College entrance exam takers this year have found more favor than students in yesteryears.

Institutions of higher learning will admit nearly 70 percent of the 9.57 million students who appeared for the entrance examinations last week, according to the Ministry of Education.

There is also another piece of good news. Fewer students sat for the exams this year; the number was down by nearly 650,000 over last year's. These high school graduates should thank a higher-education equivalent of the global credit bubble for this stroke of good luck.

Higher education in China has been transformed from an elitist to a mass education model over the last decade due to commercialization and funding reform.

On government orders, universities have boosted enrollment by up to 30 percent annually, year after year for most of the previous decade. They have also invested generously in building vast new campuses.

The expansion of universities has been so rapid, and the pressure to pay off loans so intense that many schools turned into diploma mills, producing poorly qualified students.

The expansion has also raised questions about the quality and employability of graduates. In fact, graduates from some universities have been less successful in the jobs market.

That apart, well-off urban families have been able to afford the higher tuition fees, but low-income families from urban and rural centers, especially in inland areas, have faced hurdles in getting their children through university or college.

Rising tuition fees at these universities have deterred many poor families, even as entry requirements have been significantly lower for local students in big cities than for outsiders.

The higher intake promised this year may actually come as manna from heaven for students from rural areas.

(China Daily 06/14/2010 page4)