Taiwan and the “One China” Pledge

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Hello!

To compliment this week’s discussion on Taiwan and next week’s discussion on China, I found an article about “One China” agreements between Taiwanese and Chinese universities. Due to various factors that we’ve discussed in class, such as aging populations and low birth rates, universities are relying on international students to stay open. Chinese students have been allowed to study in Taiwan since 2011, and now make up more than a third of Taiwan’s international college students. In order for many Chinese Universities to allow their students to study in Taiwan, Taiwanese universities have made agreements with the Chinese universities to not offer courses that include politically sensitive topics, such as “one China, one Taiwan” or Taiwanese independence.

What are the pros and cons of a policy like this?

Are there comparable policies between other countries’ universities?

Will these “One China” agreements really prevent Chinese students from being exposed to politically sensitive topics while studying in Taiwan?

 

http://thediplomat.com/2017/03/china-vs-taiwans-academic-freedom/

http://thediplomat.com/2017/03/china-vs-taiwans-academic-freedom/

 

Artworks from famous Chinese Artist Feng Zikai (丰子恺), on the irony and frustration of the traditional Chinese education system

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Feng Zikai (1898-1975) is one of the most gifted political and artistic figures in China in the 1920s and 1930s. The 1920s was an era of deep political and social instability, a time when the future and destiny of China was blurry and uncertain.

Feng was a painter, writer, music educator, translator, calligrapher and art theorist. In fact, Feng is considered to be the founder of modern Chinese cartoon art. His essays and cartoons are still popular among the Chinese public today. Feng’s cartoons seek to furnish his viewer with a degree of critical distance. He injects irony into his paintings, so that his viewer will be prompted to take a step back and examine the social issues in China that are subtly embedded in his work.

The cartoons below reflect Feng’s critical perspective on a gamut of issues with the education system in China, which ranges from the elementary school to university level.

You can find more of his works here: https://www.pinterest.com/mymurmuring/feng-zikai/

“

Imagination”

To Feng, the job of an educator is similar to that of a gardener, who trims and prunes his plants so that they can flourish later. Feng draws his viewer’s attention to the cruel ways in which the education system in China stifles students’ minds and their ability to think for themselves. Feng suggests that the system in China is more interested to standardise students, pressuring them to conform to a certain pattern of thinking.

“Somewhat School”

Schools were part of the problem of perpetuating a vicious cycle of capitalism and standardization in learning. In this cartoon, the monkey on top of the pole is the teacher, the administrators are playing a tune, students are watching, and of course someone is collecting money.

“Somewhat Teacher”

Teachers might try to destroy students’ minds with endless drill and repetition. These teachers do not alter or update their pedagogy. Instead, they behave like a gramophone that is used to play the same old tune for years. Feng criticizes the formalist, stubborn teaching style practiced by some educators today, and he encourages them to innovate and improve themselves instead.

“Somewhat Education”

Figuratively speaking, education can be seen as a process of transforming raw materials into beautiful sculptures. In this cartoon, Feng criticises the Chinese education system that aims to kill the unique characteristic of individual, by shaping everyone using a singular template or model.

“Being educated”

This one follows the previous painting, but it is now from the perspective from the students. It does not seem fun for them to be shaped from this one model.

Questions:

Even though Mr. Feng passed away more than forty years ago, the severe problem of Chinese society and our education system persists. We still have not figured out a way to offer students with special talents another way to grow and the society still pushes young people so hard with mandatory college entrance examinations. I would like to ask your thoughts on the cartoons I posted:

  • Do you have thoughts on why China still continues to adopt such a standardised way of assessing its students?
  • How do you compare the current Chinese education system and the one Mr. Feng described in his paintings?
  • Do you see any progress or regression in China?

UniSIM is now Singapore University of Social Sciences

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As a follow-up from my previous post, Singapore’s Ministry of Education has just announced today that the Singapore Institute of Management will be renamed as the Singapore University of Social Sciences — shocking, I know!

SIM used to be Singapore’s only privately funded university, but after this recent rebranding and restructuring, it will become the country’s sixth autonomous (i.e. government run) university. Below are quotations taken from news reports regarding this sea change in Singapore’s HE sector:

“The name was chosen to reflect the university’s mission of “driving lifelong learning anchored in disciplines with a strong social focus”, Minister for Higher Education and Skills Ong Ye Kung said in a press release issued by the school on Friday (Mar 17).

“SUSS is under the ambit of the Ministry of Education and is no longer part of the SIM Group, which comprises SIM Global Education, SIM International Academy, SIM Professional Development and Platform E.”

“Autonomous universities receive government funding and are subject to government oversight, but have the flexibility to set their own direction and differentiate their educational offerings. Currently, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Management University, Singapore University of Technology and Design and Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) are autonomous universities.”

See more at:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/sim-university-renamed-singapore-university-of-social-sciences/3603440.html

http://news.asiaone.com/news/singapore/unisim-now-singapore-university-social-sciences

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/world/article/unisim-renamed-as-singapore-university-of-social-sciences

Government Reforms in Social Science and Humanities Research in Singapore

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Hi folks!

Hope you had a great Spring break. I thought I should post my presentation slides on this blog, for the benefit of those who weren’t around during our session last week or might find it handy to have a soft copy of the slides!

The gist of my presentation is as follows:

  • On 07 November 2016, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam announced that the Ministry of Education will spend SGD$350 million (equivalent to USD$250 million) on social science and humanities research for the next five years.
  • The government will also establish Singapore’s very first Social Science Research Council, while establishing partnerships with existing institutes in the US such as the SSRC in Brooklyn and Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford.
  • My presentation examines the implications and limitations of these newly implemented government policies, focusing particularly on the potential winners and losers of these reforms, in HE institutions and the wider society.

Please feel free to share with me your thoughts or questions on this recent government reform! Will look to hear from you, specially on how we might be able to address critics’ skepticism towards the huge amount of funding that is channelled into this project by the Singapore government (while governments in other parts of the world such as the Trump administration is trying to cut back heavily on funding for the arts and cultural expression), fair democratic representation of members in the SSRC (because right now it is predominantly made up of senior academics and civil servants) and conflict between the winners and losers of this reform. Thank you!

– Tim

(Final) Government Reforms in Social Science and Humanities Research in Singapore- A Case Study-1lxygfs

How do international students experience university differently?

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When we are discussing issues of internationalization in class we usually stop at the institutional level. Otherwise, we may discuss people in terms of student population movements between countries. This week, I tried to find something recently published that looked deeper than that. In the most recent Journal of International Students, researchers from Azusa Pacific University evaluated the way college experiences for international students diverge from their that of their domestic peers. They explain that their research fills an important hole in the literature which often ignores student satisfaction outcomes for international students. Using data from the 2010 University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES), they came to some interesting conclusions.

The article shows that international students report lower levels of satisfaction with their college experience, with a particular weight placed on the quality of the classroom experience. Moreover, the researchers found that low levels of satisfaction correlated with lower levels of cognitive improvement. The researchers conclude that their findings should influence universities to craft more effective support systems for international students and ensure that international students’ satisfaction level equals that of their domestic peers. They suggest that knowingly selling an inferior product to an unwitting buyer is tantamount to exploitation on the part of the university.

Overall, I think the article makes a good moral argument about the risks of the profit model which is driving internationalization. That said, I don’t think the strength of their research design can quite back up the strength of their claim. For instance, the UCUES, from which the data for the study was pulled is a one-time survey of outgoing college seniors which relies extensively on retrospective self-reporting.  The study also suffers from a lack of longitudinal data. To be fair, the researchers do acknowledge these limitations in the concluding paragraphs.

Still, I think the article raises an important question about parity between students at research universities that may be uniquely relevant to SIPA given the size of its international student community.

Korean Horror movie reflecting brutal college entrance examination

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Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9lyjyarCd8

Movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFqWC6F0Hps

 

Since last week we have been talked about Korean high school education and the studying abroad trend, I found this horror movie focusing on high school seniors preparing for the college entrance exams. It was published in 2006 by director Kim Eun-Kyung.

Story happens in a boarding high school created especially for students who have failed college entrance exams from previous year. It started with an advertisement by the principle introducing “the perfect school for study only” and close shots are around the campus. Dormitory, study room and dinning hall are newly renovated and look beautiful but lack of vitality. Everything in this high school is highly unified. Girls are dressed in uniforms with certain hairstyles and ruled by exactly same schedule of their daily activities. Girls get up early at the same time, brush their teeth in same room with same pace, do same morning exercises and eats the same breakfast during the same given period of time. Gilrs’ personal properties except textbooks and exercise booklets are collected on the first day they arrived school, because all are considered as disturbances, which could only harm their efforts for the test. We see girls lost their interests, their habits or even friendships during their preparation for test. They are taught that the only concerns should be the grade. It is not right to care about roommates or classmates because they are only competitors not companions in life.

Another storyline made me feel painful is the family of the girls. We see one girl, Kim Ri-Na, had strong desire to leave and was already mentally ill, however, her mother forced her to return and finally pushed her to the edge of her life. Family’s decision has been distorted by the stressful reality of education in Korean society.

“Do you wish to continue to be a loser?” Their mentor, a young cold-blood woman, repeated this sentence more than ten times in the movie. Originally from China, it is not difficult for me to imagine this story happening in the real world. Traditional admission culture and education system in Korea and China made college entrance examination a huge deal and had tremendous pressures and negative psychological effects on teenagers and their families. Failing the test equals to failing your first eighteen years of life. But truly, is it fair to define someone a “loser” based on test score? Is it valid to measure how well one learns in six years based on several pieces of test papers?

What do you think about the college admission requirement and process in Korea? Is a fatal examination enough to evaluate the education outcome? Does the examination well prepare students for higher education? Does it result more harm or more benefit? For broader picture, Do you prefer Korean way or American way of college admission? Why do you think this system has been effective in Korea and China for decades?

This movie is also known as “D-day” when it published in Korea and China. D-day usually refers to June 6,1994, which American army fought to win or die. It makes a lot of sense: A examination for win or die.

Job-Hunting Season Kicks Off in Japan

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How can university students get a job in your country? Japan has a unique job hunting custom. Companies decide the job hunting schedule each year, affecting students significantly. In this year, companies started to hold seminars from March 1st and will be allowed to fully begin selection procedures, such as interviews and written exams, from June. http://www.nippon.com/en/behind/l10171/

You can learn more about the Japanese job hunting tradition from here: http://www.nippon.com/en/column/g00365/

I would appreciate it if you could share your countries’ cases about job hunting.

Relationship between HE enrollment & output in economy (high-tech intensity, GDP per capita & output per worker)

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(Note: income level is given by GDP per capita. Economies’ position in the figure reflects their ranking by income and technology. Technology clusters are divided into three on the basis of the skill and hig-tech intensity of their products and exports.)

this proxy provides an assessment of an economy’s productivity and ability to move up the value chain within the service, manufacturing, non-manufacturing industry, and agricultural sectors.

Interestingly Japan has relatively high HE enrollment ratio(50+%) compared with other Asian countries. Korea has the highest level of enrollment ratio across the globe. However, Japan still has the highest level of GDP per capita and output per workers. There must be other factors leading to the outputs. However if we analyze from the perspective of higher education, I would say Japan has the highest capability of transferring knowledge/technology in HE into output.

Source: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EASTASIAPACIFICEXT/Resources/226300-1279680449418/7267211-1318449387306/EAP_higher_education_fullreport.pdf

Studying Abroad Trends in South Korea

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Hello, all!

I was glad that everyone really responded to my presentation and questioned a lot today. 🙂

In summary,

Republic of Korea has the highest number of students studying abroad per capita in the world. (By Korean Ministry of Education, 223,908 in 2016, counting only higher education students. And SEVIS by Numbers, 74,817 coming to the US, counting all F&M Visa holders) Many of them mostly study abroad for Bachelor’s and Master’s degree.

The number of students going out is increasing by years gradually.

Major destinations are the US, China, and other Asian countries (Japan, Philippines).

According to SEVIS by Number, only 22% of Korean students study STEM field in the US.

According to Statistics Korea (the government office for statistics), 55% of a social survey respondent said yes to send their children to study abroad, 32% No, and 13% said I don’t know.

Among those 55% yes, the three top reasons why they want to send their children to study abroad is: 1) For nurturing international/cosmopolitan perspective, 2) For my children’s talents (in case of arts, and music), and 3) Because of unsatisfying education system.

And many of student studied abroad do not want to go back to Korea and this cause huge brain drain and education deficit. In response to this, Korean government spent a lot of money and policy for attracting foreign students and colleges and for establishing an education hub in several port cities, but so far nothing worked.

And I looked up the tuition system of Korea since I had no idea and want to add the tuition of several top ranked universities of Korea. The tuition was different by universities, each school within a university, major, how many credit you take per semester and what year you are in. The data is in 2016.

(using exchange rate 1 dollar = 1150 won)

Seoul National University (public) : average $5200 (per year, but it varied a lot from school to school. For example, the liberal arts school was $4400, but the medical school was $8600)

Korea University (private): average $7200 (per year, but this university also varied a lot. For example, the medical school was $10500, the engineering school was $8400, and the school of arts was $7800. But the liberal arts school was $6200. And also, the first year student needed to pay entrance fee of $900.)

Yonsei University (private): average $7800 (per year. It did not vary much among schools, just the medical school was about $10500. The first year student need to pay entrance fee of $860)

Please comment me below if you have any further questions. 🙂

Have a good day!

 

The actual powerpoint file is here:

Studying Abroad Trends in South Korea-2idklc5

Gender Parity Index and more

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Hi class! This time our data team focuses on Gender Parity Index across countries.
Gender Parity Index (GPI) is a socioeconomic index usually designed to measure the relative access to education of males and females. It is calculated as the quotient of the number of females by the number of males enrolled in a given stage of education. (If the value is less than 1, then it means that the number of males enrolled is greater than that of females enrolled)
Here is the source from UNStats.
https://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/SeriesDetail.aspx?srid=614

And this is my summary!
U.S.A.: 1.37 (in 2013)
China: 1.15 (in 2013)
Peru : 1.09 (in 2010)
Pakistan: 0.98 (in 2013)
Mexico: 0.96 (in 2013)
India: 0.92 (in 2013)
Japan: 0.90 (in 2012)
Viet Nam: 0.90 (in 2013)
Korea: 0.75 (in 2014)
Singapore: – (no data found)
To be honest, I’m very surprised by the fact there is less differences across Asian countries than I thought and there is almost no correlation with gross enrollment ratio that I posted last time (http://edblogs.columbia.edu/inafu6653-001-2017-1/2017/02/08/international-comparison-gross-enrollment-ratio/). Another striking fact is Korea and Japan is lagging behind even within Asian countries.
And rather than just showing this alone, we also wanna share World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Rankings in 2016. This index is composed mainly of four factors (economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment)
U.S.A.: 45th
Singapore: 55th
Viet Nam: 65th
Mexico: 66th
Peru : 80th
India: 87th
China: 99th
Japan: 111th
Korea: 116th
Pakistan: 143rd
Anything strikes you? Please share and discuss it!