<p>I hope the girl profiled in the story gets a job in logistics, her field of study in college. She is under a lot of pressure. Her parents have sacrificed a lot to pay for her education, and they remind her of it.</p>
<p>It’s interesting that Beliavsky has often beat the drum of “not everyone should go to college.” Our system, imperfect as it is, doesn’t produce the soul-crushing poverty these people have to live under, nor the absolute desperation for their daughter. Maybe the girl depicted is one of those “not worth investing in” in Beliavsky’s terms – after all, she is likely just normal bright, not some kind of genius. </p>
<p>Maybe US colleges of the caliber that don’t impress Beliavsky aren’t such a bad thing after all.</p>
<p>Mocking aside, this article was very poignant and fascinating. I hope that girl gets a fantastic job and everything works out for them. I have a hard time interpreting this article as evidence that not everyone should go to college. Instead, I think that the article illustrates the need to have better school systems and more support and better working conditions and a thousand other things. </p>
<p>In many ways, I think this article makes a good case for holistic admissions. The girl, according to the article, actually did quite well on the Chinese and other parts of the test but bombed the English aspect because of a lackluster school system. Until everyone has some similar level of resources, I think a true meritocracy can never exist.</p>
<p>I realize that the girl is under a lot of stress and may feel as if college is too difficult for her or that her circumstances are too challenging . . but I also feel as if she is a little bit spoiled.</p>
<p>Her parents have literally sacrificed everything for her. Every little thing. Although most people in the US don’t have the same type of destitute background, a lot of people whose parents are sacrificing for their education feel indebted to them. I cannot imagine, if my parents had moved and worked so hard to send me to school so that I could go to college and improve everyone’s situation, that I would want to drop out of school. </p>
<p>This board often calls students whose parents are paying the bills spoiled. Sure, there are people like this, but there are also people who know they have to work hard because their family is dependent on them. This is the case for this girl, except so much moreso.</p>
<p>At one point the student’s father says that if she doesn’t study well, she might as well drop out of school and work in the mines. While this is harsh, it is absolutely the reality of their situation. Either she excels in school or at least gets a solid job, and her family is fine, or she should contribute to her family instead of taking away from it. She does not get the luxury of foolishness, or unfortunately choice.</p>
<p>As great as China sometimes seems to be, terrible situations like this show how unbalanced and difficult the system is.</p>
<p>It has quadrupled from what? 5% ? 50%? You can see how voicing the exact proportionate of college-educated Chinese a decade ago will change the meaning of this article completely.</p>
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<p>Such as? I do not have experience with this particular communist state, but one would think that they have welfare.</p>
<p>Two items:</p>
<p>I think the writer is engaging in sensationalist sophism, as illustrated by his clever non-use of statistics. So, rural kids receive worse educations than their urban (indeed, in underdeveloped economies, this is the material distinction) peers, and far worse than their rich urban peers. Is this new? So, number of graduates in China has quadrupled in the past decade. Where has it not? The only informative aspect of that is that the girl’s parents are absolutely doing the right thing by keeping her in school, because if the trend is such, Chinese without a college education will be relegated to mining in a rural village forevermore, and their children will go to precisely the same school that had previously failed them. If there is indeed an oversupply of college graduates in China, I doubt it reaches anywhere near the catastrophic Western one. That said, nowadays, an oversupply of college graduates is a tautology - because everybody is a college graduate.</p>
<p>Secondly, can people show some basic compassion please? You think this girl doesn’t feel the pressure to perform? You think she doesn’t understand that her parents are staking EVERYTHING on her? Of course she’s gonna call them and tell them she doesn’t want the responsibility - what 20 year old would? Ultimately, fact is, it’s not yet her place to decide how her parents spend THEIR money, and if they (rightly) believe that educating her is the best investment they can make with it, she’ll just have to suck it up and read more textbooks. I see this as a deep psychological tragedy more than as some sort of economic warning.</p>
<p>For a country run by a supposedly “communist” party, the People’s Republic of China has a higher Gini coefficient than the US, meaning it has more unequal incomes than the US, which is one of the more unequal countries among the rich countries. Indeed, its Gini coefficient is larger than most countries in Asia, including both richer ones (e.g. Japan, the Republic of Korea, Turkey) and poorer ones (e.g. India, Mongolia, Vietnam).</p>
<p>One thing to keep in mind is that up until the late '90’s when the central government pulled once generous educational subsidies, college was effectively free for all students*. However, this was balanced out by the fact there were far fewer colleges and the difficulty in gaining an admitted place was far greater. </p>
<p>Being slightly above average academically for purposes of college admission just a decade and half ago would have meant Caoying’s education would have most likely stopped at the end of academic high school at the very latest. </p>
<p>The fact she came from a rural area with academically mediocre schools/support would made made that outcome a greater likelihood. Especially considering many leaders within the central government were in no mood to repeat the affirmative action college admission programs targeting students from rural peasant and worker backgrounds implemented during the Cultural Revolution as it resulted in the effective shutdown of universities/research institutes for a decade due to the admission of many highly politicized students who were un/undereducated and politicized students running riot at the encouragement of the radical Maoists. </p>
<p>Likewise, it wouldn’t surprise me if many Chinese academics or senior CCP leaders…especially those at elite institutions with memories of the Cultural Revolution were not favorably disposed to educate those whom they associated with their past tormenters**…rightly or wrongly. </p>
<ul>
<li>All Chinese university students who went to college from the end of the Cultural Revolution up until the late '90s said it was free so long as they academically qualified for admission through the gaokao. However, once the subsidies were pulled, financial pressures became an issue for those in the working/poor. This was somewhat counterbalanced by a great increase in the number of higher education institutes…especially private colleges with dubious reputations because of the commonplace perception I kept hearing from Mainlanders that private == profit motive and profit motive == diploma mill.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>** Anyone in favor of providing “affirmative action” admissions targeting those from rural peasant/worker backgrounds, relaxation/elimination of academic standards in college admissions by deemphasizing/eliminating the gaokao, etc. Incidentally, Deng Xiaoping and his family was one of the many CCP leaders & their respective families who were harshly persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. His son ended up permanently paralyzed because he jumped/was pushed from his higher floor dormroom by Red Guards out to “struggle him”.</p>
<p>She is 20 years old and has the right to discontinue the studies her parents are paying for and take a job. Whether she should is a different question.</p>
<p>However, the people of China are relatively well off compared to the people of India, Mongolia, and Vietnam. It’s not so bad if the rich are richer as long as every body is richer too. Income inequality isn’t a good measure of the well being of the poor.</p>
<p>This documentary done by BBC is the best I have seen done on Chinese schools. While I enjoy the whole series, I find the story of Wu Yufei and her battle for a place at Tsinghua U particularly riveting. Here are the specific segments:</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube]BBC</a> - Chinese Schools - Episode 2, Part 5 of 6 - YouTube<a href=“2:06%20to%20the%20end”>/url</a></p>
<p>[url=<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube]BBC</a> - Chinese Schools - Episode 2, Part 6 of 6 - YouTube<a href=“0%20to%204:40,%0A5:17%20to%208:55”>/url</a></p>
<p>[url=<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube]BBC</a> - Chinese Schools - Episode 3, Part 3 of 6 - YouTube<a href=“7:15%20to%20the%20end”>/url</a></p>
<p>[url=<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube]BBC</a> - Chinese Schools - Episode 3, Part 4 of 6 - YouTube<a href=“0%20to%202:28”>/url</a></p>
<p>My feeling is that it is a place with too many people fighting for too few opportunities.</p>
<p>Yes, and no one has quite figured out that just-studying-more-to-find-the-right-answer-that-someone-already-preordained isn’t actually what creates opportunities. Which is why I’m glad we have the creativity and right-brain thinking that we have here in the US (or western countries as a whole).</p>
<p>The above is a good example of someone from the US expecting everyone to have the same “rights” while ignoring the political and cultural realities on the ground. Since when did one party authoritarian states grant genuine “rights” to individuals? </p>
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<p>Ironically, the overpopulation problem which prompted the one-child policy in the very end of the '70s/early '80s was rooted in Mao’s policies of encouraging multiple childbirths in the '50s and '60’s to facilitate the export of his “revolution” and to “defend it” against the “Capitalist West”. Something which worked far too well especially considering he took over right after more than a century of a series of colonialist invasive wars(Opium Wars I & II, Sino-Japanese Wars I & II, etc), civil wars(Taiping Rebellion, Warlords era, Chinese Civil War), and revolutions(1911 & 1949). </p>
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<p>Not only that, but that China’s starting from a very low starting point due to cumulative losses/destruction from European/Japanese colonialism/drug pushing from the early-mid 19th century, civil wars, and revolutions before the CCP takeover under Mao in '49. </p>
<p>Then Mao and the CCP added to those woes through such initiatives as the Great Leap Forward and moreso…the Cultural Revolution which effectively set China’s research, education, and cultural institutions by at least a decade…if not more. </p>
<p>The Cultural Revolution’s experiment with “affirmative action policies” for university admission targeting rural peasants and workers with “good political backgrounds” caused so many problems with universities and the state that bringing back* and keeping the ruthlessly competitive gaokao is viewed by many in Chinese academia and the senior CCP leadership since Deng Xiaoping took over as a way to avoid a repeat of having universities overrun by academically un/underprepared students who are going to run riot. </p>
<p>Not to mention the fears by senior CCP leaders and academics that such Cultural Revolution policies are also perceived as having the potential to further lower the academic reputation of Mainland Chinese universities rather than strengthening their reputations to be remotely competitive so their graduates are well regarded by employers and grad schools domestically and internationally…not the politicized laughingstock of the rest of the world.</p>
<ul>
<li>Gaokao was done away with during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and reimplemented in the late '70s.</li>
</ul>