As summer approaches, glossy posters depicting majestic skylines of foreign cities will appear around college campuses nationwide, detailing opportunities for teaching abroad. In spite of these glittering advertisements and dedicated recruitment efforts on the part of nonprofits, many of these organizations are broadly dismissed by students on sight for misuse of funds, inefficiency and a history of paternalistic behavior toward those whom they claim to help. But a general rule, even if broadly true, cannot apply indiscriminately in all cases. In the case of structural educational inequality in the Chinese higher education system, such nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) may be the best existing solution in a deeply fractured system.
The specific defining feature of the Chinese higher education system is the gaokao, a test administered to all Chinese students who wish to attend college. Western scholars have compared the gaokao to the SAT or ACT standardized tests in the United States, but it is far more significant for Chinese students than these tests are for American ones. Rather than being just one factor in deciding whether or not a Chinese student has the aptitude for college, it is almost always the only factor — especially so for those who are not wealthy or connected. For a nation such as China, where education is often the only way to achieve social mobility, passing the gaokao is critical, especially for students from rural, impoverished environments.
More than just posing a high barrier to post-secondary education, the gaokao creates a disproportionately high obstacle for rural students hoping to attend college. The gaokao tests four subjects — English, Math, Chinese Language/Culture and History (or other Social Sciences) — with some unique subdivisions among the four in each province. Everywhere, the first three subjects are given the heaviest weight. English was added by the Chinese government as a part of a movement to encourage the entire country to learn English, and ] with its addition as one of the major test categories, China has experienced a massive rise in demand for English teachers in the past decade. In the spirit of the free market, this demand has been met with a willing and eager supply of foreign English teachers, many of whom come to China under the guise of helping children learn English but leave having benefited from larger salaries than their counterparts in the United States could ever expect. It is not uncommon in schools in urban centers, such as Shanghai and Beijing, for even the most inexperienced of tutors to charge as much as $100 USD per hour of teaching. Wealthy parents in such places are more than willing and able to pay such prices.
The high cost of English tutoring and the need to learn the language create a system in which rural students, virtually unable to ever enter the market, continue to lose out. This education inequality gap between urban and rural populations is already wide and only shows signs of growing. Chairman Xi Jinping’s upcoming relaxation of China’s one-child policy will allow families to have up to two children instead of just one. This population increase will only increase the strain on the higher education system and make it even harder for rural students to attend college. According to one study, 80 percent of students from urban areas will be able to go to a university, but only 5 percent of the rural students will have thesame opportunity. This statistic translates into roughly 200 million rural or migrant children who are unable to attend college in a given year. Since the 1990s, the percentage of children from the countryside attending Peking University, one of China’s top collegiate institutions, has dropped from 30 percent to 10 percent. Another recent study showed that a student from Beijing was 41 times more likely to gain access to higher education than a student from the relatively more rural, impoverished Anhui province just outside of Shanghai. For the students left behind, this blocked access to college education is effectively a life sentence to agricultural labor, continuing the cycle of urban wealth versus rural poverty.
While institutions of higher education in the United States endeavor to compensate for structural and societal inequalities through initiatives such as affirmative action, there are no such measures taken in China’s educational system. The gaokao effectively discriminates en masse against those who do not live in urban centers, with knowledge of English at the heart of the problem. Access to quality English teachers is much greater in urban centers than in rural areas, and poorer families often cannot afford private English lessons even when they are available. As a result, it pays to live and work in the city, which shows in the large differentials in English exam scores along urban and rural lines.
In addition to unequal access to quality English education, there are several structural factors that further complicate this issue. One could argue that the English teachers flocking to China are akin to profiteers, taking advantage of the flaws in the Chinese education system for high salaries and colorful tourism. Thus the Chinese government, as well as tutors and those who offer them exorbitant salaries, bear some responsibility for the discrimination inherent in the Chinese education system. Moreover, the emphasis on English in the gaokao has its roots in problematic imperialist influences from Western powers in the early 20th century, reflecting a long history of political and economic imbalance between China and the Western world. Indeed, although all Chinese students must master English to attend college, most Western students certainly do not face a parallel emphasis on learning Mandarin. While structural factors are relevant — and should be addressed on a broader scale — NGOs that send much-needed English teachers to rural areas of China are a critical, if temporary, outside solution to the present situation.
This external presence is especially necessary in a country that seems unlikely to change their position on broad existing structures that already make life inordinately hard for rural residents in other ways. Rural residents have less disposable income and weak access to infrastructural support. Furthermore, there is little political effort from the government to integrate the rural and urban parts of China or to expend great energy to improve the problems in these areas.
Faced with this seemingly insurmountable problem, nonprofits, such as Teach for China and Stepping Stones, have stepped in to help level the playing field for students in rural areas as well as those in migrant communities. Teach for China’s vision is to create a world in which “one day, all children in China will enjoy access to a quality education.” Stepping Stones connects poor, migrant Chinese students in need of English lessons with English-speaking expatriates to help these students advance their education. Some might try to discredit these nonprofit organizations by likening them to for-profit English-language schools, but these NGOs target those students who need help the most and who are not currently receiving it. By taking talented English-speaking individuals and sending them to teach English to rural populations, these organizations help close the gap between urban and rural students. Additionally, these organizations have helped to change the culture surrounding English teaching in China by incentivizing more English speakers to teach English for the global good, rather than for goods. In the six years since its founding, Teach for China has experienced a 150 percent increase in the number of instructors, and this rapid growth has resulted in increases in the number of students that receive better English instruction.
NGO presence was only introduced to China about 25 years ago. Before that, the central government had outlawed their operation and it has only recently, and begrudgingly, begun to loosen restrictions. It is therefore hard to gauge the long-term effectiveness of NGO work in terms of specific increases in gaokao test scores, but the increased access to quality English education is a good indicator of at least short-term success — and has surpassed the impact of most government initiatives designed to iron out these inequalities. Although the government is currently considering reforms to the test, which may include removing the English section, NGOs are an important stopgap until that happens. As NGO presence grows, the number of rural students scoring high enough on the entrance exam to attend college should correspondingly increase, helping to close the wide education inequality gap that hangs over China even as it rises to global economic prominence.
That said, one would be naïve to claim that all nonprofits present a perfect solution – some have actually perpetuated key structural problems or engaged in problematic activities. However, in an imperfect world, where concentration of wealth, urban-rural divides and binding test systems abound, perfect solutions are hard to find. Nonprofits are an effective outlet through which individuals interested in social justice can accomplish tangible, concrete change – even if that change is only on the microcosmic level of a classroom of 50 children eagerly awaiting a new English lesson.