______During the Great Cultural Revolution, Chinese education once suffered great damage. Only after the CR, the government could begin to make various efforts in education. Today, after 20 years, all kinds of schools have had great development. Take the example of universities. In the past 10 years, they have doubled, from the 500 in 1979 to the 1075 in 1989. The number of students in all kinds of schools has also greatly increased. Especially after 1986, the Chinese government implemented the nine year compulsory education system. All children of six and a half years of age have to enter schools to study. The enrollment rate for school-age children has reached 97.1 %. The illiteracy rate in the country’s population has decreased to about 20%. At the same time, all kinds of adult universities and vocational middle schools have also developed very rapidly. Now there are even private schools, which are also growing.
______But, due to the fact that the education budget is not much (in 1989 the average amount of money spent on each student by the government is 422 yuan), the conditions for running schools are rather poor. Especially for middle and elementary school, housing is not sufficient. In the countryside, the situation of school housing is even worse.
______Chinese education is still rather backward. The people who can go to college are still few. In the recent few years, new problems have occurred for Chinese education. Because there are more and more people doing business in the society and these people have much higher income than the educated people, hence many people think that it is useless to study. Therefore, some children in the countryside do not go to school but help their parents work and make money. Among college students and graduate students, some drop out to find good jobs, some go abroad. Some teachers no long teach but go to do business.
______The texts in this unit from different angles depict the current education and employment situation in China.