Event
In light of the recent buzz around college entrance exam registrations: the news of Tsinghua and Peking University's being prep schools “cultivating elites for US” again popped up. Let's discuss why so many graduates from these top institutions choose not to return to China after graduation from a US school for master or Phd.
Reflection
Where students go after graduation is a strong reflection of a nation's future development trends (tho it’s a bit lagged but this trend is extremely accurate). The primary reason why top students, educated under the Chinese educational system, choose to work in the U.S. isn't money. Instead, it's because many job positions in China aren't a good fit for them. The mismatch between demand and supply causes this. It's definitely not about the money because if China “truly” had that many industries generating wealth and they need our graduates, the salaries in these sectors would certainly be comparable to those in the U.S.
The main difference between China and the U.S. economically speaking is that China has primarily grown its economy through agriculture and industrial production up to this point, while the U.S. thrives on financial returns by issuing currency (debt driven). Hence, the U.S. isn't the place for manufacturing products like TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines. If you study these fields, you'll likely face challenges in finding employment in the U.S.
Therefore, the education required for U.S. financial endeavours doesn't match China's focus on on-site construction or operating sewing machines. Yet, we pride ourselves on learning western advanced techniques and then establish a lot of disciplines and degrees that we don't necessarily need. A significant reason for this includes shifts in perception (like believing university graduates should be white-collar workers, and white-collar workers are superior to blue-collars) and the surge of students graduating due to the baby boom (thus, the need to expand admissions and increase the number of disciplines). Hence, we end up with many disciplines such as accounting, financial management, and computer science (even medical schools offer accounting, and even Beijing Foreign Studies University (my university) offers computer science, which is quite unreasonable). We claim to learn from the advanced American educational system, yet finally we only trained a large number of talents that are only needed by U.S. Over time, there's a mismatch between talent supply and demand domestically, with many accountants jobless on one hand and a severe shortage of manufacturing workers and agriculture experts.
This is a significant issue. The education in China's rural areas or second, third, and fourth-tier cities is very bad, I can say it’s almost a waste of time. This is partially due to the government's policy of centralising educational resources. After many years of concentrating ample resources in big cities, the only result was that in many key universities or high schools (which receive grants of 5 to 6 billion annually), we end up learning many things our country doesn't need and then those talents couldn’t survive and could only go abroad. This exacerbates the problem of resource allocation in the domestic educational system.
Whether a country's education system is good or not should be determined by how well it serves the country's current economic stage. While being advanced has its advantages and offers a prospective edge, it also means allocating a substantial portion of limited resources to those who cannot directly contribute to productive output. As long as public finances don't lean towards the countryside, this trend will persist. To break this trend, from my understanding, there's no need for drastic changes in the curriculum. Allocating more funds to schools in third and fourth-tier cities would suffice. With some guidance, it would alleviate the current shortage of young labor.
Prediction
The major changes China has implemented include:
- Reducing undergraduate admission rates
- Increasing admissions for vocational training programs
- Equating the value of community colleges and undergraduate degrees (tho HR doesn’t agree)
- Recently, rotating teachers in Beijing and thereby impacting the housing market around school districts
- Intensifying scrutiny on employment situations (which won’t have any influence as long as the labor law is still overlooked and the company that breaks the labor law doesn’t get punished)
My prediction: In the coming years, the state won't make changes to the curriculum or adjust the allocation of fiscal funds. However, they will further explore ways to reduce the number of undergraduate admissions, employing more moderate measures.