THE results for the annual college entrance examination have been released. Few numbers can be taken too seriously.

Nationwide, more than 9 million families greeted the scores with joy, disappointment, relief, or misery.

The test results will decide the "fate" of the test takers in a number of ways.

For most rural candidates, it could mean whether they could successfully shed the stigma of a rural hukou, an inherited residential status that perpetually sets them apart from the more privileged whose urban hukou afford them many more benefits.

For the more privileged urban candidates - since education resources favor them much more by comparison - the focus is usually not about going to a university, but which university.

After being ranked repeatedly for over 10 years in an educational system that seems to be interested in little else, test takers are under tremendous pressure not to disappoint.

The ranking starts very early, from grade one.

Last Wednesday I was informed that my son was ranked 22nd in a class of 40 first graders. On that day a kid who had variously been described as polite, considerate, lovely and tall, was reduced to a number, which means "below average."

This piece of information weighed heavily on the eight-year-old's mind as he plodded to school on Thursday for the last time before the summer vacation.

In the school context, that number largely decides whether he is considered a good or bad student, and this categorization will have significant impact on his school life.

I remember one day I was escorting him to school. When there was still quite a distance from the school gate, he suddenly asked me to leave him there and then, took over the heavy schoolbag, and hurried to the school with lowered head.

Then I noticed he was avoiding one of his girl classmates surnamed Shao, but knew not why, until some days later when I heard him quipping about Shao, saying she no longer needed to have an egg cooked for her any more, because she had scored an "egg" (zero) in a test. Although he himself has never being a paragon of academic excellence, he had his consolations.

He avoided Shao because he did not want to be seen in the company of a "bad" girl.

An article on Wenhui Daily (June 23) by Le Xiaoying enlightened me further.

While strolling in the neighborhood one evening with her son, mother Le noticed that a girl in the distance was making gestures while calling the boy's name. But the son, a second-grader, pretended not to hear, even after being reminded by the mother several times.

"Isn't she your classmate?" the mother demanded sternly at last.

"Well, her study results are very poor, and she is seated in the last row of the class. Don't talk to her," the son cautioned.

He further revealed that many parents disapprove of their children getting friendly with that girl because of her poor grades, and the teachers sometimes made fun of he in class.

Our children may be unable to understand (just as I am baffled) in what way the ability to grasp arithmetic and an alien tongue like English has come to represent all that is worth acquiring in their childhood, but there are ways to make them sensitive to the consequences of failure: ostracism. Generally, fear of that suffices to put an eight-year old in place and drive him or her to study harder.

It pains me to think that my son would still be ranked for 11 consecutive years before he comes to that mother of all rankings - the national college entrance exam.

The attempt to quantitatively assess all aspects of Chinese life, in the name of science, is epidemic.

Rush to rank

Just as the enshrinement of GDP made some local officials brutal land grabbers, the same superstition about figures and ranking is corrupting virtually every aspect of national life.

The ranking does not stop at universities. Today colleges and universities are not only busy ranking their students, they are also ranking their faculty and themselves, in their aspiration to becoming the "first-rate," whether globally, regionally, or domestically.

That obsession long ago kicked off a race for the superlatives: the biggest, the tallest, the greatest, among universities and colleges.

The explosive amount of SCI (Science Citation Index) data and published papers has come to symbolize the degradation of academe.

Should the Ministry of Education step in? Well, that authority is itself busy ranking universities, by periodically launching such glorious projects as 211, or 985.

By holding the purse strings, the ministry exercises firm control by rewarding obedience and conformity.

Just as a Chinese city - once unique in tradition, life, dialect and architecture - is being standardized into cookie-cutter apartment blocks, boulevards, and lawns, once unique Chinese universities have also lost their soul in following "advanced international practice."

Impatient to grow

In Ruth Hayhoe's "China's Universities, 1895-1995," she observed one of the salient features of Chinese universities was their high degree of stability. A university as a rule added the cream of its graduates to its faculty. There was a time when a university had time to foster and pass on its own tradition.

But in this age of instant gratification, everyone, whether teachers or students, has lost their patience.

The university today has lost its patience to grow, or mature, together with its faculty and students.

Just like a city can apply a false patina of age by adorning its streets with old trees imported from other provinces, rich universities now vie with each other in buying foreign talent, like professional football clubs.

Twenty years ago, a college teacher had a job for life. Today, a teacher is restless, under constant pressure to get fancy degree, because he or she is expendable.

Self-denigration followed by indiscriminate importation of "foreign experience" lies at the root of nearly all problems plaguing today's China.

An American Chinese scholar Ray Huang once accused traditional Chinese government of lacking digitalized management.

Ironically, he later lost his university job after failing digitalized assessment of his work.

Similarly, Chinese universities, in their eagerness to rank and be ranked, are losing their true worth.