A conversation about Education
Last week, a ranking of world universities was released by ShanghaiJiaoTongUniversity where they ranked Harvard as the top university for the past eight year. In computer science and software Engineering, they rank CMU as number 5 in the world after Stanford, MIT, Berkeley and Princeton. You could check their ranking in http://www.arwu.org/SubjectCS2010.jsp.
The most interesting from this Chinese ranking was that among 100 best universities in the world, the U.S has 54 but no university in China even make it to the top 100. Only two Chinese universities were ranked in the top 200. I was very surprised that TsinghuaUniversity was ranked 191 and PekingUniversity was ranked 199. However, the U.S News Report ranking put TsinghuaUniversity at number 9 and PekingUniversity at number 10. When I asked a friend, Professor Yang at Tsinghua university about this differences, he said: “It is disappointing that few Chinese universities are considered among the world's best, even by a Chinese source. It means our education system is not as good as we would like to and we will have to work harder to improve it”.
Because I also teach at Tsinghua University as a visiting professor, I found that students there were very good and under no reason the school could be ranked that low so I asked him: “Why do you think Tsinghua was ranked like that by a Chinese study, it must have reason that I do not know”. Dr Yang explained: “From an outsider like you, you see thing differently from someone who is inside. Even our school is very good and most students are very competitive but our system is not perfect. The fact is sometime we have to lower the admission standard to accept some students who do not qualify. If the input is NOT of high quality then you CANNOT expect better output. Sometime, we were told to re-test some students because they did not do well in their tests. If the results of the second test were not better, we had to re-test them again until they passed. Each time the test was done, we had to lower our standard so we can meet the quota. There is problem with cheating on exams among some students too, even it is still a small portion as compare with other schools. The Shanghai Jiao Tong study checked the quality of students and they may find something. Other studies such as the U.S News & World Report did not focus on students outcomes but mostly on the amount of research published, and the ratio between professors and students. Different methods lead to different conclusions”.
I do not quite agree with my friend's conclusion as I know Tsinghua is an excellent school with good students. If there are few special cases, they are an exceptions rather than a majority. However, I also know that the Shanghai's ARWU ranking to evaluate Chinese universities was among the prominent ranking worldwide and highly respected by many scholars. A survey about higher education published by The Economist magazine commented that “The ARWU is the most widely used annual ranking” of the world's universities, and the Chronicle of Higher Education also reported that the ARWU "is considered the most influential international ranking today."
Dr. Yang told me: “Today number of Chinese students who study abroad are much higher than students from any country. Each year, about half million of them leave China to study oversea, few people would ask why such a high number. The simple reasons: They are seeking better education, better trainings, and better opportunities elsewhere. Lack of a quality education is the main factor causing them to study elsewhere. In fact, China is losing some of the country's best students because once they leave, few would return. To retain the best talents, China must build good quality education system and make domestic education the highest priority. Our government has spent a lot of money on improving the education system but it is not easy because it requires a completely different mindset. The traditional method based on exams is no longer suitable, it only produces a lot of people with book knowledge but no practicing skills. Our students spent more time in cramming books, memorizing theories rather than applying their knowledge into practices. If you ask a student why he is attending university, you probably get an answer such as: “To get a degree” or “To get a high paying job” That is the current thinking among our students, the degree is more important than knowledge and skills. If you ask the same question of a students in the U.S or Europe the answer would probably be “To get an education” or “To learn something exciting”. The sad results of our education is we learn to copy rather than create, we learn to imitate rather than to innovate. Unless this mindset changes, improvement will not happen and that is why we were not ranked high, even by our own ranking system”.
Of course, not everybody agreed with Dr. Yang. One professor angrily told me: “This kind of ranking is nonsense, full of biases toward westerners, you should ignore it”. Another professor complained: “I do not know why we tell the world about our education weaknesses. That kind of honesty equates to stupidity”.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
