Zhengzhou

[ckc_ucl]

Hi Everyone,

Does anybody have experience of teaching at Shengda College, Zhengzhou, Henan?

www.shengda.edu/cn

Even better, are any of it's (apparently many) current foreign teachers members here? I would love to get some feedback on the college as I have been offered a teaching post for the coming year.

Also, any insights into life in general in the city would be greatly appreciated!

Many thanks,

Charlene

[莱米西]

Sorry for the old posts, but maybe you can still get in touch with the posters there.

[L-F-J]

I know you can get some pretty awesome Chen Style Taijiquan there!

[ckc_ucl]

Thanks for the direct link to Dave's; it's incredibly useful & would've taken hours for me to find by myself!

Shengda sounds a bit shite huh?

Charlene

[libertango]

I don't know anything about the university, but Zhengzhou isn't bad. I'd rather be here than in Beijing or Shanghai, but then I do enjoy being in more "Chinese" places..

What kind of things are important about city to you?

[gato]

More Shengda news.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/world/asia/22china.html?ex=1308628800&en=0ae328e69b1c1293&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

June 22, 2006

Rioting in China Over Label on College Diplomas

By JOSEPH KAHN

XINZHENG, China, June 21 — Shengda College in central China has a diverse curriculum, foreign faculty members to teach English and a manicured campus, where weeping willows shade a recreational lake.

But many students paid the college's rich tuition — at $2,500 a year one of the highest in China — primarily because Shengda promised that their diplomas would bear the name of its parent, Zhengzhou University, a more prestigious national-level institution, and not mention Shengda at all.

So when the graduating class of 2006 received diplomas that read "Zhengzhou University Shengda Economic, Trade and Management College," students erupted last Friday, ransacking classrooms and administrative offices, shattering car windows, scuffling with the police and staging one of the most prolonged student protests since the 1989 pro-democracy uprising that filled Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.

The protest, still simmering on Shengda's now tightly guarded campus, reflects the reality that the country's exploding population of college students must grapple with petty fraud, substandard instruction and an intensely competitive job market. Students, a traditional bellwether of political volatility in China, have become a fresh source of unrest in a society already angered by land grabs, unpaid wages and environmental abuse.

[liuzhou]

Full story with photos here.

[wushijiao]

I worked at Shengda. I originally didn’t want to post anything too negative about the school. After all, they never failed to pay me on time, and I did enjoy my year there. However, these riots underscore the unbelievable dishonesty this school has a habit of. If it is true that in ‘03 the authorities knew that the graduating class wouldn’t receive Zhengzhou University diplomas, then, I am truly disgusted. For Americans, imagine the equivalent of paying $40,000 per year for a promised University of Tennessee (or whatever state you choose) diploma, and then finding out you would actually get a community college diploma, which would have only cost $5,000 per year. Except that analogy isn’t apt, because many cities on the east coast of China, like Shanghai, require that students graduate from a “211” project university if they want to transfer their hukou’s. Zhengzhou University is, and I doubt Shengda is on its own. So, this is probably one of the most successful education scams in Chinese history. It’s also worth mentioning that the people they scammed generally come from very humble financial situations.

[md1101]

well i hope the students get reimbursed

[Girl Scout]

I currently work at ShengDa. If you are still planning on working here post your questions and I'll try to answer them.