Reform requires caution

Chinese students take part in the first examination of the national college entrance exam, also known as gaokao, at a school in Guiyang city, southwest China's Guizhou province, on June 7, 2014. [Photo/IC]

After they learned on the weekend that 38,000 places from Jiangsu's quota for university enrollment will be given to high school graduates from provinces or regions with meager education resources, the anger some people in East China's Jiangsu province have expressed is understandable, as they worry it will mean their own kids will have less chance of getting enrolled in good universities.

Despite the promises from both the local and central education authorities that the enrollment rate for local students by universities will not drop this year, more needs to be done to convince local residents that the authorities are serious about what they say.

The move to give more university places to students from provinces or regions with fewer institutes of higher learning is a bid by the central government to promote education equality by getting all provinces and regions to more equally share educational resources.

Nevertheless, there can never be too much caution in designing and putting into practice such a measure.

Of all the concerns that need to be taken into consideration, the primary one is that the interests of local residents should be well balanced.

It is also important for the decision-making process to be transparent. Local people need to be kept well informed about how their chances of sharing good education resources will be affected by the adjustment in quotas.

Now people in Jiangsu believe that their cheese has been moved without their knowledge. Thanks to the lack of transparency about the move, they have enough reason to believe that their own interests are being infringed on.

Reforms concerning the enrollment of college students are no small matter, as they involve the interests of all families who hope their children will go to college. Education equality should not be achieved by the shifting of educational resources in favor of the some regions at the cost of those in the other ones. There should be wiser ways to achieve the goal.

--China Daily