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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
An energetic new intellectual élite is being moulded in Communist China's rapidly growing network of higher educational institutions. Some time from now members of this “new class” are expected to replace the distrusted old-style intellectual. Each year an increasing number of young men and women enter colleges and universities and, emerging four or five years later, take up responsible positions of leadership in the country's economic and intellectual life. Many phases in the training of the present-day Chinese student are still little known to us. Who are, after all, these new students in China's new universities? On what basis are they selected? Who does the selection and how? And, last but not least: why is selection necessary? In the following pages we shall attempt to find answers to some of these questions.
2 Ch'üan-kuo kao-teng hsüeh-hsiao chao-k'ao hsin-sheng-ti kui-ting (Regulations Governing the Enrolment of New Students for Higher Educational Institutions), published annually since 1952.
3 Enrolment Regulations for 1954 and 1957.Google Scholar
4 “Joint enrolment” is understood to have been applied as follows: Individual higher educational institutions within a geographical unit (province, county or city) carried out their selection and enrolment work “jointly”; they together decided upon the Students to be admitted, and distributed the new students among each other on the basis of common agreement. Another form of joint enrolment was that institutions of the same specialty (for example agricultural institutes) of the same geographical area joined in the selection and enrolment of students and distributed them among each other.
5 It should be noted that if it had not been for an exaggerated increase of admissions target in 1956 compelling the institutions to absorb 163,000 freshmen, i.e., about 90 per cent, more than in the previous year (a planning “error” which was later duly renounced), an oversupply of senior middle school graduates would have occurred a year earlier. In this article, we are concerned with the regular higher educational institutions only, i.e., with the ca. 230 institutions that existed prior to August 1958. The appearance later that year of 700–800 new “colleges” and “universities” is said to have created a new shortage of secondary school graduates. Still, the regular “core” institutions probably have many more applicants than they.
6 Jen-min Chiao-yü (People's Education), 10 1957.Google Scholar
7 Decision Concerning the Reform of the Educational System, October 1, 1951. Full text in Hsin-hua Yüeh-Pao (New China Monthly), IV.6. 10 1951.Google Scholar
8 Although the nurober of students of worker and peasant origin showed a steady rise (20–46 per cent, in 1952–53; 29–20 per cent, in 1955–56; and 34–29 per cent, in 1956–57), in the academic year of 1957–58 it reached only 36·42 per cent. (Peking Review, No. 12, 05 20, 1958, p. 16.)Google Scholar
9 “Decree of the RSFSR Council of Commissars,” 08 2, 1918Google Scholar, quoted in Korol, A., Soviet Education for Science and Technology (New York: Technology Press of M.I.T. and John Wiley, 1957), p. 169.Google Scholar
10 Kao-teng hsüeh-hsiao chao-sheng k'ao-shih ta-k'ang (Outlines of Entrance Examinations for Institutions of Higher Education), compiled and published annually by the National Enrolment Committee.
11 A special remark about the “political knowledge” subject gives us a notion as to its content: “In political knowledge, the candidates will this year be examined from the important political events of domestic nature and other important events which took place during the year 1957–58. This is principally to test the awareness and attitude of the students concerning the rectification campaign and the anti-rightist struggle” (Enrolment Regulations, 1958).Google Scholar
12 A foreign language was not listed as a requirement for the years between 1955 and 1958. It was required before 1955, and reappeared again in the new Regulation issued in the summer of 1958. The examination can be taken hi one of the two languages Russian and English. Exemption can be given for those applicants who have not studied foreign languages in middle school.
13 The various categories of applicants for whom priorities are granted have been listed each year in the Enrolment Regulations. They usually include: workers and peasants, students of worker and peasant origin, revolutionary cadres, national minority students, demobilised army personnel, children of revolutionary martyrs, and overseas Chinese students.
14 Enrolment Regulations for 1958 and 1959.Google Scholar
15 Chieh-fang Jih-pao (Liberation Daily), 07 24, 1952.Google Scholar
16 Ibid.
17 Cheng-ming (Contend!), No. 2, (02 10, 1958).Google Scholar
