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Comment from local press

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-07 08:00

Drop in exam takers tests education authorities

This year 9.57 million students will take the national college entrance examination, 650,000 fewer than last year.

The decline constitutes a challenge to the country's higher education system, and at the same time, also provides an opportunity for long-delayed reforms.

It is estimated that in 2020, the population of 18- to 22-year-olds will be 38 million less than that in 2010. In the following decade, some colleges and universities may go bankrupt because of a shortage of students. So the education authorities should not wait to begin the necessary reforms.

It is a pity that our education departments and schools seem to have no sense of crisis. Amid the dwindling number of students, they are obviously not ready to meet the challenge.

Last year, when publicizing information about the national college entrance examination, the Ministry of Education said that 840,000 high school graduates took a pass on the examination. That startling figure caught public attention and ignited hot discussions. This year, the ministry did not release the number.

The authorities should undertake a thorough study of the statistics and find out how many lost graduates are from the rural areas, and how many from urban areas, how many apply to study abroad, and how many join the army of migrant workers.

Maybe the ministry has been making such a study, but if the results are not publicized, how can schools and students make necessary adjustments?

Excerpts from a comment in Beijing News, June 6

Try to cool down this overheated atmosphere

A US education official said he was surprised by the extreme attention Chinese society pays to the national college entrance examination.

Similar examinations in the US, ACT and SAT, are also important, but they receive far less attention.

People in the US can even hear such things from students as: "Is tomorrow the day for ACT, my God, I almost forgot that. I will have to get up early."

So the examination in the US only means "getting up early" for some students. But in the eyes of most Chinese people, the national examination decides the fate of students. The whole society is thus mobilized for the "big issue."

Construction sites near schools are ordered to halt work, hotels are crowded with students and their families, traffic police work overtime to maintain a smooth flow traffic so no one is late, and residents are asked to take public transport so they leave space on the roads for students trying to get to school.

Do we really need to make such a fuss? A report said that a kindergarten in the city planned to enroll dozens of children and hundreds of parents joined the queue for applications in the middle of the night. So what sort of enrollment rate is there for the national college entrance examination? In Beijing, it is 84.6 percent.

With the ever-growing enrollment rate, college education, to a certain extent, has become a kind of basic education. To stand out from the competition, students now need further education and maybe master's or PhD degrees.

But, if they fail the examination, students can learn some practical skills and work for a while before returning to the school campus after accumulating working experience and money. Amid this manmade hot atmosphere, participating students need to find a way to calm themselves down.

Think about the post-1960 students who took part in the examination after helping their families do farm work. The slogan of "all for the examination" is no more than a commercial. Some obviously care more about the commercial potential behind the examination instead of caring for the students. The hotel rooms and nutrition foods are not given free of charge.

Excerpts from a comment in Mirror Evening News, June 5

(China Daily 06/07/2010)