Something I didn’t know, that surprises me is the space set-aside for local kids. “Most” spaces? Does that mean the government is actively favoring richer kids in setting aside places for those in prosperous areas or is it akin to state schools in the US where instate kids get an advantage (usually…).
I’m assuming this is not a new phenomenon, richer kids probably do better than poor ones in China for the same reasons they do here:
But I didn’t know that most places were set side and kids from rural areas had to score higher then the city kids to get in.
Gosh that sounds familiar. There’s some kind of limited(?) AA in China, and some effort to increase enrollment of students from poor families, and wealthier (maybe middle class is the right word here) families are feeling that “their” spaces are being unfairly taken away.
There is also significant inequality in primary and secondary education in China that limits students from rural areas from competing effectively in the gaokao (entrance exam):
Interesting links ucb. I’d always assumed it was just the top scorers that got in (since the gaokao is held up as an example of a meritocratic college admissions system in contrast to “holistic” here), had no idea about quotas by province.
It’s been moving that way (towards holistic from relying on a single test). But the in-province preference has been there from the beginning. The problem is that the best unis are in the richest provinces, so kids from poorer provinces have it harder in multiple ways.
A large part of those Beijing parents’ reaction other than self-interest is due to remembering living through or hearing about the Cultural Revolution from older siblings. During the Cultural Revolution(1966-76), Mao and his allies eliminated the gaokao and admission policies were structured to prioritize the admission of those from farmer/laborer backgrounds and those who demonstrated the most political zeal by yelling radical Maoist slogans, creating large character posters with such slogans, and participating in Maoist sanctioned hooliganism and violence as Red Guards.
My great-aunt who remained in China after '49 and was initially quite idealistically supportive of the Revolution was a Physics Prof at a lower-tiered university in the Beijing area and recalled the drastic decline in the quality and academic preparedness of students admitted once the Cultural Revolution began. Most of the students she saw in her classes after the start of the Cultural Revolution who were admitted solely on the basis of “good worker/farmer” or “revolutionary” backgrounds, but were seriously academically underprepared, not very serious about academics, and/or were practically illiterate*.
Her status as an intellectual and having many relatives who fled after '49 along with her pointing out these issues factored into she and her family being persecuted by those very Red Guards…including some of her former students**, imprisoned, and sent to the countryside as a forced laborer along with her family. It also disrupted the educations of my aunts and those of their generation for around a decade.
Experiences by many in my great-aunt’s position and most of those who lived through the experience are such that they tend to be skeptical or reject any policies which resembled those they remembered from the Cultural Revolution years.***
In some ways, this resembled what happened to CCNY/CUNY colleges after the sudden introduction of open admission policies in 1969…except the scope/effects were far worse in Mainland China during the Cultural Revolution years as the effects of the flood of underprepared/illiterate students and prioritization of Maoist driven from the top political propagandization efforts were such academic teaching and research in universities were effectively shut down for most of those tumultuous years.
This factor is one reason why many private sector and public sector employers in Mainland China make it a point to scrutinize or even automatically reject job applicants who graduated college during the Cultural Revolution years unless they can prove they have the educational/intellectual acumen they'd expect from a college graduate. One way to demonstrate this was to get a graduate degree from a respectable/elite foreign university.
** Thankfully, those former students realized how wrongful and atrocious their conduct was and formally apologized afterwards as a group.
*** Exceptions were those who benefited from privileges during the Cultural Revolution…fanatical unreconstructed Red Guard leaders and farmers/laborers/Maoist political hacks whose talents were limited mostly to yell/create large character posters with Maoist slogans. Talents which weren’t in much demand after the Cultural Revolution ended and Deng Xiaoping and his faction brought back the national college entrance exams with a vengeance in light of what transpired during the Cultural Revolution’s decade of turmoil. Consequently, most in those groups ended up getting left behind when the Dengist economic reforms started in the '80s and accelerated in the '90s and '00s.
However, @cobrat, , China’s not trying to put a bunch of farm kids who can’t read into the Us, they’re trying to allow kids who scored HIGHER than local kids but live in a different province to attend, There’s ZERO reason to fear an avalanche of patriotic but dumb kids in these selective universities.
That may be true, but in the eyes of those from urban areas, they approve of this setup precisely as a reaction to the college admission policies from the Cultural Revolution years they remembered/heard about from older siblings.
In short, the feeling among many from what I’ve heard/gathered over the years is that those from poorer rural areas need to prove they are better on the gaokao for them to even exhibit any consideration as to whether they should be counted as academic/intellectual equals. This feeling is especially strong among those who were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution because of their “intellectual” status.
Ironically, one effect of the Cultural Revolution intended by Mao to raise the social status and mandate equality/superior treatment of those from farmer/laborer and “revolutionary” backgrounds is that it ended up exacerbating the “country bumpkin/laborer/Maoist political hack” stereotype of those from those backgrounds and/or those who support policies strongly resembling those which existed during the Cultural Revolution.
Those negative stereotypes of those in that group also factored into what transpired during the 6-4 protests in 1989 as the vast majority of PLA troops sent in to shoot the student demonstrators and urban laborers protesting with mostly came from rural farming or laboror family backgrounds. That and there was a mutual contempt between the two as the PLA even in the late '80s was transitioning from being an elite competitive career path*…especially for those from poor rural farming/laborer families to being one of near last resort.
Up until the early '00s, the level of competitiveness to join the PLA was such that they'd reject someone with less than 20/20 vision for any position.
I think it has nothing to do with their older siblings’ memories of the Cultural Revolution and everything to do with having fewer places in the best universities for their own kids. Which is clearly what they are saying when they are protesting.
^ Ha. Everything in China is. Many people on Wall Street think (or thought) that they are titans of the universe and can outcompete anyone, but I wager they wouldn’t last a few days as a street peddler in Shanghai.
However, memories of the Cultural Revolution are very strong among parents of current HS/college aged students in Mainland China and some Chinese-Americans here in the US like my aunts. Many who were elementary/middle school/HS aged and most affected by the disruptions to their own educations and the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution years don’t want a repeat of that affecting their own kids…including policies resembling ones they viewed as effectively punishing them for their intellectual/urban family backgrounds.
Incidentally, the aunts whose educations were disrupted ended up having to finish their K-12 here, attending public colleges not very popular among in-staters, and worked themselves into the middle classes. Funny enough, all their kids who were born/mostly raised in the US have either graduated or are currently students at a couple of Ivies.
I’ve heard that in USA, minority + legacy + VIP (donors) + VIP (children of politicians) + recruited athletes + low SES take, approximately 60% of slots.
Less than half of the slots in USA are awarded to students on merit based criteria. Less than half !!! (of course, it creates issues in colleges, when you have such intellectually diverse group of students. )
Chinese universities already hold around 30% of spaces for those with “innovative thinking, creativity, or skills in sport or art” and they hold “most” (so more than 50%) for those who live locally.
They want to set aside “6.5 percent of spots in the top schools for students from less developed provinces” - who actually score HIGHER on the test than those who get in locally.
So China’s system is not merit-based (based on test alone) at all. It favors wealthy city families, more than the US system, it seems.
The discrimination in china against rural folk goes far beyond just upper education. It all starts w the hukou household registration system. It’s an internal inmigration system fraught w human rights abuses.
In essence, it would be like affluent white folk in Connecticut barring poor white folk from Idaho from moving to Connecticut to compete for housing, jobs, school slots.
“I’ve heard that in USA, minority + legacy + VIP (donors) + VIP (children of politicians) + recruited athletes + low SES take, approximately 60% of slots.”
It is nothing short of bizarre that you assume minorities, legacies, athletes, and low SES kids must not qualify academically.
The Hukou as implemented in Mainland China was designed to tightly control movement of rural and urban populations as part of the command oriented planned economy one would expect from an avowed Communist state such as the Soviet Union or Mainland China after '49.
It was also used as a means to punish dissidents or those considered to have “bad family backgrounds” such as my great-aunt’s family by forcibly relocating them to the rural areas and changing their hukou registration to make their attempts to move back to their urban home city nearly impossible.
One great irony of this use of the hukou system was once the Red Guards were perceived as getting “too far out of control” even for Mao and his faction, the Red Guards themselves ended up being relocated to the countryside and subjected to coerced laboring on rural farms and factories in the same manner as my great-aunt and her family were for the crime of being “bad” intellectuals.
It seems China is keeping out students who are MORE qualified academically, who make higher test scores despite attending schools that are not as well funded as the urban schools.
While the schools may not be as well funded, that doesn’t really affect the curriculum between those schools as the curriculum is practically the same nationwide as the curriculum is dictated by the central government.
Where the difference lies is in the areas of teacher effectiveness(not many of the best/brightest teachers are inclined to work/move to rural areas…especially in light of the negative associations from the “send intellectuals down to the countryside” policies during the Cultural Revolution*) and homelife support along with financial resources/tutoring access as needed.
Vast majority of the intellectuals sent down to the countryside ended up moving back to their home cities sometime after the Cultural Revolution ended once that policy was abolished or some like my great-aunt and her family immigrated to the US and other countries in the early '80s. The "send intellectuals down to the countryside policy" affected an entire generation of families with intellectual status and thus considered "bad" by the Maoist faction during the Cultural Revolution and most are still understandably bitter about those times/that experience.