As schools open for the new semester and the 20th Teachers' Day arrives in three days, the news media are drumming up a lot more about what's going on in schools nowadays.

There is the good news: A record number of freshmen start college this week and another record number of young people are applying for next year's graduate studies.

Rural children in many places begin enjoying genuine free schooling; some of them get food allowances and no longer pay even for their textbooks.

However, other stories illustrate that things are not so rosy for our education, especially college education. In fact, some people, especially rural teenagers and their parents, seem to be losing confidence in the higher education system.

A magazine reported that every year, some 1,000 teenagers in a small city in South China drop out of school and work in cities without even finishing junior middle school, which is required by China's Law on Compulsory Education. They are disinclined to continue their schooling not because they cannot afford to pay for textbooks and other charges, however.

A rural woman calculates that her family paid some 35,000 yuan (US$4,397) in tuitions and living expenses over seven years for her elder son to graduate from a senior high school and then a college. Now that the elder son has started work in a big city, he seems to earn more, but he spends more and pays more for insurance and housing as well.

In contrast, her younger son, who now works in a workshop in Shenzhen without having finished junior middle school, earns less but spends less at the same time.

She reckons that the younger son, without paying for his room and board while spending less on entertainment, would save more than his brother does.

She has a point. A young man surnamed Wang, who graduated with a bachelor's degree in industrial management three years ago, started his freshmen year this month at a vocational machinery school in Southwest China's Guizhou Province.

Instead of climbing up the academic ladder for a master's degree, he has chosen to "go down" and learn to become a digital mechanic, a job with much greater promise and security than the 10-odd jobs and businesses he has tried as a college graduate.

For centuries, Chinese have believed that a good education, especially a higher education, could elevate people and change their lives.

These days, voices that encourage youths especially those from the countryside to pursue vocational training become louder as the market needs more skilled workers than college graduates without hands-on skills or working experiences.

Wang shared an experience that also discourages many more youths from pursuing higher education. He told reporters that the college textbooks he studied were outdated and that he had no way to practise what he'd learned.

It is surely high time the country invested extra money and made an extra effort to ensure that all teenagers complete a nine-year compulsory education that not only nurtures them in basic knowledge but also helps them master basic skills.

However, higher institutions have themselves to blame. They are plagued with numerous problems ranging from lack of incentives and programmes to foster critical and creative thinking to cheating and plagiarism.

The public has to question whether colleges and universities have improved themselves so as to go beyond their obsession for money and fame. Institutes of higher learning must give up the over-complacent attitude that they have trained numerous high-calibre professionals and leaders in every field and re-examine their current routine.

They must shoulder responsibility for shaping the way in which future generations learn to cope with the complexities of sustainable development and turning out responsible citizens able to meet the broader needs of all sectors of human activity.

Email: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn