Examination Systems

past and present

For well over a thousand years, the civil service of Imperial China, the officials who ran the empire, was principally selected from those who had successfully passed through a series of ferociously competitive exams. Passing the first level gave one the rank of licentiate, which carried with it status and the right to take the second level of exams. Passing the second (“provincial”) provided a significant chance of eventual appointment to office as well as the opportunity to take the third level of exam (“metropolitan”). Passing the third level was a near guarantee of official appointment.

In the early part of the final dynasty, there were about half a million licentiates out of a population of several hundred million, only about 18,000 people who had reached the next level. The provincial exam that separated the two groups had a pass rate of about one percent. It was offered every three years and could be, and often was, taken multiple times. The metropolitan exam produced 200 to 300 degrees from as many as 8000 candidates each time it was given. While a few unusually talented candidates made it through before they were twenty-five, a majority were in their thirties, some older.

The exams did not test administrative ability, knowledge of the law, expertise in solving crimes or other skills with any obvious connection to the job of district magistrate or other jobs for which the exams provided a qualification.^¹

“The content of the provincial examinations presented an exacting challenge, especially to the novitiate. Its syllabus called for compositions on themes from the four core texts of the Neo-Confucian canon and a further five or more classics, extended dissertations on the classics, history, and contemporary subjects, verse composition, and at various times the ability to write formal administrative statements and dispatches. To be at all hopeful of success, the candidate should have read widely in the extensive historical literature, thoroughly digested the classics, developed a fluent calligraphy, and mastered several poetic styles. Above all he should have mastered the essay style, known as the ‘eight-legged’ essay from its eight-section format, which was the peculiar product of the examination system.” (Watt, John R. 1972. The District Magistrate in Late Imperial China, pp. 24-25)

This raises an obvious question: Why? Why require the ablest men in the society to spend an extended period of time, often decades, studying to pass the exams instead of applying their skills to running the empire? Why test a set of skills with little obvious connection to the jobs those men were expected to do?

One possible explanation is that the exams were IQ tests, designed to select the most intellectually able and hardworking candidates for government service. But I find it hard to believe that there was no less costly way of doing so or no approach along similar lines that would have trained and tested more relevant abilities.

A more interesting explanation focuses on the content of what they were studying—Confucian literature and philosophy. There are two characteristics one would like officials to have. One is the ability to do a good job. The other is the desire to do a good job instead of lining their pockets with bribes or neglecting public duties in favor of private pleasures. One might interpret the examination system as a massive exercise in indoctrination, training people in a set of beliefs that implied that the job of government officials was to take good care of the people they were set over while being suitably obedient to the people set over them. Those who had fully internalized that way of thinking would be better able to display it in the high-pressure context of the exams.

Perhaps selecting officials was not the main purpose of the system. Judging by the pass rates on the exam, for every student who got far enough through the system to have a significant chance of employment a large number, possibly several hundred, studied and failed at either the first or second stage. One could interpret that as a system for making sure that a significant fraction of the population, in particular of its upper classes, got indoctrinated in Confucian ideology.

Alive and Well

It may have occurred to you that Imperial China is not the only society whose elite members are expected to qualify for high-status positions by studying for, and passing, exams on subjects having little or nothing to do with the positions they are qualifying for. It may even have occurred to you that you yourself have done, perhaps are presently doing, almost precisely the same thing.

In modern-day America, one requirement to be considered for most of the best jobs, both in government and in the private sector, is a college degree. Some of what a college student studies for and is tested on may be relevant to the job he applies for but much of it, in the case of many jobs most of it, is not. Neither American history, Shakespeare, or geometry has much use in the daily work of a lawyer, doctor, or accountant. Geometry and algebra will be useful to an engineer but literature, art history, and sociology probably not. Yet the students who plan to go on to those jobs are likely to have spent a good deal of their time in such classes and their job opportunities will depend in part on the grades they got in them. The same is, to a significant degree, true of high school classes as well.

There is abundant statistical evidence that someone with a degree will, on average, make substantially more than someone without it. It is not clear why. There are three popular theories.

One is the human capital theory, the idea that a college education teaches useful things. The problem with that explanation, as with the parallel explanation for the Chinese system, is that much, arguably most, of what the typical college graduate studies is irrelevant to the job he ends up with. A further problem is that there is a fair amount of evidence indicating that many students graduate from college knowing little more than they knew when they entered. As almost any college professor will have observed, many students in their classes memorize as much as they need to pass the final exam and forget most of it as rapidly as possible thereafter.

A second theory is signaling. By graduating from college a student demonstrates to prospective employers that he is smart enough, hardworking enough and sufficiently obedient to the demands of his professors to do so. He may be no better qualified than before but he has better evidence of his qualifications.

The problem with this theory, like the problem with interpreting Chinese exams as IQ tests, is that there should be much less expensive ways of generating the same evidence. So far as intelligence is concerned, a few days of testing should do it. For self-discipline, willingness to work, obedience to authority, a few years of productive employment should provide at least as much evidence at considerably lower cost.

That leaves us with a final theory: indoctrination. The claim of a liberal arts education is that it makes the student into an educated man, the sort of person who has read Shakespeare, knows the dates of the Norman Conquest and the American Civil War, can at least pretend familiarity with the ideas of Adam Smith and Karl Marx, Aristotle and Kant. Why employers would want those characteristics, however, is less clear than the reasons why the Chinese emperor would want subordinates indoctrinated in Confucian philosophy.

The Imperial examination system is alive and well. In America.

[This post is based on material in the chapter on Imperial China in my Legal Systems Very Different from Ours.]

---

My web page, with the full text of multiple books and articles and much else

Past posts, sorted by topic.

A search bar for past posts and much of my other writing

A draft of my next book, Consequences of Climate Change, webbed for comments.

1. One exception was the ability to write formal administrative statements and dispatches.