The total school building floor area in regular senior high schools increased 36,728,000 m2 over the previous year to 680,349,000 m2. The percentages of schools with facilities and equipment fulfilling applicable standards were as follows: 94.46% of schools met the sports ground area (stadium) requirements; 96.50% met sports equipment requirements; 95.85% met musical instrument requirements; 96.05% met art supply requirements; and 96.18% met laboratory tools and equipment requirements.
The total school building floor area in regular senior high schools increased 7.39% over the previous year to 275,160,900 m2, and the per student building floor area was 20.55 m2. The per student value of educational facilities and equipment reached RMB 8,504.32.
III. Higher education
In 2022, gross enrollment in higher education reached 59.6%, 1.8 percentage points higher than the previous year.
China had 3,013 higher education institutions (HEIs). Among them, 1,239 were regular ones (164 independent colleges included). This included 32 polytechnic colleges, and 1,489 higher vocational education institutes. There was also a total of 253 adult higher education institutes. There were also 234 research institutions training postgraduate students. The number of registered students in all HEIs totaled 46.55 million across the country, an increase of 2.25 million over the previous year.
The number of registered students in all HEIs totaled 10,145,400 across the country, an increase of 6.11% over the previous year. Regular HEIs enrolled 4,679,400 students on average, an increase of 5.25% over the previous year. Vocational colleges enrolled 76,300 students, an increase of 84.39% over the previous year, while higher vocational education institutes enrolled 5,389,800 students, including 542,900 students in five-year programs beginning at junior high level.
The total number of enrolled postgraduate students grew by 5.61% to 1,242,500, of which 139,000 were for Doctoral degrees and 1,103,500 for Masters’ degrees. The number of registered postgraduate students stood at 3,653,600, an increase of 9.64% over the previous year. Doctoral students totaled 556,100 and 3,097,500 were Masters students.
4,000,200 students were newly enrolled in an undergraduate program in HEIs for adults, bringing the total number of registered students to 9,336,500; while 2,808,900 students were newly enrolled in online higher education programs, bringing the total number of registered students to 8,446,500.
There were 1,977,800 full-time teachers in higher education, including 1,315,800 in regular undergraduate colleges; 27,800 in undergraduate-level vocational colleges; 619,500 in higher vocational education institutes; and 14,700 in adult higher education schools. 78.54% have a Masters’ degree or above, up 1.04 percentage points from the previous year.
The total floor area of regular HEIs reached 1.1308055 billion m