(LI SHIGONG)

Renmin University of China (RUC) has launched a project to help students from rural areas realize their dreams of going to college. This was part of the university's 2012 recruitment policy. The project aims at giving an opportunity to rural students with good academic performance, if there are no college students for three generations in a student's family.

Over the past years, many people have argued that universities shouldn't select students only according to their performance in the national college entrance examination, but should have more independence to give preference to students they think are more in accordance with the universities' principles.

Statistics show that the proportion of rural students in China's top universities has been declining since the 1990s, and many universities have adopted preferential policies for poor districts and poor students.

RUC is not the only university that has introduced preferential policies for the independent recruitment of students from rural areas. For instance, Tsinghua University has asked each of the 592 poorest counties in China to recommend rural students whose scores in the national college entrance examination are 60 points lower than the admission line to apply to the university.

These preferential policies for rural students have aroused hot debate in the country.

Supporters say as it's now much harder for rural students to go to top universities than before due to increasing tuitions and the unbalanced allocation of educational resources, these preferential policies have brought new hope for rural students. This is a very good attempt for universities to do their best to correct previous flaws in their recruitment policies, which should be encouraged.

On the other hand, opponents think these policies can't really solve the problem and enrolling students by taking their family background into consideration will do great harm to the fairness and justice of the national college entrance examination.

Good try

Li Xiangqian (Legal Evening News): The requirement of "no college students for three generations in the family" mainly aims at bringing more attention to the special group of poor students, rural students and students from remote areas. It can also make the student population in universities more balanced. Therefore, I think it's a very good policy.

The standard is very strict because the university wants to help realize the dreams of the poorest and the most needy students. As a university with a high sense of social responsibility, RUC aims at giving more hope to rural and poor students, benefiting an underrepresented group that has no power to express itself in society.