Understanding China

This is foolish. The US has many of the best universities in the world, but they are prohibitively expensive and exploding in cost exponentially for no good reason. I’m sure China has lots of good universities but the direction of students studying abroad is overwhelmingly from Asia to North America and not the reverse for a reason. Also, Sanders supports free PUBLIC college, the colleges we all pay for anyway. If you run up a gigantic bill at a private university I agree, that’s on you. But there’s no sense in the public supporting institutions that only reinforce a relative elite. Also too, if you want more engineers etc then you should support policies that enable a broad swathe of the population to achieve that higher education, rather than looking at the relatively narrow crust who benefit from the current system but don’t get the degree you deem valuable and declaring them “snowflakes”.

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I’d be ok with that if the government told schools “this is how many students you may have enrolled and this is how much budget you have.”

The current system of paying per student makes schools greedy and want to keep students enrolled that shouldn’t be there.

The government provides many forms of grants, subsidies, and “loans” to all public and private colleges. All non profit colleges are subsidized with tax free status, tax deductions to donors, and government guaranteed student “loans.” Most of which will never be repaid. Total student loan debt now exceeds total credit card debt, something like $ 1.5 Trillion. It’s the next financial crisis. Most of that debt will never be repaid.

It’s not just students that are saddled with huge student debt, it’s also their parents. There are lot of retired people on social security that still owe over $100,000 on their kids student loans.

Additionally, many schools are also funded by fat government research grants.

For example, that Boston University professor that wrote a research paper explaining why our beloved Christmas song “Jingle Bells” is racist, undoubtedly received a government research grant to do it. What is worse, at Christmas I had to listen to one of the overeducated snowflake kids in the extended family explain why this professor is correct, and that critism of her research is just more racism. I’m not sure what this kid got out his expensive education, but he’s 30 and hasn’t had a real job in the last five years.

The top schools have huge private endowments and admissions policies that are blind to the ability to pay. Most students receive as much college provided financial aid as they need. Highly qualified students from poor families get almost full scholorships. Semi-qualified “Diversity” students often get full scholarships; the schools compete for them with financial aid packages.

Harvard and about 50 other top schools are the best value in education. While expensive, they are well worth it and most students have scholarships. Public colleges are cheap and some are a good values. Others are not.

The majority of private colleges are high cost, modest quality, and a terrible value. These colleges survive mostly on tuition paid by government provided student loans. Some of these colleges are closing at an increasing rate. Many will be wiped out.

Most people do not belong in college. They belong in vocational training that prepares them for a good trade and a decent paying job. A college liberal arts education that has little value in the job market, is something that America and especially its students cannot afford.

Free college for everyone is the last thing we need.

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China is spending their money to educate people for the jobs that will be available in the future, not in the past.

Since nobody can predict 40 years into the future, it is import to have re-education program to enable people to change track and stay relevant, even if their present job become redundant and irrelevant.
To subsidize dying industries and vocations are like beating a dead horse.

I agree totally. That is why vocational training and apprenticeships are so important. Germany is spending billions on their programs, while Trump’s Big Leap forward with an investment of USD 200 Mil. is “a piss in the ocean”:

If you divide that on the 330 Mill. people vs 80 Mill. Germans the difference in enhasize become even more loopsides.

I don’t say that the US should import the German system wholesale, but at least learn from it and adapt what is useful under US reality. (Or change that reality to suite a similar system)

Which is why I say the government needs to fund the school and give them a maximum number of students, not pay them per student like they currently do. Currently they are allowed to charge whatever they want knowing there’s idiots willing to pay it with Government money.

Have blind selection teams where all they see are an assigned applicant number, so they can’t determine race or gender based on name, and have strict admission requirements.

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The only way any of this gets fixed is after we hit rock bottom. There are too many entrenched interests for any major change to take place now. Either the United States will change successfully (China) or unsuccessfully (Russia). China had a long run of shitty policies before this success.

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I certainly agree with a blind admissions process, at least on the first cut based upon GPA and SAT scores. The cure for past discrimination is not more discrimination.

Public financing of education also needs to based upon student merit and educational value as measured by the job market and societal requirements. Attempting to train anyone who wants to get a “college degree” in some fluff major is obviously a losing proposition.

Foreign education systems where college is “free” are based upon merit. They place their students in tracks (unskilled labor, skilled trades, college, and professional schools) starting at an early age. It’s very difficult to move up to a higher track. The government gives students a choice of majors based upon academic merit. There is no grace inflation or drifting through school. Students must work and show progress or they flunk out. That is one reason so many foreign students who’s parents can pay full tuition come to the US to study whatever they want to.

Some years ago California provided “free” tuition at state colleges;it became unaffordable. At one time CUNY was “free”, I bet it’s not anymore.

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I’m afraid that you are right. Any changes that can be made will be so incremental that it will take decades for any significant improvement.

We are already seeing the beginnings of the crash where some public schools are being allowed to fail, and private colleges without big endowments are failing.

Many small private colleges are now training their second generation of intellectually un-gifted gender studies and social justice majors. A college needs financially successful graduates to be future major donors. Gender studies gurus and social justice warriors who are working as baristas, school teachers, and bureaucrats will never earn enough to be meaningful donors. The financially successful graduates of yesteryear who visit campus today to discuss big donations are shocked when they see that their beloved school is no longer the bastion of a serious liberal arts education, and is now a post high school playground producing snowflakes.

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That’s an apt description.

How much does US spend on education and how much does it get back for it in result??
Here is OECD statistics that my put some light on this:

For those who like to get the data presented in a different form, here is an article in The Atlantic from Dec. 2013 that spells it out:

CUNY is not free now but both tuition and total cost are relatively low in one of the most expensive cities in the country, in a state where the bloated public sector has inflated the expense of all other government functions. It’s actually a model for what I’m talking about

Again I am telling you, free PUBLIC college is completely compatible with all of this. It’s not a nanny-state idea, it’s a blow against the coddled rich who are ripping off the taxpayer and are already bribing their way thru subsidized private universities. CUNY is no-BS and no frills. Copy that model and this is what you get: https://nytimes.com/2017/01/18/opinion/sunday/americas-great-working-class-colleges.html

In the UK where its all gov uni and basically free less annual admin charge, the gov pushes everyone in to keep the unemployment queue smaller hence to get them in they have to lower the entrance qualification to allow for the ones that can barely read and write.
Then they reduced funding so the uni’s were told to run like business so the business they are in in handing out degrees. Foreign students are full fee payers so they get as many of those as they can, mostly being asian they expect to get a degree one paid for.
I know a few people in HR in the UK, they say we throw 50% of the CV’s in the bin once we look at where they went to uni. To enable the dumbasses to pass there are no exams, its all papers so you can pay another person to do this.
I think the only Uni’s with credibility are the ivy league in the US where they dont need your money so they get rid of failing students.
In OZ the uni’s ( same as UK system) have different campuses for the foreign students so they keep a standard for the locals.
Big issue now in OZ and the UK if you were a foreign student you bought your degree so very hard to get a job as all employers know this.
As the USA doesnt have any Federal oversite on Universities is also the worlds headquarters for degree mills as they can be state or local and call them selves a uni

Of course Asia has a huge problem with politicians getting degrees…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lamsharon/2017/10/08/how-blockchain-can-stamp-out-chinas-fake-diplomas/#58013a168546

The Ivy League, and the top 50 private liberal arts colleges, and the top 10 to 20 public universities, and the service academies with name brand recognition are about the only schools with nationwide credibility in the US. There are a few regional schools with credibility in their home region.

There are a few schools with good name brand credibility in a specific industry, like the maritime academies, the Webb Institute, the Colorado School of Mines, Embry-Riddle, etc.

For most colleges, their lack of name brand recognition and credibility in the job market is a huge handicap that most of their graduates can never overcome. This makes the majority of these colleges a very poor value for the education dollar.

Large employers are flooded with resumes. Resumes from top schools make the first cut. Resumes from unknown schools out of the region never get read. It may go like this: a company will hire anyone in the top half of their class from an Ivy League school, anyone in the top 20% at a good name brand school, and anyone in the top 5% (if their resume got noticed) from any school.

Even large corporations have problems with understanding China:

Is it too late to start learning Mandarin?

It is NEVER too late to learn.
Learning a new language at our age may be difficult, but NOTHING is impossible.

Yeah, about that…If I’m not there, start the class without me.

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I just spent a week in Shanghai, the English is far better than Singapore

Chinese now buying as much as Americans

The mighty force of consumerism has taken hold in China. In 2018, retail sales in China are expected to equal or surpass sales in the united states for the first time, another definitive marker in China’s rise to economic super power status. The growth of China’s domestic retail market is luring everyone from automakers to makeup companies that want to cash in on the country’s growing middle class.
Retail sales in china are on track to hit just over $5.8 trillion this year, according to Muzuho, a Japanese bank, it’s a stunning rise from a decade ago, when sales in China were a quarter of those in the United States.

The Virginian Pilot

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