How The Chinese College Expansion Plan affects me

My mom always said: “If I could have entered the university, we would have a different life right now.” In the past years, entering a university was an unreachable dream for most Chinese people because it was too hard. However, more and more people wanted to receive a higher education. Meanwhile, the Chinese government wanted to improve the quality of the population. Therefore in 1999, the educational department made a new policy called The College Expansion Plan. It said that colleges and universities would expand their enrollment to most high school graduates. My mom was very happy when she learned about this because that meant I could have more chances to go into the university. This policy had important influences on my life.

The first effect was obvious; I got the chance to enter the university. According to this policy, most of the universities would lower their requirements of application to ensure that more students could be enrolled. I had to fill out the university application form according to my score when I passed my exit exam. I checked the university guide book and found that I had at least twenty universities I could apply to. I picked three of them and my favorite major with my parents. I was so excited, because I didn’t image that I would have many choices for my university. If the policy hadn’t changed, I would have gotten to some training schools and learned a kind of skill to find a low wage job. In short, I enjoyed my university life and received a better education from it

The second effect was the cost of my university. I had to spend a lot of money for my university, for the cost increased when this policy was declared. With the increase of students, the university had to employ more teachers and got more educational resources to satisfy the increase. The cost increase was inevitable. When I received the admission to my university, my parents prepared a certain amount of money for my four years university. That was almost equal to five years of their salary. I think it was not easy for some poor families. For instance, I have a high school classmate who was accepted by a good university, but he quit finally because his family didn’t have enough money to provide his tuition fee. While this policy enabled some high school students to enter university, it also closed the door of university to some excellent but poor students in the meantime.

The last effect was that finding a job became harder. I always expected that I could find a wonderful job after graduation. However the truth was entirely opposite. I found out that eight out of ten people had the same diploma as mine and wanted to apply to the same position as me. Then I was aware that the extended enrollment made more university students to go into the society; therefore finding a job became more competitive. My degree became worthless, and I had to get more skills to outshine others.

The situations that occurred to me also brought similar problems to many graduates. Recently, these problems happened in the education system have gotten some serious concerns from educators and governors. They are trying to adjust the policy to figure out the problems. For example, the government encouraged universities to accept some excellent students without the tuition and supplied a large number of scholarships; they gave good benefits to people who found a job in hard or poor area. In sum, I hope the College Expansion Plan will bring more positive effects to students than negative. It can really work on the improvement of the quality life of the Chinese population and the development of the country.