Chinese College Tuition Policy Assessment Study

University's policy of tuition is regarded as an important component of the public education financial policy, which affects interests of more than 10 million higher education students and their families. At present, the scientific, normal and judicial evaluation system of tuition policy for regular universities has not been set up in China, causes the current tuition fee policy to be queried by each side in scientific and normal, it is an indispensable important link in the policy process. The policy process of university's tuition would become further optimized in China, by setting up a comprehensive evaluation system for the university's policy of tuition.The dissertation takes the evaluation for tuition policy of China's universities as research objects. The main contents of the dissertation include as follows. Chapter one explains the research background and significance, research object and methodology, research stream of thoughts and frame structure, as well as possible innovation of the dissertation. Chapter two reviews domestic and international literature on the evaluation for tuition policy. Chapter three defines the concept of the tuition policy and its evaluation of China's universities, sets up the system of the tuition policy and its policy process, analyzes policy's characteristics and functions, elaborates related historical changes and current situation, probes into various kinds of factors influencing the policy, and makes economics analysis on the offering way and fixing the price of the higher education products on the basis of the public economics theory. Chapter four discusses some issues, such as the subject and object, the environment, the standard, the indexes system, and the implemental procedure of the tuition policy evaluation for China's universities, to set up the evaluation system of the tuition policy. Chapter five carries the investigation of questionnaire on the students in five universities at Xi'an, analyzing their affordability and the willing of paying, and surveying and studying their understanding and attitudes on the tuition policy. In addition, 10 faculty of universities are investigated to making the comprehensive evaluation on the current tuition policy of universities in China, so as to find out principal problems existing in the current tuition policy of universities. Chapter six proposes some recommendations to improve the tuition policy of universities in China. Chapter seven presents main research conclusions of the dissertation, and the problems that will need studying further in the future.Main conclusions of the dissertation are as follows. First, the evaluation of tuition policy is an indispensable important link in the process of university's tuition policy, which is a basic way to examine the operation result, determines the important basis of the policy moving forward, is the foundation of disposing policy resources rationally, contributes to the policy towards more scientific and democratic, and is effective tactics of structuring the good public relations.Second, while utilizing the comprehensive evaluation method of many indexes to evaluate tuition policy of universities in China, it is critical to structure and assess the index system. The tuition policy of China's universities has been implemented near 10 years, some results of the policy has been appeared, either. It is thus necessary to establish the system of comprehensive evaluation indexes, based on the standard of operation process of the policy on the view of post-evaluation.Third, some findings are gotten from the results of investigation and research on students at school in five universities at Xi'an, such as the tuition expenditure accounting for nearly half of students' total expenditure each year, but the effectiveness to relieve the student's burden by financial aids offered by government and university being limited; the proportion between students' direct payment and family income being reduced with the increase of family's annual income level; students not fully understanding the tuition policy of universities in China, although most of them agreeing on the implementation of university's tuition policy; the main reason of their preferring to pay the tuition and entering universities being to obtain better employment opportunity, but over half of students considering their tuition being not worthy with their enjoying higher education service offered by universities; the willing of students' joining higher education not dropping by a large margin with the increase of university's tuition level, indicating students' very strong expectation to pay higher education service.Fourth, the result of the current tuition policy evaluation of universities in China is 71.46 out of 100. There are several problems of tuition policy in China, such as relevant information ability of students and their families being relatively low, the fair consequence of tuition policy of universities being not satisfied, the goal of tuition policy of these universities being some deviation, and the participation of persons who are correlated with of making the tuition standard being quite low.There are some kinds of innovation inside the dissertation. First, it is the innovation of the research approach. While studying the evaluation on the tuition policy of universities, the evaluation system of the tuition policy of universities in China is constructed and built up by public policy analysis theory, the system of comprehensive evaluation index is established, and a practical advice of method for the government carrying on the evaluation to the tuition policy is offered. The second is the innovation of research perspective. The micro individual data in the dissertation are gotten by the questionnaire investigation and interview of the students and educational experts and scholars, but most of the current evaluation on tuition policy of universities in China takes analysis of experience research and macroscopically data, and lacking of the policy evaluation based on the investigation and survey of the educated individuals directly. Third, the current mainstream recommendations mainly emphasize the improvement on the content of the tuition policy of universities in China, but seldom suggest on the policy process of tuition policy. The recommendations for standardizing and optimizing the main existing problems of the tuition policy of universities in China are offered in the dissertation, on the basis of evaluating results of case studies.