Why should I study in china?
Pretty much.
As far as mainland China goes, my experiences are only on the teaching side at third- and second-tier schools, so I can’t speak to the quality at some place like Beijing University.
But it is my opinion that many and probably most of the teachers at the schools where I’ve lectured care very little about teaching. Incidentally, they care even less about research (Just plagiarize a paper or slap together some received wisdom with fake statistics once or twice a year. Avoid both the flashy and the substantial. After all, your paper now needs to pass Party review before submission to a journal). It seems that what they do care about is having a decent social status, a stable salary, a nice vacation, and a faculty discount in the cafeteria. In other words, they’re typical state employees in a flabby bureaucracy.
I cannot tell you how often I’ve seen teachers essentially lecturing at the air, because their students occupy seats as far back in the room as possible and keep their heads down, buried either in their arms or in their phones. These teachers make no effort to connect with or motivate their students or even check their comprehension. They just walk into a room with a PowerPoint presentation prepared and they’re damn well gonna deliver it. Whether or not there are other people in the room and whether or not they’re listening is apparently beside the point.
On the other hand, the students themselves aren’t bringing any motivation either. Why? Because their parents chose their majors for them from the list of possible majors based on their gaokao scores. Very few students like their majors. Even those who might kinda like their major in the beginning are dragged down by the gloom emitted by their classmates and the overwhelming, soul-crushing imperative to conform.
Not a few professors expect bribes and sexually harass their students.
A lot of profs disdain their students and mock them behind their backs. This type is also insulted when students question anything they say, and they seize the opportunity to publicly humiliate students.
The students, meanwhile, regard such profs as bullshitters, liars, and fakers who put on airs—rightly so. They lament the outdated pedagogy to which they are subjected and the inability of not just these profs but also of most Chinese teachers to embrace the faintest intellectual humility. They are bored to tears by their ideology classes, which demand that they memorize reams of Party-speak in order to keep up their GPAs.
I feel that these tier-two and three unis are actually just glorified secondary schools. Or glorified remedial boarding schools for troubled youth. But hey, apathy and an inability to even begin to conceive of the meaning of personal responsibility are what happens when you have a paternalistic and authoritarian education (and social) system.
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