From the Readers

Time to change attitude toward education

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-08-26 14:37

Comment on"Try harder to build world-class university system" (China Daily Website, Aug 23)

Nothing will improve until people's attitudes toward education change. Despite the fact that so many students want to study in the West, their motivation to do so is still getting a foreign diploma, while an actual education is a secondary concern.

And while it's true that Chinese universities are producing an extraordinary amount of patents, the utilization rate for these patents is pretty low. There are more and more patents produced every year, but few of them are actually used. The same thing is happening in academia. Chinese professors are required to publish so many papers per year that some are turning to paper-writing services to take some of the pressure off their workload. This focus on quantity over quality is resulting in a lot of awesome statistics, but more of the same in terms of what's actually being produced.

I'm sure things will get better eventually, but it's useless to look at the issue in terms of national pride. Simply saying, "No, there is no problem. Our universities are the best in the world," is an easy way of sticking one's head in the ground. Nothing will improve if we don't acknowledge that problems do in fact exist.

Richard, on China Daily Website

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