American Universities’ China Problem(quillette.com)
quillette.com
American Universities’ China Problem
https://quillette.com/2018/12/23/american-universities-china-problem/
18 comments
It’s very interesting and unfortunate that our universities taken a lot of money from awful regimes. There’s been a lot of talk about universities heavily depending on international students because they pay exorbitant tuition. I’m not sure what the solution to this is.
Establish the culture of not being afraid to "offend with facts", which academia is now lacking.
Run universities as nonprofits.
Run universities as nonprofits.
Becoming less dependent period would be a start - universities seem to catchup themselves in net lossy winner takes all marketing spirals from campus cosmetics to trying to compete in sports by funneling money in that is usually not earned back.
The thing to make abundantly clear to less than free nations of all stripes is that the committment to truth and dialogue are an integral part of the quality they are sending students there for in the first place.
The thing to make abundantly clear to less than free nations of all stripes is that the committment to truth and dialogue are an integral part of the quality they are sending students there for in the first place.
stop paying the administration so damn much?
They need to dramatically lower headcount including professors and likely lower salaries as well. The total expense of US higher education needs to come way down.
Federally guaranteed student loans exceed $120 billion every year. That is a massive subsidy, and it may be increasing costs for more people than it helps. The glut of admissions being able to pay artifically high tuitions is emboldening administrators to add more dormitories every year, expand the administrative class, and build rec centers -- raising tuition even further.
> Last year, FSA provided more than $120 billion in federal grants, loans, and work-study funds to approximately 13 million students at nearly 6,000 participating schools.
https://www2.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/2017report/fsa-repo...
> Last year, FSA provided more than $120 billion in federal grants, loans, and work-study funds to approximately 13 million students at nearly 6,000 participating schools.
https://www2.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/2017report/fsa-repo...
What is the correlation between status as the best in the world and cost? I'm not saying it's perfect, but surely there is some relation.
American Universities are hardly "best in the world". American education is universally scorned, apart from a small handful of institutions.
The draw for US universities is as a gateway to possible citizenship in the future.
The draw for US universities is as a gateway to possible citizenship in the future.
really, really untrue. My most recent trip to Asia had most of the "smaller" midwest Uni's promoted (as for many it's the only way into US higher Edu).
Get funded by society (taxes) instead of individuals.
1% of the military budged would do.
A lot of this support comes in the form of large numbers of small contributions: Chinese graduate students. This is especially pernicious because it influences at the level of the department and even individual professor, since they see the funding directly.
I came from Vietnam, in my views, Vietnam is China-lite or China-CC.
The other day my American friend (who was my roommate) came with me to visit that country and we had a pretty interesting conversation on the taxi cab from the airport to the hotel. My ex's dad worked in the government and his role was essentially censor the press (and my ex was particularly hush-hush about that). Now on my ex's views, she said her dad has no illusion about how shitty the situation is, either. In her description of his job, that is to walk the thin line to allow the press to say as much as possible without making anyone really pissed off (and take revenge on the journalists). My American friend, predictably, didn't like that and thought that was just an excuse.
My dad, like many people of his generation, refused to work with that government. He refused to take any higher-up position. He is just a college lecturer for all his life. To him, taking upper management jobs means he will be corrupted just like the ones he despited. Now he is a disgruntled, angry old man who now faces the fact that there is absolutely nothing he can do to change anything in that shitty system. I believe if he took the job, he would have been able to do more good to the students than the corrupted people he despited.
One of the things that Vietnam has over China is that the internet is much much freer. We get access to Facebook, Google, etc. without problems. That was thanks to someone who worked in the government basically convinced the higher-ups to open up the internet and "fix problems as they appear."
I talked to one of my Chinese graduate friends who has a dad who did essentially what my dad did. I feel bad for both of them.
I feel that in dictatorship countries, making something happen is better than nothing.
I still don't know what to think about my ex's dad, but I owe my gratitude to whoever worked in the government to get the internet to Vietnam so I can be in the USA today to do really great, great work and to speak freely. But I only write this because I had the choice to get the fuck out. My dad and my friend's dad, they had a family to feed and couldn't get out due to many reasons. In that case, for their owns' good, I wonder if making a compromise and "do what you can" is a better choice for both the person and the common good. This is one of the cases where I ask whether the black-and-white, absolutist thinking of good-and-bad what was a too simplistic view of the problem. I believe many scholars in China didn’t say things directly because they were brainwashed or cowards. They know their priorities.
The other day my American friend (who was my roommate) came with me to visit that country and we had a pretty interesting conversation on the taxi cab from the airport to the hotel. My ex's dad worked in the government and his role was essentially censor the press (and my ex was particularly hush-hush about that). Now on my ex's views, she said her dad has no illusion about how shitty the situation is, either. In her description of his job, that is to walk the thin line to allow the press to say as much as possible without making anyone really pissed off (and take revenge on the journalists). My American friend, predictably, didn't like that and thought that was just an excuse.
My dad, like many people of his generation, refused to work with that government. He refused to take any higher-up position. He is just a college lecturer for all his life. To him, taking upper management jobs means he will be corrupted just like the ones he despited. Now he is a disgruntled, angry old man who now faces the fact that there is absolutely nothing he can do to change anything in that shitty system. I believe if he took the job, he would have been able to do more good to the students than the corrupted people he despited.
One of the things that Vietnam has over China is that the internet is much much freer. We get access to Facebook, Google, etc. without problems. That was thanks to someone who worked in the government basically convinced the higher-ups to open up the internet and "fix problems as they appear."
I talked to one of my Chinese graduate friends who has a dad who did essentially what my dad did. I feel bad for both of them.
I feel that in dictatorship countries, making something happen is better than nothing.
I still don't know what to think about my ex's dad, but I owe my gratitude to whoever worked in the government to get the internet to Vietnam so I can be in the USA today to do really great, great work and to speak freely. But I only write this because I had the choice to get the fuck out. My dad and my friend's dad, they had a family to feed and couldn't get out due to many reasons. In that case, for their owns' good, I wonder if making a compromise and "do what you can" is a better choice for both the person and the common good. This is one of the cases where I ask whether the black-and-white, absolutist thinking of good-and-bad what was a too simplistic view of the problem. I believe many scholars in China didn’t say things directly because they were brainwashed or cowards. They know their priorities.
>I believe many scholars in China didn’t say things directly because they were brainwashed or cowards. They know their priorities.
What I meant was “many scholars in China didn’t say things directly not because they were brainwashed or cowards.” Say if I do AI or biology research or whatever, I’d rather spend my time doing those things instead of arguing with people about whether a particular person really was good or bad. It’s like how we see the Trump administration now: everyone already made up their mind. I don’t go out to the street to protest Trump everyday, and I don’t share CNN news about how bad he is on my Facebook feed.
Not that I can freely do it in those countries, but the idea is that we have limited time in this world. Asking people to express/assert their views on shit they have little interest in and saying that they’re cowards when they don’t say what you want to hear is simplifying it a bit much.
What I meant was “many scholars in China didn’t say things directly not because they were brainwashed or cowards.” Say if I do AI or biology research or whatever, I’d rather spend my time doing those things instead of arguing with people about whether a particular person really was good or bad. It’s like how we see the Trump administration now: everyone already made up their mind. I don’t go out to the street to protest Trump everyday, and I don’t share CNN news about how bad he is on my Facebook feed.
Not that I can freely do it in those countries, but the idea is that we have limited time in this world. Asking people to express/assert their views on shit they have little interest in and saying that they’re cowards when they don’t say what you want to hear is simplifying it a bit much.
Has anyone studied the effects of an American education in bringing more westernization and western ideas into China ? Surely all these graduate students aren’t gonna go back with the same exact ideology that they came with, per se
The kind of students who have the means to study abroad are more often than not (in my anecdotal experience, in the Netherlands (which has a different scholarship dynamic too)) already pretty Westernised. I also know that myself, given I got to leave Turkey.
The effect is of the same order of magnitude as that which American students who study in China experience. It stands to reason that us Americans would be impressed and influenced by seeing such a economic success story up close, right?...
China and in general "productive Asia" grab the worse of USA/UK model and push it to the extreme, that's the real problem for them, especially for their citizen.