Really? You think you can learn to design and run a petroleum distillation column from Wikipedia? Do you want Wiki-taught teachers in front of the 8th graders? Maybe a Wiki-degree will let you optimize an air handling unit to go into new World Trade Center buildings?
I know a bunch of engineers and teachers, who learned how to do their jobs in undergraduate classes, not Wikipedia.
My WAG here would be that Chinese students would be uncomfortable going to a university in Japan (this is a vast understatement), and probably vice versa. Same goes for Korean students. I’m sure it happens, but I’d guess that they would be MUCH more comfortable going to university in the US or another Western country. There is a lot of bad blood in the region concerning the Japanese…and it goes both ways.
I taught in a Chinese university, and I always have a little laugh when people laude the “Asian” education system. If the rest of Asia is anything like China (and I imagine it probably is not- I’m sure there are some huge differences) well…hahhahaha. The yellow menace isn’t coming for us quite yet!
The Chinese education system was very good at rote tasks, not so good at much of anything else. The first time I gave a test, I was shocked that the students, to a man, memorized the book and wrote it word for word for the short answers. A quick comprehension test showed that while they had indeed memorized the book, nine times out of ten they had no idea what the sentence they wrote actually meant. That’s just a small example, but show some of the reasons why China can have good primary education (which is a lot of rote learning) and not great secondary education (where really understanding and applying knowledge take precedence.)
Another example- in a typical Chinese hight school, they read no books. None. “Literature” consists of reading plot summaries, the background of the author, and a few quick passages. So you may meet someone who can converse quite competently about literature, but there is a good chance they’ve never actually cracked open the books they are talking about so well. Why waste all the time reading one book, when you can memorize the details of ten?
Chinese universities, even good ones, are a joke. I knew people teaching at maybe 50 universities, some of them quite good ones. Most of us were not allowed to fail students, or even give them low scores. Most of us had been forced to alter grades. Most of us were unable to do anything about plagiarism or absenteeism. Our students generally were studying something they had no interest in or input in, and were completely and totally disengaged. It was just a big play-act of a university. Graduate degrees are even worse. Students don’t attend classes, there is no real pressure to write a thesis, and as far as I can tell grad school consists of sitting around doing whatever for a couple years and then getting a degree at the end. Many grad students don’t even bother to live in the city of the school they are enrolled in (and no, they are not doing some kind of distance learning or field research.) I honestly can’t even figure out what a grad degree in China even means, but I do know I’d never hire anyone based on having on.
This, as well. Even in very good universities, plagiarism and fraud are not only accepted, but actively encouraged. Yes, there are cultural reasons. But it impedes learning. Cheating is also huge. One of my friends specialized in selling tiny radios you put in your ears on test day to cheat with. I know other people who simply cut to the chase and bought their certifications.
My point had nothing to do why Chinese and Korean students don’t go to Japan, I’m well aware of the historical animosity between different Southeast Asian countries. My point was this is a thread about East Asia and I was questioning why at least a moderate number of Japanese students come here, rather than going to the (imo) very good, perfectly well respected schools over there.
I really have to be fair with the plagiarism. It’s prevalent, yes, but the cultural reasons are about emulating the masters, rather than redoing the entire history of things that have already been figured out. In some ways the Chinese view is very useful, it doesn’t advocate reinventing the wheel like a lot of American schools do.
That said, there are better ways to do it than the way China does, since they take it way, way too far. At my (American) University, in Computer Science we’re perfectly allowed to implement standard algorithms or use sample code with attribution, they actively encourage not reinventing the wheel. However, they also specify that we pretend the wheel hasn’t been invented yet for the ultimate task of the current class project. In other words, small parts may be recycled, but the whole package must ultimately be novel.
I think for China to really become a power in education, they have to do what Japan did with their manufacturing and technology industry. Japan, culturally, believe that tiny imperfections make the work “complete” or “better” in some fashion. But they’re also prudent, and realized nobody wants to buy stuff with imperfections outside of Japan (and nowadays, one may argue, in Japan either), so they abandoned that notion in everything except perhaps art. And lo and behold, their manufacturing and technology industries are some of the best on the planet.
China really could be a world power in a lot of things if it was willing to sit back and evaluate in what ways it can change the “Chinese way” without outright abandoning it to serve their needs. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like they’re at the point where they’re motivated to fully undergo that introspection and cultural change as a nation (though one can see the mentality them trying on occasion).
Not to single you out, but… there are massive numbers of Chinese students studying at Japanese universities. There were 141,000 foreign students at Japanese universities last year. 92,000 (65%) were Chinese/Taiwanese (By way of comparison there were 157,000 Chinese students in the US last year.) Having a Japanese degree is very prestigious in China.
A lot of it is pure hype based on how hard it is to get in, especially when it comes to undergraduates. Once they’re in it’s virtually impossible to fail out (my friends who taught there and elsewhere were told not to fail students). In a way college is a reward for all the hard work they did up til that point and a break before they have to go suffer as a salaryman/OL for 40 years.
I went to graduate school at one of the above school (not Okayama or Tokyo Metro :D). My Japanese classmates were all quite bright outside of class but in classes they were stone-faced. No one ever asked questions or challenged anything the professor said, even when the professor bent over backwards to encourage it (the professors were really quite good).
Reasons for Indians coming to the US for education:
Reasons #2 and #3 are gradually limiting as India is growing.
No cite, but based on several articles I’ve read, and conversations with foreign students:
Universities in the US and Canada are the most rigorous in the world. That’s not to say that American party schools offer a better education than Oxford, but a so-so state school with a compass direction in its name will be more academically rigorous than a typical well-regarded school in many other countries.
Prestige when job hunting. A “quality” North American education, knowledge of enough English to pass the TOEFL and make it through graduation, experiences from living in a different culture, and so on, all give a returning foreign student a huge advantage over their competitors.
As others have said, there’s not enough colleges and universities in other countries to meet student demand. The quality drops off dramatically from the upper echilon of elite schools. If you’re a very intelligent Indian from a middle class family, and you can’t get into IIT, it’s either going to be a crappy upstart school locally, or a highly rated school in the US where you’ll be among your intellectual peers. I’ve met Indian students in town that had their pick of any Ivy, but still couldn’t get into IIT.
Active recruitment by American schools. They WANT foreign students, because most pay full price.
In India, a young man or woman who’s an “Amreeka return” is considered very desirable in the dating/matrimony market. Supposedly, in India, a man with a US college/university degree is the equivalent of a six digit income, 6’ tall, six pack abs, and nine in… well, you get the idea, stateside.
Here’s a question: based on what you’ve said, one would expect higher Japanese populations in lower tiered colleges, since, if they could get into the higher ones, they could likely get into the ones in their own country. Is this the case? Is there a disproportionally smaller number of Japanese natives in schools like Harvard or Yale than in secondary state colleges, like say, my alma mater Arkansas Tech?
When I was at the uni I lived with all foreign students, (it was awesome!), and they paid double in tuition. I believe the thinking was that Canadian taxpayers subsidize every university place, effectively!
In Korea, university education is a joke. Our top universities don’t even make it into the top 100 worldwide (although our top two tech universities do). I went to undergrad at a so-called elite university in Seoul and breezed through most of my classes. Asians universities in general are very difficult to get into but very easy to graduate from.
Many people think that attending an American university - any American university - is better than graduating from a second-tier Korean university in terms of career prospects. Korean people have a very clear hierarchy in their heads when it comes to Korean schools, but are a bit fuzzier when it comes to Western universities.
For most Japanese students, the aim of going to university is to get a job on graduation. Going to an overseas university makes that less likely. The reason is that Japanese companies tend to be very conservative in their recruitment. They take in a bunch of new recruits in April each year, fresh from graduation.
If you are “different” in some way (for example, graduated from NYU in September instead of Kyoto University in April, or take a year off for travel), you may find it much more difficult to get a job. Ever.
So, studying overseas can put you at a big disadvantage if you intend to be employed in Japan. It is therefore a positive choice by people who specifically want to go abroad for what they can learn there.
An example: I heard yesterday about a young man who wants to become an architect. He feels he can learn more by studying in America than Japan. But his father opposes the idea because he knows that it will be hard for the boy to get a job in Japan if he does not graduate from a Japanese university.
One of my professors from college had spent years teaching at universities in Japan and he told us this same thing. He said it was a real adjustment, the other staff had to explain to him how it works because he was grading the students poorly and he had high expectations for their work.
He said that the university you get into determines how good of a job you can get when you graduate, that it’s hard to buck the trend.
That seems odd. My wife is from Japan and we both graduated from UIC. Not bad school at all mind you, but no one would ever call it prestigious. She was practically inundated with offers from Japanese companies for jobs both in Japan and in the US. She had no less than 10 offers in Tokyo and the surrounding area before she even graduated.
Ivies, Ivy-equivalent private universities outside of the Northeast, and elite state schools in California have a student acceptance rate of about 15%-25%. For “Canadian Ivies” (McGill, Toronto, Queen’s) and 1st/2nd tier state/land grant schools outside of California (U Michigan, U Texas, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Binghamton, etc), it’s 40%-50%. From what I’ve read, for schools like IIT and University of Tokyo, it’s around 1% to 2%. I’ve had Indians tell me while IIT is a good school, a decent state school in the US is better.
When I was in grad school at SUNY Buffalo, the graduate architecture program was filled with European students; not the typical Asian, Middle Eastern and Indian contingent that usually dominates the foreign student body. This is despite the fact that European universities generally have strong architecture programs. UB supposedly has one of the highest foreign student enrollments of any major state university in the US, because it’s selective, there’s massive foreign recruiting and a huge foreign alumni network, and it’s cheap; out-of-state tuition is still in the sub-$20K range.
In that case, please disregard my earlier post, which is contradicted by your direct experience.
Perhaps what I heard only applies to some companies or some industries.
Don’t feel bad hibernicus, I’ve read and heard the same thing, living here. It’s late so hopefully I can post a little bit more tomorrow.
ISTM the fallacy in comparing the Asian vs. American primary education system lies there. Comparisons get made on the basis of standard Middle and High School-level test results without considering that in fact in many Asian cultures, “teaching to the test” IS viewed as the purpose and the point of that level of education. For centuries in the nations with Confucian-influenced culture, the ultimate goal in schooling was to be able to face The Examinations, which were not only about proving your knowledge but also your worthiness to get ahead in the world. Even after the adoption of universal education, that POV surely has influenced the modern-day systems.
Hey, who knows - maybe she was an outlier.