China’s demographic ‘crisis’ may not spell doom and gloom for HE

China’s once-a-decade census, released this week, showed vast improvements to domestic education since 2010, but also a worrying forward trend as population growth slowed to its lowest rate since the 1950s.

There was definitely good news in the education sector. Since 2010, the number of people with a university education grew from 8,930 per 100,000 people to 15,467 per 100,000. “The continued improvement [in] educational attainment demonstrated the achievements in promoting HE,” says the census report.

Almost all higher education figures have been on an upwards trajectory in the past decade, from the tertiary enrolment rate to the number and ranking positions of Chinese universities. In the figure most studied by foreign receiving markets, the number of outbound Chinese students more than doubled in a decade from 285,000 to 662,000.

But looking ahead, China is now grappling with a fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman, which is below the 2.1 “replacement level”. Even before that figure was reported in the census, HE experts such as Philip Altbach had warned of a coming “China crisis” of demographic decline.

ICEF Monitor predicted that China’s college-age population would fall by 40 per cent from 2010 to 2025.

Stuart Gietel-Basten, an expert on Asian demographics and a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, calculated that the number of 18-year-olds in China had already declined from 26 million in 2007 to 16.5 million today.

“Will there be fewer 18-year-olds in the future? Definitely. But will there be more 18-year-olds with the academic ability and means to pursue higher education, either domestically or overseas? Also definitely,” he said, adding that rising levels of literacy and urbanisation could offset some of the effects of a low birth rate.

“It’s not just a matter of the number of people, but the capacity of those people,” he said. “This is what is remarkable: despite this decline, there has been a massive expansion of HE in China.”

Professor Gietel-Basten said mainland China had not yet reached the demographic crises seen in places such as South Korea and Taiwan, where universities are struggling to fill seats.

“The Chinese system is not yet at the saturation point. There’s still room for expansion,” he said. “For example, as more students receive their undergraduate degrees, there will be more demand for graduate studies.”

This is borne out by statistics showing a 10 per cent increase in Chinese postgraduate admissions this year.

In fact, the university sector might actually help to mitigate the effects of demographic change – not the other way around. “Higher education can be the motor to drive productivity, which in turn will help the country face the challenges of population decline and ageing,” Professor Gietel-Basten said.

joyce.lau@timeshighereducation.com