As a sophomore majoring in English at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at Tsinghua University, Zhao Jun has learned the true meaning of “spiritual solitude” over the past year.
　　“Although I would call myself outgoing and sociable, I find I just don’t have much in common with my classmates,” said the 21-year-old student with an air of dissatisfaction.
　　What sets Zhao apart from his classmates is the fact that he is from a small village in central China’s Henan Province, while most of his classmates are all from major cities.
　　“They have totally different life and educational experiences, so I always feel somewhat isolated, which can be demoralizing,” Zhao said.
　　Only five out of the 36 students in Zhou’s class came from rural areas.
　　This is reflective of a broader trend with rural students being massively underrepresented in China’s universities. While they have always struggled to secure places at top universities, in recent years the situation for rural students has actually deteriorated. The proportion of rural students at Tsinghua University, which ranked 35th on The Times Higher Education magazine’s list of world’s top 100 universities in 2011, has dropped to a historical low point. According to a study conducted by Yang Dongping, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, only 17 percent of freshmen at Tsinghua University in 2010 came from rural areas, even though they comprised 62 percent of those registered to take the national college entrance examina- tion that year.
　　This year, less than 15 percent of the university’s 3,349 newly enrolled students had their education in rural schools, according to the Admissions Office of Tsinghua University.
　　According to Jin Jun, a lecturer at the School of Humanities and Social Science of Tsinghua University, a typical student at Tsinghua University hails from a city, has parents who are teachers or government employees, and travels overseas with his or her parents at least once a year.
　　The situation at Tsinghua is comparable to that at China’s other major universities. The ratio of rural students at Peking University, which was rated 43rd on The Times Higher Education magazine’s list, has dropped to around 10 percent over the last decade from more than 30 percent between 1978 and 1998, according to a study by Liu Yunshan, Vice President of the university’s Graduate School of Education.
　　Even at China Agricultural University, which has traditionally had a high percentage of rural students, fewer than 30 percent of students are now from rural areas.
　　“The decrease is alarming as the proportion of rural students in leading universities has dropped to below 20 percent,” said Xiong Bingqi, Deputy Director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, a private nonprofit education policy research body.
　　For centuries, Chinese people have believed that “knowledge can change fate.” A better education has been seen as the key to a brighter future and children in rural areas, particularly remote areas, struggle to get into college in order to improve their prospects and the livelihoods of their families.
　　“Getting admitted to a good university in a major city represents not only a personal achievement for rural students, but also a major change for their families,” said Xiong. “It is the most direct and effective way for them, sometimes even the only way, to shake off poverty.”
　　For several decades, rural students were a key part of the intake of major universities. They were viewed by professors and admissions staff as more focused and hard working compared to their urban counterparts.
　　But today this avenue of social advancement is in danger of being sealed off.
　　“It’s become even harder for us rural students to get into top universities,” Zhao said, adding that he was lucky to be an exception to the rule.
　　Recently a teacher with 15 years of teaching experience posted an article online saying that young people from poor rural families are bound to struggle to reach the top of society as they effectively start their lives as losers. The post sparked a new round of discussion and debate on the inequality of education and the uneven distribution of social resources.
　　Unequal resources
　　Zhou Xufeng, Director of the Admissions Office of China Agricultural University, suggests the hukou (registered permanent residence) system is responsible for the imbalanced intake.
　　“The search for better schools drives many rural residents into cities and changes their hukou status. Students originally from rural areas now hold urban hukou,” Zhou said.
　　Therefore the decline may not mean that fewer students with rural origins are entering universities but rather reflects the fact that bright rural students often hold urban hukou by the time they enroll in universities.
　　“In terms of China Agricultural University, another problem is that students from rural areas are reluctant to take jobs related to agriculture, for many of them, college is a way to get out of the rural areas,” Zhou said.
　　However, Xiong attributes the decrease of rural students at leading universities to the unequal distribution of educational resources.
　　“Educational equality is the foundation for providing opportunities for rural children in underdeveloped areas. Equality means an equal starting line, an equal process and fundamentally a fair chance to succeed,” he said.
　　According to official statistics, less than 40 percent of rural children are receiving a preschool education.
　　
　　Meanwhile, there exists another daunting challenge. For decades educational resources have been unfairly allocated between urban and rural areas.
　　“Urban areas have better teachers and resources. Schools in rural areas, on the other hand, are fraught with the outflow of talent, and a shortage of teachers and resources,”Xiong said.
　　A 2009 survey of students and teachers in six counties in underdeveloped northwestern Gansu and Guizhou provinces and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region showed that poor living and teaching conditions result in a dearth of quality teachers and good students. Talented teachers and students try their best to reach county or even higher level schools where conditions are much better.
　　“Some rural teachers are simply not qualified as they received college degrees from continuing-education programs, which do not really provide a good education,” Xiong said.
　　To correct this, the Ministry of Education has launched a series of special recruitment plans to attract qualified teachers to rural areas.
　　One of the government’s major initiatives has placed more than 180,000 teachers in 18,000 rural schools around the country since 2006. Teachers involved in the program for three years will be able to study for a Master’s Degree in Education without having to take an entrance exam.
　　But many of these teachers admit they will still leave the countryside after their three-year term ends. A yawning gap will remain between the number of quality teachers in rural and urban areas.
　　“With only a handful of able teachers in the provinces it is almost impossible for students in villages to compete with their urban counterparts,” Xiong said.
　　The fact that the majority of China’s most prestigious universities are located in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai is another advantage for urban students. Some schools now have policies favoring students from their own cities, in order to support the local government and economy.
　　A slew of policies, including lower entrance scores and bonus scores for special talent in arts or sports, have added to the discrimination faced by rural students, who have little or no access to extra-curricular activities.
　　Schools in big cities on the other hand have access to the best teachers and facilities. Students at these schools can choose from a range of subjects and stand a much better chance of being admitted to prestigious universities.
　　Weak competitiveness
　　Despite criticism of its “scores-forschool” system, which leads to tough competition among students, the national college entrance examination is still considered the fairest way to determine a student’s fate. Regardless of wealth and social status, every student must take the same examination, a fact that in the past led to a high percentage of rural students getting admitted to high-quality universities.
　　“However, recent reforms to the exam have altered the balance. Under new broader criteria, hard working rural students find themselves at a disadvantage,” Xiong said.
　　Some policies aimed at broadening access to higher education have in fact made it more difficult for rural students to gain entry to leading universities. In 2003 reforms were introduced to allow students with more rounded profiles, not simply outstanding performers in exams, to enter universities. The Ministry of Education permitted 22 key universities to use their own criteria to independently select 5 percent of their students from high schools around the country.
　　The independent criteria focus more on students’ creativity, imagination and learning skills. Students who are particularly talented in art, sport and literature can now enter these key universities despite their lower test scores. For example, Zhang Tianci, a talented violinist from Jinzhou, a city in northeast China’s Liaoning Province, earned 60 privilege points to gain entry to Tsinghua University last year.
　　Many experts see this program as a way to break down the country’s exam-oriented education system. They believe it to be conducive to better understanding where students’ talents lie. There are now 80 universities involved in the program.
　　The shift away from a purely exambased selection process, however, has placed rural students at a disadvantage. Admission based on talent in art, music or sports favors students who have the resources and time to cultivate extracurricular talents.
　　“When urban students compete for the Mathematical Olympiad or participate in English summer camps, it’s obvious that rural students have fallen behind due to limited teaching resources,” Xiong said. “Their isolated living conditions limit their knowledge of the outside world compared to urban students.”
　　Likewise, students whose families are well-off can attend special classes or hire private tutors to improve their grades. Poor families cannot.
　　Some experts also claimed that examination questions and terms for admission to universities today favor urban students, further exaggerating the existing inequality. Oral English examinations are unfair to rural students who have less access to good English teachers.
　　“I had no idea what the oral English exam was before the last year of my senior high school,” said Li Chen, a student at Peking University who comes from a small county in Gansu Province.
　　The national college entrance examination also tends to be more concerned with knowledge found outside textbooks, an advantage for teenagers who live in cities.
　　Chen Meishi, a sophomore at Tsinghua University, said her entrance exam required that she write about Fei Xiaotong (1910-2005), a renowned Chinese sociologist and anthropologist, attended.
　　“I didn’t even know who Fei was, but urban students did,” recalled Chen, who was born in a small village.
　　“The independent exam is partial to students from developed areas and rich families,” said He Yunfeng, Director of the Research Institute of Knowledge and Value at Shanghai Normal University.
　　
　　Super schools
　　Zhao at Tsinghua University considers himself lucky to have had the privilege of studying at a prestigious provincial-level high school, a springboard to a first-class university. “The door to Tsinghua University would have been shut before I even sat for the exam if I hadn’t attended the high school I went to,”he said.
　　The school Zhao attended is one of China’s super middle schools. These schools, usually based in provincial capitals or developed cities, take up more of the country’s already uneven educational resources. Their influence is such that they can recommend their outstanding students to top universities without taking the national college entrance examination.
　　While they are undoubtedly successful, these schools receive regular funding and other support from local governments and absorb the best teachers and students in a province, shortchanging other schools.
　　Zhao was born in a small mountainous village in Henan’s Huixian County. Originally, he attended a local high school but after one year there, he found the school could not provide him with a sufficiently high quality of education. Heeding the suggestion of one of his relatives, he left the school and took an entrance exam to gain admission to the Xinxiang-based Affiliated Middle School of Henan Normal University. Having passed the exam he was accepted by the key high school which is known for placing large numbers of its students at top universities. This year alone, more than 360 students from the school gained admission to major universities.
　　“I’m glad to see four of my junior school- mates coming to Tsinghua,” Zhao said.
　　The super high school, Zhao said, was a completely different academic experience.“When I entered the classroom for the first time, I was astonished to see advanced teaching equipment, including projectors, video players and many computers. I had never seen these things at my previous schools,”he said. “For the first time I learned what creative education and multimedia classes were.”
　　“In my previous schools everything came from the textbook, but I discovered that there are many other ways to teach and learn,” he said.
　　“More online materials were used for further study,” Zhao said. “Urban students can take courses online and can download education materials easily, while students from the countryside have less access to the Internet and know little about the outside world.”
　　Almost every province has one or two such super schools. In Henan, famous key schools include the Affiliated Middle School of Henan Normal University and the Zhengzhou-based Henan Experimental High School, Zhengzhou Foreign Language School and Zhengzhou No.1 High School.
　　This year the Zhengzhou Foreign Language School has 17 students entering Tsinghua University.
　　“Students like us have to be outstanding to gain admission to super schools and receive a higher standard of education,” Zhao said. “If not, we have to stay at a county-level high school, which means little chance to enter top universities, no matter how hard we work.”
　　His former classmates who studied at the high school in Huixian all ended up in local colleges or even abandoned their studies to work in local factories or migrate to the big cities.
　　A survey conducted by Jin, the Tsinghua lecturer, in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province found that of the 2010 freshmen at Tsinghua University and Peking University who came from Shaanxi, more than 97 percent were graduates of five elite high schools in Xi’an, the province’s capital.--
　　Financial burden
　　“It has become harder for students from rural areas to move up the social ladder,” said Yang Dongping from the Beijing Institute of Technology. “This is really a dangerous signal for Chinese society.”
　　According to his research, most students from rural areas only attend local colleges and polytechnic schools.
　　In central China’s Hubei Province from 2002 to 2005, for example, the proportion of rural students at junior colleges rose from 39 to 62 percent, and at military and normal colleges went from 33 to 57 percent.
　　“A better university means a better chance of landing a good job after graduation. The lower chance of entering prestigious universities places students from rural areas at permanent disadvantage relative to their urban counterparts,” Yang said.
　　According to Yang’s survey, a large number of urban students receive help from their parents, particularly in terms of introductions and contacts, when they are looking for jobs.
　　“Given the difficulties they face both in getting into universities and finding jobs, more and more rural children are choosing not to pursue higher education. They think there is no meaning in going to a university,”Xiong said.
　　According to a survey, among the 9.46 million registered candidates in 2010, nearly 1 million finally gave up the national college entrance examination. Most of those who quit were from rural areas. Other rural students leave school even earlier and chose to study in technical schools or seek jobs directly.
　　The high cost of a university education plus the difficulty of finding a job after graduation has contributed to the prevailing idea in the countryside that “education is useless.”
　　For instance, in Beijing, college students have to pay an average of 5,000 yuan ($782) for a year’s tuition, students also have to pay living costs of around 10,000 yuan ($1,564) a year. That’s almost the same as an average rural household’s income.
　　Sending a child to university can cost the equivalent of 10 years’ household income of a rural family in Gansu’s Huining County, according to the People’s Daily, the country’s leading newspaper.
　　“Instead of offering opportunities to young people from rural areas to move up social classes through education, the tertiary education system is reinforcing the social divide in the country,” said Liu Yunshan of Peking University.
　　For a long time, the government has invested in top universities, but many private vocational and junior colleges have no access to state investment, subsidies or social donations.
　　“Education equity also means the choice of all kinds of higher education should be offered to meet the needs of people from different economic backgrounds,”he said.