China Struggles to Change Entrance Exams That Reward the Wealthy

China Struggles to Change Entrance Exams That Reward the Wealthy

Here's a tough one: Is the gaokao — China's notoriously grueling, dayslong college entrance exam — a fair way to funnel the country's brightest students to its top universities?Unlike the questions on the test itself, there's no right answer. Officially, China has unwavering faith in the exam, the single most important component of college admissions since the founding of the People's Republic. Under the gaokao system, anyone with high-enough scores can theoretically enroll at elite universities such as Tsinghua, Peking or Fudan, a first step toward upward mobility.

Unofficially, however, the system is aging poorly. The gaokao is increasingly seen less as a gateway to opportunity and more as a barrier, largely due to a rapidly growing student population and a widening disparity between top schools and all the rest. What's more, the government's most recent efforts to make the test more fair and less stressful have been as divisive as the problems they're attempting to fix.A record 10.7 million students took the test this year, and while the Ministry of Education doesn't release nationwide admissions