About 9.42 million Chinese high school graduates, slightly less than the population of Sweden, will sit for the famously stressful college entrance examination, known as Gaokao, this weekend.
Despite the huge army of high school seniors pursuing higher education, Chinese universities face a growing survival crisis after decades of explosive expansion.
The number of students taking what is generally considered the single most important test any Chinese person can take, has fallen for five straight years since 2009. It peaked at 10.5 million in 2008.
The amount of examinees stopped declining in 2014, but the modest recovery has not brought relief to the looming survival crisis, according to a 2015 report on Chinese university admissions released by China Education online Tuesday.
DIFFICULT TO GET FULL ENROLLMENTS
Universities across China have been facing difficulties meeting recruitment quotas in recent years.
In central China's Henan Province, where the pursuit of higher education is intensely competitive, nearly 70,000 university or college openings were not filled in 2014, accounting for 11.36 percent of the province's total quotas.
Such vacancies have existed for three years in Henan.
Under China's university recruitment system, the central authorities set quotas for university enrollment across provinces and major cities. Students indicate the universities and colleges they want to apply to and their Gaokao test scores are used to allocate spots.
It is the same in Beijing, which is generally considered to have the best universities in China.
The quotas for Beijing students who take the Gaokao was cut to 52,200 in 2014, down 30 percent from 76,700 in 2008.
Unfortunately, the move did not ease vacancies in university recruitment.
Statistics show second-class universities or colleges failed to get full enrollment among high school graduates in Beijing for four straight years, since 2010. Chinese universities are classified on different levels based on their overall strength.
