北大清華招生罵戰暴露中國大學功利主義

A war of words has raged on the Chinese Internet this week. It doesn’t involve celebrities or politicians. It’s a battle between China’s top two universities, Tsinghua and Peking, over recruiting new undergraduates.

本週，中國網絡上掀起了一場口水仗。它與名人或政治人物無關，而是中國兩所頂尖高校——清華大學和北京大學——之間的一場爭鬥，其目的在於搶奪本科生生源。

Every June after the national university entrance exam, or gaokao, Chinese universities start their recruiting process: They call the students who received high scores on the exam, the students’ parents, their high school teachers and even members of their high schools’ administrative staffs. They also arrange for promising recruits to visit their campuses.

每年6月，在被稱作“高考”的全國大學入學考試結束後，中國的大學便開始了招生工作。招生人員會聯繫在這場考試中取得高分的學生，以及學生家長、他們的高中老師，甚至學生所在高中的行政人員。他們還會組織潛在的新生參觀大學的校園。

According to the Ministry of Education, 9.42 million students are vying for seven million spots in China’s undergraduate and associate degree programs beginning in the fall of this year. Traditionally, the competition between Tsinghua and Peking for the cream of the crop has been particularly fierce. The majority of students with excellent gaokao scores usually choose to attend one of the two schools.

教育部表示，共有942萬名學生在爭奪今年秋季開學的700萬個本科和專科名額。一直以來，清華和北大對最優秀學生的爭奪都十分激烈。一般而言，大部分高考成績優秀的學生，都會選擇進入這兩所學校中的一所就讀。

This year, when the Tsinghua freshman class will number 3,372 and the Peking class 3,665, the most conspicuous battle has featured the two universities’ freshmen recruiting teams in Sichuan Province arguing on their official Weibo accounts, as initially reported by the website ifeng.

今年，清華計劃招收3372名本科生，而北大計劃招生3665名；在這場尤其引人矚目的戰爭中，兩所大學的四川招生組在官方微博賬號上展開了舌戰。最早報道此事的是鳳凰網。

The Peking University team was the first to post its version of recent events in the province:

北大招生組首先從自己的角度，講述了四川省最近發生的情況：

The other school’s recruiting team made phone calls to students who rank in the top 10 and claimed that Peking University had lied and would not let them into their desired majors. We are here to respond: First, a promise by our team is always reliable. Based on the current applications to each department and number of people, there’s no way the students’ needs cannot be satisfied. Second, from our experience in the past five years, it is the other school that has frequently breached its promises to students. Please stop bothering the to-be freshmen of Peking University.

“某校招生組給文理科前十選擇北大的考生挨個電話，稱北大欺騙了他們，不會滿足他們的專業志願。在此我們迴應：1、招生組的承諾，一諾千金，目前報考各個專業的人數也十分合理，沒有任何不滿足的可能；2、從近五年的歷史看，恰恰是某校多次毀約，沒有兌現其承諾。請不要繼續騷擾北大準新生。”

The Tsinghua team in Sichuan responded:

清華四川招生組迴應道：

Brother, it’s not a problem if you advertise Peking University so that they can make a better choice, even if you exaggerate a little. But if you decide to go beyond the policies and use money to lure the students, aren’t you afraid of exerting a bad influence over children?

“兄弟，給考生介紹北大情況，讓學生更好地選擇，你誇張一點也沒問題，但非要超越政策，拿錢誘惑考生，就不怕教壞小孩子嗎？”

The Peking University team then alluded to how it said Tsinghua had succeeded in recruiting two recent top gaokao scorers with generous scholarships:

隨後，北大招生組暗示道，清華曾用豐厚的獎學金成功招走近年來的兩名高分考生：

Brother, in the past five years, you used a lot of money to buy up Tang and Guo. Do I need to bring this up? Here we reiterate that there’s no chance for anyone trying to haggle for money from us with their high scores.

“兄弟，過去五年你們砸錢買走的唐某、郭某，需要我講嗎？我們也再次說明，拿分來跟北大談錢的，門兒都沒有！”

The rival recruiting teams soon deleted the posts, but ifeng published screenshots of the argument, which went viral.

兩所大學的招生組迅速刪除了這些帖子，但鳳凰網發佈了此次爭論的截屏。這些截屏在網上被瘋狂傳播。

Later, the Peking team returned to the squabble and suggested:

隨後，北大招生組重新迴應爭議，並提出以下倡議：

1. Serve the students truthfully. Do not lie or attack others. 2. Respect students’ own choices. Do not put pressure on the students through schools and parents. Do not use younger brothers to force their older brothers, nor use girlfriends to make decisions for their boyfriends. 3. Abide by the rules, treat every student equally, and object to any price demand.

“1、真誠爲考生服務，不撒謊不抹黑；2、尊重考生本人的選擇，不通過學校、家長施加壓力，不用弟弟綁架哥哥、女友綁架男友；3、遵守規矩，公平對待每一位考生，也抵制漫天要價者。”

Some commenters on ifeng have been hard on the two schools. An observation with more than 3,600 likes from a user in Fujian says: “With this kind of education, does our nation have any hope? Everything is for vanity. Famous universities are vain, famous professors are vain, and the students, too, are vain. The common people are even worse.”

鳳凰網的一些評論者對兩所高校頗爲不滿。一名福建網友發表的一則評論獲得了3600餘次“推薦”，該評論稱：“這樣的教育，民族還有希望嗎？一切都那麼功利，名校如此，名師如此，學生亦當如此，國民甚之。”

For Tsinghua and Peking, the goal is to recruit as many zhuangyuan, the very top gaokao scorers from each province, as possible and to set the cutoff scores, below which applicants won’t be considered, as high as possible. According to a widely reposted commentary on Haiwai Net, the website of the overseas edition of the newspaper People’s Daily, the more top scorers a university lures and the higher the cutoff scores it sets in each province, the more prestige it gains.

清華和北大的目標是儘可能多地錄取高考“狀元”（每個省得分最高的考生），並且把分數線設定在儘可能高的水平。《人民日報》海外版網站“海外網”上一篇被大量轉發的評論稱，一所大學吸引的高分學生越多，它在每個省劃定的分數線就越高，學校也會獲得更高的聲望。

As for the effect of recruiting the top scorers, Shangguan Caiwei, the author of the commentary, offers an obvious example: “If the news says, ‘This year, the zhuangyuan from every province are attending Peking University,’ then everyone will believe that Peking University is the best university in the country. The same happens if it’s Tsinghua.”

這篇評論的作者上官采薇在談到招收高分考生的影響時，舉了一個明顯的例子：“如果新聞中出現‘某年高考，所有狀元均選擇北京大學’，可能所有人都會認爲，這纔是中國最好的學校。反之亦然。”

Compared with recruiting top scorers, setting a high cutoff score is a trickier business. Ms. Shangguan points out that some students do not rank in the top 10 in their provinces, but they still manage to be accepted to study at prestigious schools like Tsinghua or Peking. “It’s not because of their family background,” she said. “It’s because they determine the cutoff scores of the university in the province.” In other words, every university has a quota in each province, so the goal is to fulfill the recruitment quota with a higher cutoff score than your competitors’. So although some students do not seem like hot commodities, their scores are perfect for elevating the cutoff scores.

與招收高分考生相比，設定較高的分數線是一件更棘手的事情。上官采薇指出，有些學生的排名並非全省前十，但他們卻能被清華或北大等名校錄取。“不是考生家裏有什麼強大不可告人的背景，”她說。“而是因爲，他/她決定了這所大學的錄取分數線。”換而言之，每所大學在每個省份都有一定的招生名額，所以他們的目標是以高於競爭對手的分數線來完成招生指標。因此，儘管有些學生看起來不像是熱門人選，但他們的分數對於提高學校的分數線而言卻十分理想。

“If these students are taken by the competitors, then you’ll be forced to lower your own cutoff score” to fulfill the quota, Ms. Shangguan said. “Once your cutoff score is lower than those of your competitors, you lose half of the battle of recruitment. This is what we call ‘a few points determine the difference between heaven and earth.’ ”

“如果這名同學被對方挖走”，爲了完成招生名額，“分數線會繼續下降”，上官采薇說。“一旦低於對方學校，這場招生戰役，也輸了一半。可謂幾分之差，天上地下。”

Ms. Shangguan also lends credence to several seemingly apocryphal stories online: It is true, she writes, that a few Tsinghua and Peking recruiters traded blows and inflicted injuries on one another and that Tsinghua invited new recruits to campus and cut off their contact to the outside world to make sure that the students selected Tsinghua. It is also true, she writes, that during the final three hours for applications to be accepted, Tsinghua recruiters pretending to be students called all the phones at Peking University’s recruitment center in an unnamed province so that the lines stayed busy for real students in need of information from their rival.

上官采薇的話還表明，網上幾種看似可疑的傳聞都有真實性。她寫道，幾名清華和北大的招生人員曾拳腳相向，致使雙方都因此受傷，清華還曾把新生請到校園，切斷他們與外界的聯繫，以確保這些學生最後會選擇清華，而這些都確有其事。她還寫道，在高考志願填報最後一天的最後三小時，清華招生人員冒充學生，撥打某省份北大招生中心的所有電話，導致需要從清華的對手那裏獲取信息的真正的學生無法撥通電話，這件事也是真的。

In another showdown between Tsinghua and Peking, covered in the Southern Metropolis Daily as well as the CCTV program “News 1+1” on Monday night, a high-scoring Guangdong student named Liu Junyan was bombarded by phone calls from both Tsinghua and Peking for three straight days. The newspaper reported that after Mr. Liu chose to enroll at Peking University Guanghua School of Management, the Tsinghua recruiter told him: “The business management program in Peking University is not very good. Tsinghua’s business management is No. 1.”

《南方都市報》和中國中央電視臺週一晚間的節目《新聞1+1》對清華和北大之間的另一場較量進行了報道。在這場競爭中，廣東省高分考生劉俊言就遭到了清華和北大連續三天的電話轟炸。《南方都市報》報道，在得知劉俊言選擇就讀北大光華管理學院後，清華招生人員告訴他，北大的“經濟專業很爛，不如清華的經管學院”。

Mr. Liu said: “The fight over new recruits is understandable because the recruiters are under so much pressure from the schools that they resort to inappropriate ways to attract students. The recruiters should strengthen their self-discipline, and the authorities should ban the universities from smearing one another. Let rationality rule the recruiting process, and let the students enter their dream schools.”

“高校搶生源還是可以理解的，因爲大家都被上頭逼着，壓力太大就會去走不正當的捷徑，”劉俊言說，“應該加強行業自律，主管部門加大對互黑行爲的規制，讓搶生源迴歸理性，讓考生進入真正心儀的學校。”

Besides Mr. Liu, other commenters have seized on the deeper implications of the recruitment battle. An unsigned commentary on the Qianjiang Evening News site points out that Chinese universities’ recruiting tactics are so ruthless that they no longer serve the best interest of the students, but that such tactics occur only in a larger context:

除劉俊言以外，其他評論者還抓住了這場招生大戰更深層的含義。《錢江晚報》網站上一篇未署名的評論文章指出，中國大學的招生策略非常殘酷，所以它們往往不再爲考生的利益服務，但此類策略只會出現在這樣的大背景之中：

Since recruitment is part of university education and not an independent procedure, to some extent, it points to the problems in university education. Furthermore, universities are part of the social fabric. Therefore, the idea that ‘score is everything’ represents a materialistic trend closely linked with the materialistic tendencies in our society. The phenomenon that recruiting students has become ‘recruiting scores’ represents a sickness in universities as well as in society.

“招生是大學教育的組成部分，其運作機制不是孤立存在的，它在某種程度上體現了大學教育的問題。大學又是整個社會肌體的一個部分，招生分數至上，體現出功利趨勢，這和功利主義盛行的整個社會是同構關係。招生異化爲‘招分’，是大學之病，也是社會之病。”