Job Discussion Forums

[slapntickle]

Chinese parents have always been enamoured with the idea of a western education for their children, especially these days when competition for jobs at home is cut-throat. However, in a recent article at www.asianewsnet.net I was saddened to read that a new "urban poor" is being created in China because the promised western education and its supposed benefits have not materialised, leaving parents in serious debt:

"Parents are surrendering their last resources to wager them on a child's future by sending them abroad," said Lao Kaisheng, an education policy researcher at Capital Normal University. "If these children don't get the decent jobs and the salary that is expected, their parents will naturally be sucked into poverty."

The article contnues:

However, not many Chinese families have enough saved in the bank to cover the tuition fees and accommodation and living expenses involved in overseas study potentially hundreds of thousands of yuan. Instead, many are choosing to take on massive debt at a critical time in their own life.

The article then gives a case study of a Chinese student who went to Texas to get his Master's degree, which his father thought would give him an edge in the market place upon his return:

His father worked at an electronics factory in Zhuhai and earned more than 10,000 yuan ($1,583) a month, so the adventure was not a great financial burden. However, after his return, 26-year-old Wang was no better prepared to find work.

Even his English skills had not improved, he said, as "we stayed with other Asians most of the time".

Eventually, his parents had to invest more money to help their only son eke out a meagre living by running his own electronics store.

"He hasn't earned a penny back for us, even though we've taken care of him for 26 years, while other people his age might have earned more than 200,000 yuan ($31,660) by now," said his 66-year-old father, who did not want to be identified.

"We could have had a decent life after retirement with our savings, but now we've painted ourselves into a tight corner," he added bitterly.

Wang said his father has had to quit his favourite hobbies swimming and rock climbing to save money. He added: "It's not just the lack of money, the feeling we're now poor makes me really ashamed when I'm with friends."

When will Chinese parents see the light and realise that western universities are churning out thousands of students every year with degrees that are losing their value simply because every Tom, Dick, and Wang has one?

http://www.asianewsnet.net/home/news.php?id=28771&sec=3

[Shroob]

"He hasn't earned a penny back for us, even though we've taken care of him for 26 years, while other people his age might have earned more than 200,000 yuan ($31,660) by now," said his 66-year-old father, who did not want to be identified.

"We could have had a decent life after retirement with our savings, but now we've painted ourselves into a tight corner," he added bitterly.

Wang said his father has had to quit his favourite hobbies swimming and rock climbing to save money. He added: "It's not just the lack of money, the feeling we're now poor makes me really ashamed when I'm with friends."

That's probably the most extreme example I've heard of where Children are seen solely as a parent's investment/retirement fund.

If I had parents like that, I'd have tried my best to stay in America...

[Denim-Maniac]

In terms of an investment, a Western education doesn't make much sense to me. I have a Chinese friend in the UK who has been there for 7 years now. Her student fees run to around 100,000 RMB per year and I would guess her living costs are likely to double that yearly figure.

Although she has been there longer than most, if you take those figures over a standard 3 year degree then the total cost is around 600,000 RMB. In the example of my friend, who has just finished an architecture MA, she expects to find a job in a major Chinese city with a salary of much less than 10k per month to start. She thinks 5k a month is closer to the mark.

A 600,000 RMB investment to start work at less than 10k a month looks like a bad deal to me. Even with future pay hikes and other benefits its going to be a long time before there is a return on investment IMO. I would personally look at using that money to fund something in China, property, small business etc etc.

On a side note, the filial duty referred to in the previous post is hard to swallow sometimes, but its not always a bad thing. Im friends with a wonderful, pretty 25 year old Chinese girl here, and rather than spending weekends drinking her money away or wasting it on clothes she doesnt really need, she keeps a little back to send home. Its certainly opposite to our culture, but a bit of filial piety beats a lot of the 'me,me, me' attitude, rampant consumerism and an obsession with store and credits cards that many young people have in the West.

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

The rush to go abroad will be tempered with a reverse rush in a few years when it's found out that their kids can't / won't earn money for them.

[xiguagua]

Chinese parents always want to look at someone who has defied all odds to become successful and compare their kid to that person. It's like if all our parents said "Look at Mark Zuckerberg! He's so rich and successful, my kid is a failure because he's not the same as him"

I'm sure most 26 year olds fresh out of college aren't making nearly 200k per year......I agree with Shroob. I know that is Chinese culture and everything, but i'd probably run away too if that was my dad.

[MisterButtkins]

IMO it's a prestige thing for the richer Chinese. They send their child abroad basically because it looks good. Presenting an image is important to Chinese people. Just getting a degree is not and has not ever been a 100% guarantee of getting a job.

For the example of an architecture MA, I actually read that it is extremely difficult to find a good job with an architecture degree, and architects have one of the highest post-graduate unemployment rates. The top architects make huge amounts of money but most of them do not do so well. I read this in a recent article, don't have the link with me.

[xiguagua]

Yeah that's also a deciding factor for parents when CHOOSING THEIR CHILDS MAJOR. It makes me feel ridiculous when saying that because the idea is so absurd to me, but I have had so many students telling me they wanted to do X but their parents made them do Y. Either trying to live their their children or as you said, they can read one article and see that successful architects make big bucks and decide that's the job for their child.

I've had English majors who seriously cannot say anything outside of the typical "how are you? I'm fine thanks and you?" Wondering what their parents were smoking when they decided that for their poor kid.

People are too quick to assume that choose a major = automatic riches and glory.

[MisterButtkins]

[Miles Smiles]

I couldn't find the article in question so I must rely upon the posted excerpts, with which I must disagree.

His father worked at an electronics factory in Zhuhai and earned more than 10,000 yuan ($1,583) a month, so the adventure was not a great financial burden. However, after his return, 26-year-old Wang was no better prepared to find work.

Even his English skills had not improved, he said, as "we stayed with other Asians most of the time".

If the kid's father made the equivalent of $1,583.00 per month, sending his kid abroad would be a great financial burden. The state university where I taught (which has one of the lowest in-state tuition schedules in the U.S. that I know of) charges $8,600.00 per semester for foreign students (still a bargain compared to many other American universities' foreign student tuition).

Wang's daddy doesn't make enough money to cover a year's tuition at my state university, and (considering his income) he wouldn't have the credit to borrow for an American education--- even at a two-year community college. Private colleges and universities cost even more than public universities in my country, unless, perhaps, one enrolls in a divinity college.

Second, my American university has a rather large foreign student enrollment because it is one of the less expensive state schools in the country and because it has a very good school of engineering, school of business and an excellent school of architecture. Before any foreign student can take any content courses, he must pass English proficiency tests. Usually, a proficiency test is required for entry as well (TOEFL or, increasingly, IELTS). MA students must pass either the GRe or the MAT. One cannot gain entry to graduate school without taking one of those tests. (MAT is usually required for the humanities). One must have a fairly high mastery of English--- and understanding of western culture--- in order to pass the test.

That said, it is clear to me that whoever wrote the article is either grossly misinformed or was talking about another school system that was certainly not American. When I taught in my alma mater, foreign students flunked out if they couldn't pass the rigors of course work. (It didn't happen often because the price that they paid to go to the university posed quite an incentive to do well). While most American schools like the revenue that out-of-state (especially foreign) students bring to the school, there is no great pressure to award degrees to slackers. For every foreign student who fails, there are two waiting to get in. I'd wager that this is true of all state (public) universities and colleges as well as major private universities and colleges that admit foreign students.

If the student in question spent most of his time with other Asian [why not just say Chinese?] students, it is his shortcoming, not that of the school's. One would be hard-pressed to find a state university or a private university that does not have clubs and extracurricular activities that will put the foreign student in non-class room contact with American students. Many universities have an organization called ELTI (or English Language Training Institute) that tries to find host families who will provide social support for the foreign student. My university is in a city of perhaps 400,000 people in the entire metropolitan area. I am sure that universities and colleges in other larger American metropolitan areas can provide even more services to the foreign student.

The article is clearly contrived to dissuade Chinese students from studying abroad. Perhaps the OP posted this article (or just supposed excerpts) because he has knowledge of another country's school system, not that of the United States'.

Again, if the student in question didn't learn more English, it is his shortcoming.

Otherwise, the excerpts I have read are complete bunkum.

[Miles Smiles]

[Miles Smiles]

[slapntickle]

[whitehouse]

It is not always the case but quite sometimes when foreign Universities are having trouble in finding students at home they look to China or elsewhere to find them. The standards of management and teaching of the weak ones leaves a lot to be desired and appears to me sometimes to be a rip-off. An example of this is below.
I worked for a low ranking British University a few years ago. They sent lecturers out from the UK to deliver intensive short courses to Chinese university students. Because there were so many Chinese students they needed more than one lecturer so I was appointed locally to teach the same stuff. If the students passed the exams they would spend the final year at the UK university
I had to mark one of the tests (an MCQ test) from one of the British university lecturers because she decided to go home to UK without marking it despite being on a salary of around 40000 pounds a year and a bonus for coming for a few weeks to China. The test was supposed to be 20 questions but was in fact 21 questions with 2 of the questions being repeated twice, identically.
I was teaching 500 students for the same British uni on another occasion and this group was divided into 2, a banking and an accounting group. Beforehand, I was told to teach the whole group Consolidated accounts which is normally taught in the final year of many UK universities to accounting students. So I travelled to the Chinese uni. and found after a few hours teaching that 300 of these students had only had a 2 week intensive accounting course over a year earlier(they were banking students) and were totally ill equipped on this basis to do final year difficult stuff like consolidated accounts which was only meant for accounting students.
I once rang up the UK lecturer in charge of their Chinese operations , on 60000 pounds a year. He complained to me that answering the phone call had woken up his new baby . This was 2-30 pm on a weekday.
I was employed illegally during this employment with a visa and residence permit but with an organisation that I never worked for so I was at risk if being found out, of being deported.
It is the students who I feel most sorry for because most Chinese students are pretty decent and they were being seriously messed about by this foreign university. I also felt I was being seriously messed about .

[Miles Smiles]

Thank you for posting the link to ChinaDaily that discusses the matter. I wonder how a link to AsianNewsNet was originally posted instead.

Does the misstep of one school represent the practices of all of western educational institutions?

It doesn't. This is one such misstep. It is easy to see how and why something like this could happen in North Dakota: there's not much in that state. It is the third least populous state in the U.S. with about 600,000 people living there. Cows outnumber people. If one were browsing all of the Associated Press releases state-by state, this one headline would stand out. It might be the only press release of that given day, week, or month.

There is enough evidence that this may have occurred (the extent to which has yet to be learned); the audit has just begun, and the whole story has not been told.

What's really sad is that this university's original mission was to produce teachers. I guess that the guy who wrote the article about the problem in the blog Inside China graduated from the school.

http://insidechina.onehotspots.com/dickinson-state-university-an-alleged-diploma-mills-dean-shot-himself/10398/

I mentioned in the other thread about this supposed endemic problem in western education that there are entities in the U.S. that audit school records to ensure that rules are being followed. This situation at Dickinson was uncovered by such an entity. So now we know about 400 foreign students (some of whom were Russian) who were allowed to bypass the rules. Should we believe that this is going on throughout ALL of western education?

I don't understand why this subject reappears in the threads, especially since the perceived problem with western education is based upon one incident. No empirical information has been presented to validate any claims that western education is going to Hades in a hand basket and that all Chinese students are attending schools abroad, only to return home none the better for the trip. In addition, no evidence has been presented to prove or even suggest that western education ".. is increasingly losing its market value."

If one uses unemployment figures in China as such an indication, one will be surprised to learn that the vast majority of Chinese students DON'T study in the west. Unemployment percentages among almost all Chinese socioeconomic strata of are high, not just among those who can afford to study abroad.

I wonder how prevalent similar situations in China that involve Chinese students might be. I also wonder if such situations would make headlines in Chinese newspapers.

[whitehouse]

There are quite a few dysfunctional universities,colleges and individuals who naturally gravitate to China because it is their last opportunity for an income. They are unable to make it in a more competitive environment which occurs in their home countries and so end up in China. There are also capable universities, colleges and individuals who are in China for different reasons. I was in China for more than 10 years and know what I am talking about.
Chinese parents should check up on the foreign universities and colleges through their rankings to make sure they are not being ripped off. Many Chinese employers are nowadays far more knowledgable about things like rankings and, if the foreign University to which the prospective employee has gone to is lowly ranked, make note of that.
There are too many foreigners with vested interests who are not entirely upfront about the merits or otherwise of foreign courses to which they are associated. Chinese parents should beware of spending a lot of money on foreign courses some of which are useless.