艺考腐败(yìkǎo fǔbài): Corruption around arts colleges' admission exams

For years, the independent admission exams of arts colleges have drawn wide public concern, because of the serious corruption associated with them.

In recent years several serious corruption cases have been reported. In 2014, the former secretary of the Party committee in Hubei Institute of Fine Arts Liu Gang was sentenced to 11 years in prison for taking advantage of his position to make illegal profits from the college's admission exam. In 2016, Meng Xinyang, former dean of the music college, Minzu University of China, was sentenced to five years imprisonment for accepting 1.23 million yuan ($180,000) to help 13 students pass the college's admission exam.

The reason that the admission exams for arts colleges have bred corruption is that the evaluation of an applicant's performance in an arts exam is highly dependent on the examiners' judgment. It is much easier for the examiners to practice favoritism during these exams compared with other exams with strong objective standards.

However, it doesn't mean the admission exams for arts colleges don't have any standards at all. For the experts in this field, it is not too difficult to judge whether the examinees have passed the exams or not.

The more important reason for the corruption though is the lack of a necessary supervision system.

A complete profit chain has formed around the admission exams for arts colleges. It involves the examinees and their parents, arts exam training agencies as well as the examinees, because many examinees also become teachers of the exam training agencies. Strict inspection and supervision is necessary to break these chains of corruption.