NEWSWEEK: China has greatly expanded opportunities for high-school students to enter college in recent decades. How has this affected the quality of those university grads? Mao Shoulong: In general, the quality of college education is upgraded in China compared with that of the ’80s … In the ’80s, students studied much harder than students do nowadays. At that time, only about 5 percent of the senior middle-school graduates were able to enroll into colleges. But now more than 20 percent of senior middle school graduates are enrolled in college. Even so, compared with famous universities in the developed countries, the quality of education in China is still low. In China it’s difficult for students to get enrolled, but once they are, it’s easy for them to graduate. This is different from foreign countries.
There have been reports that the millions of engineering and science graduates pouring out of China and India are poised to help those Asian giants overtake the West—especially the United States—and become the new high-tech superpowers. Are those warnings justified? The education facilities in China are not as good as those of famous internationally known universities. For example, in the United States, school fees for a student might be as high as $10,000 or more on a yearly basis, but in China, the fees would be about 10,000 renminbi ($1,300) per year. Students in the United States would enjoy accommodation as good as Olympic athletes while in China students have to share one dorm and spend a lot of time on studying politics and foreign languages. In general, compared with what China had before, China now has upgraded its quality of education, but compared famous universities in the world, China is still low in educational quality.
Is China’s traditional reliance on education through rote memorization suited to today’s emphasis on creativity and innovation? The rote memorization system detracts from the quality of education. But in China this system is welcomed. For example, middle-school students have to do rote memorization. College students and postgraduates also have to do this. In China, students have to take unified national examinations for postgraduate education, so most of the students have to recite or memorize things. In this way, combining theory with practice and making new breakthroughs and creativity are ignored.
Many Chinese graduates today are not employable in big multinational firms, for example, because they don’t have practical training. Students might have good marks from examinations, but they are quite weak in practice. So that’s why the students in the United States might not have great marks in class but can make sufficient missiles, while students in China enjoying good marks in class are unable to make good missiles.
What is the Chinese government doing to close the gap between book learning and practical applications? The government educational department has noticed this already. But it is difficult to change the situation. The reason is that China is used to the system of rote memorization, and if someone tries to change it, students would resist. Students would think that the teacher is somehow too lazy. This is also true about training classes for [Chinese Communist Party] cadres in China. Debates are not welcome in class. This is the difference between China and the United States in education. I think in future, this situation will [change] and China will pay more attention to practical education in the end.
What about the quality of teaching personnel? The quality of teaching personnel is also upgraded in China nowadays compared with that in the ’80s and ’90s. We have a lot of doctorate holders who work as teachers in universities, but in ’80s and ’90s, the situation was different. We also have a lot of returned students [educated abroad] working as teachers and professors in universities. From time to time, we also send scholars to foreign countries. But compared with the United States, Britain, Taiwan and Hong Kong, the level of teaching personnel in [mainland] China is still weak. This is because we had experienced the 10 years of the Great Cultural Revolution [which disrupted the educational system from 1966-1976].
What needs to be done in the classroom to improve the situation? Officials from the Ministry of Education must be looking closely at this. [There should be] improvement in labs and creativity training in the fields of engineering and science. More scholarships should be given in order to encourage promising students to go on to further studies, especially for doctoral degree students. We also should practice the system of easy enrollment with strict graduation. If this is carried out, students will have to study hard even when they get college enrollments.
Why is China producing so many engineers and scientists? Paying more attention to engineering and science is part of the planned economy. In the past, in order to develop China’s economy, China needed a lot engineers and scientists. So students from that area had a greater role to play. They might become technicians after graduation from college and then they were promoted from time to time to the level of the central government. In the past, China had about 60 to 70 government ministries involving in engineering and science. But now, almost all of the 20 to 30 government ministries are [not involved in] engineering and science. So it will be difficult for engineering and science graduates to enter government in the future, and even if they do, [they would be] computer engineers, specialists on DNA or professionals in certain scientific areas.
