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

• Main Authors: Yong-Ming He, Yu-Long Pei, Bin Ran, Jia Kang, Yu-Ting Song
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-01-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: higher education; sustainability american universities; tuition income ratio; educational input; teachers’ salaries
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/573

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.