Summary

China’s national college entrance examination, the Gaokao, was held on June 7-8 this year. A total of 9.40 million students took the examination nationwide, 20,000 fewer than the 9.42 million candidates who took last year’s exam.

This continues a long-term trend of declining candidate numbers, although numbers did recover slightly in 2014 and 2015. The main cause is China’s decreasing youth population, a long-term trend which is expected to continue for years to come. Some provinces have seen even larger declines, such as Liaoning, Beijing and Jiangsu, while others, particularly in central and western areas of the country, are still seeing an increase in Gaokao candidates.

Meanwhile, the total number of first-year bachelor’s degree places in the country’s universities has increased by over 50,000 to reach 3.71 million. Almost all of this increase has come from universities at the provincial level or below, with essentially no change in enrolment at universities directly under the Ministry of Education. The largest number of new places is in Shandong province, while Xinjiang has seen the largest increase in percentage terms.

In closely related news, the Ministry of Education announced changes to provincial recruitment quotas earlier this year. Each Chinese university has a set quota for new student enrolment from each province, set by the Ministry of Education or via provincial education bureaus. These changes have mainly shifted quota from more-developed provinces and municipalities to less-developed areas in central and western China, in response to changes in the youth population as well as the government strategy to reduce educational inequality between regions. Jiangsu and Hubei provinces both saw large decreases in their quotas which will make it harder for students from those regions to enter universities, while the biggest gainers were Guizhou, Yunnan and Jiangxi. This change caused protests in Jiangsu and Hubei last month.

Analysis by Kevin Prest and Xiaoxiao Liu

The decline in Gaokao entrants, combined with the expansion in local university places, will make it harder to recruit Chinese undergraduate students in general. However, the overall change is small in the context of China’s total student population and is accompanied by ongoing economic growth which is continuing to make overseas higher education more affordable to Chinese families. In 2015 the number of Chinese students going abroad to study reached a new high of 523,700, an increase of 63,900 over 2014.

In addition, the expansion of domestic university places is mainly limited to provincial or municipal universities rather than the more prestigious national universities. Competition for top-quality Chinese universities is still extremely high.

The reduction in universities’ quotas for students from developed regions may also have a positive effect on demand for overseas undergraduate courses for students from these regions. In particular, 38,000 university places were re-allocated from Jiangsu to students from other provinces.

Sources

1. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/beijing/2016-06/08/content_25649119.htm (English-language report on Gaokao candidate numbers)

2. http://www.eol.cn/html/g/report/2016/index.shtml (more detailed report on Gaokao entrants over time and by province)

3.http://www.moe.edu.cn/srcsite/A03/s180/s3011/201605/t20160504_241872.html (MoE announcement on university enrolment quotas)

4. http://datanews.caixin.com/2016-05-13/100943513.html (infographic illustrating the shift in university enrolment quotas)