This year, 96 percent of students who applied for university were admitted. Next year the enrollment rate is expected to reach 100 percent. This leads many people to suspect that university entrance standards are too low. And for good reason.
However, some publications recently said the enrollment rate could drop 2 percent or 3 percent next year.
A university system should be judged by the quality and the level of university graduates -- not the quality and level of the freshmen.
A university is a place for studying; it is about developing and learning.
The key question is whether students achieve sufficient benefit from their studies -- not their level at the start of their college education.
If a student does exceptionally well in high school but does not take university seriously, university will be wasted on that student, which would be sad indeed. University graduates are the end product of our education system.
We should be worried about improving the level of university graduates -- not enrollment rates and setting elite standards for attending university. A higher dropout rate would also be good if it meant that students not suited to university leave or realize they want to pursue a different career path.
Higher education standards in university classes would see the nation's students work hard and get the most out of their education.
It's only natural that universities should see a certain percentage of students drop out each year. Among freshmen the dropout rate should be relatively high, as first-year students who find university is not what they want or who can't make the grade leave to avoid wasting their time. By graduation, at least half of the students in a given class should have dropped out.
A dropout rate indicates a university's quality control.
During their four or more years of university studies, whether a student stays on should be decided by that students' grades -- not just based on one exam. They should see university as a first step to their future.
If universities emphasized the dropout rate instead of the enrollment rate, a high enrollment rate would not be a bad thing. If the enrollment rate goes down, and the dropout rate up, that could pose a problem. Quantitative change leads to qualitative change. So if we take the current high enrollment rate and combine it with a high dropout rate we get the best recipe for students and faculty alike.
Such an approach would be very useful for encouraging young people. It gives young people who want to study at university every opportunity to give it a shot.
University entrance exams and recommendations are not without flaws, and if entrance rules are relaxed, this could compensate for some of their problems.
At the same time this approach would improve our education system by urging students to study diligently and achieve better results.
For the universities, a high enrollment rate means they can recruit sufficient students, while a high dropout rate means they can ensure the quality of the graduates.
If we tried to improve the quality of university students by bringing down the enrollment rate by requiring higher grades on the university entrance exam, this could improve the level of freshmen, but if the dropout rate does not increase, the level of university graduates will not necessarily improve.
Richard Hwang is a research fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica.
Translated by Anna Stiggelbout
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