CHINA, NATIONAL, SOCIETY, NEWS FEATURE, EXAM SYSTEM: The Comprehensive Assessment System - Is It Fair?

By Dan Ran

"So many young people, with excellent intelligence and beautiful future dreams, are ranked by this ridiculous score, showing who is better than whom, and who is superior to whom! I will never believe that I am valued by this mere 80 score!" On his personal weblog, a Grade Three student of the Diplomacy Department at Beijing Foreign Studies University, expressed his anger. On October 25, 2005, the result of the annual Comprehensive Assessment of BFSU students came out, arousing strong, numerous responses.

The Comprehensive Assessment system was adopted by BFSU more than a decade ago, having quantified the performance of countless students, those currently studying and those who have graduated from the university. Comprising three parts, namely, moral education scores (20%), intellectual education scores (70%), and P.E. scores (10%), the system aims at annually evaluating and ranking the performance of all the students in a comprehensive way.

"The system is the best we can adopt," said Miss Guo, an adviser at BFSU. "It contains the three main elements involved in a student's college life with a rational proportion of them."

However, about the "three main elements," some students see more than just what Guo said.

"The system is far from being rational as the three parts of the scoring hardly reflects the real ability of a student," said Jingwen, a Grade Three student in the School of International Business at BFSU. "For example, many students who have rich knowledge and broad horizons do not necessarily get a high score in exams. But the exam scores, ironically, are the only thing related to the intellectual education score."

"On the surface, it seems fair enough to simply add up the three scores to have the final score. But how can this show the strong suit of each student?" Weiwei, a Grade Two student in the Law Department at BFSU, said. "Some students are particularly talented in P.E., yet they only do moderately in the other parts, thus their total score ranks only in the middle or even the last in the department. In this way, how can their P.E. talent be recognized and appreciated?"

In response to this, a school officer in charge of the Comprehensive Assessment replied, "As to those who have particular excellence in certain fields, the system has taken them into consideration in the form of awarding them with extra points."

Yet the rule of awarding students with extra points does not satisfy everyone.

"It is often the case that the extra points play the decisive role in the ranking of the total scores, as we don't have a very big disparity in the intellectual education score," said Zixian, a Grade Two student in the Journalism Department.

According to a school official document published in August this year, there are rules regulating the extra scores. For example, those who get first place in a school-level sports competition can get 1 point added to the final score, and those who get second place can have 0.7 extra points, etc.

"There are so many kinds of different competitions concerning all fields, held by such a large number of organizations, that it is almost impossible to cover all the awarded students with detailed regulations," Zixian said after reading the published official document.

The P.E. scores aroused strong controversy.

An official document, "Guide For Conducting P.E. Courses in Universities," issued by the Ministry of Education in August 2002, required universities to put more emphasis on P.E. courses. Thus, the P.E. score takes up a considerable proportion of the final score, 10%, which is not considered fair by all of the students.

"The proportion's just too high," said Zixian, "I spend so much time reading books and preparing for my exams that I rarely have time for physical exercises. And I don't feel the necessity of such a harsh demand on P.E. performance in universities. We're no longer children, after all. We should choose our own emphasis in life."

Xiaoyun, a Grade Two student in the English Department, smiled in appreciation of the P.E. score proportion. "It's just good to see the school realize the importance of P.E., as the intellectual education scores can hardly be completely fair, while the P.E. scores can," he said.

Though much doubt has been cast on the system, there are many students who feel contented and appreciate it.

Cailan, a Grade Two student of the Diplomacy Department said: "I'm happy to see such a system that evaluates students not only by their academic performance but also by their performances in morality, P.E., extracurricular activities. Compared to the system in the middle schools, this is already big progress."

"There must be a standard to quantify performances," said Shuang, a Grade Two student in the English Department. "I don't see much trouble with it. I especially appreciate the moral education part, as the score of this part usually reflects a lot, such as the general reputation and personal relationship of a student."

The Comprehensive Assessment system works not only in BFSU, but also in a large number of other universities in China, including elite universities such as Tsinghua University.

Pingyi, a student in the Architecture Department of Tsinghua University summed up the position of those who favor the status quo:

"I don't think there is any system that can evaluate every student with total fairness. Every system has its loopholes and fallacies. The Comprehensive Assessment system has shortcomings, of course, such as not being objective enough. Yet I appreciate the core principle of it, that is, viewing a person from multiple angles, manners, social work participation, leadership, artistic talent, and of course academic achievement, rather than one perspective only. This is the most important thing."