MANY education agencies are helping students from the Chinese mainland get overseas Chinese IDs so that they can be enrolled in elite universities in China with lower exam scores, according to sznews.com.

The spokesperson of a Beijing education agency told the parents that overseas Chinese students could be enrolled in elite universities by scoring 400 in the national college entrance exam for overseas Chinese students and students from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. But local students on the Chinese mainland have to score at least 600 to enter an elite university.

The spokesperson said that the agency could help students apply for permanent residency in the Philippines or Malaysia, and that they would have to live in one of those countries for nine months each year for two years before being allowed to attend the exam.

According to a Shenzhen education agency staffer, the cost of the service is 276,000 yuan (US$40,103) per student. The service consists of five parts, including a five-month English prep course in Shenzhen, the application for an immigrant visa to the Philippines, an 18-to-20-month course at a high school in the Philippines, seven months of exam training in Shenzhen and counseling services before the exam.

The prices of such services range from 320,000 to 500,000 yuan at four other agencies investigated by the reporter, and each agency offered the services to nearly 100 students each year. Many agencies also said that they had self-run or cooperative schools overseas.

According to Chinaqw.com, there were 4,500 to 4,700 students who signed up for the exam annually over the past three years, and 29 percent of them were then enrolled in first-tier universities, while 36 percent were admitted to second-tier universities. However, there were between 800 and 900 students who scored lower than 300, which is the minimum passing score for second-tier universities.

Liu Haifeng, head of the education institute at Xiamen University, said that real overseas Chinese students who received education abroad might not be able to compete with students from the Chinese mainland when taking the exam, so these “immigrant students” are taking away slots from real overseas Chinese students.

A staffer from the exam’s admissions office said that students could sign up for the exam as long as they could provide valid documents in accordance with the existing policies, but they couldn’t tell which students were assisted by education agencies and which weren’t.

Yang Yiping, member of the legal advisory council of All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, said that it’s unreasonable but legal for students to get overseas Chinese IDs in such a way. He said that parents of these students usually don’t live abroad like real overseas Chinese, so relevant departments could tackle the problem by adding restrictive clauses for examinees based on this situation.

(Zhang Yang)