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China’s national college entrance examination has for decades been compared to a stampede of thousands of soldiers and horses across a single log bridge and long heralded as a symbol of fairness in selecting bright young people. However, the attraction of this exam is declining.
Fewer Chinese students are choosing to take the once-a-year exam, usually on June 7 and 8, according to a new study. Meanwhile, more of them are considering studying abroad.
In the past four years the number of students taking the exam fell by nearly 1.4 million from 10.5 million in 2008 to 9.15 million in 2012, said the 2012 Report on the National College Entrance Exam released by China Education Online (www.eol.cn), which claims to be the largest Chinese education portal.
The phenomenon of “three quits,” referring to high school graduates who either quit the exam, university application or college registration, is increasingly popular, according to the report.
Outbound students
Kuai Pengzhou, a researcher with the School of Economics and Business Administration of Beijing Normal University, said that the main reason behind the decrease in the number of exam takers is China’s falling birth rate. According to his calculation, China’s total school-age population will drop by 8.6 million every year between 2010 and 2020, representing an annual decline of 3.23 percent.
Those sitting the national college entrance examination over the last three years were mostly born after 1991, falling outside a baby boom in China from 1985 to 1990. The demographic transformation also explains why attendance for the exam peaked at 2008 but began to decline each subsequent year.
Meanwhile, more graduates are applying to overseas universities. The report by China Education Online shows the number of Chinese students going abroad for further studies has grown at an annual rate of more than 20 percent since 2008.
There were 157,558 Chinese college students studying in the United States in the 2010-11 academic year, up 23 percent from the previous year, making China the largest source of international students in the United States, according to the New York City-based Institute of International Education.
Before institutions of higher learning in China began to enlarge their enrollment in 1999, the highly competitive national college entrance examination used to keep a large number of young people out of higher education whose scores weren’t high enough. Around the year 2000 the majority of high school graduates studying abroad were students who had not been admitted to any college in China. To guarantee higher education for their children, wealthy parents were prepared to pay the tuition and living costs of their children in a foreign country.
However, the decline in the number of exam takers is expected to bring the university admission exam’s pass rate up to 75 percent in China this year, compared with just 57 percent in 2008. This has made it much easier for Chinese high school graduates in 2012 to access higher education at home. Take Shanghai for example. In 2011, nearly 90 percent of all 60,000 students sitting the national college entrance examination in the city were admitted by an institution of higher learning. This year, all the examinees in Shanghai will be able to enroll in a college or university.
The current craze for studying abroad is characterized by an increasing number of students who, though they can be admitted by a reputable Chinese university, opt for a foreign institution. Foreign institutions are seen to have greater international prestige. Many of those now seeking foreign degrees are top students from prestigious high schools in big cities, whose parents belong to China’s growing middle class.
Zhang Xi, a sophomore at one of Beijing’s top high schools, told the 21st Century Business Herald published in Guangzhou, southern Guangdong Province, that he was preparing to apply to study abroad, as were half of his classmates, in hopes to secure better career opportunities after graduation.“Many senior students told me that a diploma from a domestic institution could not guarantee a decent job,” Zhang said.
Zhang’s mother, a civil servant who graduated from the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai, said that the tuition and living expenses for attending Chinese colleges were increasingly high. “I’d rather let my son study abroad and get a more competitive diploma,”she said. “At least he will be able to master a foreign language.”
The increase in parents like Zhang’s mother has pushed the number of Chinese students studying overseas to 340,000 in 2011, of whom 22.6 percent were high school graduates, according to a study by the China Education Association for International Exchange.
In recent years, an increasing number of high schools around China have opened an “international division,” which develops a curriculum with more emphasis on English language studies and the Western pedagogical tradition. Almost all the graduates of these programs forgo the national college entrance examination and eventually spend their university years abroad. Although tuitions for students in these programs are much higher, ranging between 60,000 yuan($9,421) and 100,000 yuan ($15,702) a year in Beijing, fierce competition means the enrollment rate is below 10 percent for some programs.
According to the report by China Education Online, the proportion of high school graduates applying for foreign universities against the total number of graduates is still small, but it has been steadily growing year on year. The report quoted the proportion of Nanjing, capital of east China’s Jiangsu Province, which jumped from 0.7 percent in 2007 to 1.7 percent in 2009. Citywide, the figures were higher in key high schools and reached between 5 and 10 percent, according to the report.
There have been reports on the low investment returns from overseas education: Graduates from foreign universities are not paid significantly higher in China though their study expenses are several times those of domestic institutions. However, parents supporting the current push for studying abroad hold increasingly rational expectations.
“Expensive and high-quality education does not deliver returns overnight. If I spent 1 million yuan ($157,018) on my son’s education, I wouldn’t expect him to find a high-paid job the day after he graduated. Life is a long-distance race instead of a sprint,” an anonymous father who sent his son to study in a high school in the United States told China Youth Daily.
Forced reforms
Last year, nearly 1,000 institutions of higher learning in China reportedly failed to meet their recruitment targets.
“Institutions of higher learning in China used to have no survival pressure as a college diploma was highly sought after and respected everywhere,” said Chen Zhiwen, Editor in Chief of China Education Online. He said that instead of pursuing the universal goal of becoming a major research-based university, universities and colleges in China now need to focus on nurturing their unique strength in certain fields and producing competitive graduates in the labor market.
“Parents send their children to study overseas not simply to avoid the enormous pressure of studying hard for the national college entrance examination. Many of them are disappointed at China’s higher education,”said Professor Cheng Fangping at the Renmin University of China in Beijing.
The Beijing-based 21st Century Education Research Institute released a report on China’s educational development in March 2011. According to the report, the public’s satisfaction over the general education quality declined compared with two years ago and was “between considerably satisfied and not very satisfied.”Many college graduates complained that they learned little during their four years in Chinese universities.
“Chinese colleges must be reformed,”said Xiong Bingqi, a long-time observer of China’s higher education. “I suggest they remove all application restrictions and allow students to change their major after admission to meet the personal demands of students for higher education and be more competitive.”
Many experts said that as the students’pool dries up, higher education institutions in China would feel the pressure to reform themselves.
“This is good news for China’s higher education in the long run. Institutions have to reevaluate their strengths and adjust their development goals. Meanwhile, China’s overall social environment has become more conducive to educational reforms,” Chen said.