UNICEF Blog Post

When discussing inequalities in higher education, the public tends to focus on economic disparities. The differences between government funding towards education globally has been seen to be directly correlated with youth literacy. While it is easy to zone into this factor and view inequalities in higher education as a lower-income country phenomenon, recent studies have demonstrated that inequalities - particularly ones related to gender - occur everywhere. In fact, China is a prime example of a high income country with inequalities in higher education.

Despite China having a fast-growing income, there are still economic disparities faced between rural and urban areas. Much of this stems from families' abilities to pay for tuition fees. Surprisingly, this burden can instigate further gender discrimination leading to an absence of females in higher education. In fact, studies have found that the girls are the ones who mostly pay the price of been poor since the families mostly choose boys to attend schools, which are then pushed to work very hard to attain a scholarship to join college (Li et at., 2019).

Additionally, China is still fighting sexist values that have been ingrained into its society for thousand of years (Murphy, 2018). These date back to imperial China when sayings such as "too much learning does not become a virtuous woman” were prominent. In many rural areas, these thinkings remain that make it harder for females to pursue a higher education. In fact, it is not surprising that even well-developed countries like China struggle with equalizing education among social and gender classes.

This analysis of the status of China hopes to propel you delegates to consider the broader factors at play. As you prepare to draft ideas and solution in committee sessions, take note of the history and intertwined factors that contribute to this growing inequality in higher education experienced by low-income, middle-income, and even high-income countries.