Education, Higher China

In 2024, the university enrollment rate in the People's Republic of China was 60.8% according to country's Ministry of Education, representing 48.46 million mainland Chinese students enrolled in 4-year university and college degree programs in some 3,119 Chinese tertiary institutions. Entry into universities is intended to be meritocratic, depending only on the result of the Gaokao entrance examination. Entry is not influenced or determined by sporting activities, extracurricular programs, donations, or alumni parents and siblings. Chinese education authorities have emphasized meritocracy as a social equalizer. Usually, 12 years of formal education is the one prerequisite for entry into an undergraduate degree. Near the end of the twentieth century, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attempted numerous reform measures aimed at strengthening higher education in China; these included Project 211 and Project 985. Later, in 2014, the CCP General Office and State Council of China issued guidance on strengthening ideological education in colleges and universities. In 2015, a tertiary education development initiative called Double First-Class Construction was launched. It aims to comprehensively develop elite Chinese universities into world-class institutions by improving their faculty departments to world-class level by the end of 2050. During the general secretaryship of Xi Jinping, universities in the country have increasingly come under the direct management of a CCP committee secretary.