(TibetanReview.net, Mar21’24) — As China speaks of the primacy of the interests of “all ethnic groups”, designedly including the Han predominant group, to combat what it calls “ethnic minority exceptionalism” under President Xi Jinping’s assimilationist call for “a sense of community for the Chinese nation”, national college entrance exam seats available from Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) are being offered to candidates elsewhere in the country, for a hefty price.
The TAR government has promised this week that people from elsewhere in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would have their children allowed to take university entrance exams there in return for an investment of at least 3 million yuan ($417,000), an unusual move to exploit what is considered an easier scoring system, reported Reuters Mar 21.
The big attraction for those seeking to avail the offer is that TAR, with a population that is 90% ethnic Tibetan, has one of the PRC’s lowest college entry barriers, a key edge for the millions of students who take the competitive “gaokao” entrance exams each year, hoping to secure lucrative white-collar jobs after graduation, the report said.
The plan is reported to have sparked debate on Chinese social media, with some posters arguing it would be unfair to students from the mountainous region, and others supporting it.
“What about the enrolment rate of kids born in Tibet?” one user on the popular Weibo platform was quoted as having asked.
Amid growing concern about such tendency as the exam approaches in early June, China’s education ministry was stated to have issued a notice on Mar 20 vowing to crack down on “gaokao migrants”, as students seeking to benefit from such a plan have been dubbed.
The report noted that finding jobs had become harder as the world’s second-largest economy slowed, with the jobless rate hitting a record 21.3% last June among those aged 16 to 24, which included college students.
The TAR, with a gross domestic product that is less than 2% of the richest province, Guangdong in the south, was reported to have said this week the qualifying investment would have to stay untouched for five years.
China’s differing college admission criteria reflects preferential policies meant for ethnic minorities. This could be seen in the fact that in 2023, a student in the TAR scoring at least 300 out of 750 on the entrance exam would have qualified for an undergraduate place at more than 1,200 universities nationwide. By comparison, those taking the exam in Beijing would have needed a score of 448, the report said.
The bad news for college aspirants from the TAR is that with qualifying scores partly linked to overall exam performance, an influx of exam takers from provinces with better education resources threatens to drive up Tibet’s minimum scores and hurt regional candidates, the report said.