Exam scores reveal increased student interest in China’s newer, smaller universities
Research-focused universities with close ties to entrepreneurs and scientists seen as offering competitive advantage in job market
A growing number of China’s top high school students are looking beyond traditional elite universities to smaller, newer, research-intensive institutions that offer curricula focused on technological innovation and its commercialisation.
In Guangdong province, two-year-old Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology and one-year-old Great Bay University, in Dongguan, had minimum admission scores from the national entrance exam above 625 this year, higher than many departments at more established universities, according to data released by the city government of Guangzhou, the provincial capital.
Amid China’s broader push to foster research-focused universities as a way of bolstering strategic industries, the newer universities have focused on more specialised fields of research and closer links with industry than is common at traditional universities.
They include Westlake University in Hangzhou, ShanghaiTech University, Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology, Fuyao University of Science and Technology in Fuzhou and Eastern Institute of Technology in Ningbo.
For some families navigating an increasingly competitive graduate job market, the roles that prominent entrepreneurs, scientists and industry leaders play at such universities suggest graduates might have an advantage in career competition.
Steve Zheng, from Shenzhen, scored in the top 1.6 per cent of the 433,000 physics-stream high school students who took the National Higher Education Entrance Examination last year and sought to study mathematics at his home city’s Southern University of Science and Technology, which was founded 16 years ago, for that reason. But the fierce competition for places ultimately led him to enrol at a longer-established comprehensive university in the province.