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    Failing Undergrads Downgraded to Vocational Diplomas

    Hubei science school gives struggling students an alternative to getting the boot.
    Jul 31, 2017#education#policy

    One of China’s top universities will trial downgrading poorly performing students to graduate with vocational diplomas, Beijing Youth Daily reported Saturday.

    Under the new system, students at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan, capital of central Hubei province, will be eligible to transfer to a vocational course of study if their academic performance does not meet the school’s requirements, or if they are “unable to continue their studies for any other reason.” The measure will go into effect this September.

    The document also stipulates that students will not be able to return to undergraduate courses once they have transferred to vocational ones.

    HUST is listed as a member of Project 985, a collaboration between the government and the country’s top 39 universities aimed at improving higher education. The school has a large student body of more than 30,000 undergraduates and 20,000 postgraduates, as well as a sizable faculty. 

    “Most students don’t think it’s a bad policy,” an HUST undergraduate engineering student surnamed Zhou told Sixth Tone, adding that he thought it was a good way to encourage students to perform better.

    A teacher from the academic affairs office of the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering told Beijing Youth Daily that the regulation is designed to humanize the current system and offer struggling students another option. Compared with dropping out of university, a vocational diploma isn’t such a bad fallback plan. “Every year, we meet a few dispirited students, and according to the school’s regulations, they should be asked to quit,” he said, adding that this result is not always accepted by both the students and their parents.

    HUST is not the only school to issue such a policy. In 2015, Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University also revised its regulations and now orders struggling students to either transfer to vocational courses or quit.

    Online, many people are questioning whether the policy discriminates against those who end up taking vocational courses, but in education experts’ eyes, this is an experiment designed to improve how universities deal with their worst-performing students.

    Xiong Bingqi, vice president of 21st Century Education Research Institute, a Beijing-based think tank, told Sixth Tone that the undergrad-to-vocational policy is intended to explore more possibilities for poor academic performers. “If this trial is seen as discrimination, schools will haven even less room to experiment,” he said, warning that public opposition could lead to “a situation where it is more trouble than it’s worth for universities to remove failing students.” Xiong added that in China, many universities neglect students’ poor performance and lack strictly enforced academic standards.

    According to current regulations for university dropouts in China, students do not have the option to switch to an alternative institution unless they retake the gaokao, China’s national college entrance examination.

    “So in fact, HUST is providing these students with another way out,” Xiong said. “Of course, if they don’t want to do the vocational program, they can always consider taking the gaokao again.”

    Editor: Nuala Gathercole Lam.

    (Header image: Students attend their commencement ceremony at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Hubei province, June 20, 2017. Zhang Muzhi/IC)