The bulk of China's increases in education spending has been rolling into universities, for reasons more structural than sensible. For higher education institutes, government sponsorship is easy to find. They're big, economically important institutions whose budgets run well into the tens, or even hundreds, of millions.

Local and national leaders are regularly photographed at top schools, but even mid-ranking colleges can normally rely on a well-placed alumnus or two. And a doctoral degree can always be quietly arranged as part of a quid pro quo deal with an official looking to burnish his resume.

So the funding is always going to be there for universities, especially ones coddled under such initiatives as the "211 Project." Nonetheless, while the country still strives to create an internationally recognized university, the education of the majority of kids is weak, especially in the countryside.

China's rural schools are vanishing. Around 63 elementary schools are shutting every day, according to statistics from the 21st Century Education Research Institute of China quoted at china.org.cn.

About 6 percent of schools are shuttering their doors every year, a figure that far exceeds the fall in the number of rural children. 

Meanwhile, tens of millions of children moving into the cities with their migrant parents are shut out of access to urban education, thanks to the obsolete hukou (household registration) system that keeps urban schools for the local elite.

Even if a school is available, the teaching may not be worth it. Rural teachers are often undereducated. Only 23 percent of teachers at rural schools had completed a four-year college degree, according to 2003 data, though the bulk had at least a year or two of higher education.

But this underestimates the scale of the problem, since many schools now rely heavily upon supply teachers, not formerly counted as educational staff and often with only a high school education. 

Then there are the conditions at the schools. Only 3 percent of rural elementary schools have access to multimedia equipment, compared to 30 percent of urban ones. Many lack even basic textbooks or whiteboards. Classrooms are sometimes windowless and poorly insulated in the winter.

This, in turn, widens China's wealth and class gaps. Access to top universities is increasingly controlled by the urban elite. Although in 2010, 62 percent of those taking the gaokao, or national college entrance examinations, were from the countryside, only 17 percent of freshmen at Tsinghua University were from rural backgrounds.

Rural teaching used to be considered an honorable career, or at least one mandated by the government. According to China's official statistics, between 1949 and 1980 the country's basic literacy rates leapt massively. This basic literacy, along with the other skill-benefits of elementary education, was one reason why China was more attractive than other developing countries to foreign investors looking for a capable workforce.

In contrast, university education is a poor payoff. I don't mean to knock the ideals of higher learning. But in simple investment terms, without considering the value of scholarship or the humanities, elementary schooling, as Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang has pointed out, is a much better deal than tertiary education.

Increasing the numbers of university graduates beyond a certain threshold has very little economic effect; look at the job market today, where the excessive numbers of graduates have severely driven down the value of a degree.

Overinvestment in tertiary education, and underinvestment in village schools, is one well documented reason for the developmental failings of post-colonial African states. |

Their leaders, who had often gone to English universities, poured resources into recreating Oxford campuses under African skies, creating hollow shells of institutions that churned out a pseudo-educated elite, even as children in the countryside were left illiterate.

China managed to avoid this trap; even during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), when the universities were closed, village education survived. But it might be falling into it today.

Small, poverty-stricken, isolated rural schools have no one to speak up for them. China needs to recognize the value of rural education from the top town, before they create a new class of illiterates.

The author is an editor with the Global Times. jamespalmer@globaltimes.com.cn