Costs of Education in China: Issues of Resource Mobilization, Equality, Equity and Efficiency

This paper is a survey of the costs of education in one Asian country, China. It focuses on three areas of education costs: (1) national expenditures on education; (2) unit costs of education; and (3) educational cost functions. It relates the analysis of education costs to four enduring policy issues in education in China: resource mobilization, inequality, inequity and inefficiency. The analysis is based on primary and secondary data sources and on existing studies in both the Chinese and English literatures. Whenever appropriate, comparative discussion is made by drawing on cost studies on other (mostly Asian) countries. The paper is aimed at providing a review of the current state of knowledge, and identifying knowledge gaps and areas for future research on education costs in China.