I am actually quite curious about American’s education system, but I don’t really have much time for researching for this one…Probably I will try next time.
This post is inspired by documentation called “Why Poverty? Education, Education”. In this documentation, the interviewer interviews an officer in an admission office in a Chinese university, and he told a pathetic story for the higher education system in China.
There is quite a lot of great university in China, such as Peking University, Tsinghua University. They locate in the large city, have funding from the government, and employ the best scholar as faculty. In short, they have all the best resource, they are the symbol of the higher education system in China, the Chinese government even give them a special title, 985 and 211 universities. But how many students can get into these top university? Let’s take my personal experience as an example. I graduated from one of the best three high schools in my city, only the top 13% to 15% students are eligible to enroll in these good high school, but getting into the best high school doesn’t mean students are qualified to get into those top universities. In fact, normally only top 700 students in my high school will have enough score in college entrance exam to get into 211 universities, and in order to get into a 985 university, they need to be top 350. In another word, for every new born baby in my city, there are only 10.5%(15% * 70%) chance they will end up studying in a good university.
However, this number doesn’t mean anything, because we have no idea where will the other 90% of students go, and this is exactly what the documentation I mentioned, in the beginning, told me. The admission officer said it himself, some garbage universities. “They are actually more like companies instead of universities, they simply want you to pay the tuition and never care about your education at all.” His job is traveling to different rural area, and tell local people how can knowledge change their children’s life, and how good their education is, while the truth is, he acknowledged that every single word he said is just a lies, and all the pictures he used during the presentation to show how good their university is all came from internet. But people trust him. People in those poor families believe they found the valuable chance to get rid of poverty, so does those kids. The tuition is normally a few thousand USD, which is definitely not a low price for those poor families, but they want this chance.
It’s a scam. And how about the quality of their education? The answer is very simple, there is no education at all. There are teachers, but those teachers also graduated from these universities, and literally know nothing more than the students. Consequently, students spend time playing video games and watching movies. Four years later, they will have a useless degree and do what their parents do. Nothing changed, except the money they lose.
Actually, the above mentioned two types of university are kind of extreme, although there is a huge number of such universities. For those students who do not excel academically, but have some money and live in city, there are also quite a lot of universities for them. These schools are mostly in-between. Students can learn something here, but they don’t have that much opportunity. Most of them just find a career that maybe have nothing to do with what they learn in the university and make a living.
I think the problem of the Chinese education system is not about those top universities. Sometimes it’s true that only those smartest people can be the leaders or scholars, and there is no need to contribute funding to even more top universities. But the scam should be stopped. There is nothing wrong with staying in poverty. our society is just not developed enough, but they should not waste the 4 years times and the huge amount of money to pay for the tuition. Maybe they can enter some professional college, where they can learn some skills to make a living, and become a useful person. Or they can simply not attend college, stay at home and help parents to farm.
It’s honestly not such a difficult thing. There are plenty of skilled workers to teach, and many families that wish to have a better live by learning some skills. Why not? I feel like no one care about poor people. Everyone try to earn money from those rich families in large cities as if those poor people do not live in the same world as we do. It’s really pathetic.
Wow, I did not know how complicated the education system was in China. It seems like there are two extremes in universities. I think the statistics you provided helped with your appeal to logos, and your personal experiences with the schools in China establish ethos. The links also helped to clarify some of the confusion I had about Chinese schools.