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Taxpayers' money wasted on a few scholarships
By Xinhua Daily Telegraph |
August 1, 2012, Wednesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
HUANG Qiqi, a native of Humen in Guangdong Province, was admitted to prestigious Tsinghua University in 2010, and has already received a total of 605,000 yuan (US$96,000) in scholarships.
These come from his alma mater and different levels of government in Humen, Dongguan, Guangdong Province.
Like Olympic medalists, people like Huangs become upstarts overnight for being eminently successful in taking a test (the National College Entrance Examination) whose importance has been grossly exaggerated.
This (awarding of scholarships) is unfair because the prize money came from taxpayers, and limited educational resources should have been more reasonably used. Funds should have been spent in making basic education more accessible to the masses, in narrowing the gap between the quality of education provided by different schools, and in helping the many who have dropped out schools for lack of money.
An investigation showed that the proportion of rural students at Chinese universities has been declining steadily in recent years, and one of many reasons is the rising number of rural students who cannot afford tuition.
Clearly, using taxpayers money to enable more poverty-stricken students to attend primary, middle or high schools would be more meaningful than turning out a few student upstarts.
According to incomplete statistics, last year Humen township alone had given out 2.2 million yuan in scholarships to successful test takers. Local government officials now should ask if they have done something for those students who are in straitened financial circumstances.
This kind of monetary award is informed by a distorted educational philosophy little different from the governmental obsession with GDP.
It is wrong to assess the achievements of education by the number of the highest test scorers.
These come from his alma mater and different levels of government in Humen, Dongguan, Guangdong Province.
Like Olympic medalists, people like Huangs become upstarts overnight for being eminently successful in taking a test (the National College Entrance Examination) whose importance has been grossly exaggerated.
This (awarding of scholarships) is unfair because the prize money came from taxpayers, and limited educational resources should have been more reasonably used. Funds should have been spent in making basic education more accessible to the masses, in narrowing the gap between the quality of education provided by different schools, and in helping the many who have dropped out schools for lack of money.
An investigation showed that the proportion of rural students at Chinese universities has been declining steadily in recent years, and one of many reasons is the rising number of rural students who cannot afford tuition.
Clearly, using taxpayers money to enable more poverty-stricken students to attend primary, middle or high schools would be more meaningful than turning out a few student upstarts.
According to incomplete statistics, last year Humen township alone had given out 2.2 million yuan in scholarships to successful test takers. Local government officials now should ask if they have done something for those students who are in straitened financial circumstances.
This kind of monetary award is informed by a distorted educational philosophy little different from the governmental obsession with GDP.
It is wrong to assess the achievements of education by the number of the highest test scorers.
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