From Village Classrooms to University Campuses: The Impact of Free Compulsory Education on Access to Higher Education in Rural China

Can reducing the cost of compulsory education generate lasting gains in higher education attainment? China offers a rare opportunity to answer this question. Although nine years of schooling were legally mandated since 1986, tuition and textbook fees remained substantial in rural areas until the 2006–2007 Free Compulsory Education Reform eliminated them entirely. This two decades gap between legal compulsion and cost elimination, unusual in international experience, allows me to isolate the effect of financial barriers on educational progression, holding the attendance mandate constant. Exploiting the staggered provincial rollout of the reform, I construct an individual-level measure of exposure based on the number of tuition-free semesters received during compulsory schooling. Each additional semester increases the probability of college attendance by nearly one percentage point. Suggestive evidence indicates that the reform may have reduced adolescent farm work and improved academic skills, which are both associated with later educational attainment. Heterogeneity analyses provide limited evidence that the gains may have been somewhat larger for rural female students, although the overall effects appear broadly shared.