Chinese Freshmen in American Colleges Facing Challenges

The University of Iowa, like many universities around the US, has seen an increase in freshmen from China


One night in August, right before the fall semester started, I shopped at a local Walmart. Bumping into a few Chinese fellows at Walmart is common here in Iowa City, but never to such an extent like that night.

Mandarin chattings on what to buy, or guessing the use of some gadgets, etc. filled my ears from aisle to aisle. Everywhere I looked or moved, there would be a few Chinese people nearby. They were young and stylish, loading their shopping carts with everything from fruits to rice cookers and furniture. Some of them were shopping with a team, staffed by their parents, with the mother and child browsing through the shelf while the father pushing heavily-loaded shopping cart behind.

Make no mistake, they were the incoming freshmen at the University of Iowa from China, and they were brought to Walmart by two fully-occupied big school buses that night.

As the university struggle to balance its cost and revenue amid steep budget cuts, international students came to the rescue, since they pay full tuition instead of in-state tuition. That is, $23,713 vs. $7,417 per year, according to numbers shown on the UI website. Plus living expenses, health insurance mandated for international students, as well as books, these Chinese students, or, precisely speaking, their parents, are paying around $36,000 per year.

The New York Times ran an article in early August about the challenge to house all these international freshmen at UI. Among about 430 of them this year coming to UI, nearly 350 are from China alone, the New York Times reports. But for these Chinese students, the challenge goes way beyond finding a place to sleep.

After the first meeting of a journalism history class, for instance, four Chinese students came to the professor complaining that they didn’t understand the lecture, and couldn’t take notes. I am an instructor for two sections of the same history class, and the two Chinese students registered for one section dropped out in the first week.

I talked to a Chinese girl in my other section, and she admitted facing language barrier, especially for a journalism class. One day after class, she asked if she could speak Chinese when discussing a class related question with me. I said no. I told her she better speak English, because that was the reason she came to the US to study.

Nationwide in the US, steady increase in enrollment of undergrads from China has been a trend for a few years. In the 2004-05 academic year, 8,299 Chinese undergrads were enrolled in American universities. The number keeps rising year after year, to 26,275 in 2008-09 academic year, according to data collected by the Institute of International Education. Peggy Blumenthal, IIE’s executive vice president, contributed the increase to the rise of an economically strong middle class in China, their determination to provide the best education to their only child, as well as the scarcity of high quality college education within China, according to Inside Higher Ed.

The large number of incoming Chinese freshmen has caught the attention of Chinese students and professionals already at UI, and there is this sense that most of these kids are not able to get into a decent university in China through the competitive college entrance examination. At the same time, many people, including people not from China, wonder how these families can afford four years of higher education in the U.S.

Thousands of young Chinese men and women have made it to the US to pursue college education in recent years. These post-80s youth have far stronger purchasing power than my generation of the studying-abroad Chinese. But studying abroad is more than a shopping trip. I hope they have also the perseverance and diligence to overcome all the challenges and get the education they paid for.

Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/education/04admissions.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=the%20university%20of%20iowa,%20august%203&st=cse

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/25/chinese

http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2010/08/28/chinese-students-at-isu-one-of-iowas-biggest-exports-to-china/

Less People are Taking the College Entrance Exam in China

job hunting of college graduates

The news that attracted most viewer comments on sina.com.cn on Friday was the one about the impact of the dire job market for college graduates. The China Youth Daily story reported that the number of people registered for the 2009 College Entrance Exam decreased in most provinces in China. Many places, such as Hebei Province, saw registered exam takers decrease for the first time in decades. The overall number of registered exam takers will still remain at a high level of about 10 million, according to the China Youth Daily.

The College Entrance Exam is the harshest competition for generations of young Chinese since the late 1970s. Every year, millions of teenagers taking the same exam on the same days to get into a relatively small number of higher education institutions has become a prominent and rather unique social phenomenon in China. The exam has been fervently condemned as well as defended. It is seen as the culprit for the test-oriented education approach in China that is blamed for suffocating the creativity and independent thinking of tens of millions of Chinese students. But at the same time, the system stands tall over the years as important means for providing fair opportunities for the poor and powerless, especially young adults from rural area.

The number of registered exam takers generally kept increasing in previous years, and doubled from 2002 to 2008. It is surprising for many to see the number decreas nation wide. China Youth Daily pointed at the difficulty for college graduates to find a job in recent years as the main reason for the decrease. Another reason the newspaper discusses was the increasing trend of high school graduates attending college abroad. Nearly 7000 comments posted by viewers, however, reveal some other reasons for less people wanting to pursue a college degree, which used to be regarded as the best choice for young people to have a better future.

Some complain that college education is not necessary, either because knowing someone is more helpful in finding a job, or because employers start to look at the actual capability, rather than diploma when hiring. But many people seem to be displeased by the fact that social connections, or guanxi, still play a bigger role in personal development than education or talents in Chinese society. Some criticize that college education in China is like a joke, neither faculty nor students taking it seriously, and students can learn little from college. Another reason indicated is the high cost of college education. “It is better to start to work and make money early than going to college, ” one comment says. Some also say that less people are taking the exam simply because the population is decreasing because of the one-child policy.

Experts Voice Worries over Chinese Education in Colleges, Once Again

English is one of the major courses in Chinese schools







Chinese language education is being “marginalized” in colleges and students could not use their native language very well, experts warned.

Some universities have canceled Chinese classes, and textbooks in use are of mixed quality. Today’s college students often pick the wrong expressions, confuse with characters and use poor syntax in their Chinese writing, experts say.

Such a situation is largely due to too much emphasis on English learning, says Wen Rumin, chair of the Chinese Department at Peking University. Many netizens would agree with him and expressed aversions toward too much weight given to English, calling it a big mistake of China’s education and mocking, “What’s the use of learning Chinese? Let’s just study English and talk to each other in English in streets.”

Indeed, English seems to be everywhere in Chinese people’s life. “How many companies turned down job applicants because of their Chinese? How many literature on advanced technology are written in Chinese? How many excellent Chinese movies are out there to satisfy our spiritual needs?” One poster asked.

But a couple of comments denied the notion that people’s Chinese skills are deteriorating. “Native language is something that we are using every day…and we never stopped practicing it.”

Chinese government has promoted a National Professional Chinese Test since 2003, to assess Chinese reading and writing abilities of professionals, especially those working for government agencies and schools. The test results are supposed to be used as a benchmark for hiring and promotion.

Meanwhile, the debate about whether too much attention has been given to English education over Chinese education is likely to go on. It’s not just about language learning. A large part of the debate has been related to the survival and development of Chinese culture in an English-dominating world.

http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-09-13/143613883521.shtml
http://comment4.news.sina.com.cn/comment/skin/default.html?channel=gn&newsid=1-1-13883521&style=0

Child Sexual Abuse in China Documented by Scholar

The book, titled "Shame of Sex ? Or Pain of Harm?"

The first social study report in mainland China about child sexual abuse was published recently. The author, education researcher Long Di, told Beijing Morning Post that the case of child sexual abuse is increasing in China.

There were 135 cases of girl’s rape reported to All-China Women’s Federation in 1997, and the number reached over 3000 in 2000, she said.

Ms. Long Di’s book documented the experience of six young girls from a northern China village who suffered sexual abuse. They were abused by their school teacher since the second grade for two years.

The six families finally reported to the police, but then some villagers started to gossip with exaggeration about the girls' experience, and some others prohibited their own children to socialize with those victims.

Ms. Long said in order to prevent sexual abuse of children, researchers need to study those sex offenders first, and listen to their stories. More education to increase the awareness of child sexual abuse among students is also necessary, she added.

Child sexual abuse has long existed in China but started to gain attentions from scholars and the public only in recent years. Victims, especially those in rural area, are often times too ashamed to report abuses to the police or officials in fear of losing their own and their family’s dignity. Many people still don’t see such abuse as a crime of the offender, but merely a shame of the victim.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/edu/2007-05/11/content_6084866.htm

Cartoon Channel Cancellation Received Mixed Reactions

While the cancellation of a cartoon channel in Zhengzhou, capital of central China’s Henan Province, may not be good news for young children, some parents were happy that it was no longer on air.

The parents complained that their children spent too much time, including sleep and homework hours, watching the cartoon channel, a subsidiary of Hunan Satellite TV and available in about a dozen Chinese cities.

One person, who called himself the father of a five-year-old, posted a comment on sina.com.cn and said that his child often spent a whole day watching the channel. He also protested that a Japanese cartoon program on the channel had too much violent fighting and bloody scenes.

Another lady told China Youth Daily about her concerns. Her four-year-old daughter was fascinated by the suicide of a cartoon character and she was afraid that the little girl might mimic the act.

Officials of Zhengzhou’s television provider and Hunan TV, however, said the removal of the channel was due to conflict in distributing local channel resources but not out of concern of the content or parents’ complaints.

But the explanation did not stop the public from debating on the Web on issues such as cartoon industry, television culture and education.

Many wrote that parents should blame their own failure in education, but not the cartoon television, for their children’s problems, while insisting that the children should have the right to watch cartoon.

“I don’t understand why [parents] blame television when their children were not well educated and controlled,” one post reads.

Some suggested a rating system for cartoon programs in China, like in some other countries.

People also criticized that Chinese television programs are having more and more violent or sexual contents.

“Some bad commercials, bad cartoon and bad dramas are aired over and over again on many TV stations,” one poster wrote while suggesting stronger control of program quality. “[I] would rather have fewer channels than so much trash. ”

The discussion inevitably touched on the comparison between Chinese and foreign, especially Japanese cartoon productions, and quite a few commentators were not happy that Chinese cartoon production has lagged behind.

“Had China’s cartoon developed better, things would not have been like this—everyone loves watching Japanese cartoon,” one note says.


China Youth Daily story
http://comment4.news.sina.com.cn/comment/skin/default.html?channel=gn&newsid=1-1-12898591&style=0

Online comments
http://comment4.news.sina.com.cn/comment/skin/default.html?channel=gn&newsid=1-1-12898591&style=0

Hunan satellite TV cartoon channel
http://www.hunantv.com/cartoon/

Students Hope to be Away from Internet Porn

Bad Internet content harms students


Students around China have voiced welcome to a nationwide crack down on Internet pornography, a campaign launched by the Chinese government this month.

They knew they are an easily tempted group and some of them have already suffered from viewing too much unhealthy content from the Internet.

A secondary school student in Anhui was addicted to Internet porn and his grades suffered significantly. To pay for the fees he owed to an Internet cafe where he viewed those sites, he went so far as to steal machine parts from a factory.

Eighteen-year-old Beijing boy Liu Wei once had similar experience, and told Xinhua that he now hates those “dirty stuff” on the Internet.

Traditional media in China, including print and broadcast, are relatively clean of sexutal content because of tight control of the government, and no porn publication store is allowed in China.

In contrast, the Internet has become perhaps the freest media in China, both in terms of expressing people’s opinions as well as publishing conventionally deemed inappropriate or provocative contents such as exposing pictures.

Even on popular websites like sohu.com, yahoo.com.cn and sina.com, which are accessible to just about any Internet user, there are always a few sexually explicit video clips or photos on the home page, in entertainment section or blogs. Students can view such content easily, and if going to an Internet cafe, they can further log on to some porn sites without much effort and almost free of surveillance.

Setting up porn websites and publishing pornography on the Internet is illegal in China, but in recent years, there were several serious incidents where porn sites targeting viewers in China were registered on overseas servers, but those who ran the sites, for making money, were Chinese citizens, sometimes teenagers. Among about a million registers of these sites, most were Chinese youth, according to state media.

Statistics show that by June 2006, there were over 80 million adolescent web users in China, out of the total of 123 million, and about 30 million were elementary and secondary school students who are extremely vulnerable to Internet porn.

In addition, some young people got involved in the so-called “nude chat” on the Internet, using cameras. Lately, technology development allowed new channels for filthy content to reach students, such as porn video games downloaded to cell phones.

The government, schools and parents, including students themselves, have grown very concerned about the problem, but not enough has been done to cope with it.

In this crack-down campaign, which will last for six months, the authorities will “clean up” videos, photos or fictions on the Internet that contain pornographic content. Meanwhile, the authorities will also target online information that “disturbs social order,” as well as online forums, chat rooms and blogs that are deemed having grey area in “management responsibility.”


About the crack-down campaign
http://news.xinhuanet.com/edu/2007-04/19/content_5995268.htm
http://edu.people.com.cn/GB/1054/5637785.html
http://news.tom.com/2007-04-13/OI27/34990413.html

Other stories about Internet porn problem in China
http://news.xinhuanet.com/edu/2006-09/01/content_5033303.htm
http://www.yn.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2006-09/11/content_8007062.htm
http://www.people.com.cn/GB/jiaoyu/1054/3098263.html

Chinese Universities Ranked Low in Research Competitiveness

Beijing University, one of best universities in China, was ranked No. 192 in the world in a study


Top Chinese universities did not make the first 100 on a list of research competitiveness of universities around the world.

The highest ranked Chinese university on the list is Beijing University, at 192nd, followed by Tsinghua University, at 196th.

Not surprisingly, Harvard University is the number one on the list, compiled by researchers at the Research Center for Chinese Science Evaluation of Wuhan University. Nine of the top ten universities are in the United States, including University of Texas, University of Washington, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University.

Nevertheless, the overall research competence of mainland China institutions moved up to No.16 in the world from last year’s position of No.22, according to the study.

The ranking is based on Essential Science Indicators (ESI), which provides data of journal article publication counts and citation frequencies in over 11000 journals around the world in 22 research fields.

Researchers hope to use the study to “assess the position of Chinese universities in the world,” and to provide some reference for “building some key universities into internationally influential institutions,” says a statement of the research center.

Based on the results, the center concludes that Chinese universities still leg far behind the leading ones in the world, especially in terms of high-level research institutions, achievements and international impact. In other words, there is a long way to go to reach the government's goal of turning some Chinese universities into the world's first-class institutions.

The public is not surprised or disappointed by the ranking. Instead, many of them saw it as “normal,” and voiced disapproval of the higher education system in China in their online comments.

Some criticized universities for only caring about luring money from students, while others pointed out that university administrations paid more attention to politics than to academic development. Quite a few posters mocked Chinese universities as superior in the world when it came to collecting money from students and building grand-looking front gates.

The list
http://rccse.whu.edu.cn/college/sjdxkyjzl.htm

Explanations
http://rccse.whu.edu.cn/college/yylnysj.htm

Online comments
http://comment.news.tom.com/listall.php?page=1&subject_id=63465&channel_id=1&news_date=2007-04-09&news_id=3BMVTHUN&subject_type=0&key=21a6bf8f6684a35fb58d3ba43f12d029

Chinese Youth Questions Worthiness of Education

Chinese youth: struggling for a promising future

Because of skyrocketing education cost, many Chinese youngsters relapse to the education-is-useless idea, says a report released by China Youth & Children Research Center on Wednesday.

The report, which profiles Chinese youngsters in the years from 2001 to 2005 on things like health, life style, education and career, blames insufficient government funding for education for the high cost, especially in college education. For many young people from rural area, their parents have to borrow money to pay for their college and end up in heavy debt, becoming even poorer.

The idea that education is useless was once rampant among Chinese youth during the early years of the country’s economic reform and openness. Many young people at that time dismissed the importance of going to school, when seeing people without much education become reach by selling clothes or fruits on their own. But in recent decades, education has been a hot pursuit as diplomas have been valued higher by employers, be it government agencies or large companies.

Now that more and more young adults receive college diplomas at ever-increasing costs, while the job market gets tougher, once again, some young people apparently start to question the worthiness of getting good education.

People under the age of 35 account for about 30 percent of the 14 million unemployed urban population. Also, 150 to 200 million young people from rural area are the so-called “extra rural labor force,” who are out portioned the lands available for farming and expected to move to cities looking for a living. Moreover, the enlarging-college-enrollment wave in the past five or six years have created a large body of college graduates competing for jobs, the report says. Today, gaining a college degree no longer guarantee a job with satisfying income.

Some other findings of the report:

• 
  Chinese youngsters are developing sexuality and start dating at younger ages. Also, young couples spend more money for romance than earlier generations.


• 
  More than 13 percent of young web users are addicted to the Internet, with the highest percentage, over 17 percent, among those between 13 and 17 years old.


• 
  Generally speaking, Chinese young people in those years (2001-2005) are becoming healthier, but still face certain health problems. For example, the number of diabetes patients aging 20 to 35 are increasing every year, while breast cancer is also spreading among young women.

----by Josie Liu

http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-01-11/025112003283.shtml
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-01-10/191512001797.shtml
http://finance.jrj.com.cn/news/2007-01-10/000001911567.html
China Youth & Children Research Center
http://www.cycnet.com/cycrc/intro.htm
http://www.cycrc.org/default.asp