Job Discussion Forums

7969 · Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 5782 Location: Coastal Guangdong

we have, in my home country, an annual listing of the best universities in the country. a lot of schools dropped out of it recently as they claimed the emphasis was on too many things not related to academics, or the schools just disagreed with the way the list was completed. at any rate, they dont have this type of list in china, as far as i know, but students are aware of which schools are good and which arent and they strive to do well on their college entrance test (or whatever its called) so they can get into a good school.

i've had four jobs in china now, three at universities and colleges. so i have a good idea of what chinese students are like.

at my current job, every student who i've asked "why did you come to this college?" has replied: "because i failed (or did poorly) on my college entrance test." so apparently the place i work now, has a poor reputation and isnt a desirable location for a lot of these students.

the funny thing is, after nearly one month here, i can say that these are some of the best students i've seen in china. they take notes, they ask questions, attendance is almost 100% in every class, quite a few of them have good english (not just one or two per class) almost no falling asleep in class, no mobile phone test message sending.....

whats the reason behind this post? i think it says a lot about the uselessness of this chinese college entrance test, that it obviously doesnt focus on the right things, to some degree. a test which i might add, we dont have in my country either.

7969

Steppenwolf · Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 1769

There are hardly any exceptions! And we shouldn't blame the students. The students have to achive high marks just to get into any university and universities then select students according to their scores. That doesn't even give them a choice as to subjects to study!

The universities in fact attribute study places without ever asking students what they want to study. Thus, a student can regard himself as lucky if he can join the university of his dreams; the university then forces him to study what they offer him no matter his aptitude, interests or ability!

There is a semi-official ranking of China's top universities established by a group of expats; not sure I can dig it up again, but it ranks only public universities, not private ones.

Private ones would not impose on a student the study of a subject for which the student shows no interest.

ymmv · Joined: 14 Jul 2004 Posts: 387

danielb · Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 490

7969, your uni is one of a group of universities at around the mid 500s on that second list.

poopsicola · Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 111 Location: World travelling

Kurochan · Joined: 01 Mar 2003 Posts: 944 Location: China

I know there is a list that exists somewhere. There are like 990 Chinese universities on it, and they are all ranked.

I've been thinking about how this ranking, which I believe is based on students' college entrance exams, is BS. Supposedly like 40% of college graduates can't find work by the time they graduate. That's a nationwide figure. In the past, I worked at Shenzhen University, which is supposedly a third-tier (third-class) school. Students didn't have to get such high marks to get in. But from what I've heard, the pre-graduation employment rate for SZU students in the major I taught (English) was 99%. Some of my students have GREAT jobs, right out of school. The reason is that they can speak/understand English, Putong Hua, and Cantonese fluently. A lot of students also have excellent social skills as well as business experience before they graduate (a lot of them have worked at their parents' businesses). They also have a lot of interesting ideas and hobbies -- they have their own bands, write their own comic books, and I had a couple students who even had written novels in their spare time. They were a far cry from those, "How are you, I am fine thank you. What do I do all day? I just study and sleep" students. But, since they didn't get such high marks or such high grades on their college entrance exam, they didn't get into a super school, and they didn't get much respect from the school administration. One dean was like, "Why work hard to teach them? They're not such good students. If they were, they wouldn't be here."

So as far as I can tell, the school ranking doesn't have much to do with student's abilities, or ability to find work.