Daniel Garst

Abolish hukou-related university admission quotas

By Daniel Garst (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-05 09:39

Just over a month ago, a million-plus Chinese high school seniors underwent that dreaded rite of passage into university life, the gaokao examination.

Many foreigners in and outside of China believe that this test is the sole criteria used in university admissions. However, admissions are also affected by where students were born and their hukou.

Of course the residence registration (hukou) system's main impact on education is to deny the children of rural hukou-holding migrant workers living in Chinese cities free primary and middle school education. But the hukou system also makes it more difficult for these children, along with those who stay in the countryside, to get into universities located in some big cities.

This is because these cities reserve a disproportionately large quota of university admission places for their own hukou-holding students. Thus, Beijing students are given preference over non-Beijing students in the fierce competition to get into the capital's universities. Indeed, the former can get into these universities even when their gaokao scores are lower than those of non-Beijing applicants.

The bias in favor of Beijing hukou holders matters hugely because the city is not only China's political capital, but its higher education center as well. Three of the country's top five universities, Peking University (Beida), Renmin, and Tsinghua, are located here. Beijing is also home to the best Chinese foreign language university, Beijing Foreign Studies University (Beiwai), best teacher college, Beijing Normal University, many other upper-tier universities, and a host of solid middle-tier institutions.

This system is unfair because many highly qualified applicants from other provinces are passed over for admission into Beijing's universities in favor of less stellar students from the capital.

All reasonable people would surely agree that one should get into a university because of one's qualifications, rather than place of birth.

If basing admissions solely on gaokao scores means that a disproportionate number of Shandong and Hubei students, who consistently have the highest gaokao scores - Beijing students are lower scoring - attend the capital's universities, then so be it.

The hukou associated admission quotas naturally lowers the quality of students attending Beijing universities. To be sure, this is less a problem at the very best universities; even the Beijing students given preferential admission into Tsinghua and Peking universities have stratospheric gaokao scores. But the admission quotas in favor of the capital's hukou holders have arguably made the capital's middle-tier universities dumping grounds for mediocre Beijing students with low gaokao scores.

I saw this during my year of instructing English at one such middling university, the Beijing Second Foreign Languages University (Erwai).

With a few notable exceptions, the Beijing Erwai students were a pretty rum lot. Not only were these students not that clever, but they were fairly lazy to boot.

For example, one of my freshmen level students, a tall, leggy and quite lovely young lady, spent most class sessions reading Japanese and South Korean fashion magazines. And many of the Beijing boys made no effort to prepare for the group activities the students were called upon to do in class.

In contrast, the non-Beijing students were markedly brighter, reflecting higher overall gaokao scores. Moreover, they studied much harder than their Beijing classmates. This better work ethic was undoubtedly driven by their greater need to succeed after getting into Erwai.

Unlike many of my Beijing students, these kids hailed from modest backgrounds. They couldn't rely on guanxi, or relationships, from their parents, who had none to speak of, to grease the skids for them after graduation.

My fashion-conscious freshman student, on the other hand, had no need to work hard, because her father was vice-president of a big company.

This was certainly not true for my two best former erwai students, a farm girl from Shandong and young lady from Xi'an whose parents owned a small hardware store. The former is now getting a master's degree at Beiwai, while the latter is doing graduate work at Beida.

I am very happy that these two exceptional non-Beijing students were able to get their feet in the door of the capital's higher education system, but I fear that many others like them are denied the same opportunity by the hukou-system related admission quotas.

For their sake, it's high time to abolish this aspect of China's registration system.