to exchange ideas with their potential students, and select the best candidates.

Li Shichun (Changjiang Times): Graduate school education requires that students have the strong will to concentrate on academic work and it tests a student's endurance in doing the work. Thus, it's unwise to decide one's qualification for entering graduate schools by depending on an exam paper alone. If the right of selecting qualified students is granted to different universities, these schools can choose excellent students by referring to their performance during the undergraduate period. In general, these students will be more academically reliable. This method values candidates' overall quality in the whole process. As for those who do not study well during the undergraduate period and only want to take advantage of the examination as a way of trying their luck, PKU's practice is a warning to them.

Hidden agenda?

Wu Zuolai (The Beijing News): It is because the lecture staff believe that direct admission students are more academically reliable that they reserve a large quota for such students. How this judgment is made is still unknown. My question is, why can't the lecturers do more to improve the selection system? After all, examination is considered as a fair means to choose good students. The graduate school entrance examination covers written tests and interviews, so why can't the tutors add more questions that verify a person's analyzing and research capabilities instead of multiple choices? During the interviews, lecturers can have direct exchange with students, so it's suggested a team of judges from different schools be present when assessing the students' capabilities. In this way I think capable students can be found.

To reserve 50 percent of the quota to its own students is unfair. If a lecturer is fair, then he may find satisfactory students in this way. But the fact is universities are not immune to corruption, so without a formal examination, students who are not good enough, but who have social connections to lecturers, can enter graduate schools in the name of direct admission.

Besides, if a large proportion of the quota is reserved for direct admission students, the problem of academic "inbreeding" will become more serious. Students who have spent four undergraduate years in the university are already familiar with the lecturers' teaching methods and ideas, so they will easily identify themselves with that logic, but this is not so good for a free and diversified academic environment.

Ye Zhijun (gb.cri.cn): PKU remains the top Chinese university and maybe that is why it risks announcing this unfair recruitment plan. According to PKU's announcement, those who can enter its graduate schools without examination must be from national key universities. This will undoubtedly block many students who dream of entering PKU from approaching the university. There is also the suspicion that most students who want to be PKU's graduate students just want to use the diploma to find a good job. In no sense do they come to do academic research. Behind this farfetched reason lies a superiority complex of some key universities.

Since 1999, China began to invest more in its key tertiary institutions in the hope of building a group of "world-class" universities. Of the added 10 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) education investment, Peking University received 1.8 billion yuan ($235 million). With so much input from the national budget, the university still does not want to share it with more students from outside PKU.

How many undergraduates choose to remain in PKU for further education? According to statistics, in recent years almost 20 percent of PKU's graduates went abroad for further education.

On one hand, Peking University is becoming a talent reservoir for Western universities; on the other hand, it is rejecting students from common universities. A possible consequence is that it will have fewer and fewer really qualified graduate students in the future.

Shi Ziyan (Henan Business Daily): The postgraduate student recruitment system has always been a thorny issue. While lecturers are blaming the inflexible recruitment system for not being able to find satisfactory students, some excellent students are deprived of a fair chance. A typical example is that Professor Chen Danqing of Tsinghua University resigned after failing to recruit a satisfactory graduate student in four successive years. At the same time, more and more undergraduate students begin to complain that the rising decision-making power in target universities and their lecturers is damaging the fairness, equality and transparency of the examination. Why does PKU choose to announce its postgraduate student recruitment policy when the examination system is in a dilemma?

Why is it taken for granted that direct admission students will necessarily have higher academic quality? Only the lecturers know whether their pupils are qualified or not. But the current direct admission system can't ensure lecturers free decision rights. Sometimes, they even have to accept direct admission students that they do not really want to do have, because the recruitment plan has reserved so many seats for these students.