The Chinese Student Crisis

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[matthewcira]

The "focus on research means less focus on teaching" completely rings true. I am studying engineering and our current administration has spent the last four years pushing more research and enticing professors with huge research budgets, while us students get stuck with unresponsive, dispassionate teachers who think a powerpoint presentation alone will equate to a complex understanding of high level concepts.

[tacitus]

There was a big scandal about this in Australia years back. It was uncovered that big universities were sending recruiters to China and SE Asia and helping them with the visa process and that the language test they had to take was a joke. Then when these kids got to the universities, tutors (Aus version of class teachers) were pressured not to fail international kids no matter what, because doing so could dry up the stream of intl kids paying stupidly huge fees.
While this is happening the unis are paying less for actual professors to teach classes and are relying more on post-grad kids, while the number of administrative staff was ballooning.
Whole this was disgusting.

[Tarthoc]

Just want to expand on the social bubble thing further. I’m Chinese and have been studying in Australia for 6 years, I get excellent grades, but I still can’t speak English confidently, and don’t have a single close local friend. Here’s why:

Chinese (and East Asian) culture has an emphasis on quietness, obedience, and humility, and I was considered too shy even by Chinese standards; it took me many years to learn how to socialise properly even in my native language. In English it’s a whole other thing: another (huge) set of rules to learn before you can comfortably produce the right social response to jokes, complains, stories, and not ruin conversation. For introverted (common for East Asians) people with nerdy interests like me it’s near-impossible to form close bonds with locals, because I’m generally an awkward and un-fun person when speaking English and I easily get more friends when speaking Chinese.

So even as a person relatively well-versed in English I am still tempted to only mingle in Chinese circles. It’s very very difficult to get out of. For Chinese students who are less interested in assimilating into Western culture and barely watch enough YouTube in English (lol) it’s even more impossible for them to make local friends, because when you easily find people who have similar interests, make similar jokes, know the memes you know, sing the same songs you sing, why bother socialise with people so different from you?

[yaoyangyea]

I'm a Chinese student and I want to say that "The more research a teacher does, the worse quality of teaching" is surprisingly correct!!

[Kiirxas]

I'm european but was conned by this bullshit too. I managed to enter "the best" mechanical engineering school in my entire country despite having really high rejection rates. Let's just say they treated me so well I ended up with severe depression. Teachers would come to class once every two weeks, only to verbally assault us, others would not know how to use powerpoint and use it as an excuse to leave us without classes for months despite having a fucking phd in AI (while not related FFS, IT'S FUCKING POWERPOINT). Nearly all of us dropped out before the first year ended and were promptly met with more verbal abuse by the administration, who straight up thought we had no value as people and were inferior to them. Talk about elitism.

I decided to just go for our equivalent of a state school and found out that you can be treated like a human being while in uni, while also finding out they had way better installations, teachers, commodities and even programs to make sure no student was falling behind. At first I didn't believe it tbh, this uni was meant to be garbage in comparison to my last one according to those ratings. I also found out that this new uni has a program where my degree is instantly valid across the whole of europe and the us (though that last one requires some paperwork if you wanna do stuff with any legal implications outside of Texas, since that's where the uni they partnered with to achieve it is from), while the previous one wasn't even valid across all of europe, just my own country.

The first semester at my new one was still tough though, not only my will to study was depleted, so was the one to live. I really did think I wouldn't make it to the end of the year without killing myself, having truly believed what I was told beforehand. By the end of it, I managed to get back on track, sorta. I did fail a whole lot of subjects the first semester, but by the second one I was not only passing, but learning more than I thought I ever could, my grades reflecting that.

I'm an atheist, but I really do hope there is such a place as hell, so the people who created this exploitative garbage can taste some of their own medicine.

[xdonnix]

This problem is extremely pronounced in Australian universities.
Australian citizens have subsidised University fees and accesss to interest free government loans to afford an education.

International students are required to pay each semester upfront at full cost.
Over the last 15 years, Australian universities have become degree factories for international students, where funding is diverted into building international accommodation rather than investing into research facilities, grants etc.

This problem is exacerbated as the government provides permanent residency schemes for students on study visas if they do certain degrees. Everyone flocks to these degrees, few can get a job after, due to lower English language proficiency standards and increased labour supply. These students then take any job they can get and saturate the unskilled labour market.

It is a malicious program which robs developing countries of their talent to ensure a developed country has a steady stream of cheap foreign labour which can be exploited.

These policies are deliberate and ensure wages are suppressed, federal tax revenue is high, housing demand is high, and education profits are high.


But hey, it helps expand GDP - so all good right?

[Eagle-cyqj]

We had a TON of Chinese international students while I was at university a year ago, and now I know why. This video was pretty spot on with its description of our international students. They tended to stick together and unfortunately tended to struggle academically. One day in the office of one of my professors, he went off to me, privately of course, about how the university kept setting Chinese students up for failure because they didn't speak or write English well enough to succeed at the university level, so he consistently was failing them. This came from a guy who was usually always very calm and even tempered.

The university also made sure the students were dependent on the university by providing them with meal plans, cell phones, and housing, for a price of course. It was honestly a bit of a sketchy situation.

[LM-qwjy]

I am a German student who did her bachelors in Amsterdam before deciding to go to a higher ranked/"better" university in London for her masters. Although I was more than happy in Amsterdam, I felt that one of the prestigious British unis would prepare me better for the competitive job market. Well, what should I say? Going from a 50+ uni to one of the top ten, the British one was much worse. In academic quality and organization. Plus, they kept asking for feedback, however, stayed non-responsive to any negative feedback, and barely taught me what I had already learned in my Bachelors (if even).
In many European countries, unis are for free or relatively cheap (2k per year). But the uk is extremely expensive compared to that (40k for a masters). Hence, many European students expect the uk unis to be better, otherwise they wouldnt pay this surplus. My uk uni, however, is completely oblivious to that, only compares itself to other overpriced British unis, and is more than happy to hear that I barely learned anything at their institution, as long as they can somehow sell me off to the job market, since their ranking is highly dependent on the salary earned by graduates (yes, this is true and shocking and yes, this is the Financial Times ranking I am talking about here, whose ranking is made up to 25% by the salary earned in the first years after graduation, the rest being based on research and citations.)

[vipa]

I tutored high school kids for three years, and I can tell you that the stress of picking a college gets worse every year. Many kids pick their college based primarily on its rankings, and it's really tough to tell them how little it means. Outside of the top tier of schools, there's very little difference between what school you attend. But the message of "your college decides your future" still gets out there, so kids will pay top dollar to go somewhere they don't really want to go just because it's a few ranks higher. If you work hard in college and put yourself out there, you'll turn out just fine.

Thank you for putting this video out there. It shows how easily these rankings can be manipulated, and that it's better to use them as a very rough guideline than a strict ranking systems.

[bigsisderpina]

The very idea of ranking is also heavy within Chinese culture. I remember even in elementary school, my parents would ask me, "are you ranked at the top in your class?" all the damn time. We take rankings VERY seriously even if the actual quality isn't true. Because of that, a similar idea has been happening among Asian-American communities. You will still get parents asking, "you should go to (insert name of school) because of rankings!"

I remember I got admitted to a lesser state university and my mom would nonstop ask me, "have you thought of transferring?", and I'm glad I never did because sometimes, the lower-ranked stuff teaches you more. I also get classmates telling me that people in "better schools" only learned simulation, but the counterpart in my uni learned practical, hands-on stuff.

TLDR: don't let the rankings deceive you from what unis actually teach people.

[pianoforte]

14:30 In one study Princeton's business school was ranked in the top 10 (by peer colleges) despite not even existing.

That's absolutely hilarious.

[kenehnsklp]

I can only imagine the pressure that those Gaokao exams bring. We have something like that in Vietnam. In fact, my parent's life changed after their exams, which opened the door for them to get government funded scholarships to study in Russia. Those people formed an upper class for that generation. Those who could not make it during the the exam, would only be able to catch up and exceed by becoming business people in Eastern European countries. Even when they are rich and come back to Vietnam, for a long time, people like my dad would look down on them because they didn't make it in the exams in the old days.

I come from a (back then) upper middle class, who would have never made it in the uni entrance exam. The education system was designed for well rounded machines, not humans. I was fortunate enough to have full support from my parents to leave and study abroad when I was 17. I watched from afar many of my friends going through the entrance exam and have huge respect for those that made it. Those that did not make it to prestigious schools, 10 years on, they're still not getting very far.


I now live in Australia, and have seen that that success of a person does not depend on the label of the university they attended, but their mindset and attitude towards success. The barriers between the classes are there, inevitably. However, it is less heavy and crushing that that in VIetnam, or China or Asia in general.

[ProperlyBasic]

I'm honestly amazed the publication/citation issue hasn't turned into a big scandal. A few have popped up over the years, but never gotten traction outside of academia.
Unfortunately, even if the whole model you described falls apart, the US government provides the loans, so they have an interest in keeping the system flowing, even if it is broken.

[blakelowe]

I went to a high school that prioritized getting into Ivy League and prestigious research universities. I applied to most of them, thinking that they were the key to a successful future. They all rejected me. I remember being devastated and making fun of the local public university that I was accepted into. Five years later, I've realized that studying film at my university was the right choice, as it was my greatest passion. I also found a job with a professor I really like and state scholarships that ended up paying me to go to school, even now as I get my graduate degree. Also, I made friends and professional connections that I never would have at an Ivy League. I understand this video is more about the macro level political factors of university rankings, but if any student applying to colleges reads this, remember to stay open about which school you choose. Do what you love doing, and the rest will follow. Great video!

[hammerth]

And this is why I love the German university system. I'll simply go to the closest university which happens to offer what I want to study. Is it the best? Unlikely. Is it good enough to build a good career on a degree from there? Definitely.

Edit: I just met a Nigerian who went from the US to Germany to study here. He pays $300 instead of like $30k per semester.

[estycki]

I remember noticing this at my University 15 years ago: in first year there were so many people that barely spoke English... if you have to team up with them on an assignment, they struggled to write their part (I often had to explain why Wikipedia is not an appropriate source...). I felt bad for them because it was clear that few of them made it to the next year, but it was an easy source of income for the University to just "let anyone in" to first year who could afford it, because it was easy money for the school. An administrator admitted to me there were high suicide rates among them because they were failing, under immense pressure, they were isolated, scared :( I had no idea. Talk to them, be nice and help them practice English if you can.

[daeseongkim]

Similar to the Gaokao, the Suneung in South Korea determines the class - economic and social of someone's prospective post-high school life. It's such a Confucian remnant on our societies, Japan also similarly has a end of high school / pre-university comprehensive exam. Our success is owed to this as well as our stress and high suicide rates unfortunately.

[Youssii]

This also holds very true in the UK. The number of Chinese students was already high and increasing, and has boomed massively due to restrictions on US visas last year. Many are ruthlessly exploited, with universities waving English language requirements to charge students who will inevitably fail £90, 000+ to be there.

[feandil]

Reminds me of how French universities are always low in these rankings, because they don't "publish" much.
But in France, research is done by separate (publicly funded) research centers, universities focus exclusively on education. So they're considered "bad" because they don't do research... which has never been their job.
I always find it funny when people think that education in France is terrible only based on the universities ranking, where if you have worked with French people your realise their education is just as good, and probably wider, than elsewhere.
And yeah the problem in the US is mostly the for-profit model, if you want your citizens to be educated university should be public and free. It costs a little bit to the taxpayer but the result is totally worth it. And universities wouldn't need to whore themselves to get better ranking.

[fuzzyhenry]

My family isn't that "middle-class" enough to get me "international". And Gaokao is the most exhausting gate that I passed through and got an "OK" result. Not the best scores I can get. Ended up with an average key university. Students who aren't happy with the results can spend another year and take the Gaokao again if they will. But I just can't take that pressure again, for another year. I just go with it. University is the important stepping-stone when you are a graduate. But when you start the career, it doesn't matter that much we as students used to think it does.
Two years after graduating, I've got a well-paid job now that I can't imagine when I was in school.