During the 2008 Summer Olympics held in Beijing, China’s notoriously polluted capital, a controversial interview surfaced on the website of Tsinghua University. Alleged to have the support of university president Binglin Gu, the interview condemned the Chinese higher education system as teeming with “serious academic corruption dry and irrelevant to society curriculum, and rote memorization teaching methods.” It continued on to say, “The old-fashioned methods of teaching and teaching material caused our society to lose many Da Vinci’s and Bill Gates … up to now, China has no Nobel prize-winners, which has a lot to do with this kind of education pattern.”

While the interview was later revealed to be a fabrication by hackers, it still garnered enough attention to challenge the effectiveness of Chinese higher education, now the largest system of tertiary education in the world. The question remains though: Are the claims true?

As the report claims, China’s education style is, in a way, old fashioned. China has long favored memorization and exams for its education. This tradition dates all the way back to the 7th century, when China’s growing bureaucracy created the challenging keju exam system in order to select the best administrators. More than a millennium has passed, but the importance of the exam in Chinese education remains.

The college entrance exams, or the gaokao, a modern form of the ancient keju, serves as the single admission criteria for all Chinese universities. It has become a national obsession for college-bound students. In order to succeed on these intensely rigorous tests, the college hopeful have resorted to “cram-schools,” which fill the hours between school and bedtime with studying. On weekends, some 20,000 students will arrive at certain cram schools at 6:20 in the morning only to return home over 14 hours later.

The college admissions process has also received criticism for its bias and discrimination. Reports have suggested that more wealthy, urban students from influential cities like Shanghai and Beijing are 41 times more likely to be admitted to Peking University compared to more rural and poorer students from the province of Anhui.

Not surprisingly, more testing means Chinese students spend more time in classrooms than their Western peers. While more than one-third of Chinese college students experience 30 hours of class time a week, the average UK college student spends 14 hours equally working inside and outside of the classroom. In comparison, 40 percent of Chinese college students spend less than five hours working outside of class.

The Chinese obsession with tests corresponds to the increasing attendance and funding among the country’s colleges. In 1999, the Chinese government expanded its education system in order to jumpstart its stagnant economy. The number of graduating students has spiked since then. In 2003 there were 2.12 million university graduates in China, with almost 7 million a decade later, according to government estimates.

However, this investment in education has not entirely paid off. As more and more Chinese have enrolled in universities, China has found its economy actually decelerating, albeit in small amounts. Recent graduates have also struggled with employment, with only 35 percent having found employment. Post-graduate students fare even worse, with only 26 percent having found employment.

While China has invested greatly in its own higher education, its best universities still cannot hold a candle to those elsewhere, particularly in the West. This has led a large number of Chinese students to seek more valuable college educations abroad to get an edge in an increasingly difficult domestic job market. More than 3 million Chinese students have chosen to study abroad and they represent 20 percent of international students from OECD countries.

These international students often do not return home. In fact, according to a study, 85 percent of Chinese students who earned their doctorate in America in 2006 were still there five years later. With so many potential academics and intellectuals not returning to the country, many proclaim that China has a “brain-drain.” Only recently have Chinese citizens begun to win Nobel prizes for work done in their home country.

To entice its many expatriate academics back to their homeland, China has offered generous benefits. Those who return can expect free housing, a 1 million Yuan bonus and state-of-the-art facilities. The results were exceptional: From 2005 to 2012, published research articles from universities rose by 54 percent, with patents increasing eightfold. However, returning professors still have to work in an academic environment that restricts their research. Currently, the Chinese government plays a major role in directing research and rewards academics for the quantity of articles published rather than their quality.

Yet the sheer amount of money China has invested in its higher education system should guarantee results, a Harvard Business Review article stressed. It predicted that China will soon produce the most PhDs of any country in the world and lauded the increasing productivity of its professors.

The question still remains as to whether or not China can innovate and compete in both the realms of business and education. While perhaps less revered and creative, China’s universities are pioneering a controversial yet forward-looking path. To those guiding this burgeoning system, quantity has a quality of its own.

– Andrew Logan

Sources: The Economist, Harvard Business Review, New York Times 1, New York Times 2, Times Higher Education, TIME, University of Buffalo
Photo: New York Times