Since late 1977, The National Higher Education Entrance Examination, commonly known as the gaokao (高考) was officially resumed based on academics,it has continued to the present day.
The acceptance rate of college entrance examination has soared from 5% to 74%.
In fact the enrollment rate was low until the dramatic "enlargement of enrollment" in 1999. It was between 10-20 percent in the 1950s and 1960s before the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), during which colleges and universities suspended recruitment. When the entrance examination - known as the gaokao in China - resumed in 1977, 5.7 million candidates competed for 273,000 seats in college classrooms, an enrollment rate of only 4.8 percent.
The enrollment rate surpassed 50 percent in 1999 and rose to 74.46% percent last year. This year it will be 75 percent, according to the Ministry of Education.
We can also see that in recent years, the number of third-year high school students (high school in China lasts three years) is more than 9 million, which is about half of the annual birth population. That is to say, half of the children took the college entrance examination and the rest dropped out. However, the probability of being admitted to the university for the college entrance examination is more than 74%. This is a national-oriented data. If it is a high school in a big city, the probability of being admitted to a university (including junior college) is 99%. In most part of China, high schools are generally rated as key schools and ordinary schools. Some key high schools dare to say that the second-tier university rate is 99%. The first-tier university rate is 90%. It can be said that an individual can enter a university. In 2017, nearly 8 million college graduates graduated, which also exceeded the demand for new jobs in the labor market. So everyone formed an impression that college students became worthless and everywhere.
But in fact, since the resumption of the college entrance examination, a total of 95.77 million college graduates have graduated in the past 40 years, half of whom graduated from first-tier, second-tier and third-tier university and the other half of whom are junior college students. That is to say, there are about 48 million graduates.
It does look like a lot, but the total population of China is 1.3 billion. The proportion of graduates in the total population is 3.69%. In other words, as long as you are a graduate, your education will crush 97% of Chinese.
From the perspective of 3% of the population, graduates are very valuable. In recent years, nearly 8 million graduates graduate each year. The talent market is overwhelmed. Graduates are very cheap. This reflects the huge gap between the rich and the poor in China and China's historical debt of being too poor.
By contrast, the proportion of graduates in the total population is 45% in Japan, 42% in the USA, 46% in Israel.
In this sense, China still has a long way to go.