China Increases Admissions Quotas for Students From Poor Provinces

Shanghai — Amid concern over equity in its higher-education system and rising interethnic political tension, China has raised enrollment quotas for students from less-developed western provinces, the China Daily reported today.

The country closely regulates enrollment by region and ethnicity, with policies that have traditionally favored residents of developed cities like Beijing and Shanghai for admission to elite universities in those same cities. Under the new policy, the number of slots reserved for students from central and western China will each increase by around 7 percent.

All told, 60,000 spots will open up for students from poor provinces like Anhui, Henan, and Guizhou — as well as, presumably, western regions inhabited primarily by ethnic minority groups like Xinjiang and Tibet. As justification for the change, the newspaper explained that western China suffers from “historic underdevelopment” and “complicated geographic situations” that block local students’ access to education.

A majority of the new places will be at universities that are administered directly by the education ministry, receive more resources, and are mainly located in prosperous cities in eastern China. To open up those slots, the institutions will cut positions open to more-privileged local students.

China has come under mounting pressure to change its inequitable admissions system in recent years. But compared to the country’s total college enrollment, the new quotas are quite small. The number of new students projected to enroll in colleges and universities this fall is close to seven million. —Mara Hvistendahl