China's College Admissions Process
The article “China’s College Admission Crisis” published in last week’s Opinion section of The Exonian provided a good analysis of China’s college enrollment system. However, several points need to be clarified regarding what’s actually going on behind the admission crisis.
It is true that the region-by-region test administration in China’s college admission exam, Gaokao, has resulted in unfair circumstances; the students from the major cities in China usually receive an easier version of test than those in the rural areas. For example, the Gaokao test in Shanghai is normally easier than that of its neighboring provinces, Jiangsu and Zhejiang; a student in Beijing can go to a much better college than a student in Shandong province who achieved the same score. However, the main factor that leads to the problem is not bureaucracy or corruption. It is China’s distinct feature of regional differences, which makes it very hard to unify the country with the same standard.
It is China’s distinct feature of regional differences, which makes it very hard to unify the country with the same standard.
The majority of China’s top universities are located in the economically developed cities, offering students in big cities more chances to receive a better education. In addition, it is becoming a new trend that families in big cities prefer to send their children to study abroad. The soaring number of students abroad considerably reduces the number of students taking the Gaokao test, forcing the administration to further lower the admission criterion in big cities.Unlike America, China has an extremely uneven physical distribution of its population. One example is that, in 1987, a Chinese demographer proposed that if we were to draw a line from a northeastern city (Heihe), to a southwestern city (Tengchong), we would discover that 94.4 percent of China’s population lives on the eastern side of the line, while only 5.6 percent of the population inhabits the western side, which in fact takes up 57.1 percent of the total territory. The imbalanced allocation of population, resulting from the differences in climate and geographic features, contributes to the uneven economic development and disproportionate distribution of educational resource among regions.
In recent years, universities in China are paying more attention to students’ overall development apart from their test scores. An increasing number of prestigious universities in China are now carrying out a policy called “Independent Recruitment.” The overall excellent students are nominated by their high schools to attend an interview with the professors from the universities, the topic of which covers the analysis hotspot issues, literary classics, frontier technologies, etc. The admission officers now evaluate not only a student’s performance in school but also his (or her) performance during the interview, including the ability to quickly respond and think innovatively. If a student passes the interview, he (or she) still needs to take Gaokao to test academic proficiency, but the required admission score is greatly reduced. Chinese universities are now considering a student more as an individual “person” instead of a “test machine,” which will gradually change the test-driven atmosphere in Chinese high schools.
In recent years, China’s Department of Education has experimented Gaokao reform in several cities, aiming to reduce students’ pressure upon taking the test. Students now need to take three elective subject tests and three major subject tests. Instead of sitting for all the subject tests in three days, students are now able to start taking the majority of the elective subject tests from the second year of high school, and two chances are available each year for the English test. In order to encourage students to participate in community service, 60 hours of voluntary work is now required for high school graduation. Many high schools in China are recognizing the importance of physical well being and putting more emphasis on improving the quality of physical education by renovating facilities, increasing the number of P.E. lessons and developing school teams.
While the inequality that lies in the distribution of educational resources in China still remains an alarming issue, it is worth noting that China’s college admission system is undergoing drastic reform for the sake of its students.