Pick students by lottery from everyone who clears the bar when too many people apply to a university
In short
- Popular universities choose students by lottery from among the people who are ready to learn, not by ranking test scores from highest to lowest.
- The passing bar is set by whether a student can keep up with classes after enrolling, and raising it just to increase competition is banned.
- Universities end any special admission spots for children of alumni or children of families who gave donations.
- People who lose the lottery have a better chance of winning if they apply again the next year.
If this comes true
A boy who studied at a high school in a harbor town with no cram schools clears the bar, wins a spot in the lottery one spring, and sits in the front row of his first lecture at a famous university with his notebook open.
Perhaps
A student who has studied for years to gain even one more point might lose the lottery, lose sight of what their effort meant, and become unable to sit down at a desk.
Water so far 💧 0
The proposal in detail
This applies to universities and departments that receive government or local money or tax benefits and that attract more applicants at a passing level than they have places. Each university first publishes a minimum standard showing whether a student can keep up with classes after enrolling. The standard may be test scores, high school learning, practical skills or portfolios, whatever suits the field, but it must be set at a line where past students' grades and graduation rates show that below it, continuing to learn is difficult, and raising it to reduce the number of applicants is not allowed. An examining body independent of the university checks whether the standard is reasonable and sends back any increase that cannot be justified. Everyone who clears the standard joins the lottery on equal terms. Applicants rank several universities in order of preference, and a mechanical matching done in public decides where each person goes. When someone who lost applies again the next year, their chance of winning is raised once. Practical tests in music or art and aptitude interviews in medical fields may be used as a standard before the lottery, but not to rank people. Spots for people with exceptional talent are limited to a very small part of the places, and the reasons for choosing them are published in a way that does not identify individuals. Any preference for children of alumni, donors' families or relatives of staff is abolished entirely.
BenefitsMoney spent on exam prep matters less for who gets in
Once people clear the standard, everyone has the same chance of winning, so piling up more points above the standard gives no advantage. This makes it less worthwhile to spend endlessly on expensive cram school fees and exam prep, and the part of admission that depends on family wealth gets smaller. Students can use the time they once spent solving the same problems again and again for a perfect score to read books or go deeper into what interests them. The student body at famous universities also becomes more varied in region and family background, and the connections formed there no longer stay closed inside one group. Because the standard is set by whether students can keep up with classes, the situation where admitted students cannot continue learning is avoided. And when people know it is a lottery, there is less reason for those who lose to believe they are worthless. A university's reputation is less likely to rest on how many people it turned away, and universities are more likely to put their effort into competing on how much they help students grow after enrolling. Ending admission through connections or donations also restores trust in entrance exams.
DrawbacksEffort loses its sure reward and universities lose their power to select
For people who have worked hard to reach the top, leaving the final decision to a lottery will feel deeply unfair. Even someone far above the standard can lose, and neither they nor their family will easily accept that a turning point in life was decided by chance. The desire to study itself may also fall. Universities too may lose their power to gather especially strong students and offer high-level classes and research, and as the range of students' abilities widens, teaching becomes a heavier burden. Some famous universities may give up public money and leave this system, continuing to select as private schools with high tuition, and then inequality would simply harden in another form. Furthermore, companies that can no longer tell people apart by their degrees may begin hiring based on less visible and more unequal clues, such as internship experience, personal introductions and the atmosphere of a person's family background. Disputes over where to draw the standard line will never stop, and the line itself may become the new target of exam competition.
Learn the background
Entrance exams for popular universities have become a fight over a few points at the top. But it is unclear how much those few points, which separate those who pass from those who fail, show about differences in the ability to learn after enrolling. Meanwhile, stacking up those points depends heavily on the money and time spent on cram schools, private tutors, study abroad and activities for exams. As a result, children from wealthy families gather at famous universities, and the degree they earn there turns into differences in jobs and income that are passed on to the next generation. This is hard to change because many people benefit. Universities do not want to give up their power to select, since being difficult to enter itself brings reputation and donations. Families that have invested in exam preparation for years strongly resist changing the system. The exam industry also depends on the current system. Above all, the idea that it is fair for people with high scores to get in is widely believed, which makes the differences in the conditions that produce scores hard to see. Scholarships and recommendation spots have been improved over time, but the system itself, which ranks the top finely and cuts the line, has been left untouched.
Choose them ready to accept their drawbacks too (up to 5)
It helps pay for the server and the AI's planting
This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-23b) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes