“One test can decide a person’s whole life,” runs a popular Chinese saying. The message is familiar to anyone who hopes to pursue higher education in Taiwan. All students, regardless of their intended major or career goals, must take the grueling, two-day Joint University Entrance Examination. (The only exception is that students educated abroad are allowed to take a simpler modified test.) Of the estimated 120,000 college applicants who took the test last July, there was space for less than 45 percent to gain admittance into any local college or university.
From as early as first grade, children are told by their parents and teachers to spend their free time studying for entrance exams. At the end of ninth grade, they face the Joint High School Entrance Exam, in which about one-third score well enough to go on to high school. (Those who fail can attend a vocational school or a five-year junior college, or can take the test again each year, as many times as they like.)
Three years later, high school seniors face the university entrance exam. The pressure is intense. Even among those who do well enough to enter college, most do not test into their first-choice university, and some will not be able to study their preferred major. Students apply to specific university departments after receiving their scores and comparing them with the minimum scores required at each one.
Cramming at a night school is a way of life for Taiwan teens. Here, a practice entrance exam in geography. Many applicants who fail the exam study for another year and try again.
There are several alternatives for students who do not get into university. Many opt to spend another year studying at an entrance exam cram school, then retake the test. Others enroll in a junior college or vocational school, or directly enter the job market. But because of the traditional emphasis on higher education, many students go into the exam feeling that if they don’t score well, their academic career will be severely hampered and their lives altered.
The Joint University Entrance Exam was developed by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in 1954 as a method for evaluating college applicants fairly. The tests are administered anonymously and all students take the same test, virtually eliminating the traditional advantages enjoyed by the children of wealthy or powerful families. After it began, the system quickly gained public acceptance. Today, all Taiwan private and public universities and colleges, except the Open University for continuing education, use it as the main criterion for admission.
The entrance exam continues to be praised for its fairness. Every step of the test’s development and administration is carefully monitored. Each year, a new test is drawn up by a team of university professors, with two working on each of the ten test sections. These professors draw up a series of multiple-choice and essay questions based on the standardized textbooks used at all Taiwan high schools. When the draft test is ready, two top-ranking college freshmen are pre-tested to check the difficulty level. These students are sequestered during the pre-test period.
Each November, the MOE establishes an examination committee comprised of university presidents to oversee the exam process for the following year. Each university is then responsible for one step in the exam process, following directives from the ministry. For example, for the 1995 exam, National Taiwan Normal University is responsible for grading essay questions, Feng Chia University in Taichung will oversee the computerized grading of multiple-choice questions, and Tunghai University in Taichung will assign students to university departments after the test. Beginning in 1996, the process will be even more strictly monitored because all procedures will be overseen by the College Entrance Examination Center (CEEC), a committee comprised of the presidents of all universities and colleges. The committee was formed in 1989 to review the university admittance system.
The first part of the two-day exam covers a set of basic topics: Chinese, English, math, history, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, and the philosophy of Sun Yat-sen. For the second part, examinees choose one of four sections, depending on their intended major. Roughly categorized, Section 1 covers English, Chinese, social sciences, economics, business, and law; Section 2 covers math, applied sciences, computer science, and architecture; Section 3 includes medicine and natural sciences; and Section 4 covers agricultural sciences. Most students choose one section, but those considering majors in two different test sections can take two and will spend three days on the exam.
After-school fun? Probably not. Young people are encouraged to spend all their free time studying. Professors worry that preparing for the exam produces students who can memorize but can’t think analytically.
During the testing period each July, public attention is riveted on the students. In the days just before the test, certain temples are filled with families asking the gods for assistance. During the test period, newspapers and TV news reports run images of the students filing grimly into the exam halls, and columns with advice for students and parents. The local governments allow families with exam-related emergencies to call for police assistance. The officers give police escort to students caught in morning traffic jams or rush students back home to retrieve forgotten admission tickets. Doctors are on hand at all exam sites around the island, and many parents and other family members gather outside the buildings to offer the young people cold drinks, snacks, massages, and advice during the breaks. Some parents put their children up in hotel rooms near the testing sites to try and ensure a good night’s sleep.
One month later, the test scores are mailed out and students find out whether they can apply to the university department of their choice, based on the average exam scores accepted by that university the previous year. More than half of them find that their scores are too low to apply to any university. Those with high enough marks submit a list of their university department choices in order of preference to the MOE-approved Examination Committee. The committee then assigns students to specific departments and publishes the results in local newspapers and on the campus bulletin boards of major universities.
This high-pressure, all-or-nothing system has come under increasing fire in recent years. Critics say the exam forces students to focus solely on preparing for the test, rather than developing and pursuing individual academic interests, and that it allows a single test to determine a student’s academic career.
Professor of Psychology Wang Jenn-wu (王震武) of Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei charges that the system creates passive students who are skilled in memorization but lack analytic skills. “Most students in my classes don’t know how to question,” he says. In addition, he believes the exam system has a negative impact on students’ character. “Students become selfish and unable to get along well with other people because of the fierce exam competition,” he says. “Indirectly, it causes family problems and social problems.” Wang even charges that the exam is unfair because it judges all students by a single standard, regardless of individual interests and abilities.
Kuo Hung-chi, professor of atmospheric science, National Taiwan University–“I doubt there is a problem with the [exam] system. Most Chinese students abroad still perform as well as foreigners do or even better.”
Other professors complain that the exam system places too many restrictions on the high school curriculum. In order to maintain fairness, the exam covers only information in the standardized high school materials approved by the MOE. “Exam preparation forces students to learn only old information printed in the textbooks instead of expanding their knowledge beyond these books,” says Lu Chun-fu (呂俊甫), a professor of education and human development at National Chengchi University in Taipei. Professor Huang Jong-tsun (黃榮村), chairman of National Taiwan University’s department of psychology, points out one prevalent example of such limitations. Although Taiwan students begin studying English in seventh grade (and some begin as early as kindergarten, in private language schools), their speaking skills often remain very limited. The reason? The English section of the exam covers only reading and writing.
“To prepare for the exam, I only studied textbooks covering the test subjects,” says Chen Sheng-ying (陳聖熒), a sophomore studying library studies and information sciences at Fu Jen Catholic University. “Preparing for the exam taught me to think in a very limited way. I just learned to supply the standard answers.” He adds that the study habits followed him into college, making his first year difficult.
But atmospheric science professor Kuo Hung-chi (郭鴻基) of National Taiwan University defends the exam system. Kuo points out that the local primary and secondary education system measures up very well internationally. For example, in the 1992 International Assessment of Educational Progress, which tests math and science knowledge in students from twenty countries, Taiwan’s nine-and thirteen-year-olds had the top scores. “I doubt that there is a problem with the system,” Kuo says. “Most Chinese students abroad still perform as well as foreigners do or even better.” Kuo also downplays fears that the testing system produces students with weak analytic skills, stressing that students usually strengthen these skills quickly once they begin university. Says Kuo, “The situation is better for juniors and seniors.”
Perhaps the biggest complaint from the students themselves is that the exam system dictates where and what they can study. If a would-be English major does not score highly on this section of the exam, he or she may well end up in a history or Chinese department. “The system forces students into their last choice major,” says Tsao Liang-chi (曹亮吉), vice president of the CEEC.
But some professors defend the system as a way to weed out students who are not suited to their chosen major. “We should blame those who design the exam, not the system itself,” says Hu Yar-pin (胡雅萍), a professor of dentistry at Taipei Medical College. “In fact, the system can determine which students are right for college.”
There is recourse for students placed in majors they dislike. After one year, they can take a test within the university and try to switch departments. “About one-fifth of the atmospheric science majors switch to another department every year,” says professor Kuo Hung-chi. Hu Yar-ping says it is even more common in the dentistry department. “Most dentistry students enter the field without thinking about whether they are really interested in it and have a bad time in college. I encourage them to switch to other departments or to leave school for a while.”
Some of the most compelling arguments against the exam have come from Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲). As president of Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s top-ranked research institute, and a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Lee is one of the island’s most respected scholars. Lee has called the system rigid and unfair and has told local newspapers that he hopes the Joint University Entrance Exam will be discontinued before the end of the century. He would like to see the education system revised to allow greater access to both high school and college.
Lee is recommending that it be replaced by a two-part system. First, students would take a general test similar to the U.S. Scholastic Aptitude Test. Second, students would take individual tests developed by each institution. Lee explains that such a method would allow students to make academic choices according to their interests and aptitudes, rather than depend on the scores of a single test.
In 1994, the Executive Yuan invited Lee and thirty university presidents, scholars, officials, and businesspeople to form a Council on Education Reform to suggest revisions to the entrance exam system. The council planned to announce a series of recommendations for reform to the Executive Yuan this spring. But the MOE has stated that these recommendations will be taken as personal suggestions only and it has not committed itself to following them.
In response to the outcry against the Joint University Entrance Exam, the Ministry of Education is pursuing several routes toward revision. A small-scale alternative exam program has been operating on a trial basis since 1993. Under it, students selected by their high school teachers can take a two-part alternative exam. The first part, a general aptitude test, differs from the standard exam in two ways. First, it covers fewer general subjects—Chinese, English, math, science, and social studies. Second, it includes fill-in-the-blank questions, a translation, and a composition, in addition to the current multiple-choice and essay questions. Those who pass it can choose one university department and take an admittance exam developed by that department. Students who are not admitted through the alternative test can still take the Joint University Entrance Exam.
For the first trial testing, forty-two colleges and universities islandwide set aside a total of 1,412 seats for students applying to enter for the 1994-95 school year. More than eight thousand students took the alternative tests, and just over one thousand entered college through it. The program has been expanded for the 1995-96 school year. More than 2,800 seats will be available and 21,000 students took the initial test this past spring.
The program has met with mixed reviews. “I don’t think the alternative test solves the problems of the Joint University Entrance Exam, because it still quantifies student’s aptitudes solely through test scores,” says education professor Lu Chun-fu. But others praise the increased freedom given to universities. “The program is good because the institutions can choose appropriate students according to their own criteria, their own standards,” says Tsao Liang-chi of the CEEC.
The Joint University Entrance Exam itself is under review by the CEEC. In May 1992, after four years of studies on the entrance exam system, the center submitted a proposal to the MOE for diversifying university admissions using three channels: a special recommendation and screening system for students with talents in specific fields such as science, the arts, or athletics; an Advanced Learning and Placement Program for high school graduates who have been out of school for at least a year and want to continue their education; and an improved Joint University Entrance Exam. Like the alternative exam, CEEC recommends that the exam be divided into a general aptitude test and a second test developed by the individual institutions.
The aptitude test would cover the same topics currently in the general studies section of the current entrance exam, but it would merge history, geography, and the philosophy of Sun Yat-sen into a “social studies” category. It would also combine physics, chemistry, biology, and earth sciences in a “science” category. For the math, science, and social studies sections, students could choose either a basic or advanced test. The CEEC also recommends that, when admitting students, universities take into consideration each student’s preferred ranking of schools, rather than base selections solely on exam scores.
The CEEC believes the revisions will be in place by 2000. But the MOE has not set a schedule for reviewing the plan and stresses that any changes to the Joint University Entrance Exam must be approved by the ministry and by university presidents. The process is likely to be long and slow, but it seems unavoidable that the exam system eventually will be changed.
Sample Questions from the 1994 Joint University Entrance Exam
(1) Geography section
Which area has the most varied topography, climate, and religious beliefs?
a) Eastern Europe b) Western Europe c) Central Europe d) Northern Europe
(2) English section
Mary is having a tough time deciding whether to dress __ or formally for the party tonight.
a) individually b) casually c) respectively d) deliberately
(3) Mathematics section
A teacher gives twelve of the same type of pencil to six students (A,B,C,D,E,F). Two of them get four pencils each, two get two each, two get none.
1. How many different ways could the teacher group the students when handing out the specified sets of pencils?
2. What is the possibility of Student E and Student F receiving four pencils each?
ANSWERS
(1)a, (2)b, (3) 90; 1 in 15.