Disadvantages: After continuous enrollment expansion, the number of college students has reached a considerable scale, and the educational resources of colleges and universities can not meet the teaching needs and the standards set by the Ministry of Education, which has set off a nationwide upsurge in the construction of new campuses of colleges and universities and triggered new problems and crises.
Motivation of the upsurge of new campus construction
The direct cause of the construction of new campus in colleges and universities is the expansion of enrollment. After the enrollment expansion, the number of students increased sharply. On the one hand, colleges and universities can't meet the lower limit standards of educational resources such as per capita floor space, building area and the number of books and materials stipulated by the Ministry of Education. On the other hand, colleges and universities are really crowded. Teachers, classrooms, dormitories, books and other educational resources are relatively old and scarce, which cannot meet the requirements of students and parents. Therefore, the climax of building a new campus is one after another.
Another reason for the upsurge of new campus construction in colleges and universities is the promotion of local government forces. The local government is keen to gather new campuses of many universities and build university towns or campuses. On the one hand, it can realize the * * * construction and * * * enjoyment of university infrastructure; On the other hand, the large-scale construction of the university town can bring many external benefits to local governments, such as stimulating domestic demand, expanding employment, promoting local economic growth, enhancing the commercial value of the land around the university town, and boosting the city's popularity.
At present, there are more than 50 university towns or university parks under construction and completion nationwide. Each university park has as few as 3-5 schools and as many as 7-8 universities; The area of each new campus ranges from several thousand mu to 3,000-5,000 mu. The building area ranges from several hundred thousand square meters to more than one million square meters; The required construction funds range from several hundred million yuan to several billion yuan. According to this scale, the construction funds needed for the new campus of colleges and universities nationwide are conservatively estimated at around 250 billion yuan. For example, Anhui University is expected to invest 654.38+03 billion yuan; Zhengzhou University is expected to invest 2 billion yuan; Zhejiang University is expected to invest 3 billion yuan; Fudan University is expected to invest 2.05 billion yuan; Tongji University is expected to invest 2 billion yuan; Nanchang University is expected to invest 65.438+0.4 billion yuan ... These figures are only the budgeted amount. Due to the rising price of building materials and the improvement of standards and projects in the construction process, it is certain that the construction investment of most schools will exceed the budget. Moreover, many of these funds do not include the investment in teaching and experimental equipment.
The three main institutions share the cost.
With the advancement of higher education reform, there are three main bodies of higher education cost sharing in China at present: government investment, student payment and self-financing by colleges and universities.
Governments, including the central government and local governments. China is a developing country, and the task of reform and construction is still very heavy, especially now that it has entered a period of frequent social contradictions. The government must ensure the capital investment related to social stability and the national economy and people's livelihood, which is a typical poor country to run a large education. Therefore, the central government's investment in education is relatively insufficient, and the proportion of education funds to GDP hovers around 3%. Among them, compulsory education in primary and secondary schools, especially in rural areas, needs more state investment than institutions of higher learning. In this case, the state adopts the strategy of concentrating resources and speeding up the construction of key projects. The limited funds for university construction are in the form of "2 1 1 Project" and "985 Project" to ensure the impact on the construction of some universities directly under the central government, such as "world-class universities", "domestic first-class internationally renowned high-level universities" and "well-known high-level universities at home and abroad". For most colleges and universities, especially local colleges and universities, it is impossible to get more financial support from the central government, let alone invest in the construction of new campuses.
Some local governments have made special investments in the construction of new campuses of local universities in different ways. For example, Henan Province invested more than 400 million yuan to build the new campus of Zhengzhou University, and the loan funds for the construction of the new campus of Guangzhou University City were all subsidized by the government. However, it is difficult for most local governments to do this. Take Jiangxi Province as an example. In 2002, its local fiscal revenue was less than 20 billion yuan, while the capital demand for the construction of Nanchang Changdong and Yaohu University Parks was as high as 1 1 100 million yuan. What local governments can do is to integrate public resources such as land, water and electricity, and reduce all supporting construction costs. Such as: land removal costs, provincial project bidding and quality and safety supervision costs, environmental impact assessment costs, civil air defense facilities relocation costs, etc. At the same time, the policy of raising tuition fees is given.
As the main beneficiaries of higher education, students' families become one of the main contributors to the cost of higher education by paying tuition and miscellaneous fees. According to statistics, the average tuition of college students in China has risen from 800 yuan in 1995 to about 5,000 yuan in 2004, while the tuition of students entering the new campus is about 6,000 yuan. Accommodation fees rose from 1995 in 270 yuan to 1000 in 2004 to 1200 yuan. Coupled with eating and dressing, each college student spends about 6.5438+0 million yuan a year, and four years of college needs about 40 thousand yuan. In 2004, the average annual net income of urban residents and farmers in China was 9,422 yuan and 2,936 yuan respectively. Therefore, to support a college student, it takes 4.2 years of urban residents' net income and 13.6 years of farmers' net income, which has not taken into account the residents' expenses of food, clothing, medical care and old-age care. According to the survey, 25.5% of the students said that they "don't want to go to college again" because "the family can't afford to go to college". It can be said that the charging standards of colleges and universities in some areas have approached or even exceeded the affordability of ordinary residents in China.
Colleges and universities. Colleges and universities in China are non-profit public welfare organizations, and they can't fully put into the market like private products. Of course, higher education also has the property of commodity, and colleges and universities should also consider the cost of running schools and set appropriate prices. From the perspective of economics, higher education is a kind of "quasi-public product". The running cost of colleges and universities refers to the educational funds directly consumed by colleges and universities to train various professionals, including personnel funds, teaching business expenses, administrative expenses, direct student affairs expenses, depreciation of fixed assets such as equipment and rooms, amortization of books and materials, etc. Especially since the late 1990s, the competition for talents in colleges and universities has greatly increased the expenditure of teachers' allowance, which makes it more difficult for most colleges and universities to solve the construction funds through their own accumulation. Therefore, relying on the strength of colleges and universities themselves, it is impossible to raise huge funds for the construction of new campuses in a short time.
In addition, social capital can also be introduced to build student apartments, canteens, teaching buildings, stadiums and other logistics service facilities by means of cooperation such as BOT, which can save some construction funds. However, for teaching and research facilities such as teaching buildings, libraries, experimental buildings, office buildings, books and experimental instruments, due to their nature and the profit-seeking nature of capital, social capital and foreign capital cannot intervene and can only rely on their own construction.
Risks in the construction of new campus
As China's education funds have been mainly invested by the government, the social charity and social donation system is underdeveloped. The social donation ratio of higher education in China is only 1% ~ 2%, which can't play a key role in the operation of colleges and universities.
According to the regulations of the Ministry of Education and other ministries and commissions on the planning area index of ordinary colleges and universities, and according to the standards set by the Ministry of Education for ordinary colleges and universities, "one place for each student", it takes about 38,000 yuan of extra funds to add one student, which is far from the standards required by the Ministry of Education and the development space is seriously insufficient. At present, the utilization of resources in colleges and universities can not meet the needs of the expansion of higher education, nor can it meet the standards of the Ministry of Education. We must find another way to raise funds for higher education, and it is an inevitable choice for colleges and universities to borrow from banks.
The large-scale expansion of colleges and universities has an urgent need for funds, and colleges and universities have both national support for higher education and inflated tuition income, so colleges and universities have become high-quality customers in the eyes of banks. Since 1999, the cooperation between banks and schools has become a trend. If Huaxia Bank 1999 provided a credit line of 500 million yuan to Peking University, ICBC decided to provide a credit line of1000 million yuan to Peking University; 1999 By the end of 2002, China Bank provided a credit line of 600 million yuan to Harbin Institute of Technology; Nanjing University has obtained credit lines totaling 5 billion yuan from five banks, including Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Huaxia Bank, China Merchants Bank and CITIC Industrial Bank. 198 The loans for education (mainly schools) issued by ICBC were only over 200 million yuan, which rose to198 billion yuan in mid-2003.
At present, the funds for the construction of new campus in colleges and universities mainly come from bank loans, and some schools even reach 90% of the construction funds. The average loan of each university is more than 500 million yuan, and the loan scale of most universities is more than 800 million ~ 65.438+0 billion yuan. It is conservatively estimated that the loan amount for the construction of new campuses of colleges and universities nationwide is at least 200 billion yuan.
On the surface, relying on bank loans and student fees, quasi-public products can obtain abundant output under the condition of insufficient government investment, but in fact, new problems and increasing risks are hidden.
Most of the construction of new campuses in colleges and universities began around 2000. Now the investment in the first phase of construction has been basically completed, and 2 ~ 3 students have moved in. According to the agreement with the bank, most colleges and universities began to repay the principal and interest in the fourth year after the establishment of the school, that is, after the fourth student moved in. With the annual interest payment, most colleges and universities began to repay the principal and interest one after another.
Suppose that the new campus of a university is planned to accommodate 30,000 students, the total annual working capital of the school is 300 million yuan, and the loan capital is 654.38+04 billion yuan. According to the central bank's annual interest rate of 5.58%, if it is paid off in 20 years, the annual principal and interest will reach about 1 100 million yuan, accounting for 1/3 of the school's working capital. There is no doubt that this will inevitably affect the sustainable development of the school.
According to the statistics of some local colleges and universities, the current financial allocation of local colleges and universities is 2300 yuan per student, 5700 yuan per student (including tuition increase) and 8000 yuan per student, which is 2000 yuan different from the average annual training fee 1000 yuan generally recognized by ordinary colleges and universities. According to the principle of cost compensation, the deficiency should be made up by the government. Take a school with 30,000 students as an example, the government will allocate an additional 60 million yuan/year to meet the capital needs of the basic development of colleges and universities. However, some local governments still allocate funds in the form of "base plus fixed increase" before enrollment expansion, which leads to a huge funding gap in colleges and universities. If it is not solved as soon as possible, it will seriously affect the normal teaching operation of colleges and universities.
The construction of new campus in colleges and universities is fundamentally a kind of government behavior. In fact, the education authorities have forced universities to build new campuses on a large scale by "evaluating the conditions for running schools", stipulating the average floor space and construction area of college students, and issuing an "enrollment plan" that far exceeds the capacity of schools. Once the debt risk appears, the government, banks and universities will all face an extremely complicated embarrassing situation.