Arbitrary collection of fees by educational institutions was ranked first in the State Development and Reform Commission's newly released listing of the top six areas receiving the most price complaints in the first half of the year. Education experts estimated that more than 200 billion yuan (US$24.15 billion) had been illegally collected from primary and middle school students in the past 10 years.

Arbitrary collection of educational fees is undermining equality of educational opportunity and tarnishing the reputation of schools and teachers. In a just and fair society where everyone has equal access to opportunity and to education, people can work their way up toward higher-level positions through hard work. The level of social mobility is often used as an indicator of societal openness. Open stratification systems have a high level of social mobility. The most egalitarian societies are also those with the highest level of social mobility.

Education can enhance a person's capacity and improve his or her life circumstances. As it is often said, knowledge is power. Knowledge can change a person's fate. Education is an important key to the upward mobility of all citizens and especially children from the disadvantaged groups.

However, rising education fees have placed an increasing burden on middle- and low-income families. Some children from poverty-stricken families found that they had no alternative but to drop out of school, some brilliant students from poor families were forced by high education fees to abandon college. We can imagine how frustrated and disappointed they must have been when their dreams were turned to ashes and their world seemed bleak and bare. There is little else more dreadful than educational injustice.

High education fees have added to educational inequality which, in turn, is going to have an adverse impact on the future because it will surely hamper the improvement of the population quality and endanger the welfare of this nation.

In a recent online dialogue, Vice-minister of Education Zhang Baoqing said that industrialization of education not only deviated from the purpose and principle of education, it also violated the interests of the people and the fundamental principle of the socialist system. He added that running education as an industry would wreck education. His remark triggered a strong social response.

Education is a public service and should not be covered by commercial trade rules. Education is one of the most important institutions in our country, an institution which is meant to be the "concrete embodiment" of the values of equal opportunity and social justice for every individual. Education bears a particularly important responsibility not only for improving the quality of the population and ensuring that our workforce is prepared for the demands of economic development, but also for contributing knowledge and expertise to benefit society.

In Western societies public education is a weapon against a polarized society of rich and poor. The government action in providing public education is used as a means for counteracting unequal forces in the "free" market place which favour children of higher status families. As a country where most social resources are in public ownership, China should and can secure a fair distribution of educational resources for all children.

In this sense the government should ban public schools from charging extra fees for compulsory education. The charges for higher education should be determined in accordance with the per capita income level so as to ensure that all children have equal access to education, and to provide a path of upward mobility for the aspiring children of the poor.

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