Tag Archives: education

China cutting under-employed college majors: paranoid or good policy?

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Laurie Burkitt for the WSJ reports the Chinese Ministry of Education has announced plans to phase out college majors that don’t get people employed. Emphasis mine:

Yet the government’s decision to curb majors is facing resistance. Many university professors in China are unhappy with the Ministry of Education’s move, as it will likely shrink the talent pool needed for various subjects, such as biology, that are critical to the country’s aim of becoming a leader in science and technology but do not currently have a strong market demand, a report in the state-run China Daily report said.

An op-ed in the Beijing News criticizes the approach for a different reason, saying that it will only spur false reporting of employment rates from schools that are looking for greater autonomy to produce more diversified, higher qualified students.

These seem like pretty good critiques of a policy aimed at reducing the number of unhappy, unemployed, college-educated young people in China.

Could it be that these drawbacks are considered “worth it” by officials concerned about the size of a disenfrancised bourgeoisie, or is it just that such a narrative is so deeply ingrained in my Western-social-science-educated skull that I can’t spot the good intentions?

Or, could it be that the government is accomodating actual people rather than development goals or the ephemeral goal of gathering accurate statistics?

Republican curricula in the US and China

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Gina Russo at Frog In A Well has an interesting post drawing a tentative parallel between US conservative groups that advocate “the teaching of Western culture and a triumphal interpretation of American history” (in the Times‘ summation) and Republican era Chinese textbooks that included instruction on how to be a “good citizen” (好公民).

My sense is both phenomena are interesting, but as Gina points out they may not have much to do with each other. On the US side, I’m more concerned with a “triumphal interpretation” of US history (whose triumph is it?) than I am with the teaching of Greek philosophers and European political theorists. That’s mostly because you can teach these thinkers alongside more recent theorists without damaging anyone. However, if in the example of the history of the North American west courses had to preclude Patricia Limerick’s Legacy of Conquest in favor of Frederick Jackson Turner (in pursuit of triumphalism), then students would miss out.

Since I’m presently studying in various ways both the question of “civil society” in China and the formation of a sense of nation in early 20th century China, these textbooks are equally interesting. The behavioral aspects, such as lessons on proper posture and how to stand quietly in line, are especially interesting given the preponderance of civility-promoting (usually 文明 or “civilization” was the watchword) advertising campaigns in Beijing during the year leading up to the Olympics. While I heard little about the “no spitting” regulations that received so much attention in the US press, subway passages frequently featured signs encouraging people to stand, civilized, in line.

A key difference between these two examples might be this: US conservatives seem dissatisfied with changes in their country as articulated by changes in ideology among some academics, whereas some aspects of the Chinese campaigns seem directed against the state of affairs in China in favor of a perceived civilized other. I am not in a position to make that argument regarding the Republican era, but in the contemporary example at least part of the impetus for these campaigns was clearly the desire to make a good impression during the Olympics.