The graph demonstrates the number of people enrolled on four different types of educational course in China in the period 2008 to 2012.
Overall, with the exception of literacy, the number of students on all the other courses climbed gradually with undergraduates easily outnumbering all other types of student.
The first key feature shows that literacy courses had the lowest number of participants overall for the whole period. This type of course is the only one which showed a downward trend, beginning with just over 1.5 million students in 2008 then dripping to almost 0 by 2010. Uptake rose slightly in 2012 to just under a million but this course type remained the lowest in terms of student numbers.
On the other hand, the proportion of students on undergraduate courses showed the highest increase throughout the period and numbers on this type of course increased steadily from around 19 million in 2008 to 23 million in 2012. These courses had roughly four times as many students as the other types of course. Similarly, numbers of students enrolled as postgraduates and using online courses followed a similar upward trend and increased moderately from 2008 to 2012, ending with around 2 million and 5 million participants respectively in 2012.