A college in China has expelled 40 students for slacking off.
That's a rare move in a country where millions of students who start college every year are almost guaranteed to graduate, thanks to what analysts say is a lax culture that breeds lazy students.
The expulsions underscore a renewed effort by Chinese universities to improve the quality of education amid a slowing economy and changing demands for the workforce.
"To graduate from college is like a breezy walk in a park. That has to change," Chen Baoshen, China's education minister, said at a conference in 2018. "We have to make college courses more difficult, challenging and motivating."
In June this year, the Hebei Institute of Physical Education said that 40 students were expelled for failing to turn up to classes.
In a report published by Pear Video on Wednesday, one of the students complained about the expulsion and said he would seek legal help to restore his place.
The northern Chinese province has an average graduation rate of nearly 99%, according to a 2017 study published in the journal International Higher Education. Nationwide, the graduation rate for 187 universities surveyed by the 2017 research was 97.3%.
Dropout rates in South Korea and Japan, which have education systems similar to China, are closer to 10%, according to the study.
In China, students are the products of an educational system known for its cutthroat competition, at least until high school. That's when everyone has to take a grueling college entrance exam, called the gaokao.
Compare to that exam, the college curriculum is known to be "cushy" and "lax," hence the popular saying that students "kill themselves to get into college for a happy vacation."
Chinese college students take graduation for granted. Dropping out or being expelled is extremely rare. For many, leaving college without a degree would massively derail their professional aspirations.
In recent years, China has been on a mission to change that, in order to produce more qualified graduates with the talent to transform its export- and manufacturing-reliant economy into one powered by services and innovation.
But critics say such efforts are nothing new and are likely to fail again if reforms don't include overhauling the college entrance exam that places students according to how well they did on standardized tests.
"I have been in the Chinese education field for over twenty years, and I have seen such reform failed over and over," Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, told *Inkstone. *
Xiong said the core issue lies in the inflexibility of the current system. Unlike many other countries, transfers between colleges and even switching majors within a college are very difficult in China.
"If a college student gets expelled in China, they can't apply to other schools. The only redemption for them is to go back to a high school and take the grueling entrance exam again."
He said that's why most colleges in China face overwhelming social pressure to ensure the majority of their students graduate.
"Otherwise, what are you going to do with all the expelled students?" added Xiong.
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