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[prof]

Anyone teaching here?

Chinese Students Riot Over Diploma Changes
Jun 19 3:04 PM US/Eastern
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By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
Associated Press Writer

SHANGHAI, China

College students in central China smashed offices and set fires in a riot sparked by administrative changes that made their diplomas less prestigious, students and school administrators said Monday.

Photos of the weekend riots posted on the Internet showed fires set in debris-strewn school courtyards and glass smashed in administrative offices, shops, cars and a bank.

Students said police with water cannons had moved onto the campus of Shengda Economics, Trade and Management College in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. It was unclear if there were any clashes.

There was no mention of the apparent riots in the country's state- controlled media. Campus unrest is treated with extreme sensitivity in China, where 1989 student pro-democracy protests led to the bloody military crackdown in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Zhengzhou police and local government and education officials said they had no details of the weekend protests or could not comment without permission from Communist Party officials.

However, an official with the school's Communist Party committee confirmed the riots and said talks with students stalled Monday because their demands were unclear.

"The problem is the students aren't being coherent. We don't really know what they want," the official said by telephone. He refused to give his name.

The Zhengzhou riots appeared to reflect the massive pressure Chinese students face in an increasingly competitive job market.

Many families go into massive debt to send children to a university, and a huge expansion in higher education has led to white-hot competition for jobs, making a degree's prestige ever more important.

Students said they entered Shengda, a private college, after recruiters promised they would get diplomas from the better-known Zhengzhou University, which Shengda is affiliated with.

However, while students graduating this year will receive Zhengzhou degrees, those graduating next year will only receive Shengda degrees, said students who e-mailed The Associated Press and posted comments on an online school bulletin board that was later shut down.

"We've been cheated out of three years," said one posting, signed Yvonne, on the online education blog http://www.3ec.cn/ .

Parents, many of them poor farmers, apparently had been willing to pay Shengda's relatively high $1,250 annual tuition because they believed their children would receive Zhengzhou University degrees.

[Shan-Shan]

Perhaps once education becomes viewed as a process, a life-long one ideally, and not just the product of numbing one's ass for four years in the classroom (plus a few more if you want that extra star emblazoned one your collar), no one will need to worry about which cracker jack factory has its named scrawled across that all important "ticket to success...your invitation to the world of conference calls, martinis and carbon copy coureur de bois snug in their super sonic canoes racing to the New Worlds of deals on baby pacifers and dish detergent...Your MBA ...Shout it, roar, make the world tremble when they hear you declare: I Have Got My MBA! MBA! MBA! MBA!!!



If only some Chinese students could learn a very simple thing: the school you attend should be the school on your degree. Such a brain bender just might help prevent future rioting over the idiocy of documents in this sea of red. I wonder if Zhengzhou University students riot because Shengda students can also proudly receive a Zhengzhou University degree?

I might make a proposal to the Ministry of Eddication for a program on this modern view of nomenclature. But naturally, the course would be called something else, and credit after completing all assignments and tests will be given for first year Dutch.

Fortunately, some students have caught on to the idea that attending classes and learning is not just for certification. From the link included in the article posted by Prof:


我相信能力才是最重要的，如果在学校混四年拿到个郑大的毕业证，没有能力又能怎么样呢？

Such "radical" thinking will hopefully spread, and put an end to China's myopic obsession with rankings and names. People just might one day realize that a university graduate is what the graduate did him/herself over the course of the years at a university, and not just the bearer of a name of an institution.

However, I still see many, Chinese and foreigners alike, here who are enamoured by rankings and names ("I work/study at the # 8 university in the country, so I'm naturally superior to you #9s, but woefully inferior to them #4s and #5s).

[pandasteak]

That same sort of incident happened here in Dalian over a year ago, at Neusoft University. Apparently it made the HK and Taiwan papers. But it passed without much notice here.

Not as many people involved, but lots of property damage.

Same reason. Their diplomas were being "devalued"

[Girl Scout]

We started this discussion in Public & Private Uni Affiliation thread.

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/job/viewtopic.php?t=40262

[prof]

[prof]

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060619_2.htm

According to informed sources in Henan, there was a large-scale student riot late night on June 15th at the Shengda Economics, Trade and Management College of the Zhengzhou University located in Xinzheng city. At its worst, almost 10,000 people were rioting. The students destroyed the university facilities and then marched onto the streets to vandalize street lamps and telephone booths, and they looted banks, supermarkets and electronic stores. The cause of the riot was that the school lowered the status of the university diploma (from Zhengzhou University to Shengda College) and did not refund tuition fees to fourth-year students as contracted. The local authorities sent in several thousand armed policemen to quell the riots. The situation yesterday was generally calm.

According to internal information from the Henan Shengda College, the school announced on June 15 that the graduates of the '03 and '04 classes will not be receiving Zhengzhou University diplomas; instead, they will receive Shengda College diplomas. This led to a riot by several thousand students. The furious students started to throw stuff downstairs from their dormitories -- hot water bottles, wine bottles, fire hydrants, fire extinguishers, television sets, washing machines and glass windows came raining down.

At after 1am on June 16, several thousand students assembled in front of the school administration building and chanted the slogan: "Give me back my Zhengzhou University diploma!" Then they trashed the administration building and the library. All the glass in the college were broken. The students toppled the front gates of the college, set fire to the founder's statue and vandalized several cars parked in front of the entrance.

Afterwards, the angry students got into the streets and vandalized street lamps, telephone booths, bathhouses, banks, supermarkets along the way ... everything was vandalized by the angry students. Some students took the chance to loot supermarkets and electronic stores. The police came but had to retreat in the face of thousands of rocks pelted at them. After the Zhengzhou armed policemen arrived, the students calmed down. The demonstration ended around 3am and the students returned to the dormitories.

According to students, Shengda College is presently locked down upon orders from superiors.

[englishgibson]

Wow!

Hopeful reconciliation to those students and school
and
cheers and beers to us

_____________________________________________________________
What I know doesn't scare me as much as what I don't know

[Lobster]

Thanks for the great article and pix, prof. Hard to get that info behind the Great Firewall.

RED

[chengdude]

What wasn't posted from that ESWN blog report (zonaeuropa.com) was the translation of a post to a Chinese BBS from a Shengda student who wrote:

[InTime]

Systems which focus upon producing
*followers rather than leaders
*test-taking rather than critical thinking

...can find a bitter harvest of Grapes of Wrath

...MassMindRioting...

A thought about Wizard of Oz/TinMan '89

Leader Deng is said to have said
(in effect)
"1000 deaths now...protects for 100 years..."

(I may have got the numbers wrong...)

BUT...
IF Oz chooses to enforce/maintain student ignorance about TinMan '89,
then how is there to be any Prophyactic Effect?