PEAK OF TENSION: Students taking the national college entrance examination in a middle school in Golmud City, northwest China's Qinghai Province, wait for question papers on June 7 (ZHANG HONGXIANG)

China's national college entrance examination has for decades been compared to a stampede of thousands of soldiers and horses across a single log bridge and long heralded as a symbol of fairness in selecting bright young people. However, the attraction of this exam is declining.

Fewer Chinese students are choosing to take the once-a-year exam, usually on June 7 and 8, according to a new study. Meanwhile, more of them are considering studying abroad.

In the past four years the number of students taking the exam fell by nearly 1.4 million from 10.5 million in 2008 to 9.15 million in 2012, said the 2012 Report on the National College Entrance Exam released by China Education Online (www.eol.cn), which claims to be the largest Chinese education portal.

The phenomenon of "three quits," referring to high school graduates who either quit the exam, university application or college registration, is increasingly popular, according to the report.

Outbound students

Kuai Pengzhou, a researcher with the School of Economics and Business Administration of Beijing Normal University, said that the main reason behind the decrease in the number of exam takers is China's falling birth rate. According to his calculation, China's total school-age population will drop by 8.6 million every year between 2010 and 2020, representing an annual decline of 3.23 percent.

Those sitting the national college entrance examination over the last three years were mostly born after 1991, falling outside a baby boom in China from 1985 to 1990. The demographic transformation also explains why attendance for the exam peaked at 2008 but began to decline each subsequent year.

Meanwhile, more graduates are applying to overseas universities. The report by China Education Online shows the number of Chinese students going abroad for further studies has grown at an annual rate of more than 20 percent since 2008.

There were 157,558 Chinese college students studying in the United States in the 2010-11 academic year, up 23 percent from the previous year, making China the largest source of international students in the United States, according to the New York City-based Institute of International Education.

Before institutions of higher learning in China began to enlarge their enrollment in 1999, the highly competitive national college entrance examination used to keep a large number of young people out of higher education whose scores weren't high enough. Around the year 2000 the majority of high school graduates studying abroad were students who had not been admitted to any college in China. To guarantee higher education for their children, wealthy parents were prepared to pay the tuition and living costs of their children in a foreign country.

However, the decline in the number of exam takers is expected to bring the university admission exam's pass rate up to 75 percent in China this year, compared with just 57 percent in 2008. This has made it much easier for Chinese high school graduates in 2012 to access higher education at home. Take Shanghai for example. In 2011, nearly 90 percent of all 60,000 students sitting the national college entrance examination in the city were admitted by an institution of higher learning. This year, all the examinees in Shanghai will be able to enroll in a college or university.

The current craze for studying abroad is characterized by an increasing number of students who, though they can be admitted by a reputable Chinese university, opt for a foreign institution. Foreign institutions are seen to have greater international prestige. Many of those now seeking foreign degrees are top students from prestigious high schools in big cities, whose parents belong to China's growing middle class.

Zhang Xi, a sophomore at one of Beijing's top high schools, told the 21st Century Business Herald published in Guangzhou, southern Guangdong Province, that he was preparing to apply to study abroad, as were half of his classmates, in hopes to secure better career opportunities after graduation. "Many senior students told me that a diploma from a domestic institution could not guarantee a decent job," Zhang said.

Zhang's mother, a civil servant who graduated from the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai, said that the tuition and living expenses for attending Chinese colleges were increasingly high. "I'd rather let my son study abroad and get a more competitive diploma," she said. "At least he will be able to master a foreign language."

The increase in parents like Zhang's mother has pushed the number of Chinese students studying overseas to 340,000 in 2011, of whom 22.6 percent were high school graduates, according to a study by the China Education Association for International Exchange.