Illustration: Lu ting/GT

Over the years, I have heard numerous sad stories about Chinese students from low-income families who had to turn down an acceptance offer from a top-tier university just because their family could not afford the high tuition. However, this phenomenon is predicted to get even worse now that several provinces in China are planning across-the-board tuition hikes for universities.

South China University of Technology, a major public institution in Guangzhou city, was the first. The tuition for any arts and science disciplines were increased by 1,500 yuan ($225) and 1,690 yuan per year, respectively, to 6,060 yuan and 6,850 yuan.

Universities in Jiangxi Province, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Hainan Province followed suit, raising their average tuition starting this autumn. According to the Ministry of Education, public university tuition in China should equal 25 percent of the actual educational expenditures made by the school.

However, in recent decades, educational costs have been rising exponentially, especially after outdated teaching facilities across China were forced to update their equipment to keep up with the technology revolution of the new millennium. But is it reasonable to require students to shoulder the brunt of all these costs?

In more developed nations, university tuition is generally equal to 20 percent of the national income per capita. In the US, for example, the average tuition is only approximately 13 percent of the average national income. However, in China it is up to 35 percent!

Considering the severe wealth gap and economic disparity that exists in China, families with low incomes and from poorer provinces will be the ones most affected by the tuition hike, which in turn will further exacerbate social and regional inequality.

Take Guangdong Province, where tuition for any arts discipline was increased to 6,060 yuan, which is 22 percent of residents' per capita disposable income in Guangdong in 2015. When compared to the per capita disposable income of rural residents, the proportion reaches as high as 45 percent!

As we all know, Guangdong is considered a wealthy province with a bustling economy and high incomes due to the development of Shenzhen and the area's commercial proximity to Hong Kong. For students from the Canton region, tuition inflation won't matter much, but for non-locals, it could be a deal breaker.

Additionally, by law Chinese universities are supposed to be able to justify to the public line-item educational costs. As such, only if and when a third-party auditor has approved an increase in costs would a raise in tuition to be allowed. But thus far none of these educational institutions have done so.

Similarly, it must also be disclosed to the public how much the local government invests in higher education. The local government should guarantee the investment in higher education increase gradually under the Higher Education Law of the People's Republic of China.

Without transparency in local governments' financial reports, it seems that the raise in tuition is only to supplement the low governmental investment of public funding for education.

China's central and local governments along with every provincial institution of higher learning, public and private, should be making their programs more inclusive and attainable. But the recent tuition hike demonstrates that what they seem to be striving for is exclusivity.

Knowledge is the single most vital asset that any individual can have. With knowledge, even the most impoverished person from the most dire of circumstances can climb the social ladder all the way to the top. Thus, a good education is the most valuable investment any family, rich or poor, can make in today's China.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Times.