Recently, a 26 year old PhD candidate at Tsinghua University abruptly quit the program despite being just a few months shy of getting his degree.
His reasons for quitting were not - too hard, I am burnt out, ran out of money, got married or any of the traditional reasons.
Rather, he accused Tsinghua (China's version of MIT) of being obsessed with producing meaningless research papers rather than focusing on practical training. AND..the teachers are boring, too!
Gosh...it sounds a whole lot like the traditional schools in America, doesn't it?
Chinese parents and kids apply much much more effort on getting into top universities than their American counterparts do. And Americans can spend a lot.
For someone to drop out and then attack one of the major institutions is unheard of. It similar to the odd of some pc nerd dropping out of college and then starting up and succeeding at making the largest software company in history.
Schools not meeting the needs of students doesn't seem to be a unique phenomenon in the states, does it?
What do you think?
go to 老毕看中国
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This is a subject that came up in a workshop I led this week with some wonderful career services people at a major American university.
Only the lack of relevance observed however was on the business side. I heard loud and clear that classes are not teaching what business needs students to learn.
Thanks for enlarging the conversation!
Posted by: Michael Wagner | June 25, 2006 1:45 PM | Permalink to Comment