Top-notch student barred from key universities
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-07-19 09:10

Li Yang, 16, obtained first place in this year's national college entrance examination among Hainan Province's 44,929 students who took the test. His score of 897 theoretically qualifies him to apply at any university in the country.

Li Yang [baidu]

However, his university applications to top schools were officially disqualified on Friday by the Hainan Provincial Education Department.

The department said Li was an "examination immigrant" - meaning the amount of time he studied in Hainan did not meet provincial regulations.

The regulation stipulates that only students who have Hainan residence permits and finish the last two years of high school in the province are entitled to apply to top universities. Students who fulfill one of the two requirements can only apply to common universities.

Li has a Hainan residence permit. But he spent more than 10 years in Hubei Province's education system. He completed his last 1 1/2 years of high school in Hainan.

Li was one of the tens of thousands of examination immigrants across the country. An official with the Hainan Provincial Education Department disclosed that more than 9,600 high school students from the provinces of Henan, Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi went to Hainan to take the national college entrance examination. They wanted to take advantage of Hainan's lower university recruitment standards.

The content of the entrance examination in some provinces is almost entirely unified. But admissions standards for university enrollment for students from different provinces vary dramatically.

The variations are due to regional education imbalances caused by economic disparity.

Due to less investment in education, the quality of primary school and middle schools in economically backward provinces is lower than in affluent provinces.

Therefore, the government lowered admission standards for students from economically and educationally backward provinces to ensure a certain proportion of students still receive higher education.

This policy has been criticized for causing "unfair" competition. As a consequence of the policy, examinees from affluent provinces face fierce competition and admission requirements are dozens of points higher than those for students from poor provinces.

Under such circumstances, some students from affluent provinces have started to migrate to poorer provinces and autonomous regions including Hainan, Xinjiang and Ningxia.

Examination immigrants, who received better elementary school education in their hometowns, typically perform better in national college entrance examinations compared to local students.

To prevent this, education departments in many poor provinces have created impediments for examination immigrants. The case of Li Yang is one student caught by the changes.

Chinese educational experts have been watching the issue closely. They are urging more investment in education in poor provinces to homogenize the quality of primary and middle school education.

Ultimately they want to completely unify university enrollment standards across the country.

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