Is a chinese education respected around the world?

[chris.]

I'm wondering, if I happen to get a university education in china, would it be respected as much as an english education?

Would employers be looking down upon a chinese education or is a university education just a generic thing that no one cares what language you get it in?

[tara]

This factor is very much dependent on the country you wish to seek a job and its society.

For one, in Malaysia, I can honestly tell you that a graduate from an English university is more respected. This is unfortunate but true, I think more so coz Malaysia trades a great deal with Western counterparts. I have found myself having the advantage in getting better jobs and promotions coz I am simply able to communicate better in English, whether written or spoken than my colleauges who are Chinese or Malay educated.

However, the trend is definitely moving towards having an employee who is fluently conversant in both English and Chinese, and in many instances, able to write well in both languages as well.

Well, it looks like for you to pose the question, you have a choice. Good for you coz I didn't have a choice and I wished as much that I could read and write Chinese!

[niubi]

there are a good amount of south koreans and japanese that go to china for undergraduate education. the same is true for people from the middle east and africa, and other places in asia. the numbers from the americas, europe, and australia/new zealand are relatively small. my best friend when i was studying in beijing was from iceland (he was getting his undergraduate degree in beijing). i think if you wish to get an undergraduate or graduate degree in china you should look to the most respected universities in whatever discipline you plan to study.

[quanxie]

Here in China a western education is consider to much more valuable. Unless you are fortunate enough to be able to go to one the top ten Universities a western degree means a better job.

Phil

[chris.]

Thank you quanxie, I pretty much knew already that a western education gets more praise in China, or why do so many chinese people come to western countries to study?

I'm wondering more if a chinese education would pay more in western countries if the job revolves around economics/commerce.

I plan do be doing commerce at university and I would love to study in China, however a university education costs alot of money and I want to make sure I get a good one that will give me a greater return.

[bhchao]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/magazine/01China.t.html?ref=magazine

The NYT Magazine published this 10 page article on education reform in China, and how China is seeking to incorporate Western educational aspects like extracurriculars, and a "thinking outside of the box" mentality in class; some of the qualities necessary to foster innovation.

It highlights a Chinese girl's educational experience at Harvard, her perspectives of the educational system abroad, and how certain aspects of this system can be used to reform Chinese education.

While Chinese educators are looking abroad to enhance the education system at home, American educators are seeking to emulate the Asian educational emphasis on standardized tests with a focus on math, science, and engineering.

Many Asian or Asian-American students in the US are too focused on reaching a specific GPA, and obsessed with entering name brand universities. But nowadays, most employers in the US frankly don't care what school you graduated from or what grades you received. They care primarily about what you can bring to the company through your attitude, the way you think and solve problems, and emotional intelligence.

A student who received excellent grades at a top notch school may be a poor employee who is not a team player at work, and has problems getting along with others in the workplace.

Some parts of the article:

Her topic gave her away. What Meijie was editing between bites of a bacon cheeseburger and sips of coffee was a short presentation for an expository-writing class called Success Stories. The questions addressed in the course, which focused on “what philosopher William James once called ‘our national disease,’ the pursuit of success,” have become newly urgent ones in Meijie’s own country. “What is ‘success’?” the course introduction asked. “Is it a measure of one’s financial worth? Moral perfection? Popularity? How do families, schools and popular culture invite us to think about success? And how are we encouraged to think about failure?” At Harvard, she and her classmates were discussing those issues as they read, among other things, “The Great Gatsby” and David Brooks on America’s résumé-rich “organization kids” and watched movies. In China, a nation on a mission to become a 21st-century incubator of “world class” talent, Meijie is the movie. As she progressed through her classes in the cutting-edge city of Shanghai, spent a year abroad at a private high school in Washington, D.C., and came to Harvard, she became a celebrated embodiment of China’s efforts to create a new sort of student — a student trying to expand her country’s sometimes constricting vision of success.

Amid the hoopla, Meijie insisted that the last thing Chinese students (or parents) needed was to be encouraged in their blind reverence for an academic brand name, much less be told there was some new formula to follow and competitive frenzy to join. That was just the kind of pressure they had too much of already. It was everywhere in a culture with a long tradition of rigidly hierarchical talent selection, dating back to the imperial civil-service-exam system more than a thousand years ago — and still there in a school system driven by a daunting national college-entrance exam. The Chinese call it the gaokao, a three-day ordeal for which the preparation is arduous — and on which a single point difference can spell radically different life options. The cramming ethos, which sets in before high school, was what Meijie had tried hard not to let erode her curiosity. In her experience, America had come to stand for a less pressured and more appealing approach to schooling. “There is something in the American educational system that helps America hold its position in the world,” she told me. “Many people will think it’s a cliché, but there is something huge about it, although there are a lot of flaws — like bad public schools and other stuff. But there’s something really good, and it’s very different from my educational system.”

Once at Harvard, in the fall of 2005, Meijie figured out what she wanted to do. She would try to make liberal education’s ideal of well-rounded self-fulfillment “more real in China.”....She and a selection committee would pick them on the basis not of their G.P.A.’s but of their extracurricular activities and their essays in response to the kinds of open-ended prompts they never encountered at school. On her list was a question that might be a banality in the U.S. but was a heresy at home: “If you could do one thing to change the world, what would it be?”

....Even as American educators seek to emulate Asian pedagogy — a test-centered ethos and a rigorous focus on math, science and engineering — Chinese educators are trying to blend a Western emphasis on critical thinking, versatility and leadership into their own traditions. To put it another way, in the peremptorily utopian style typical of official Chinese directives (as well as of educationese the world over), the nation’s schools must strive “to build citizens’ character in an all-round way, gear their efforts to each and every student, give full scope to students’ ideological, moral, cultural and scientific potentials and raise their labor skills and physical and psychological aptitudes, achieve vibrant student development and run themselves with distinction.” Meijie’s rise to star student reflects a much-publicized government call to promote “suzhi jiaoyu” — generally translated as “quality education,” and also sometimes as “character education” or “all-round character education.”

[thph2006]

My experience is strictly anecdotal but my wife who got her undergraduate degree in China (as a native) and her masters in the US felt that all the effort in China was to get through high school and into a university and that once they got in students just coasted through to graduation without having to really learn much of anything. She felt her US education was much more valuable both intellectually and in terms of the employment opportunities it opened for her. I've heard this same story expressed by many other Chinese nationals in the US as well. That would suggest a Chinese education might not be that valuable overseas.

[yung1]

answer to your question.

unless it's a degree from a top university in china i.e. peking uni or tsinghua uni which is recognised as an excellent university globally, then a chinese degree is not very well respected globally.

the reason i know is because i worked in an investment bank (before coming to china to study chinese). investment banks have certain choice universities globally which they recruit from. if you are not a student at that university then you can pretty much forget it unless you know people.

for example, one of my former colleagues is indian. he went to one of the best universities in india. however because it is an indian university he had to explain to the recruiter that actually his university course was very difficult to get into (he did an Indian MBA at one of the 4 India MBA schools). he had to tell the recruiter that more than 200k people applied for the course of which about 100 students were accepted.

same for a chinese university. you really will have to provide it was a good university. then again that's the same for bad universities in UK and US. People will know a bad university from a good one. brand name counts for a lot.