The issues with the education system are notorious, particularly in Hong Kong. As mentioned in earlier articles, students are under pressure to keep up and outperform their peers in order to be accepted into the most competitive, prestigious universities. Clearly, this has an incredibly adverse impact on students' mental health, yet the level of competitiveness continues rising. Why?
College admissions rates have fallen drastically. A survey of admissions rates in top US schools from 2006-2018 found that admissions rates into the top 50 schools dropped from 35.9% to 22.6%. The more prestigious the school, the greater the impact: average acceptance rates for the top 10 schools dropped from 16.0% to 6.4%. Meanwhile, SAT scores and other requirements for prestigious universities have slowly inched up in the past decade, too. Anecdotally, many parents recall that their own college admissions were nowhere near as difficult as the ones their children are going through.
There are a variety of reasons for this.
The first and most obvious reason is that the number of applications to prestigious universities has increased, both because more students are attending university — one study reports the number of university enrollments worldwide nearly doubled from 1990 to 2015 — and because each applicant sends more applications, as students try to hedge their bets against declining acceptance rates and the application process grows easier. Despite the increase in applicants, however, the number of spots at top universities has remained relatively consistent. It’s a classic case of rising demand and inelastic supply, leading to higher prices — paid in both tuition and mental health.
The most insidious reason is how competition fuels itself. Families recognise the competitiveness of education and the opportunities a prestigious college may provide, and are thus incentivised to work to reach those top universities. Those who don’t put in the work fall behind and are outcompeted, and those that want to get ahead must put in increasingly more effort. However, with everyone trying harder, we arrive at something similar to our initial state, where nobody has a relative advantage, except everyone has a lot more stress — it’s ten times the pain, with no more gain. It’s easy to draw a comparison to the prisoner’s dilemma.
A system like this, compounded by a culture that highly values education and work ethic and financial success, can easily become a race to the bottom — who can sacrifice the most in the name of educational prestige, in the name of “keeping up”? Parents search tirelessly for the best high schools, primary schools, kindergartens, and even nursery schools. Children are enrolled in a mountain of extracurriculars at an early age, and rote learning is prioritized over useful skills such as creativity, independence, and communication. Students learn to cram instead of comprehend. For what?
Prestige is not as important as you’d think. While a few decades ago an elite university would be the only guarantee of truly advanced education, the gap in quality is no longer as wide nowadays. A fairly good university is still, a fairly good university. Furthermore, studies show that future success depends less on the kind of university and more on the kind of student — students that get accepted into Harvard but perhaps go somewhere more modest have similar long-term incomes to those that do attend.
Additionally, many jobs don’t require a university degree, while some others — including Google and Apple — have dropped their requirements. Less than half of employers think college graduates are satisfactorily prepared for success on the job.
It should not be a surprise that the education system is deeply flawed, and in a way where is difficult for any individual to make a substantial change to the overall system. What’s needed is an external push for reform — like what China attempted to do by banning for-profit tutoring — or a large shift in cultural attitudes towards work and education. However, that’s not to say you can’t help yourself by reevaluating your own priorities and coming to a deliberate decision. There’s no shame in following your incentives in a flawed system, nor any in deciding that it isn’t worth it.
No matter what, the first step is to recognise the problem.
Sources:
Writing: Katherine Yan
Editing: Charlotte Chow
Graphics: Kate Chan
Comments