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Letters and Blogs
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-12 07:50 Fairness and impartiality matter most The recently released proposal for reforming college entrance exam by the 21st Century Education Research Institute has drawn great social attention. The government's proposal on the same issue is coming out soon, and as a matter of public concern the interest is high. What people care about the most, regardless of whether it is the non-governmental or the official version of the proposal, is educational equality. The question is, as more tests have been introduced to evaluate students while more universities are being granted certain quotas for self-enrollment, can we be sure that all these proposals will be implemented without causing more educational corruption? People's worries are not groundless, as their trust in fairness has been time and again hurt by scandals in college entrance exams in recent years. The test frauds and officials' abuse of power to help falsify students' ethnicity that were exposed during this year's exam have added to the anxiety. There are mainly three areas of failure in past reforms of college entrance exams: one, while the reforms are meant to overhaul the situation in which a student was evaluated solely by a single test, in practice, students were being given more burdensome tests; two, while universities are getting more independence in selecting students, the latter can only choose one college for their future study; and three, standards for universities to select students have never been clarified. In fact, to ensure success in reforms for equality of opportunities in education, a series of supportive measures must be carried out simultaneously. Firstly, the process of student recruitment must be made more transparent. So far, in practice, universities used to disclose students' information like their names, native place, graduating high schools and gender, but that's no longer enough. Internet can help to publicize much more crucial information like students' high school test records, their comprehensive performance, points they got in writing tests and interviews, and names of teachers who recruited them etc - such information is vital to ensure fairness in universities' self-enrollment. Secondly, democracy must be strengthened within a university's operation. Specifically, it is vital to establish a professors' commission and a students' self-management commission to take charge of academic affairs and things involving students' interests rather than leaving all the decision-making powers to the administrative department. Thirdly, we should build a modern management system for universities to replace the old one in which university presidents only acted as administrative officials and were not publicly elected. A university should form a council to govern its affairs, make major decisions and publicly select a president according to his or her capabilities. Xiong Binqi, professor from Shanghai Jiao Tong University http://xiongbingqi.blog.sohu.com/129266528.html Readers' comments are welcome. Please send mail to Letters to the Editor, China Daily, 15 Huixin Dongjie, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100029 China. Send faxes to (86-10) 6491-8377. Send e-mail to opinion@chinadaily.com.cn or letters@chinadaily.com.cn or to the individual columnists. China Daily reserves the right to edit all letters. Thank you. (China Daily 08/12/2009 page8) |
