China to cancel college majors that don't pay

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/11/23/china-to-cancel-college-majors-that-dont-pay/

by BlackJack • 15 years ago

142 109 15 years ago

blogs.wsj.com

klbarry2• 15 years ago

I would love if the United States modified and did this. Do the research on what majors pay and lead to what outcomes - and then shove those results in high school senior's faces often (instead of forcing the majors closed).

unshift• 15 years ago

why? college is not a job training facility and shouldn't be treated like one. high school's goal is to provide a broad education so a graduate can have the basic knowledge necessary to function in society. not everyone goes to college.

Scaevolus• 15 years ago

In the US, people are encouraged to go to college so that they can get higher-paying jobs. It's seen as a job training facility.

ams61102• 15 years ago

This sort of thing only leads to "bubbles" in certain fields, actually lowering the value of the degree and making it harder to find a job once you graduate.

lojack• 15 years ago

As if math and science isn't force fed enough. My business partner was accused of padding his grades in high school because he was good at art and wanted to take more art classes.

Shoving this sort of stuff in high schoolers faces is exactly what kills the drive to learn. How many times do you remember that classmate in the back of the room saying something along the lines of, "Why am I learning this, I'll never use this in real life?" Did you ever think that maybe they were right?

I don't know about you, but I'd rather see a country full of people struggling to do something they are passionate about than a country full of people successfully doing something that makes them miserable.

tryitnow2• 15 years ago

I would like to see the US government stop subsidizing majors and colleges that don't get results for their graduates.

Now there arises the problem of inadequate funding for the liberal arts majors. But as it is way too many people major in liberal arts and other impractical subjects. Lib arts should be a highly selective group, limited to scholarship recipients and any rich kid whose family has the money.

Treating all majors the same really hurts kids who come from working class backgrounds and might not know how society really works. Rarely will you be rewarded for learning for learning's sake. Major in engineering, accounting, nursing, etc. Then your future is pretty solid. Let's stop kidding ourselves about how our society values education.

rluhar• 15 years ago

I don't think you can count Liberal arts as "impractical" subjects. They may not be "job oriented" but I believe having a foundation in the liberal arts does allow for perhaps a broader education than focusing on a very narrow (albeit deep) technical field from a young age. Maybe some people are better suited to be generalists as opposed to specialists? I don't think restricting a Liberal Arts education for "those who can pay" is a good idea.

In Japan, some companies (especially in banking) hire people to work as generalists. They tend to rotate through a variety of roles as their career progresses. I don't think it is the most efficient allocation of resources, but it does make for employees who have a wider view of the business, and more importantly a network and contacts across a variety of fields.

Like most people commenting here, I have a very specialized technical education (Comp Sci major), but I actually wonder if my education could have been a little broader. I learnt most of what I know at work anyway!!

abhimishra2• 15 years ago

Perhaps you aren't suggesting exactly this, but I don't understand the commonly-held view that those in technical majors don't have a 'broad education'. Most people I've known in technical majors have as broad an education as any liberal-arts major I know. I personally feel that even in the absence of breadth requirements (which at my university are non-trivial), most of my classmates would be as well-educated as they are now, simply because they have the ability to read and absorb information.

Students who go to college and get a liberal-arts education often don't retain their major-specific knowledge once they move into the job market and into a role that has nothing to do with what they studied. What they are supposed to retain though, is learning- and critical-thinking skills that make them better at various jobs than someone who did not go to college at all. And that same learning- and critical-thinking ability is something technical majors also develop quite well - hence I don't see a liberal arts education as having a monopoly on developing 'generalists' or really providing any advantage in that regard.

Naturally this is also a problem of efficient allocation. I think there is value in the knowledge produced by every field - however we require different levels of supply for different skills/knowledge - and I would further argue that this variation in demand for skills has always existed throughout human history. Since society is both funding education and creating this demand, it makes sense to me that we meet that demand partly by creating the correct supply of variously-educated citizens.

elithrar2• 15 years ago

> I would like to see the US government stop subsidizing majors and colleges that don't get results for their graduates.

We do this somewhat (though not in the same way) in Australia. Degrees in fields of high demand are subsidized; in short, if you take a government loan (aka HECS/HELP debt), you owe less at the end of it. It's a good way to promote studying fields that deliver, but it doesn't prevent those with the desire to study arts degrees from doing so.

noblethrasher2• 15 years ago

As I and other have pointed out (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3197437), it's the liberal arts majors that subsidize the STEM programs at the undergraduate level because the per-credit tuition is roughly the same but it's cheaper to educate historians than molecular geneticists.

On another note, it's pretty distressing to see all these calls to drastically overhaul the university system when we're not even five years away from what was essentially an economic singularity (no pun intended).

anamax4• 15 years ago

> it's the liberal arts majors that subsidize the STEM programs at the undergraduate level because the per-credit tuition is roughly the same but it's cheaper to educate historians than molecular geneticists.

Umm, no, that doesn't prove your point because neither one pays their way during college (including loans). At best, that proves that LA majors are less subsidized than STEM majors.

If we look at where that money comes from, I doubt that we'll find that LA graduates are paying what it cost to educate them. I suspect that we'll find that STEM folk are.

yummyfajitas4• 15 years ago

You completely ignore the fact that STEM brings in research grants, which the university loots in the name of "overhead". I pointed this out also in a similar discussion. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2799626

At every university I've attended, STEM grants are used to subsidize university operations.

keiferski2• 15 years ago

It doesn't get much more short-sighted than this. What happens in 20 years if engineers are everywhere and can't get work?

Instead, let's make liberal arts degrees cheaper. There's no reason why a Philosophy or English degree needs to cost 15k+ a year. It's been said before, and it needs said again: a liberal arts education is just as valuable today as it was 300 years ago. The current problem is one of cost, not of value.

dreamux• 15 years ago

I think that's backwards. Make Science/Engineering cheaper and liberal arts more expensive... arts degrees should be considered luxury items: nice to have but not strictly necessary. I think many people would be better off not going to University than get an arts degree, whereas there is huge societal benefit to pushing out more scientists and engineers.

Liberal arts should exist, just at a much smaller (frankly, more reasonable wrt actual demand) scale.

keiferski2• 15 years ago

If the objective is to maximize short-term economic gains, then yes, that would work.

If the objective is to create well-rounded, cross-disciplinary citizens, then no, that is a horrible idea.

Regardless, I think it's a false dichotomy. Why does one have to be expensive while the other is cheap? And why can't someone get both a liberal arts education and a "practical" education? I see no reason why a student can't pay 5k for a 2-3 year liberal arts degree, and then go on to (competitively-priced) a 2-3 year engineering degree.

seagaia• 15 years ago

I've wondered how necessary it is for colleges to force a $50k tuition on students. Where does the money actually go? I'm skeptical. The administration at university just seems like one big, disgusting fraud.

mmc• 15 years ago

I was curious too, so I dug around and found this report from the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit that studies this question (for US universities): http://deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/trendsissuehighlig...

That is just the summary, there is a more complete report available too. The high points for me was that employee compensation accounts for 60-70% of costs, with increases there being driven by benefits (I assume this means health insurance costs rising), and that only 30-40% of that 60-70 is spent on instructional staff.

klbarry2• 15 years ago

I attend CUNY Baruch in NYC. It is known for providing an excellent liberal art and business education in it's Zicklin school of business. The cost to students is about 5500 a year, and the city supplies another 11,000 or so a year per student. That's $16,500 total cost per student per year (not semester) for an excellent education, and this also funds research, buildings (in NYC, no less), and more. And many students receive large amounts of financial aid.

It is entirely possible for a school to give an excellent education for an order of magnitude less than the large schools do, and this is evidence to me that most schools are horrendously inefficient.

Tsagadai5• 15 years ago

A better question is why law degrees cost as much as they do. Law is one of the cheapest subjects for a university to teach yet law is usually one of the most expensive.

elithrar2• 15 years ago

Law = supply/demand. Lots of people want to study law (it's lucrative), and therefore they can up the rate.

dev_jim• 15 years ago

First year associates at NY law firms pay $165k + bonus. Current fourth years make close to $300k. 50k+ for three years is a good investment if you do above average at a top 10 school.

rsanchez12• 15 years ago

To be fair, engineers can get together, come up with an idea, and sell their product.

But I do agree with you about making liberal arts degrees cheaper. No one should get themselves into debt studying anthropology, for example.

zhemao• 15 years ago

Are you saying that liberal arts majors can't be entrepreneurial? It takes more than engineering prowess to make a successful product. Also, although science and engineering degrees do hold the promise of a higher-paying job after graduation, that is small comfort to the engineering student who finds himself struggling with a problem set late into the night while his friends are out partying.

As for going into debt. If you choose to take out student loans in order to study anthropology and find yourself in debt as a result, that was your own mistake, and you are ultimately responsible for it. Let's stop saying that it's "unfair" to not protect people from their own mistakes. Lowering the cost of liberal arts degrees will only lead to a greater surplus than what we have today.

glimcat• 15 years ago

I keep hearing this flood meme. I'm not sure I buy into it.

It may conceivably devalue the degree itself by making it less uncommon, but skills likely lose value at a much lower rate. There are also network effects - the pace of modern science and engineering goes almost entirely on the fact that we have a great many people working at once and sharing results.

There's also nothing to stop you from studying engineering then getting a job which uses a completely different skill set. A liberal arts degree is not a career training program in most cases. Opportunity cost is one big reason why this is less acceptable than it could be. However, it may be that different program models make different revenue models more viable, driving down the opportunity cost.

Of course, none of this addresses the quality problem. It's one thing to say "throw more engineers" but it's another entirely to create more good engineers.

notatoad• 15 years ago

Yeah, what a tragedy it would be to have too many engineers, doctors, or other useful people. If we want to plan for the future, we need more poets.

Liberal arts educations are expensive for the same reason lobster is expensive. They're a luxury item, nobody needs one. If you can afford to be a philosopher, you can afford a philosophy degree.

ams61102• 15 years ago

From the piece:

Chinese have questioned whether someone like Apple founder Steve Jobs could ever emerge from an education system that seeks to push down students who stand out from the crowd.

Do they not realize Jobs was a dropout??

wtvanhest• 15 years ago

This is my favorite quote:

"Many university professors in China are unhappy with the Ministry of Education’s move"

The author goes on to make a weak argument about demand in distant future, but we all know which professors are upset, those that teach subjects which do not generate jobs for their students. (Most likely they are there teaching because they themselves couldn't get jobs in their field)

*I realize that this is a harsh view, but it is worth mentioning even though it is a little extreme.

rsanchez12• 15 years ago

Sounds like they're looking for a system where the Steve Jobs' of the world have what they need in school to become successful. There are probably a lot of Steve Jobs' who do drop out, but going through years of college drained their enthusiasm.

CamperBob• 15 years ago

What Jobs needed to become successful was to drop out, start a company, get kicked out of said company, hit bottom, and wander around in India for awhile. None of that requires a degree.

Woz also lacked any sort of degree when he worked for HP and Apple. He only went back for his BSEE after he'd already made his mark.

Tsagadai5• 15 years ago

Yeah, all those arts graduates filling prisons with dissidents. There are already calls in the comments for a similar system in other countries. Why should university be about getting a job? Shouldn't university be about learning, and being recognised for learning. A history major or a poetry degree may not be the best way to get a job but I would prefer to live in a society with poets and historians.

Jobless, educated young people are copping a lot of flak from the media everywhere at the moment. They are a drain on the economy, "they are the 99%", they are having Arab springs where spring lasts all year, they are making molotovs in Greece. They are agents for changing society.

The underlying current of this idea in education is that we should all be happy little workers. Universities have been commercialised away from being the places that brought about the Enlightenment to places for turning out more advanced labourers. Universities are becoming (some have already become) an extension of the standard school system.

I found university to be a cacophony of ideas and viewpoints that until that point I had never really experienced. It introduced me to thoughts and ideas I may have never of experienced if I stayed in a small country town. Degree-mills rarely ever have this sort of environment and if all universities are reduced to churning out technical apprentices the world will be a worse place for it.

MatthewPhillips• 15 years ago

Agreed. I have a history degree, and program professionally. Universities are about expanding your mind, not turning into Good Employee.

ColdAsIce• 15 years ago

Well hey there mate, I have a BA in History and program professionally too. JavaEE at work, and python on GNU/Linux all the way at home.

mahyarm• 15 years ago

I don't need a university to expand my mind.

SeanLuke• 15 years ago

This feels like the anecdote. I suspect you're far from the typical history major case. How about all those history majors now working at McDonalds: were they well served by their mind-expansion experience?

Radim• 15 years ago

I didn't see any mentions of banning "poets and historians" in the article (though I just skimmed to be fair). What I saw was China cutting public funding for some majors.

If someone wants to be a poet, or a historian, or anything else, more power to him. Why on everyone else's money, though?

To be honest, if your calling to become a poet is stopped by a government's funding decision, you wouldn't have made much of a poet anyway.

ceol• 15 years ago

How do you quantify the importance of a major compared to another? Certainly poets, historians, artists, and writers have more than a monetary importance in society. How do you measure the inspiration a great writer generates? How do you objectively compare the societal benefit of a mathematician versus a historian so that you can mete their funding accordingly?

I see a lot of "bootstraps" comments in the tech field— specifically about the liberal arts— and it's a shame. I wouldn't be in this field if it weren't for some of those "worthless" degrees like English (great writing helps the learning process) and Design (people are attracted to good-looking websites).

My apologies if I got a little ranty. It just irks me to see someone putting down another field of study as though they're a drain on society.

_delirium2• 15 years ago

If someone wants to be a poet, or a historian, or anything else, more power to him. Why on everyone else's money, though?

If someone wants to become a Flash-game developer or make webapps, more power to him. Why on everyone else's money, though?

est3• 15 years ago

> Why should university be about getting a job? Shouldn't university be about learning, and being recognised for learning.

Chinese university has a different definition. It's like vocational schools rather than college. Chinese vocational schools are like dirty work training camp.

justlearning• 15 years ago

I agree, although in theory.

It would a different set of priorities for a single child whose parents toiled in government factories (or even to till land - often migrating across countries to work just because they were 'transferred'). The culture of aspiring to be an artist or a 'non-professional' (defined locally as not one who brings a pay check every month; not the freelancer kind) has yet to be cultivated. (The irony is - pre communism era was the opposite; it was artists all around)

jmilloy• 15 years ago

I don't think that cancelling a major automatically means that all liberal arts classes are nonexistent. I majored in math and cs, but went to France for a term, and took philosophy, drawing, music, history, and comparative literature. I don't think my school would become a degree mill just because it didn't offer a complete degree for history.

fmota• 15 years ago

On a global scale, a liberal arts curriculum is the exception, not the rule. I highly doubt that Chinese universities have liberal arts curricula.

Tsagadai5• 15 years ago

I majored in CS and maths too and like you I also took advantage of various electives (psychology, philosophy, anatomy, genetics, public health). I spent a lot of my time attending friends lectures as well because you could just walk in and join the discussion without enrolling in the course. At university I would talk to people (students, academics, university staffers and researchers, hangers on) who specialised in an amazing array of topics. I would get interested in the practicalities of structural engineering for abstract architecture or plant sucrose transport channel manipulation simply by finding someone and talking to them about it.

If a school doesn't offer an entire history program, the chances of meeting someone really interested and specialised in history go down dramatically. A program isn't cut in isolation, courses are dropped, academics are fired, research programs are ended and opportunities are lost. Some universities have cut back to only offering first year courses in humanities (which you could probably learn everything from such courses with wikipedia, Khan Academy and an understocked library). You are unlikely to find people with more than a passing interest in a field if it isn't available for research at a university. Cut enough programs (or only offer a few to start with) and the school is a degree mill.

Highly specialised universities are often dead ends socially. They aren't fun places to visit, people are only there for that piece of paper that gets them a job. I've worked in a technical campus that was completely silent at night. The students would go across town to another university because "the music was better" or "it's more fun there". If there are no bands forming in an Engineering department there is something seriously wrong with the creative environment of the school or with the people who attend it. If you really want to find out why this is such a terrible idea go somewhere that has already done it.

potatolicious2• 15 years ago

> "Shouldn't university be about learning, and being recognised for learning."

Not when it costs six figures and puts people neck-deep in debt.

I want to live in your utopian world, where people get educations just because. We would all be better off.

But the truth of the matter is, for a lot of people there are two choices after high school:

A - Pay $[bignum] for education that has high employability and will give them the knowledge and qualifications necessary to find work, which is absolutely necessary if they ever hope to repay said debt.

B - Pay $[bignum] for education that has low employability and will not give them any of the qualifications sought for in in-demand jobs. They will still owe $[bignum] which will compromise all other aspects of their lives.

I see your line of argument a lot whenever this topic comes up. My challenge to you is: besides a lot of feel-good platitudes, how will your system work? How will people feed themselves, clothe themselves, and put a roof over their head - their head full of wonderful perspectives and understanding but no job?

The "we can all get comprehensive" education idea died when education became expensive. It died when globalization squeezed the American middle class to become more desperate and ever more critically reliant on continued employment. Far from being the norm, the age of comprehensive college education was a brief blip in thousands of years of human civilization lasting no more than a few decades. The gravy train has come to a full and complete stop, and it's time for industrialized nations to clue into something: life is tough. You scramble to survive. High-minded ideology comes second to the survival of yourself and your loved ones.

If, in this topsy-turvy struggle you can find time to fit in a comprehensive education. Good for you - you won. The rest of the world isn't so lucky.

bandushrew• 15 years ago

Education plus time to think drives innovation.

In your 'real' world where everyone must frantically scamble to survive, civilization never leaves the caves.

We have massive surpluses across the world, 98%R of the wealth is owned by a tiny fraction of the people, food is piled up and wasted to protect markets, and yet there are still idiots claiming that we just cannot afford to educate everyone.

We cannot afford not to, if we want to survive into the 22nd century and beyond.

Its not a gravy train, our surpluses drove our technological advantages, which in turn drove our surpluses.

ansgri2• 15 years ago

Well, Russia is(was?) that utopian world where you can get education comparable to MIT for free, "just because". Everything changes, though.

kalleboo4• 15 years ago

> I want to live in your utopian world, where people get educations just because.

You're welcome, we call it Sweden.

Higher education is free (before this year it was even free for non-swedes), and you get a stipend to pay for food/rent as long as you keep passing courses.

I know someone who's about to get a physics degree and is going to go into bartending afterwards since it seems more fun. I also know people who get education after education (stuff like psychology, history) while they figure out what they want to do.

GHFigs2• 15 years ago

The problem is not (e.g.) poets and historians, but that the supply of people-qualified-to-be-poets and people-qualified-to-be-historians exceeds the demand for them.

(Full disclosure: I am a high school dropout, so I'm not qualified to do anything.)

gtz65• 15 years ago

way too many people think that the only purpose of education is to earn money. It isn't. Education has intrinsic value.

KevinEldon• 15 years ago

Education's general value is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Once you have learned to critically study and learn a subject of your choosing the value of education is mostly related to the value of what you produce from what you've learned. A hermit who learns the secrets of the universe and doesn't share is of no real value. A history (or engineering) major who doesn't learn how to apply what they've studied is of little use. I think it's just generally easier for engineering majors, or business majors to apply what they've learned.

randomdata• 15 years ago

Agreed. Education is a hobby – and that is a good thing.

Hobbies always are to the betterment of the person engaging in them. Hobbies can, and often do, lead to high paying jobs and careers. Hobbies lead you to meet all kinds of interesting people who will shape your future. Hobbies are, if nothing else, enjoyable.

We just need to not lose sight of the fact that you should never bank your future on a hobby. Starting a band has made a lot of people incredibly wealthy, but that doesn't mean your band will find success. Do it because you love it, not because you want to be rich. There is nothing you can do to prepare yourself to be successful, else everyone would be.

Jach• 15 years ago

The problem is people complect education with college, most egregiously in the private sector with companies requiring BS/BA degrees to do any job (and reasonably above minimal wage). In the US, most education is free or nearly so, especially in the humanities, if you're willing to do it on your own. College on the other hand is obscenely expensive, both in opportunity costs as well as the actual loans and so on. In order to combat that expense, you should have "something to show for it" that's applicable in the job market when you're done. The purpose of college has become making money, via getting that piece of paper, social connections, etc. If you sign up for a liberal arts degree priced at $100k, you're doing a bad job at making money (and a pretty bad job at educating depending on where you go--even with Computer Science if you pick a bad school you could have learned everything and more in 1 year that the school took 4 years to teach you). Since you're doing a bad job, you should be mocked in the way a person whose goal is to profit in a yard sale and who ends up paying people to take stuff away, should be mocked.

jluan• 15 years ago

Market forces aren't good enough for them :P

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

I am really glad the Chinese are doing this. Not because I think it is a good idea, it is an astonishingly bad idea, but because in doing it they will demonstrate just how bad an idea it is.

I am very much a free market type person, I think anyone should be able to get any degree they want. And I think that people should understand that just any degree doesn't mean they will be employable after they graduate. But we do need folks who are passionate about lots of different things, and take those passions rigorously to the highest level.

The Chinese may find that someone who would excel in Art History and who would have, had they been allowed to, enabled others to develop deeper insights into their culture by looking at the art that their culture has created, may be really crappy business majors, or science majors. And making it harder for businesses to discern between people who wanted to be in business and those who were 'forced' into it, also harder which will make those businesses less efficient at employing folks.

I hope at that point everyone will look back and go "Gee that was a stupid idea." and we won't have to debate hypothetical 'what if' type arguments.

lpolovets• 15 years ago

You bring up a good point, but this would also be a very painful way to prove that a stupid idea is stupid. Many people will suffer in order to make an obvious point even more obvious.

JamesBlair• 15 years ago

> And making it harder for businesses to discern between people who wanted to be in business and those who were 'forced' into it, also harder which will make those businesses less efficient at employing folks.

It was my impression that Chinese students followed their parents ambitions. So I am not so sure that this effect will be all that noticeable. If I'm wrong here feel free to eviscerate me.

As a side note: I upvoted you for bullet biting.

Volpe• 15 years ago

Why was the sibling comment from sinope [1] down voted to death, when it was highly relevant, and factually more correct than those around it.

Seriously HN, do you want to share knowledge and discuss things, or filter out people with differing views?

Edit: added link for clarity.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3276199

18pfsmt• 15 years ago

FYI, that comment was not down-voted; the account is hell-banned.

ErrantX2• 15 years ago

And I think that people should understand that just any degree doesn't mean they will be employable after they graduate.

Sadly, I suspect this is just a pipe dream. Here in the UK we have the same problem the Chinese are facing - people doing bullshit degrees because they need the letters after their names. The Govt. here are even encouraging it.

As some of the other commentators are pointing out this is an already-effective scheme in China which has been used to cut some of those useless degrees.

wavephorm• 15 years ago

I think more industries need to adopt the tradesmen style apprenticeship before allowing someone to pursue post-secondary education. They should also be forced to employ apprentices before being able to hire someone with a degree -- too many students exit university with no real-world experience or any idea what their work will be like once their degree is complete.

If you really, really want to do a 3 year philosophy degree, I think should at least have to do a year as an apprentice philosopher.

markbao• 15 years ago

This is a little disheartening. It'll prevent people from expanding their mind in the subject area that they want, and instead, they're told that they should be studying sciences, engineering, business, or something else that'll be more "useful."

Undoubtedly, I can see why China's doing it. It's utilitarian. College is already (wrongly) seen as "job training," and this will deepen that. But the number of jobs filled is one of many measures of "useful," and this threatens to make it the only one. Nobody can predict what will come of that. Telling people that they can only pursue a certain set of majors because they're useful, and if they don't like any of them, then too bad, seems a little nearsighted.

est3• 15 years ago

As a native Chinese who graduated from a 211 & 985 college in China just few years ago, I think there are really some media manipulation going on here.

It's not they are going to do this, the Ministry already started this rule in as early as 2004-12-10.

The problem it trying to solve is that, there are too many low-level buzz-word fancy term majors created in Chinese universities, like "nanotech", "earth science", or "life science".

These majors often only covers a superficial fraction of the subject, and allows quick rote learning only on some intro theory, then quickly issue a diploma. The hardcore part of knowledge is hard thus left to other traditional majors

Why do Chinese have diploma greed? Because diploma is a hyper-inflation profitable industry in China. Nearly every bullshit job requires a BS degree, they employer just want to make the company staff looks "better educated"

These "hot" majors are not really teaching any knowledge, but an easy way to grab a degree, so the students can gain their entry to various job titles. The college make lots of money by expanding cheap majors.

But the students learns too few to start a serious career, so in a competitive job markets these students have much higher failure rate than similar harder majors.

In fact, corrupted officials/businessman can order famous univ. to create a special, private major for themselves, their daughters and sons. They don't even have to spend full 4 year time school to get a very high degree.

In addition, "new & new" majors" name is very similar to other authentic ones (aka ShanZhai majors) but requires a lot less effort to accomplish.

So the Ministry started to ban major frauds, under the name of "low employment rate".

Are they going to cancel or stop funding traditional liberal arts majors? I don't think they are really that stupid. Are there humanities majors effected by this rule? Sure.

d_r• 15 years ago

This does make much more sense compared to the assumption we immediately jump to ("eliminating liberal arts majors.")

Actual facts aside, what is fascinating is how we arrive to this assumption. The article only mentions "unemployable graduates." Nowhere does it mention humanities or specific majors. It is then we, the readers, who apply our Western worldview and assume this means "humanities majors."

Tsagadai5• 15 years ago

For what it's worth, the article did end with a mention about humanities majors in the closing line, "psychology, U.S. history and military technologies". While not humanities, Military technologies is an easy one to work out why people are unemployed. There are few people employed in military industries who weren't in the military, hence difficulty finding work. So it is easy to see why comments are about humanities when the article's closing line singles humanities out.

Thanks to the grandparent poster for the deeper insight.

lunaru• 15 years ago

If what you're saying is true (that this program is targeted at "shanzhai" majors) than this is very different from what this article is trying to portray.

In that case, the comments in this thread are a perfect example of how little people understand about China and how everything is portrayed through the lens of flawed media. It's a shame that everything we hear about China here in the states is from second-hand sources that have more interest in telling a shocking black and white story than portraying the gray truth.

mladenkovacevic• 15 years ago

I've lived in a communist country for 10 years of my life so perhaps I am biased, but I've had a similar suspicion that there's a media war going on against China and their policies (whether intentional or as a side-effect of stereotyping).

Certainly there are some Chinese policies which deserve serious criticism, which is why I get really suspicious when numerous articles mockingly talk about about other, less-relevant flaws in China's society such as imitation (fake Apple stores, imitation American jets and cars), developing advanced tech in a careless, half-assed way (high-speed train crashes), or carelessness about the environment (3 Gorges Dam) and then applying this mindless, careless progress as something unique to China.. or dare I say communism. The truth is if you looked at the advancement of any modern superpower you will see nothing but the same kinds of flaws. I'm not saying this kind of crude, unstoppable progress is a good thing.. but passing it as something that's just part of the Chinese mentality is probably a poor representation of the true values of the culture as a whole.

est3• 15 years ago

In this specific piece, Chinese domestic media started the bias first. The Chinese media (including the State-run ones) industry always bend things to a most ridiculous dramatic angle.

ansgri2• 15 years ago

Good expression for diploma hyperinflation, "Nearly every bullshit job requires a BS degree".

yinhm• 15 years ago

Why "Nearly every bullshit job requires a BS degree"? The answer is in the news report:"a generation of jobless graduates."

pullo• 15 years ago

sadly enough the emphasis on education (a good thing) in asian countries (china and india especially) is a driver for diploma greed. there are plenty of institutions , hand in hand with the govt administrators, which set up shop with little or no infrastructure. the stigma associated with someone who does not have a college degree is high and you can forget about a job as a high school grad when a college grad shows up to do the same work. too many students, too few good institutions and corrupt officials result in phantom diploma's. hence many times , the real education starts at the workplace. if the original article is correct, then it would seem they are just shifting unemployment from one kind of majors to another, cause there was no mention of employement shortage in other majors.

baby• 15 years ago

I know from a reliable source (worked in the gov. now working as a teacher in a uni). People just bullshit with their resume. My friend told me a had a student who did 100+ published articles whereas she is less than 30years old. Everytime she does a shitty stuff she says it's an article, and she steals articles from other people also... Apparently people do that in university.

dasil003• 15 years ago

Damn I'm glad I learned passion for a craft first, and the importance of social signaling later.

philwelch2• 15 years ago

> "Nearly every bullshit job requires a BS degree, they employer just want to make the company staff looks "better educated". These "hot" majors are not really teaching any knowledge, but an easy way to grab a degree, so the students can gain their entry to various job titles. The college make lots of money by expanding cheap majors. But the students learns too few to start a serious career, so in a competitive job markets these students have much higher failure rate than similar harder majors."

Brilliant. They figured out what we were doing in America and then turned around and did it better.

ErrantX2• 15 years ago

And now are attempting to fix it. Perhaps that puts them one step ahead.

teyc• 15 years ago

Someone should start a website to anonymously survey the following for US grads:

1. Years since graduation 2. Major 3. University 4. Employed/Unemployed in related field 5. GPA

At least this way, there could be some basis in informed decision making by potential students.

simonbrown• 15 years ago

There is a WSJ table that lists data for majors, but not universities.

http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/

There's a website listing more detailed data on UK grads.

http://unistats.direct.gov.uk/

afterburner• 15 years ago

est's comment (which may be true) notwithstanding, this does not surprise me. China is a communist country of the Cold War mold, if not in all the particulars, then at least in some of its centralist, autocratic ways. Communist countries of this type have outright told people what they should study, to fill particular state needs. That there is freedom to choose in China is a sign of course that this is 2011, not 1970, but still... it makes this kind of thing not at all shocking.

_delirium2• 15 years ago

I was going to try participating in this discussion, but instead I'm just going to say:

Wow, as a computer scientist, most of the comments in these kinds of discussions leave me disheartened and embarrassed with the arrogance ("useless", etc.) of my fellow technical folks. A discussion about where to allocate graduates makes sense, but the kind of unjustifiably arrogant invective here doesn't.

I think people might want to look at whether their house is made of glass a bit more as well, before denigrating "useless" historians and throwing around phrases like "contributes to the country's advancement". Is the webapp you're working on really a great contribution to society? Is Zynga producing value that will move our civilization forward?

PakG1• 15 years ago

I think the most interesting question here will be how will they account for people who don't end up working in the subject area they studied. There are tons of those in the west, I can't imagine it's very different in the east. How would those stats be calculated and would it hurt or help certain majors? Sadly, not a lot of info available.

DavidChouinard• 15 years ago

This graph (linked to from the article) on majors and popularity/salary/unemployment rate is quite interesting: http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/#term=

jdietrich• 15 years ago

Every day, I see more and more evidence that the Chinese economy is going to eat us alive.

China to cancel college majors that don't pay

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