Abstract
“School Land” is the general term for various funds of Confucian schools, including land rent, real estate rent, and Interest income. “School Land” can be divided into two stages in the development of Chinese history. In the first stage, it was the main fund for Confucianism during the Song and Yuan Dynasties. But it stopped in the early Ming Dynasty.In the Ming Dynasty, the funds for Confucian schools were exchanged for other ways.The expenses of public officials and students in the Confucian schools shall be borne by the farm rent, and the sacrifices and other official duties are supported by the fiscal canton system.
Until the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the surge in the number of students caused a lack of funding.In order to solve the problem of Confucian schools funding, local officials and elites have also used the method of establishing “School Land” to expand Confucian schools funding. This new fund will also solve the problem of helping poor students.
Most of the”School Land” management in the Ming Dynasty was led by Sheng-yüan(生員), and officials at all levels were only supervised. But in the Qing Dynasty, the manager moved to the degree holding literatus(地方紳士).In the Ming Dynasty, the central government did not have a management system for “School Land”. In the Qing Dynasty, the importance of ”School Land” was noticed because the government transferred the Confucian schools funds to military expenses and the Confucian schools’s funds were insufficient.Therefore, for the first time, a national statistical survey was conducted on School Land rent, and the tuition fees were paid to the officials of the central government’s education commissioner(提學、學政) on a regular basis every year. This fund is independently called a “Fixed School Land rent”. “Fixed School Land rent” must be listed under the other parts of the Complete Book of Land Tax and Service(賦役全書). But,the pressure of transferring revenue“Fixed School Land rent” every year forces many local education officials to voluntarily give tax collection rights to local officials to perform.
The management rules for starting the”School Land” in the late Ming Dynasty are becoming more and more detailed.The awareness of the”School Land” in the society is getting stronger and stronger. This trend began in the Ch’eng-hua(成化) reign, generally in the Chia-ching(嘉靖) reign, and became a common sense after the Wan-li(萬曆) reign.Until the late Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, various educational institutions are also aware of the importance of owning”School Land” and funding management.In the late Qing Dynasty, Sichuan Province also had an institution that unified the management of the assets of various educational institutions. It’s name called the “School Land Ju”.(學田局)
The importance of ”School Land” in society is because people believed that investing in school is a means of helping elites to be independent. Based on the high degree of consensus on the importance and protection of ”School Land” in the society. The people give the land to the school and let the school act as the landowner, pay the land tax and lease the land to themselves for a long time. The people donate the fields not for education, but to defend their own property.