Is Tsinghua University soft on foreigners?
Society & Culture
Top society and culture news for February 17, 2017. Part of the daily The China Project news roundup "Former chief executive of Hong Kong found guilty of misconduct."
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Top Chinese university criticized for lowering admission standards for foreign students / SCMP
China’s Tsinghua University recently changed its admission requirements for overseas students. Foreign students may now apply without taking any entrance examinations, as long as they hold a high school diploma and pass the HSK Level 5 Chinese proficiency test. Widely recognized as one of the top two prestigious universities in China, Tsinghua was ranked 57th best worldwide in the 2017 US News and World Report Best Global University Rankings. The move, according to an anonymous Tsinghua admissions official, is to “bring the university more in line with international practice.” For Chinese students, the path to get Tsinghua admission is highly competitive; in 2016, among nearly 9.4 million students who took the Chinese national higher-education entrance examination, only 3,000 students were admitted to Tsinghua University. The school’s favorable policies for overseas recruits sparked outrage on Chinese social media (in Chinese), with many commenters suggesting that Tsinghua discriminates against Chinese students. One person wrote, “Studying hard for 10 years is nothing compared with a foreign citizenship.”
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