中国高等教育中的自主招生与人才选拔:来自北大、清华和人大的发现

Independent Freshman Admission Program(IFAP)and Talent Selection in Higher Education in China:Evidence from National Elite Universities

本文通过对"首都大学生成长追踪调查"中三所精英大学(北京大学、清华大学和中国人民大学)具有代表性样本的数据分析,从教育公平和人才选拔效率两个角度检验了自主招生政策实施的效果。研究结果表明,从教育公平的方面来讲,获得自主招生破格录取的学生更有可能来自父母受过高等教育的家庭、城市家庭和好的重点高中。从人才选拔效率的角度来讲,获得自主招生破格录取学生的学业表现、社会活动能力、非认知能力、毕业后的计划和实际去向与统招学生却并无显著差别。本文的发现对于如何完善自主招生政策、促进教育公平、科学选拔和培养优秀人才等议题具有重要的政策启示意义。

The admission to higher education not only severs as a main mechanism to identify and select talents but also plays an important function in upholding social justice, promoting social mobility, thus maintaining social order. As one of the important reform on the college admission system, the Independent Freshman Admission Program （IFAP）, which involves the issues of allocation of quality higher education resources （e. g. the chance of receiving education in national elite universities）, has received wide attention since it was launched. In the allocation of scare resources （e. g. quality tertiary education）, the equity and efficiency are the constant dilemma that we have to encouter. There has been much discussion on the equity of educational opportunity in IFAP,and that IFAP has excerbated the inequity in educational opportunities is an indisputable fact. On the other hand,there is lack of empirical evidence on whether or not such inequity is a necessary tradeoff to the efficiency of talent selection. This article analzyes the subsample of three national elite universities （Beijing University, Tsinghua University, and Renmin University of China） from Beijing College Student Panel Survey （BCSPS） to in investigate this question. We pay attention to the heterogeneity of students recruited through IFAP, and divide them into two subgroups： those who could pass the entrance exam even without IFAP, and those who could be admitted only through IFAP, and compare them to those who enter college through competitive College Entrance Examination （gaokao） to examine the impact of IFAP on educational equity and talent selection. Results show that,IFAP is socially stratified, and students selected by the IFAP are more likely to come from families in urban areas, with college-educated parents, and graduate from key-point high schools. On the other hand, there is no significant difference in terms of the academic performance, political participation, non-cognitive ability,plan and placements after graduation among students selected by the IFAP and by regular gaokao. The implications of our findings for the admissions policies and procedures are discussed.