University Admissions System to Be Phased Out by 2028, but Student Advocates Demand More

A Promise Built on Pressure

The government has made an unusually firm commitment: by the 2028 academic year, the university admissions system that has shaped the lives of millions of students will be gone. The promise, announced after months of quiet lobbying and very loud protests, is being framed as a turning point in higher education reform. Official statements describe the overhaul as the beginning of a fairer, less stressful approach to university access. But for student groups on the ground, the news was not quite the moment of celebration they had hoped for. Yes, the old system is finally dying. No, students say, it is not dying fast enough. The gap between the government’s timeline and the urgency of student suffering now defines the entire conversation.

In practical terms, the plan means that students entering their final year of secondary school in 2027 may become the last cohort to sit for the old style of entrance assessment. Those arriving just a year earlier will still have to endure it. This distinction is not abstract for students who have already spent months preparing under the shadow of a system they describe as exhausting and arbitrary. For years, activists have called the current model a pressure cooker, a gauntlet, and even a lottery disguised as merit. The government’s announcement effectively confirms what critics have long argued: the unpopular university admissions system is no longer a permanent fixture, but a relic awaiting retirement. Yet by setting the date so far away, authorities have created a strange and uncomfortable reality in which thousands of students will still have to run through a broken process even as the country officially agrees that it should not exist.

Why the Current System Became Unpopular

To understand the frustration, one has to look at how the current system actually operates. At its core, it is a single high-stakes examination that attempts to measure a student’s entire academic life in one sitting. The exam was originally designed to create fairness through standardization—every student gets the same paper, the same time limit, the same grading rubric. On paper, this looks noble. In practice, the system has grown into something far more complex and far less equitable. Wealthier families invest heavily in private tutors, expensive preparatory courses, past-paper drills, and exam strategy sessions. Students from rural communities, or from schools with fewer resources, often walk into the examination hall with nothing but their own determination. By the time the results are published, the score often says less about academic promise and more about the money and support available at home.

This structural unevenness is why the university admissions system has become one of the most contested policies in public life. Students describe it as an endurance test that rewards speed, memory, and composure under pressure—rather than curiosity, creativity, or resilience. Teachers, too, have voiced their concerns. Many say the classroom environment has been reduced to a narrow preparation pipeline, where every lesson, every assignment, and every mock test is built around a single outcome. Educational psychologists have warned that the constant fear of failure pushes teenagers into serious mental health problems. Cases of extreme anxiety, panic attacks, and depression are no longer rare stories told quietly between friends; they are a recurring pattern in school counsellors’ offices and hospital waiting rooms. None of this is new. But it has taken years of protests, open letters, and student-led campaigns to force the system’s flaws into the center of national policy debate. Now that the government has finally committed to a phase-out, the next question is what actually replaces it.

The Roadmap to 2028: What Is Planned

Under the government’s roadmap, the old model will be retired in gradual stages over the next two years. Instead of a single catastrophic change, officials have chosen a phased transition. A small number of universities will first serve as pilot sites for alternative admissions methods, testing new ways to evaluate applicants while keeping the current framework partially intact. By the time the 2028 intake begins, the traditional exam will no longer be the automatic key that opens university doors. In its place, officials describe a multidimensional evaluation process. This could include high school transcripts, teacher evaluations, references, personal statements, and opportunities for students to submit portfolios or participate in structured interviews. Standardized tests may still have a role, but they would be treated as one data point among many rather than the final word on a student’s future.

Supporters of this approach argue that the schedule is deliberately cautious because a sudden overhaul could create confusion and unintended consequences. University admissions is not simply about picking students; it is also about coordinating budgets, faculty capacity, scholarships, and regional quotas. Rushing the process, they warn, could harm the very students the reforms are meant to help. By giving institutions time to train admissions officers and design objective criteria, the phase-out can be more than a symbolic gesture. The government also says that the new system will emphasize “holistic review,” a term borrowed from international higher education practice, meaning that admissions officers will look beyond test scores to understand an applicant’s background, achievements, and potential to succeed. At least in theory, this will allow students with unconventional talents or difficult personal circumstances to be seen as more than a number. But while the plan has been praised as ambitious, it has also raised a quiet but persistent concern: the devil is in the details.

Student Groups Push for a Faster, Fairer Future

Student organizations, for their part, are not content to wait. Their response to the announcement has been a mix of guarded recognition and continued activism. On campuses and across social media, the sentiment can be summed up in one phrase: 2028 is too late. Student groups argue that the government has spent years slowing down reform, and that the four-year timeline simply gives universities an excuse to preserve outdated habits. They point out that current students will receive no benefit from a system that is phased out after they have already left school. Demonstrations have continued, with banners reading “Our stress is not a pilot program” and “We are not guinea pigs for a future we will never see.” For the young organizers leading these campaigns, the promise of change is meaningful only if it begins immediately.

The demands go far beyond a single deadline. Activists want the new system to be co-designed with student input at every stage. They want transparent criteria for alternative assessments, so that replacing a test does not simply replace one form of bias with another. They are calling for an end to expensive test-preparation industries that flourish around the current system, and for stronger mental health support inside schools. They also want an independent appeals process, so that students who feel unfairly evaluated have a real path to challenge their results. Underlying all of these demands is a simple but powerful conviction: education should not feel like survival. “We are not asking the government to rush because we are impatient,” said one student activist at a rally outside the education ministry. “We are asking them to remember that every September, real 18-year-olds are still sitting in crowded exam halls, being told that this is the only way.” That message has resonated far beyond student circles, pulling parents, teachers, and even some university administrators into the call for faster action.

Experts Warn of New Risks in a Post-Exam World

As the debate intensifies, education researchers and policy analysts are offering a more cautious perspective. Their concern is not that reform is unnecessary—most agree the current model has run its course—but that replacing a flawed system with a well-meaning one can introduce a new set of problems. A standardized exam, for all its cruelty, has one virtue: it is difficult to manipulate. A score is a score. Interviews, essays, and portfolios, by contrast, are inherently subjective. Without careful regulation, they can favor confident students from elite schools who have been coached to tell compelling stories. They can reward familiarity with middle-class culture rather than genuine academic ability. They can also invite unconscious bias, whether based on class, region, accent, or appearance. The challenge, experts say, is not simply to erase the old system, but to design a new one that is equally difficult to game.

This is why many analysts argue that the 2028 phase-out should be accompanied by a detailed equity monitoring framework. Universities should be required to publish data on who is admitted under the new criteria, broken down by income level, geographical background, school type, and other key factors. If the new system inflates the enrollment of privileged students, it will have failed its own promise. There is also the question of faculty training and institutional capacity. Holistic admissions only works when admissions officers are skilled at reading applications without letting personal preference take over. That level of training is expensive and time-consuming. Smaller universities, especially those with limited budgets, may struggle to keep pace with flagship institutions. Some analysts therefore suggest that the government should allow institutions to move at different speeds, rather than forcing every school into the same uniform system at the same time. But such flexibility also creates confusion for students and parents, who may not know which rules apply when they apply.

A Countdown That No One Will Be Watching in Silence

With the 2028 deadline now firmly on the calendar, the future of university admissions has shifted from abstract debate to practical planning. The conversation is no longer about whether the old system should change; it is about how much better the new reality will truly be. For student groups, the countdown is not a comfort. They will continue to organize, resist, and push for policies that match the scale of the crisis they have lived through. For government officials, the pressure is now to deliver on a promise that cannot be quietly postponed. And for millions of families, the hope is that something more humane will replace the exam halls they have long dreaded. The promise to phase out the university admissions system by 2028 is a historic acknowledgment, but it is only the beginning of a much harder conversation. The real test will not be the deadline itself, but whether universities can create an admissions process that values every student as more than a single score. Until that happens, the students say, they will not stop pushing—because the future of education belongs to them, and they are no longer willing to let anyone define it in their absence.