REAL HERO: Li Wanqing, a disabled person who requires crutches to walk, has served as a substitute teacher at a mountainous village school in Hebi, Henan Province, since 1975 (WANG JISHUN)

Substitute Teachers Cry

Recent circulating news indicated nearly 450,000 substitute teachers in rural areas were to be dismissed this year. The Education Ministry quickly denied the rumor. But, whatever the ministry's schedule is, it is certain, sooner or later, substitute teachers will be dismissed.

It's true that teachers who have received regular training are more qualified for rural education and more helpful to rural children. The problem is, how to put the dismissal process into action? It's unacceptable to drive substitute teachers away penniless.

Because of insufficient government education funding, rural schools tend to employ substitute teachers, who agree to work for much lower payment than normal teachers. In poor areas, substitute teachers are even the major teaching force.

To clear schools of substitute teachers when they are no longer needed, without proper compensation, is not only morally questionable, but also legally unacceptable.

The substitutes have worked hard for decades when there were not enough staff, teaching at salaries disproportionate to their arduous work.

When it comes to substitute teachers, it's necessary for the government to formulate reasonable plans. For example, they should be given opportunities to become regular teachers through certain examinations, or they should be offered relatively high economic compensation or welfare benefits, so that they have something to depend on in their future life when they are unemployed.

In no case should those who have made contributions to China's educational development be treated irresponsibly.

Yangcheng Evening News

Be More Responsible

It was recently discovered that the local government website of Xinxiang in central China's Henan Province equivocated on almost all problems local residents had begged the government to take action on. Apart from the mailbox, the telephone hotline also offered unhelpful and irrelevant answers.

For a government website, to beat around the bush on people's complaints fully reflects its irresponsibility and laziness. It is then nothing but a stage prop.

The intent of setting up government websites is to make it more convenient for the public to have their problems solved. Only when the government takes seriously every complaint and problem submitted by ordinary people and tries to offer help, will we see more efficient and trustworthy government websites.

The Beijing News

Contacts Win Funding

At a recent forum held by the Provincial Education Department of southern Guangdong Province, participants complained that academicians at higher learning institutions had spent too much time on establishing networks of social contacts. They do so allegedly because they hope to apply for research funding through such networks, or they will get no funding at all.

In China's education system, scientific research projects are one of the most important resources controlled by the government. In most academic assessment systems, if a college successfully bids for a state-level project, it will win more praises. Meanwhile, more government incentives follow. That is why colleges compete extremely hard for these projects.

At the same time, colleges have their own evaluation systems, which attaches more importance to the number of projects an academician can secure. In the end, the competition between colleges puts heat on academicians. When they have no other means of winning research funding, they have to turn to networks of contacts.

Yangcheng Evening News

Land Sales Need Rule

It's reported two universities in China are planning to sell some of the land they own to pay off bank loans, while several other higher learning institutions might follow suit.

Universities that have expanded excessively will inevitably confront difficulties in future development: One is to recruit enough students and another is to attract adequate investment. As China's birth rate drops and employment becomes increasingly difficult for graduates, colleges where teaching facilities and student recruitment have been too great are finding out it is not easy to fill almost empty campuses. Worse still, the large-scale university construction was based on bank loans.

When the colleges rounded up land for their school expansion programs, they did not act according to the market rule. The land was acquired from farmers at low prices, thanks to governmental administrative powers. Therefore, the current land transfers should not be conducted at market prices and the profits should not be divided up only between colleges and the government, without any compensation for the farmers.

Chinese colleges have hoarded a large amount of land in previous years. Now that their expansion cannot continue any longer, it is necessary to release some of the land. But the government must be careful about handling such issues as how to differentiate between debt repayment-oriented and profit-oriented land sales and how to conform the farmers whose land was cheaply acquired by the colleges.

China Youth Daily