solve the problems existing in the development of higher education in China, the input–output, scale of higher education, students’ tuition and teachers’ income of Chinese and American universities are compared. The results show that the investment in top universities in China is similar to that in the United States, but the average student budget is much less, and the output is not comparable to that of American universities. The scale of higher education is much larger than that of the United States, and the growth rate is far more than demand. College tuition should be increased, with the absolute tuition only 5.93% of income, and relative tuition is 20.21% of that in the United States. College teachers are underpaid, earning only approximately 20% of what their peers earn in the United States. Therefore, for higher education sustainability, the paper puts forward the development direction of higher education in China, which is to control the expansion scale of colleges and universities, and to increase students’ tuition and teachers’ salary.

Keywords: higher education; sustainability American universities; tuition income ratio; educational input; teachers’ salaries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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