At 9 a.m. on Sunday, 5.27 million students sat quietly in thousands upon thousands of classrooms across China, ready to begin college entrance examination which is probably the most important examination they will ever sit.
"I am sure my daughter will do quite well in the exam," said Mr. Zhou who, like many other Chinese parents, was waiting anxiously outside the school.
He said his daughter did not worry about the exams at all, whereas he himself sometimes was still haunted by the nightmare of sitting his examination.
"It is not as tough to enter college as 20 years ago as colleges and universities have begun taking in more and more students," he recalled, "I think my daughter's generation is much luckier than mine."
The divergent attitudes to Zhou's college entrance exams and his daughter's are attributed to changes in China's higher educational system.
Official statistics available show that 52 percent of Chinese university candidates could get admitted this year, but in 1981 the figure was only 2.4 percent.
The reforms in China's higher education have brought tremendous changes to educational institutes.
In 1999, Tsinghua University announced its merger with the Chinese Central Academy of Arts and Design. And a few months later, the Beijing Medical University was officially became the Health Science Center of Peking University.
The mergers promoted the expansion of the two prestigious institutions of higher learning, which are on their ways of becoming world-famous universities with a comprehensive range of subjects.
Statistics show that from 1996 to 2000, a total of 387 colleges and universities in China were reduced to 212 through merging.
Moreover, colleges and universities are restructuring and improving their teaching methods and readjusting their curriculum.
Wang Dazhong, president of Tsinghua University said that while cutting out 20 percent of total class time, his university has added to its curriculum more fundamental subjects in the fields of mathematics, natural sciences and humanities. The move is designed to "train students to be good all-rounders," Wang said.
With China's integration into the world economy, specific courses like MBA and MPA are heavily subscribed in universities. To train students with market-oriented knowledge and expertise has now become a way for Chinese colleges and universities to reform their teaching systems.
Meanwhile, the reform in China's higher educational system has brought higher salaries and better conditions to university faculty staffs. Government departments have also carried out activities to draw more talented Chinese from home and overseas to work for China's colleges and universities. The proportion of faculty to student has reached 1:14, close to the world's average.
A few weeks ago, a draft law on the promotion of non-governmental education was submitted to the Standing Committee of the Chinese National People's Congress (NPC) for deliberation. The draft stated private schools should enjoy the same rights as public ones.
According to official statistics, by 2000 there were 1,280 non-governmental higher educational institutes altogether with 981,700 students on campus. And experts predict the future promulgation of the law on private education will provide more chances for Chinese people to undertake higher education.
With the wide spread of information technology, higher education is also available in China's hinterland areas. Through projects like remote education, it is accessible to the people around the country.
It is true that the Chinese people still have to compete for the chance of entering colleges and universities, and this will remain unchanged in the foreseeable future. But it is also undeniable that competition for higher education has changed much from that of two decades ago. It is thought the higher education system will give Chinese young people an increasing number of opportunities.
(Xinhua News Agency July 8, 2002)
