China education: parents decry 50-50 shot at academic degree, and they’re rolling the dice on a costly plan B overseas for the kids
- An education policy enacted six years ago means that only half of junior high students in China can go on to get academic degrees in the country, and many parents don’t like those odds
- Despite Beijing’s attempt to crack down on tutoring in recent years, many families are finding that costs of ensuring an academic leg-up for their children are rising
Over the past three years, Joey Lu endured a gruelling study regimen at her junior high school, with about three extra hours of additional cramming nearly every evening.
Hard work and splashing out on costly tutors, however, weren’t enough to gain her admission into an academic high school in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou – an essential step toward being admitted to a domestic university.
This has put her entrepreneurial parents at a crossroads: their child’s future lies in either spending more than 70,000 yuan (US$9,800) for a year of additional tutoring and retaking the high school entrance exam next year, or applying to overseas high schools.
And across China, more and more middle-class families have been facing similarly difficult and anxiety-inducing decisions for the past few years. Many can trace their frustration to a policy enacted by the Ministry of Education in 2017 that aimed to divert about half of all junior high graduates to secondary vocational schools, with the rest going to academic high schools.
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According to data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the so-called world’s factory, and its top exporter, is expected to face a shortage of 30 million skilled workers in the manufacturing sector by 2025.
Despite China having so many college graduates, the lack of skilled workers to meet demand has forced government officials to expand the vocational education system.
“A direct consequence of the 50-50 policy is that parents are investing more and more ineffectively in their children’s education, which pushes up the cost of raising children and actually depresses the desire among Chinese couples to have children,” warned independent demographer Huang Wenzheng.
And a slim chance of entering college can disproportionately affect urban residents, especially those living in big cities.
Middle-class parents are generally reluctant to accept secondary vocational education, as a university degree remains essential for upward mobility, especially among China’s elite.
This is our plan B for my child to attend high school in Hong Kong. He’s under too much academic pressure [in Shanghai]
So, a growing number are weighing their options and formulating a backup plan – and such plans increasingly involve immigration and studying abroad if their children cannot beat out the domestic competition and advance to an academic high school.
In Shanghai, Robert Wang, a lawyer with nearly 20 years of experience, is applying for Hong Kong’s talent immigration programme. But it has nothing to do with career ambitions – he’s doing it for his son, who is only 12 years old.
“The investment is probably a few hundred thousand yuan for the visa, and I might need to find work or pursue a degree in Hong Kong,” Wang said. “This is our plan B for my child to attend high school in Hong Kong.
“He’s under too much academic pressure right now, and it’s highly likely he won’t make it into a local high school in Shanghai.”
With many feeling that a 50 per cent elimination rate is too harsh for their children, Chinese parents are being compelled to spend more on tutoring, despite the fact that Beijing has cracked down on private tutoring in recent years, in a bid to ease parents’ burden.
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On the other hand, vocational school educations may also fall short of middle-class expectations.
A large number of students end up in jobs unrelated to their education, such as by going into the manufacturing or service sectors, either after graduating or dropping out.
According to the annual “Chinese College Graduates’ Employment Annual Report” for this year, released by state-affiliated higher-education consulting firm MyCOS Research, the average monthly income for college and higher vocational school graduates in 2022 was 5,990 yuan and 4,595 yuan, respectively.
In the Yangtze River Delta, one of China’s most prosperous economic regions, college graduates earn an average monthly income of 10,398 yuan after three years of work, significantly more than the 7,773 yuan earned by vocational school graduates of the same age.
To ensure their children enter high school instead of vocational school, families like the Wangs are going to great lengths, travelling as far as Hong Kong, Southeast Asia or Canada for alternative means of education.
But such costly decisions put considerable pressure on families, many of which are already struggling and reluctant to spend their hard-earned savings amid an economic downturn.
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The cost of raising a child until the age of 18 in China is 6.9 times the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, behind South Korea, where the cost is 7.79 times higher than its GDP per capita, the report explained.
The cost in China is double that in Germany, where it is 3.64 times GDP per capita, and more than triple the rate in Australia and France, where it is 2.08 and 2.24 times, respectively.
South Korea and China have the world’s lowest birth rates. Last year, the average number of babies expected per South Korean woman during their child-bearing years fell to 0.78, compared with 1.1 in China.
“We could feel the strong anxiety among parents, that nearly half of the students can’t make it to an academic high school – the common pathway to college and university,” said Ivan Zhai, a senior executive of overseas admissions at an Ontario-based high school.
“They don’t want to accept a vocational-school fate, so studying abroad has become their lifeboat, though it means more pressure on the family’s financial capacity and the worries about sending their children abroad at a young age,” Zhai said.
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“Lots of students who failed to get into high school in their cities in China actually have quite good academic records and would meet the entrance requirements for high schools in other countries such as Canada,” he added. “We are like offering them a second chance to approach reputed universities across the world.”
Zhai added Canada is also seeing an increasing number of Chinese parents who, having obtained university degrees and worked for years, are eagerly applying for undergraduate degrees at local colleges, with the aim of enabling their children to attend public middle schools in their college district.
“On the one hand, private high schools face stricter restrictions, but on the other hand, there is more encouragement for private vocational schools,” Dong said.
Middle-class Chinese parents have not been able to keep pace with the authorities in terms of the transformation in education and population policy, Dong added.
In large cities such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou, with massive permanent populations, middle-class families are increasingly investing in the competition for the 50 per cent admission rate for public high schools, resulting in higher annual education budgets.
A white paper on studying abroad in 2023, released by the New Oriental Education & Technology Group, a leading provider of private educational services in China, showed that the willingness among Chinese students aged 15 to 17 to study abroad is higher than in the last two years, as the competition and pressure among teenagers mounts.
“We can see the trend that the budget allocated in preparing for children to study abroad accounts for a larger share of family expenses compared with previous years, amid intensifying worries about their children failing to get into high school,” Dong said.
At his school in Shenzhen, for example, some students transfer during the midterm to international schools, which can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars a year, rivalling college tuitions that many Chinese families will face next.
