By continuing you agree to eChinacities's Privacy Policy .
Sign up with Google
Sign up with Facebook
Q: Is it worth it for Chinese to study in America or u.k?
Fees in America can be between 5k and 50k a year with the average being inbetween. A little cheaper in the uk except for medical courses which can go up to 70,000 dollars a year.
For Chinese students this is a fair wad of change. Some are extremely rich so it’s fine, but for many well to do or even middle class students, they are really scrapping the cash together. Sometimes they even use the savings of extended family. Now if they remain in the US or UK and get a good job, it maybe worth it. Or if they come back to china and are on management fast track in a big company, they may get a return. But I’m sceptical. Such pressure is on them to study abroad that teachers at international schools only get hired if they have a good degree from a foreign university.
My opinion is that the maths doesn’t work out. They spent 35000 dollars per year for a masters. Them they return and and get 5 to 8k a month rmb. Perhaps for a few it’ll go as high as 12k. By my estimation it’ll take a lifetime to pay off. They’ll never get a return on this investment. Why do they do it?
Universities are not moral institutions anymore. They are full blown capitalist business operations. Academics are of lesser importance now. In my home city the university had the same number of student halls of residence for many years. Now the building of student halls for foreign students has been described as city in itself, such is the scale of the development.
what does this enlargement do for the quality of teaching? Does the West suddenly have a much larger pool of talent of academics to teach all these international students? No it’s inevitable the quality will go down. Our countries are selling Chinese this bullshit and they are buying it.
A degree in Germany costs eu students 1000 euros a year. Granted the top universities in the world are the Ivy League universities. But a degree from a good German university is hardly to be sniffed at. It’ll be a very good quality teaching. They have not lost their moral compass.
The status quo is not good for china or western countries. They inject billions into the West, that should remain in china so they can develop their own university system. We in turn cheapen the quality of our degrees by having students with poor English make incohesive arguments in essays and lower the bar so they can pass. We lose moral integrity by taking so much of their money for education
only 35 percent of human beings are suitable for further education. Not the 50/ 60 percent now. Progress in education should only be determined by ability, not by the ability to pay. We should accept only foreign students who are exceptional and not charge them an arm and a leg. It s time to universities to return to what they once were, great academic institutions and not these stupid factories they are now
5 years 23 weeks ago in Teaching & Learning - China
Depending on the major, I don't think on a Chinese equivalent salary they will get the money back spent on the degree, but students in America borrow money for gender study degrees and never get the money back either, the money an expat friend I know, his wife spent a million rmb in Canada for high school and college for a sociology degree and works as an Ielts writing teacher, she will never get the money back.
For STEM degrees, it's questionable with patent law and copying that an innovator coming back to China would be rewarded with anything but a cushion job and a few plaques, unless he starts his own company, but then you have to rim job government officials to keep someone for stealing or copying your business and putting you down like a rabid dog.
It looks hopeless, but I suppose a few make it to prosperity.
ambivalentmace:
Education has become a scam almost everywhere I have lived and worked in the world. Discussing Plato with a taxi driver in Toronto is normal because 40 percent of Canadians have a degree, but 50 percent test scores is passing, same in Israel. I suppose my hairdresser could have an academic discussion of all 62 gender identities for her gender studies degree while she trims the hair off my ears.
In Cameron, you had to buy the teachers books for the class to pass the class, because the pay was so low for instructors. I called them instructors because what the are is actually an insult to real teachers and professors.
I think any politician that says education is the key to a good economy should be shot instantly. Russia had a 90 percent literacy rate when I was young, better than America, but it did nothing for the economy. I still believe my undergraduate degree at a US news and world reports high ranking small liberal arts college was a waste of money and they no longer call me for endowment donations after being cursed out severly and frequently. My masters degree was challenging and rewarding, should have attended for my undergraduate and my life would have been better and it was cheaper to boot. I ran a large trucking company and had drivers who sent their daughters to the Philippines for a nursing degree and 4 years there was the price of a year and half at nursing school in America, had another driver that worked for me send his son to India to be a doctor and now he is a cardiologist in Chicago, one year of medical school in America paid for 3 years in India and his son graduated with no debt. Most Ivy league graduates make the money because of Ivy League already controls the powerful companies and its the system to only hire other Ivy League folks. I think the Ivy League in the Supreme Court appointments is close to 85 percent in the history of the court. So its the right education, not necessarily a good education to get ahead.
It's not about becoming 'educated' anymore. It's a status thing, combined with wanting to be Western (White). Look @ taobao/tmall. Funny how all the models look like kids from Teen magazine or Cosmopolitan. They have turned their backs on the nongmin, and really, who can blame them? Old nongmin had/have some good qualities, but the last thing the new kids want is to be some old leather-skin, semi-literate, hacking, spitting, smoking, yelling farmer type. Right or Wrong, times change, so they buy sh*t that makes them seem to evolve beyond their Chineseness, and yes, that includes a Western education for those who can afford it.
Depending on the major, I don't think on a Chinese equivalent salary they will get the money back spent on the degree, but students in America borrow money for gender study degrees and never get the money back either, the money an expat friend I know, his wife spent a million rmb in Canada for high school and college for a sociology degree and works as an Ielts writing teacher, she will never get the money back.
For STEM degrees, it's questionable with patent law and copying that an innovator coming back to China would be rewarded with anything but a cushion job and a few plaques, unless he starts his own company, but then you have to rim job government officials to keep someone for stealing or copying your business and putting you down like a rabid dog.
It looks hopeless, but I suppose a few make it to prosperity.
ambivalentmace:
Education has become a scam almost everywhere I have lived and worked in the world. Discussing Plato with a taxi driver in Toronto is normal because 40 percent of Canadians have a degree, but 50 percent test scores is passing, same in Israel. I suppose my hairdresser could have an academic discussion of all 62 gender identities for her gender studies degree while she trims the hair off my ears.
In Cameron, you had to buy the teachers books for the class to pass the class, because the pay was so low for instructors. I called them instructors because what the are is actually an insult to real teachers and professors.
I think any politician that says education is the key to a good economy should be shot instantly. Russia had a 90 percent literacy rate when I was young, better than America, but it did nothing for the economy. I still believe my undergraduate degree at a US news and world reports high ranking small liberal arts college was a waste of money and they no longer call me for endowment donations after being cursed out severly and frequently. My masters degree was challenging and rewarding, should have attended for my undergraduate and my life would have been better and it was cheaper to boot. I ran a large trucking company and had drivers who sent their daughters to the Philippines for a nursing degree and 4 years there was the price of a year and half at nursing school in America, had another driver that worked for me send his son to India to be a doctor and now he is a cardiologist in Chicago, one year of medical school in America paid for 3 years in India and his son graduated with no debt. Most Ivy league graduates make the money because of Ivy League already controls the powerful companies and its the system to only hire other Ivy League folks. I think the Ivy League in the Supreme Court appointments is close to 85 percent in the history of the court. So its the right education, not necessarily a good education to get ahead.
Yes, it is. The Chinese students can open bank accounts in the US using their student visas, thereby allowing their obscenely rich parents to siphon their ill-gotten gains through HK bank/investment accounts linked to their mainland accounts. The students will then buy millions of dollars worth of real estate so their families have an exit plan when China's economy inevitably goes into free fall.
I have actually thought about this a lot as my (Chinese) step-son has expressed an interest in study abroad, and my (American) niece is starting to look at colleges. My short anster is "No" -- my longer answer is "No f---- way! should Chinese students attend school in the US."
The quality of undergraduate education in most US colleges and universities is in free-fall; feelings have replaced academic rigor as the core of the curriculum, and post-modernist "theory" has replaced critical analysis as the primary analytical focus. I got a better education in high school than most students now get in even well respected American bachelor's programs (and don't even get me started on the ubiquitous "Community Colleges."
Many graduate programs -- especiall in STEM fields are still worthwhile, but are so expensive that the benefits rarely outweigh the cost -- a cost which is subsidized by underqualified, often foreign, students paying full-tuition so the best (or sometimesbest connected) students get a free-ride on assistantships.
I quit a tenured professorship twenty years ago because I could see the direction in which the Acadey was falling. I tried to fight it, but, to mix metaphors, we can't hold back the tide. We can, however, choose to stay out of the polluted waters that have flooded American schools. We should encourage Chinese students to do the same.
retiredinchina:
I actually don't know a good country to get an education anymore without post modernism screwing up the system. Perhaps Singapore or Japan, maybe the Philippines and India for STEM subjects, but it does look hopeless right now.
The price of a degree isn't worth it for 80% of the degrees. But in the west you have an opportunity to voice your informed opinion. Something that can't happen in some countries is Asia. Besides what Quinn pointed out, the students also get a chance to think about what they are learning.
