A lot of the statistics people quote on anything China related borders on ridiculous, so it’s easy to grab people’s attention. This sure got my attention. How about the fact that every year China is producing 3 times the number of new engineering graduates as in the United States? I found this paper via Alex Tabarrok over at Marginal Revolution. Unfortunately the reaction over there (not at Marginal Revolution but in the US) seems to be that “Many people worry about what the Chinese education explosion means for the United States”. Alex points to some obvious reasons why Americans shouldn’t worry but is it justified for other countries to worry? Shouldn’t they start their own education revolution? It’s not a zero-sum game! And there is no reason why a country helping itself and their people attaining higher levels of education disadvantages other countries. Countless benefits and we will also have more of a chance at breakthrough technologies that could help solve some of our largest problems such as climate change.
Two things I like about this paper are that it is full of rich statistics and it later analyses the global implications if the Chinese education boom.
All of these changes have already had large impacts on China’s higher educational system and are beginning to be felt by the wider global educational structure. We suggest that even more major impacts will follow in the years to come and there are implications for global trade both directly in ideas, and in idea derived products. These changes, for now, seem relatively poorly documented in literature.
Shiro,
You’re right to point out that Chinese statistics are a little overwhelming. I haven’t read Yao Li et al’s paper, but its worth pointing out that there’s a significan diversity of quality in China’s education industry.
Beijing, Qinghua, Renmin, Fudan, Wuhan and other top level schools are very good, and they produce a lot of world class graduates. On the other hand, China has a large number of Universities which have a very poor standard of education.
I taught at a university in regional Shaanxi for a semester. When I introduced myself to the students and asked about their background, the most common response was, “my parents are peasants”.
Obviously the chance of any kind of tertiary education for a generation once removed from buffalos is great. But the national level statistics shouldn’t be interpreted as X number of graduates at the standard we might expect.
Hi, Dom
What is about a farming backgroud? You must know that 10 years ago, about 80% Chinese people living in Rural regions. You probably do not know that in may party of China, in order to get opportunity to study in Senior Middle school. childrens of peasants have to pass a higher examination benchmark than city Children, but they usually have poorer Junior middle school educatoin. By this way, more proportion of city youths get university education. Even in current education revolution, those children of peasants who sitting the university should have higer quality than city ones, averagely.
Roc,
You’re right; I hadn’t heard of that entrance requirement inequity.
Rereading my comment, it sounds a little arrogant. I didn’t mean to disparage the intelligence of people from rural areas. But growing up with limited access to skilled teachers or high quality education institutions makes it difficult for anyone. My students mostly were not from Shaanxi. They ended up in that university because it was the only one they could get into. Typically, they would tell me their choice was to study there or return to the farms.
I didn’t sit in on classes from other faculties, but given the student’s description of the quality there, I would be surprised if that University produced graduates as skilled as those coming out of, say, MIT. So while that Uni produces many graduates, graduating from there has a very different meaning to graduating from Bei’da or the other top level schools. This difference isn’t captured in the national statistics that Yao Li et al have brought up.
The above comments make some good points. I can’t find a link to verify it, but according to a few Peking University students, Beida and Tsinghua take up almost fifty percent of China’s education budget, which is only about 3% of their GDP, and leaving the rest of those thousands of schools with the other half.
Also, according to Barry Naughton, a huge percentage of the increase in higher education is in junior colleges and technical schools as well as private universities which provide questionable educational value.
With that said, the education level is definitely increasing, though the 30% figure shouldn’t be taken at face value.