Chinese universities tend to waste money on meaningless projects because they believe the government will always bail them out by allocating more public funds. Like many government officials, university presidents like to spend money on "image-building projects", such as tall buildings and grand campus gates, to impress senior provincial officials during their inspection tours. Besides, university administrative offices are often overstaffed and partly become a drain on public funds.

To make matters worse, many universities are also neck deep in debt because they embarked on large-scale expansion plans after 1999, both in terms of the number of enrollments and campus size. Many universities borrowed heavily from banks to complete the plans. The four Ningxia universities, for instance, have a combined debt of 493 million yuan.

Since universities spend little money to improve the quality of teaching or teachers, why should students bear the universities' swelling expenses? Xiong says. Students, their parents and the public in general won't accept the tuition hike unless the universities can explain their budgets in detail.

Zhang Shaoxiong, a professor of education at Central South University in Changsha, Hunan province, says the rise in university tuition fees should not exceed a certain percentage of the local per capita income. In 2013, the per capita disposable income of urban Chinese residents increased by only 7 percent. This means the increase in fees has put the cost of higher education beyond many people's means.

"This will inevitably affect people's living standards and harm the government's efforts to educational opportunities for all,"Zhang warns. And going by the public's reaction to the increase in tuition fees, he seems right.

The author is a writer of China Daily. yangziman@chinadaily.com.cn