A war of words has raged on the Chinese Internet this week. It doesn’t involve celebrities orpoliticians. It’s a battle between China’s top two universities, Tsinghua and Peking, overrecruiting new undergraduates.

　　本周，中国网络上掀起了一场口水仗。它与名人或政治人物无关，而是中国两所顶尖高校——清华大学和北京大学——之间的一场争斗，其目的在于抢夺本科生生源。

　　Every June after the national university entrance exam, or gaokao, Chinese universities starttheir recruiting process: They call the students who received high scores on the exam, thestudents’ parents, their high school teachers and even members of their high schools’administrative staffs. They also arrange for promising recruits to visit their campuses.

　　每年6月，在被称作“高考”的全国大学入学考试结束后，中国的大学便开始了招生工作。招生人员会联系在这场考试中取得高分的学生，以及学生家长、他们的高中老师，甚至学生所在高中的行政人员。他们还会组织潜在的新生参观大学的校园。

　　According to the Ministry of Education, 9.42 million students are vying for seven million spots inChina’s undergraduate and associate degree programs beginning in the fall of this year.Traditionally, the competition between Tsinghua and Peking for the cream of the crop has beenparticularly fierce. The majority of students with excellent gaokao scores usually choose toattend one of the two schools.

　　教育部表示，共有942万名学生在争夺今年秋季开学的700万个本科和专科名额。一直以来，清华和北大对最优秀学生的争夺都十分激烈。一般而言，大部分高考成绩优秀的学生，都会选择进入这两所学校中的一所就读。

　　This year, when the Tsinghua freshman class will number 3,372 and the Peking class 3,665, themost conspicuous battle has featured the two universities’ freshmen recruiting teams inSichuan Province arguing on their official Weibo accounts, as initially reported by the websiteifeng.

　　今年，清华计划招收3372名本科生，而北大计划招生3665名;在这场尤其引人瞩目的战争中，两所大学的四川招生组在官方微博账号上展开了舌战。最早报道此事的是凤凰网。

　　The Peking University team was the first to post its version of recent events in the province:

　　北大招生组首先从自己的角度，讲述了四川省最近发生的情况：

　　The other school’s recruiting team made phone calls to students who rank in the top 10 andclaimed that Peking University had lied and would not let them into their desired majors. We arehere to respond: First, a promise by our team is always reliable. Based on the currentapplications to each department and number of people, there’s no way the students’ needscannot be satisfied. Second, from our experience in the past five years, it is the other schoolthat has frequently breached its promises to students. Please stop bothering the to-breshmen of Peking University.

　　“某校招生组给文理科前十选择北大的考生挨个电话，称北大欺骗了他们，不会满足他们的专业志愿。在此我们回应：1、招生组的承诺，一诺千金，目前报考各个专业的人数也十分合理，没有任何不满足的可能;2、从近五年的历史看，恰恰是某校多次毁约，没有兑现其承诺。请不要继续骚扰北大准新生。”

　　The Tsinghua team in Sichuan responded:

　　清华四川招生组回应道：

　　Brother, it’s not a problem if you advertise Peking University so that they can make a betterchoice, even if you exaggerate a little. But if you decide to go beyond the policies and usemoney to lure the students, aren’t you afraid of exerting a bad influence over children?

　　“兄弟，给考生介绍北大情况，让学生更好地选择，你夸张一点也没问题，但非要超越政策，拿钱诱惑考生，就不怕教坏小孩子吗?”

　　The Peking University team then alluded to how it said Tsinghua had succeeded in recruiting tworecent top gaokao scorers with generous scholarships:

　　随后，北大招生组暗示道，清华曾用丰厚的奖学金成功招走近年来的两名高分考生：

　　Brother, in the past five years, you used a lot of money to buy up Tang and Guo. Do I need tobring this up? Here we reiterate that there’s no chance for anyone trying to haggle for moneyfrom us with their high scores.

　　“兄弟，过去五年你们砸钱买走的唐某、郭某，需要我讲吗?我们也再次说明，拿分来跟北大谈钱的，门儿都没有!”

　　The rival recruiting teams soon deleted the posts, but ifeng published screenshots of theargument, which went viral.

　　两所大学的招生组迅速删除了这些帖子，但凤凰网发布了此次争论的截屏。这些截屏在网上被疯狂传播。

　　Later, the Peking team returned to the squabble and suggested:

　　随后，北大招生组重新回应争议，并提出以下倡议：

　　1. Serve the students truthfully. Do not lie or attack others. 2. Respect students’ own choices.Do not put pressure on the students through schools and parents. Do not use youngerbrothers to force their older brothers, nor use girlfriends to make decisions for their boyfriends. 3. Abide by the rules, treat every student equally, and object to any price demand.

　　“1、真诚为考生服务，不撒谎不抹黑;2、尊重考生本人的选择，不通过学校、家长施加压力，不用弟弟绑架哥哥、女友绑架男友;3、遵守规矩，公平对待每一位考生，也抵制漫天要价者。”

　　Some commenters on ifeng have been hard on the two schools. An observation with morethan 3,600 likes from a user in Fujian says: “With this kind of education, does our nation haveany hope? Everything is for vanity. Famous universities are vain, famous professors are vain,and the students, too, are vain. The common people are even worse.”

　　凤凰网的一些评论者对两所高校颇为不满。一名福建网友发表的一则评论获得了3600余次“推荐”，该评论称：“这样的教育，民族还有希望吗?一切都那么功利，名校如此，名师如此，学生亦当如此，国民甚之。”

　　For Tsinghua and Peking, the goal is to recruit as many zhuangyuan, the very top gaokaoscorers from each province, as possible and to set the cutoff scores, below which applicantswon’t be considered, as high as possible. According to a widely reposted commentary onHaiwai Net, the website of the overseas edition of the newspaper People’s Daily, the more topscorers a university lures and the higher the cutoff scores it sets in each province, the moreprestige it gains.

　　清华和北大的目标是尽可能多地录取高考“状元”(每个省得分最高的考生)，并且把分数线设定在尽可能高的水平。《人民日报》海外版网站“海外网”上一篇被大量转发的评论称，一所大学吸引的高分学生越多，它在每个省划定的分数线就越高，学校也会获得更高的声望。

　　As for the fect of recruiting the top scorers, Shangguan Caiwei, the author of thecommentary, offers an obvious example: “If the news says, ‘This year, the zhuangyuan fromevery province are attending Peking University,’ then everyone will believe that Peking Universityis the best university in the country. The same happens if it’s Tsinghua.”

　　这篇评论的作者上官采薇在谈到招收高分考生的影响时，举了一个明显的例子：“如果新闻中出现‘某年高考，所有状元均选择北京大学’，可能所有人都会认为，这才是中国最好的学校。反之亦然。”

　　Compared with recruiting top scorers, setting a high cutoff score is a trickier business. Ms.Shangguan points out that some students do not rank in the top 10 in their provinces, butthey still manage to be accepted to study at prestigious schools like Tsinghua or Peking. “It’snot because of their family background,” she said. “It’s because they determine the cutoffscores of the university in the province.” In other words, every university has a quota in eachprovince, so the goal is to fulfill the recruitment quota with a higher cutoff score than yourcompetitors’. So although some students do not seem like hot commodities, their scores areperfect for elevating the cutoff scores.

　　与招收高分考生相比，设定较高的分数线是一件更棘手的事情。上官采薇指出，有些学生的排名并非全省前十，但他们却能被清华或北大等名校录取。“不是考生家里有什么强大不可告人的背景，”她说。“而是因为，他/她决定了这所大学的录取分数线。”换而言之，每所大学在每个省份都有一定的招生名额，所以他们的目标是以高于竞争对手的分数线来完成招生指标。因此，尽管有些学生看起来不像是热门人选，但他们的分数对于提高学校的分数线而言却十分理想。

　　“If these students are taken by the competitors, then you’ll be forced to lower your own cutoffscore” to fulfill the quota, Ms. Shangguan said. “Once your cutoff score is lower than those ofyour competitors, you lose half of the battle of recruitment. This is what we call ‘a few pointsdetermine the difference between heaven and earth.’ ”

　　“如果这名同学被对方挖走”，为了完成招生名额，“分数线会继续下降”，上官采薇说。“一旦低于对方学校，这场招生战役，也输了一半。可谓几分之差，天上地下。”

　　Ms. Shangguan also lends credence to several seemingly apocryphal stories online: It is true,she writes, that a few Tsinghua and Peking recruiters traded blows and inflicted injuries on oneanother and that Tsinghua invited new recruits to campus and cut off their contact to theoutside world to make sure that the students selected Tsinghua. It is also true, she writes, thatduring the final three hours for applications to be accepted, Tsinghua recruiters pretending tobe students called all the phones at Peking University’s recruitment center in an unnamedprovince so that the lines stayed busy for real students in need of information from their rival.

　　上官采薇的话还表明，网上几种看似可疑的传闻都有真实性。她写道，几名清华和北大的招生人员曾拳脚相向，致使双方都因此受伤，清华还曾把新生请到校园，切断他们与外界的联系，以确保这些学生最后会选择清华，而这些都确有其事。她还写道，在高考志愿填报最后一天的最后三小时，清华招生人员冒充学生，拨打某省份北大招生中心的所有电话，导致需要从清华的对手那里获取信息的真正的学生无法拨通电话，这件事也是真的。

　　In another showdown between Tsinghua and Peking, covered in the Southern Metropolis Dailyas well as the CCTV program “News 1+1” on Monday night, a high-scoring Guangdong studentnamed Liu Junyan was bombarded by phone calls from both Tsinghua and Peking for threestraight days. The newspaper reported that after Mr. Liu chose to enroll at Peking UniversityGuanghua School of Management, the Tsinghua recruiter told him: “The business managementprogram in Peking University is not very good. Tsinghua’s business management is No. 1.”

　　《南方都市报》和中国中央电视台周一晚间的节目《新闻1+1》对清华和北大之间的另一场较量进行了报道。在这场竞争中，广东省高分考生刘俊言就遭到了清华和北大连续三天的电话轰炸。《南方都市报》报道，在得知刘俊言选择就读北大光华管理学院后，清华招生人员告诉他，北大的“经济专业很烂，不如清华的经管学院”。

　　Mr. Liu said: “The fight over new recruits is understandable because the recruiters are underso much pressure from the schools that they resort to inappropriate ways to attractstudents. The recruiters should strengthen their self-discipline, and the authorities shouldban the universities from smearing one another. Let rationality rule the recruiting process, andlet the students enter their dream schools.”

　　“高校抢生源还是可以理解的，因为大家都被上头逼着，压力太大就会去走不正当的捷径，”刘俊言说，“应该加强行业自律，主管部门加大对互黑行为的规制，让抢生源回归理性，让考生进入真正心仪的学校。”

　　Besides Mr. Liu, other commenters have seized on the deeper implications of the recruitmentbattle. An unsigned commentary on the Qianjiang Evening News site points out that Chineseuniversities’ recruiting tactics are so ruthless that they no longer serve the best interest of thestudents, but that such tactics occur only in a larger context:

　　除刘俊言以外，其他评论者还抓住了这场招生大战更深层的含义。《钱江晚报》网站上一篇未署名的评论文章指出，中国大学的招生策略非常残酷，所以它们往往不再为考生的利益服务，但此类策略只会出现在这样的大背景之中：

　　Since recruitment is part of university education and not an independent procedure, to someextent, it points to the problems in university education. Furthermore, universities are part ofthe social fabric. Therore, the idea that ‘score is everything’ represents a materialistic trendclosely linked with the materialistic tendencies in our society. The phenomenon that recruitingstudents has become ‘recruiting scores’ represents a sickness in universities as well as insociety.

　　“招生是大学教育的组成部分，其运作机制不是孤立存在的，它在某种程度上体现了大学教育的问题。大学又是整个社会肌体的一个部分，招生分数至上，体现出功利趋势，这和功利主义盛行的整个社会是同构关系。招生异化为‘招分’，是大学之病，也是社会之病。”

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