2021年经济学人 寒门更难出贵子(1)（在线收听）

China

中国板块

Inequality in education

教育不平等

Serve the rich

为富人服务

It is becoming even harder for poor students to get into a good university

寒门子弟越来越难进入好大学。

After xiong xuan’ang gained the capital’s best score in China’s university-entrance exam in 2017, he was interviewed by Beijing’s media. The son of diplomats, Mr Xiong acknowledged that his upbringing had been privileged. “All the top scorers now come from wealthy families,” he said. “It is becoming very difficult for students from rural areas to get into good universities.” His honesty drew much praise online.

熊轩昂在2017年获得高考状元之后，接受了北京媒体的采访。作为外交官之子，熊轩昂承认自己的成长过程受到了优待。熊轩昂表示：“现在所有的状元都出生于富裕家庭。农村学生越来越难考上好大学了。”他的诚实在网上赢得了很多赞誉。

Since 1998, when China began a huge expansion of university enrolment, the number of students admitted annually has quadrupled to nearly 10m. About one third of high-school students now proceed to undergraduate courses. Data are patchy, but experts agree that the share of rural students at China’s best universities (the top 1%) has shrunk. Only 0.3% of rural students make it into them, compared with 2.8% of urban ones. Most other tertiary institutions are far inferior.

中国大学自1998年以来开始大规模扩招，每年录取的学生数量翻了一番，达到了近1000万人。现在大约有三分之一的高中生考入本科。虽然数据不完整，但专家们一致认为，就读于中国最好的大学（前1%）的农村学生比例有所下降。只有0.3%的农村学生能够就读于顶级大学，相比之下，城市学生的比例为2.8%。大多数其他高等教育机构都远不及那些顶级大学。

Around the world, students from poor backgrounds struggle to compete with their richer counterparts. In China the divide is particularly stark. The main cause is the hukou system, which makes it very difficult to gain free access to state-provided services outside the place where one’s household is registered. This means that in cities, the children of migrants from the countryside are usually shut out of local state schools. They have to attend shoddy private ones that charge fees, or go to their parents’ village for an education that is free but also bare-bones.

世界各地的寒门子弟都在努力与出身富裕家庭的学生竞争。这种分歧在中国尤为明显。主要原因在于户口制度，学生们很难在户籍地以外的地方免费获得国家提供的服务。这意味着流动到城市里的农村孩子通常会被当地的公立学校拒之门外。这些孩子被迫就读于收费的劣质私立学校，或者回老家接受免费但贫乏的教育。

The situation is made worse by the way that university places are allocated. The best universities are concentrated in the biggest and richest cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. They offer a disproportionate number of places to students with local hukou. China’s two most prestigious universities, Peking University and Tsinghua, are in Beijing. Their acceptance rate is around 1% for local students but only a tenth of that for applicants from places outside the capital, according to state television. More students from Beijing are admitted to Tsinghua every year than the combined number of successful applicants from Guangdong and Shandong. The population of those two provinces is ten times bigger than Beijing’s.

大学招生名额的分配方式使情况变得更糟。顶级大学集中在北京和上海等最大且最富裕的城市。他们为有当地户口的学生提供了远超比例的招生名额。北大和清华这两所中国最著名的大学都位于北京。据官媒报道，这两所大学在当地的录取率在1%左右，但首都以外地区的学生录取率只有这个数的十分之一。清华每年招收的北京学生比广东和山东的录取总数还要多。而这两个省的人口却是北京的十倍。