Helen Yang
A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from one of our secretaries who asked me to join the committee to interview applicants for our graduate program. The interview will be held two days later, she said. I was requested to design five questions along with suggested answers for the interview within 24 hours. I declined, because I thought that it was impossible to get ready for the interview within such a short time. I insisted that they should have notified me at least one week in advance. "What a hassle they caused!" I thought, "The delay in making the announcement was either because the administrative staff were shirking or the management of graduate admission lacked careful consideration."
Later, I realized that I was wrong. The strategy of last-minute announcement was deliberately made to reduce cheating in the interview. In China, the admission of graduate students consists of two parts. First, we look at their scores in the written tests. Second, we interview them. The final decision is based on their performance in both rounds. Due to close supervision and strict grading, cheating in written tests is unlikely. But it is relatively easy to cheat in the interview, because the scores depend on the subjective judgement of the interviewers. By bribing or pressuring interviewers, the parents of students can influence the results of interview.
A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from one of our secretaries who asked me to join the committee to interview applicants for our graduate program. The interview will be held two days later, she said. I was requested to design five questions along with suggested answers for the interview within 24 hours. I declined, because I thought that it was impossible to get ready for the interview within such a short time. I insisted that they should have notified me at least one week in advance. "What a hassle they caused!" I thought, "The delay in making the announcement was either because the administrative staff were shirking or the management of graduate admission lacked careful consideration."
Later, I realized that I was wrong. The strategy of last-minute announcement was deliberately made to reduce cheating in the interview. In China, the admission of graduate students consists of two parts. First, we look at their scores in the written tests. Second, we interview them. The final decision is based on their performance in both rounds. Due to close supervision and strict grading, cheating in written tests is unlikely. But it is relatively easy to cheat in the interview, because the scores depend on the subjective judgement of the interviewers. By bribing or pressuring interviewers, the parents of students can influence the results of interview.
If the announcement of interview is made earlier to allow full preparation, I will receive phone calls and emails that ask me to give a high score to some students who are the children of "important people". If I refuse to cooperate, the important person might get me into trouble in the future. To be fair or to be safe? This situation is of course disturbing. The strategy of last-minute announcement is set up by the school to cut off the potential connections between interviewers and the parents or the relatives of the applicants. Compared with the efficiency loss in last-minute announcement, the efficiency loss in admitting poor applicants must be greater.
Consider the long-term reputation of a department as a public good. The behavior of opening the backdoor to the children of "important people" will damage the reputation of the department. Admitting incompetent graduate students will have bad impacts on future job placement and publication records of the department. However, the professors who open the backdoor bear few of the bad consequences directly. They benefit a lot from cooperating with "important people". Therefore, they may have the incentive to free-ride on the reputation of the department. The department, acting on behalf of all the professors, has to design rules to fight against these opportunistic behaviors.
Besides this strategy, the other method used to avoid cheating is cross-interview between departments. A faculty member may be selected to join the interview committee in another department. Now, this generates some efficiency loss too - the faculty member in one department is probably not an expert in the fields of the other department. How could he/she make a good judgement in the interview? By the same token, we know that this efficiency loss must also be less than the loss in admitting bad candidates.
Last-minute announcement is not only used by the education system, but also common to almost all sectors in China. Their purposes are similar in avoiding cheating or collusion. Now I have discovered a general pattern about Chinese institutions. If you find some rules strange and stupid, it is not because the people who design them are stupid. The rules must be created to reduce efficiency loss that could have been greater without such rules. In other words, what we complain about is only the unintended consequence of the rules!
Consider the long-term reputation of a department as a public good. The behavior of opening the backdoor to the children of "important people" will damage the reputation of the department. Admitting incompetent graduate students will have bad impacts on future job placement and publication records of the department. However, the professors who open the backdoor bear few of the bad consequences directly. They benefit a lot from cooperating with "important people". Therefore, they may have the incentive to free-ride on the reputation of the department. The department, acting on behalf of all the professors, has to design rules to fight against these opportunistic behaviors.
Besides this strategy, the other method used to avoid cheating is cross-interview between departments. A faculty member may be selected to join the interview committee in another department. Now, this generates some efficiency loss too - the faculty member in one department is probably not an expert in the fields of the other department. How could he/she make a good judgement in the interview? By the same token, we know that this efficiency loss must also be less than the loss in admitting bad candidates.
Last-minute announcement is not only used by the education system, but also common to almost all sectors in China. Their purposes are similar in avoiding cheating or collusion. Now I have discovered a general pattern about Chinese institutions. If you find some rules strange and stupid, it is not because the people who design them are stupid. The rules must be created to reduce efficiency loss that could have been greater without such rules. In other words, what we complain about is only the unintended consequence of the rules!