From the Readers

Spare thought for education

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-30 07:53

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

Until people's attitude toward education changes, nothing will improve.

Despite many students being eager to study in the West, their motivation to do so is still the "all-important" foreign diploma, while actual education remains their secondary concern.

Although it is true that Chinese universities are applying for an extraordinary number of patents, the usage rate for these patents is pretty low.

And while an increasing number of patents is being registered every year, only a few of them are actually usable.

The same thing is happening in academia. Chinese professors are required to publish so many papers every year that some are turning to "paper-writing" to take some pressure off their workload. This focus on quantity over quality is yielding a lot of awesome statistics.

I'm sure things will get better eventually, but it is 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 burying one's head in the sand.

Nothing will improve if we do not acknowledge that problems do, in fact, exist.

Richard, on China Daily Website

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