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Where China Needs Most To Improve 0 comments
As China outperformed the rest of the world economically during the financial crisis, optimism about the country's progress soared--and self-satisfaction has followed. I worry that as a result the country's internal push for reforms has stalled. That's not good, for China's apparent strengths mask some serious underlying weaknesses.
The area in which China needs reform most is education. Richard Levin, the president of Yale University, predicts that within 25 years several Chinese universities will be ranked among the world's top 10 and compete with Ivy League schools. Is there a reason for such a prediction, or is Levin just trying to scare his alumni into donating more to stay competitive?
Sure, there have been improvements, but not nearly on the scale Levin implies. China's professors and the research they do are indeed becoming world-class. The government earmarks 1.5% of gross domestic product for spending on higher education, and it has made it a specific goal to recruit some of the world's top minds by building world-class laboratories and giving them very generous funding. Many of my classmates from Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences have been actively recruited, and some of them are now professors at Peking University and China's other top universities. To get the Chinese version of tenure, professors must get published in world-class journals in English; publication in Chinese journals doesn't count. These are all encouraging signs. They are the first thrust toward a Chinese institution cracking the world's top tier.
However, an educational system can't become great on the merits of a few faculty members who were mostly trained abroad and their research, awards and patents. It has to be equipping students with the thinking skills that will allow them to compete with graduates anywhere in the world and create the next Google or Apple.
By that measure, China's universities aren't succeeding. Too many multinational corporations can't find enough highly skilled white-collar workers in the country. In interviews my firm, the China Market Research Group, conducts every year with senior executives at foreign companies in China, we hear a common complaint that younger workers just don't think analytically enough, despite being intelligent and earnest. It's incredible, when you consider that the number of university graduates has risen from 1 million a year a decade ago to more than 6 million this year.
Former U.S. assistant secretary of education Chester Finn recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the average Chinese college applicant has spent 30% more time in the classroom than his American counterpart--and that's not including considerable time in enrichment classes after school and on weekends. Finn cites that figure as something the U.S. should emulate. I could not disagree more. The amount of time in class is not the issue; the quality of that time is, and there the Chinese education system is lacking.
Here are the three areas where reform should be concentrated:
First, students should be allowed to apply to colleges and then choose their majors later on, based on their interests. Currently they have to apply when they are 18 years old for a specific major at a specific school, the way Ph.D. students apply to postgraduate programs in the U.S., and then they study that subject alone for four years. If they don't get accepted by their chosen academic department, they don't get in to the university. The result is that they try to game the system, applying for the major they think will get them into their university of choice rather than the one that actually interests them. The way curricula are designed, they rarely get to take electives, so they develop is no multidisciplinary depth. Many students realize before long that they don't want to study biology or accounting after all, but they find they have no choice. This is a big reason there has been a recent boom in private training schools for young professionals.
Second, universities need to work more closely with companies like Microsoft and Intel to develop curricula and work-study programs. They need to become less theoretical and more practical in their aspirations. Not all students can become great thinkers, but all students need to learn how to earn money and support themselves. Colleges can do more to help with that by beefing up their career departments, aiding students in presenting themselves to prospective employers and forging better relationships with businesses.
Finally, China's universities should make more effort to teach students to think critically. Too much learning is done by rote, and by taking in lectures and reading assignments with little or no discussion. Too many classes are graded solely on the basis of large multiple-choice exams, and there is little classroom interaction.
Chinese graduate students need to spend more time teaching, with proper preparation, to improve the quality of instruction at the university level. A better trained corps of teaching fellows could lighten professors' loads and cut down class sizes significantly. That would make possible classroom discussions, allowing students to form their own thoughts and debate them.
Chinese universities can't simply recruit their way to international prominence. They need to do far more to train their students to think, or their graduates will continue to fall short of employers' expectations--and China's own competitiveness on the world stage will suffer, too.
Shaun Rein is the founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group , a strategic market intelligence firm. He writes for Forbes on leadership, marketing and China. Follow him on Twitter @shaunrein.
Disclosure: none
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I am in hotel in Beijing, accessing Google from computer & mobile. Is it really blocked? If not, maybe time to buy stock? #google #gfw $goog
Jul 29, 2010
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