Why did one of China’s elite universities need to offer big money to get the best students?
- Zhejiang University has been ordered to stop dangling tens of thousands of dollars to get the highest scorers in the national college entrance exam to accept a place at the campus
- Competition for the top gaokao performers is fierce as schools can no longer wait for the brightest to come to them
China’s education authorities have ordered an elite university to stop offering as much as 500,000 yuan (US$72,670) in the race to attract the country’s top-scoring high school students.
In a notice issued on Monday, the Ministry of Education told Zhejiang University in Hangzhou to stop using financial incentives to lure the best performers in the gaokao, the National Higher Education Entrance Examination.
The order was issued after Zhu Zuoxiang, the university’s director of student recruitment, told Zhejiang TV on Saturday that the top 100 scorers in the exam were eligible for 500,000 yuan if they accepted a place at the institution. Students who ranked in the next top 200 places could qualify for 200,000 yuan.
In its notice, the ministry urged the university to comply with student enrolment “discipline”, news portal Thepaper.cn reported.
“We also noticed that some of your teachers engaged in recruiting students have circulated the rewards on WeChat,” the ministry said, referring to the popular Chinese social media platform.