TO those outside of China, the numbers “211” and “985” may have little meaning, but inside the country they hold the power to determine the future career of millions of university graduates.

For years, the country’s universities designated as belonging to the “211” and “985” projects, the country’s key institutions of higher learning, have had countless students vying for entries.

Like it or not, in an increasingly competitive country, these simple numbers are the tickets to better jobs and higher paychecks for college graduates.

Recruiters in China traditionally favor students with “211” and “985” backgrounds, often considered the ivory towers of education, believing these prestigious titles guarantee quality applicants, though candidates from less-known universities could be equally excellent.

As this year’s hiring season proceeds, company heads are scouring the country for graduates from these key institutions.

Wei Ming, a college graduate, got up early to join a crowd of applicants attending a recent job-recruitment session in Dafeng of east China’s Jiangsu Province. During the event, recruiting heads from a state-owned high-tech company made it clear: Talents from these revered colleges, which include Peking University, Tsinghua University and Fudan University, could get a monthly salary of at least 7,000 yuan (US$1,142), while the highest pay for graduates of other universities would be at most 6,000 yuan, according to Wei.

Even in the capital city of Beijing, the rules are similar. A recruiting head, who is on a hiring tour in Beijing, said on condition of anonymity that his company prefers students from key universities, which provide better talent sources. He acknowledged that students from less-stellar colleges may be outstanding, but the numbers are dwarfed by those of key universities.

“We don’t want to risk hiring people not so talented, because we need to think about the future of our company,” said the unnamed source.

These “elite titles” are increasingly coming under fire, with the public complaining about unfair competition in the job market and calling for “quality titles” to be abolished to ensure fairness.

In a late November poll on microblog Sina Weibo, 23,143 participants, or 67.7 percent, voiced support for the abolishment of the education schemes.

The Chinese government initiated the “211” and “985” projects to build world-class institutions of higher education in the 1990s. The “211” project aimed to raise education standards in about 100 colleges and universities in the 21st century (hence the number 211), and the “985” project, named after its launch date of May 1998, endeavored to select the cream of the crop from the 211 institutions.

The hugely ambitious schemes have improved the education levels in many institutions, with colleges bettering their standards to obtain the titles. It’s a situation that begs the question: Are the projects necessarily the best measure to guarantee education quality these days?

To many job seekers, without the halo of these numbers doors to a number of great opportunities are firmly shut.

Liu Qiang, currently a graduate student in the famous Jilin University in northeast China’s Jilin Province, went around the province to find an ideal job after graduating from a little-known university. He said he was left to eat the dust of his peers with more enviable backgrounds during his job hunt.

“The recruiting staff always turned me down, simply because I was not from a ‘211’ or ‘985’ university,” Liu said.

Recruiters’ obsession with the numbers has prompted a rush among many students to seek further study in these elite colleges, including Liu, who managed to enter a university that falls under both titles. Liu hopes it will give him an advantage in seeking jobs. However, the future picture may not be so rosy.

Zhang Zhongdong, a graduate from Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of the country’s top two, went to multiple job interviews across the bustling capital, but was rejected by many companies because he did not study in project universities during his undergraduate study.

“With such rules regarding our academic background, I can’t compete on a level field,” Zhang sighed.

Uneven resource distribution

The “211” and “985” projects have also been accused of creating unequal distribution of education resources among Chinese universities, including central support and student enrollment.

According to official statistics, Tsinghua University received 2.775 billion yuan in research funds from the government in 2013, accounting for 70.6 percent of its total.

That number was 23 times higher than that of Southwest Petroleum University, which got a mere 120 million yuan from the central government. Nevertheless, the latter boasted the biggest amount of research funds among all non-211 institutions last year.

Different job prospects have also cast a negative impact on the enrollment rate of non-key universities, with many students choosing to apply for “211” and “985” colleges.

It has created enrollment difficulties for the non-project schools, said Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing.

The situation has had many colleges jump on the bandwagon of applying for these titles by speeding up infrastructure building, increasing academic subjects and intensifying efforts to get the best teachers from other colleges, whatever the financial cost. This has largely damaged the prospects of many less-competitive colleges, according to Chu Zhaohui, research fellow with National Institute of Education Sciences.

As urgency for change mounts, experts said reforms should be implemented with the so-called elite projects. But the complete abandonment of the schemes is unrealistic.

Huang Wai, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong Province, said the key university projects played an important role in boosting university education levels when education resources were limited. But as times have changed, the administrative means of education resource allocation among Chinese colleges needs reform.

Xiong said that based on the current system, a special fund allocation commission needs to be established to give out financial support for colleges that are in dire need of money for development.

“The commission should allocate resources based on the actual development levels and ramp up supervision. Only in this way can we truly guarantee fairness and further enhance education levels in the country,” he said.

The two key projects

PROJECT 211 is a project of national key universities and colleges initiated in 1995 by the Ministry of Education, with the intent of raising the research standards of high-level universities and cultivating strategies for socio-economic development.

The name comes from an abbreviation of the 21st century and 100 (approximate number of participating universities).

China today has more than 118 institutions of higher education designated as 211 institutions.

Project 985 was first announced by former Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the 100th anniversary of Peking University on May 4, 1998 to promote the development and reputation of the Chinese higher education system.

It is eponymous after the date of the announcement, May 1998.