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"Giant leap" in education spurs nasty slump in academics

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-03-29 14:29

The mainland's "giant leap" in education starting from 1990s, which has resulted in severe academic corruption, should be ended, said an article in the Sun, a newspaper in Hong Kong. Here's the excerpt:

"Some universities may go bankrupt within 10 years", forecast and warned by Gu Hailiang, a prominent economist and the president of central China's Wuhan University.

He made the remark when China's newborn population was decreasing. According to the education bureau, the number of university applicants in Beijing this year has decreased by 20%, and Shanghai has failed to meet its recruitment demand for three consecutive years. The decreasing tendency of the higher education-age population will aggravate the competition, and some of the colleges and universities may be eliminated, which will lead to social pains.

The pain may be inevitable. When the "giant leap" campaign in higher-education dominated by administrative authorities started in the 1990s, the climate of seeking quick success and instant benefits prevailed. With Project 211 and Project 985 unveiled in the 1990s, tens of billions of yuan have been steadily flowing into educational departments to create competitive world-class universities in the short term.

Many universities spared no effort to expand scales and increase enrollment at any cost. As a result, universities all over the country together have up to 100 billion yuan in debt and some universities are forced to sell their land.

During the campaign, the vanity of the big nation was gratified while the quality of university education suffered. From 1998 to 2008, universities' enrollment rate rose by 20 percent per year, which is double the rate of GDP growth of the corresponding period. Nowadays, China's number of university students, the amount of published papers and the scale of universities rank first in the world, satisfying those who crave quick success.

The administrative authority power has expanded while the academic status has declined. Some professors are struggling for official titles instead of academic excellence. The campus is permeated with a bureaucratic atmosphere.

Academic corruption is on the rise, while the quality of papers is declining. Paying for papers to be published has become common practice. A great many professors and students are not ashamed of plagiarism on the excuse that they are the norm. How absurd that a medical paper has been plagiarized six times by 25 people!

The giant leap campaign in education has achieved nothing but "blowout" of the number of students, "blowout" of education corruption and also "blowout" of academic plagiarism. If the bankruptcy of some universities brings an end to the campaign, it would be a blessing in disguise indeed.