A Comparative Study On The University Student Financial Aid Policies In China And Kazakhstan

With the expansion of higher education worldwide and implementation of cost sharing in higher education,the issue of educational equity is becoming more and more prominent.Being an effective measure to promote educational equity,student financial aid has become the focus of higher education reform in various countries across the world in recent years.Being the country with the world's largest higher education system,China always gives the top priority to the student financial aid,and constantly promotes the improvement of higher education financial aid system by introduction of a series of student financial aid policies.In recent years,with the proposing of the strategic goal of turning China into a country rich in human resources and technology,as well as stressing the importance of social equity,the strength of government financial aid for university students has been greatly enhanced.Especially,after the introduction of the new financial aid policy in May 2007,country achieved remarkable results in terms of the policy coverage,investment level,and the scale of aid recipients,which has great reference value for Kazakhstan to formulate an effective student financial aid policy.Kazakhstan is a China's largest neighbour in Central Asia and an important country along the Belt and Road.It has been ranked as a country with high development potential.Higher education plays an important role in the development of national economy and advancement of international competitiveness.The issues of equitable access to higher education for all school leavers within country became an important and strategic development goal of the national higher education reform.Although the government has been continually reforming existing system and achieved some success after gaining independence,there are still some problems such as low awareness about educational equity,insufficient funding,inequitable allocation of aid funding,single financial aid type,low proportion of aid recipients,and unstandardised aid management.This study focuses on the comprehensive analysis of the problems,outcomes,and the improvement measures of the financial aid policy in Kazakhstan based on the comparative analysis results of the student financial aid policies in China and Kazakhstan from the educational equity perspective and four aspects:policy development,policy composition,policy effectiveness and policy evaluation.The results of comparative analysis show that there are both similarities and differences in financial aid policy development,policy content,policy goal and policy effectiveness between China and Kazakhstan.Using the methods of binary logistic regression analysis and chi square test,it is found that the Kazakhstani students' household residence,academic achievement,socio-economic status and family monthly income have a significant impact on their access to financial assistance.State financial aid mainly focuses on students from city,middle-class family and students with high monthly family income,which affects the fairness of financial aid distribution.Based on the results of comparative analysis,it is recommended to take advantage of the development opportunity of "the Belt and Road" initiative and promote the higher education financial aid system by studying from the successful experience of Chinese student financial assistance system reform,in particular,increase the funding level,broaden the scope of aid recipients,enrich the types of financial aid,strengthen the aid management and policy publicity.