China's education watchdog has opened a 24-hour hotline for students who want to go to university but can not afford the tuition fees.

"Parents and students can ring in to learn about the country's financial aid programs targeted at college freshmen from low-income families, and report universities which fail to implement these programs," said Wang Xuming, the spokesman for the Ministry of Education.

"The ministry will deal with the reported problems in a timely fashion," Wang added.

Education has always been a priority of Chinese parents, especially the poor, who consider a degree a quick and safe road to wealth and social status.

But college tuition fees are recurring nightmares for many parents. The average university tuition fee is 5,000 yuan (about 625 U.S. dollars) a year, well beyond the reach of most rural residents, who earn on average about 3,200 a year.

Earlier this year, media reports told of parents committing suicide because they could not afford to send their children to university.

Official figures indicate that around 4 million university students in China are suffering from poverty, accounting for 26 percent of the nation's total.

As part of "a nationwide mechanism to help poor university students", Wang said, the Ministry introduced a "Green Channel" policy in 2000. The policy will be reinforced to enable poor students to register for college first and defer tuition payments.

Statistics from the Ministry show that about 390,000 students used the "Green Channel" to register for college in 2005, accounting for eight percent of total registrations.

China also launched a large-scale scheme in 1999 to provide subsidized loans to poor college students. By the end of last June,2.405 million students had received loans totaling 20.14 billion yuan (around 2.5 billion U.S. dollars).

But as graduates find it increasingly hard to secure employment, loans become a risky proposition. The student loans are interest-free during their study in university but an interest rate of around four percent is applied after their graduation when the money has to start being paid back. If they fail to settle their debts on time, they are blacklisted by the banks.

Universities are now required to provide more work-and-study programs, decrease or eliminate charges for the poorest students and reduce tuition fees by 10 percent to subsidize poor students.

The education ministry's new hotline received 80 calls in the first day of operation.

Editor: Wing