In China, debates about higher education finance led to the introduction of a cost-sharing model, whereby students were required to pay tuition fees, over a decade ago. However, there is still significant resistance towards such a system within the broader society. In order to share insights into the development of the cost-sharing policy in China with international readers and scholars, this paper thoroughly reviews the origins, impact and challenges of the cost-sharing system in Chinese higher education. Based on systematic analysis, the paper recommends reforms to the cost-sharing system in order to contribute to a stronger financial foundation for the development of the Chinese higher education system.

Job match has always been the focus of educational research. However, current empirical studies are limited to the analysis of face-to-face education, and there’s no empirical study focusing on the job match of distance education. To fill the gap in this research field, this study analyzes the distance learners in China to demonstrate the relationship between distance education and job match by using the data from a nationwide household survey. The empirical results involve two significant findings. Firstly, distance learners and face-to-face learners have no significant difference in job match. This study attempts to explain this with the human capital theory, that is, distance learners and face-to-face learners have no difference in obtaining their specific human capital, so they both prefer to work on a position characterized by job match. Secondly, job mismatch has no significant negative effect on the income of distance learners. This study attempts to explain this with the screening theory, that is, though distance education would improve the learners’ specific human capital, it still acts as a diploma signal, to some extent, in China, thus making it impossible for the specific human capital obtained by distance learners to transform into a superiority in income.

Since the 1990s, higher education at different levels has been expanding along with the high-speed development of the Chinese economy. Based on large-scale survey data of the whole country in 1995, 2002, 2008, and 2013, the paper studies the dynamic rates of return (ROR) to higher education at different levels in China. The empirical results show that (1) The ROR to junior college level and undergraduate level shows an increase following a decreasing trend. (2) The ROR to postgraduate education has been maintaining an increasing trend at a constant speed. (3) At junior college and undergraduate levels, the ROR of females is higher than that of males, which is consistent with the gender difference of other educational levels. (4) At the postgraduate level, the ROR of males is higher than that of females, and such cases can be seen in other countries and regions. These findings can be new evidence for market-oriented postgraduate education and support the cost-sharing policy. Then it is possible to develop postgraduate education with market logic and increase tuition while increasing the scale of postgraduate education.