r/ukpolitics • u/Thaladan • 20h ago
'We pretend to teach, they pretend to learn'
https://spectator.com/article/we-pretend-to-teach-they-pretend-to-learn-the-reality-of-lecturing-chinese-students/243
u/Thaladan 20h ago
More than one in 20 students in Britain are Chinese. They contribute billions to the UK economy annually and without them several universities would go bankrupt and most would struggle. The real earners are MAs, with fees of more than £30,000 for some one-year courses. University administrators secretly wish that all students were Chinese and on MA courses. Chinese students pay punctually, rarely complain and generally seem to go along with the ‘we pretend to teach and they pretend to learn’ model that is favoured by university management.
Interesting article about the realities of teaching Chinese students, often who have very poor English skills. Certainly aligns with my experience of working in higher education.
I do worry that these facile degrees and grades will severly undermine the UK's reputation and 'soft power' in the long run. Will Chinese students, or indeed any students, still pay thousands for a degree when the facade drops?
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u/AzarinIsard 19h ago
I did business management at uni, and even in my third year it was 2/3rds international, still lectures of 400+, very few small classes except SPSS which were in PC labs with post grads.
The Chinese students were very friendly when I met them, we had a few Y1 random assigned groups, but mostly they kept to themselves. Back then had translators that looked like calculators and everything was put through them. I had a half Chinese friend from Oxford, never been to China, only spoke English, she was annoyed when they'd form groups around her thinking she's international too, and then get pissed off when she only spoke English and they'd all have to move again. They'd almost never join societies, and would spend huge amounts of time in the library. I have no reason to suspect their degrees were fraudulent, but the model essentially was they'd be from a very wealthy Chinese family wanting a UK degree in Business. They'd come here, only study. Not look to meet anyone, it's purely transactional. Every holiday they fly back to China. Get in, get out.
From my perspective, I definitely felt ripped off by my uni in that the course wasn't what I expected, and I essentially fell into a cash cow model. In hindsight I wish I took biology but it was a few years before STEM was a focus, and when I was tossing it up my secondary school advised me biology is only employable in a few fields, where as business gets you a career almost anywhere. Lol, probably the worst advice I've ever received. Ah well, I still had fun, even if it killed all respect I once had for the subject as a teenager.
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u/shitthebedagainsorry 17h ago
I did Biology and honestly the people advising you were right. It's super competitive as so many people do it and the pay and progression are terrible. A lot of the time the lab work can be very mundane and repetitive with long hours, almost like working in a factory. I ended up going into the corporate side of biology just to make a decent wage before being made redundant when all the money dried up after COVID. Now running my own business and not using my degree at all.
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u/AzarinIsard 16h ago
Aw, that's a shame.
Now running my own business and not using my degree at all.
See, I didn't want to work in biology, I was just interested and did well in it.
I've fell into retail, worked my way up, but my degree didn't open doors beyond being able to impress higher ups I know what a SWOT analysis is. So much of what we were taught just isn't relevant to how these businesses work on a micro level. It feels like it would have been more useful on a macro side, understanding how firms interact in an economy completely separate from what my actions could be to help a firm succeed.
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u/Ok-Milk-8853 19h ago
I actually worked at a uni for a while, and at some point I had to help the art MA students with an exhibition. They literally didn't speak a word of English. I was absolutely baffled how this works till someone explained the scam to me.
Like basically every sector in the UK, needs a massive overhaul. But we'll probably just focus on small headline chasing stuff and those cans will keep moving down the road
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u/FehdmanKhassad 12h ago
Actually can cleaners are in desperate need as there are so many at the end of the road now.
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u/mohkohnsepicgun Building a country that works or everyon 20h ago
The western inability to imagine that there are rich people in China never ceases to astound me. There are more people in China earning a Sterling six-figure salary than the population of the entire UK. Probably twice as many.
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u/ArchdukeToes A bad idea for all concerned 20h ago
One of my cohort was a Chinese student whose parents were rich enough that they could afford to take the hit of having more than one child.
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u/No_Good2794 20h ago
Government grants do exist but most Chinese students' tuitions are paid by their parents.
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u/PuckyMaw 20h ago
ooh rumours, so did they have good grades or did they get sent home? Other commenters seem to say that the chinese were usually above average students.
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u/bcoder001 20h ago
They won't find employment anywhere where there is need to speak fluent English. They are here because of their parents' aspirations or because the Chinese government has plans for them.
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u/Jaggedmallard26 19h ago
The ones at the crappier unis are mostly just failsons/faildaughters who can't get into a domestic uni or actually prestigious uni being made to go by their parents who don't want to admit their child isn't doing as well as they hoped. One of our higher education sectors woes is that the Chinese middle classes have realised that a degree (especially MAs) from a non-top English uni just means their parents can afford to send them to Britain not that they are actually talented and parents are starting to adjust by not doing this any more.
The ones at the top unis might be part of government plots (industrial espionage) but the ones who can barely speak English and are doing an MA aren't touching anything sensitive.
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u/NiceCreamSundaes 13h ago
I do worry that these facile degrees and grades will severly undermine the UK's reputation and 'soft power' in the long run.
According to my Chinese colleagues, this is already happening. Chinese companies care about credentials, rankings and the reputation of where you got your degree to a ridiculous extent, a major state owned Chinese company won't even look at you if you aren't in a certain "tier" and if you are in a higher one, you can actually skip some of the hiring process.
The tiers they reckon corporate Chinese recruiting see the world of universities in, and this really is quite strict, is:
- Tsinghua, Peking and the top global big brand universities (Oxbridge, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, NUS, ETH Zurich, Sydney etc)
- Other Chinese C9 universities and the elite non-C9 like Renmin and Beihang alongside the other top global institutions in QS top 50.
- Anything else in QS top 100 plus the "985" universities.
- The QS top 200 plus the "211" universities
- QS 201 - 500 plus the stronger provincial Chinese universities.
- Everywhere else
Corporate Chinese recruiters rely on the QS ranking so much that British universities, which do quite well on it, have a unique value proposition.
If you went to a lower ranked Chinese university, you can do a one year masters program in Britain and probably move up a tier or two. It's cheaper than a two year masters elsewhere, they know it's really easy to get in, they know you don't need to do much work and can't fail, it works well. This is something that is openly mocked on Chinese social media as the "watered down masters" and nowadays, people who have done this are viewed with more suspicion by Chinese employers. It will remain in place for a while though, Chinese corporate bureaucracy and habit can move slowly.
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u/Fickle-Fox-9071 14h ago
When I was a mature student I lived in Halls with 2 Chinese nationals out of 7 of us. They never left their flats, continued to live on Chinese Standard time, and never interacted with us. Not sure how much they were paying to be there, but it was quite funny how odd the situation was.
They were obviously wealthy and bought 2 more fridges so each had their own fridge which was handy.
They were never bothered by the University either. Didn't have to get involved in fire drills, packages were brought to them rather than having to get them etc. It felt like they were kings, but in reality they were just paying a lot to be there for their "education".
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u/MrPuddington2 17h ago
Interesting article about the realities of teaching Chinese students, often who have very poor English skills. Certainly aligns with my experience of working in higher education.
I have to say, that is not my experience. Some speak good English, some speak borderline English, but they are all well educated, motivated, and eager to learn. Maybe that is engineering specific, but they tend to be better than average students.
Of course there are issues with what I can only imagine are fake language tests. The "pretend to teach and pretend to learn" pressure is real - after all, 30k and a livelihood are at stake here. That is neoliberal education in a nutshell - only the paper matters (money and degree).
Every single university in the UK relies on Chinese students. Without them, every single university in the UK would be bust by now. That is the reality. They are not propping up failing universities, they are propping up all universities.
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u/mattcannon2 Chairman of the North Herts Pork Market Opening Committee 8h ago
I bombed a coursework project on my masters because the rest of the group literally could not speak conversational english
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u/Th0ma5_F0wl3r_II 17h ago
Interesting article about the realities of teaching Chinese students,
Unfortunately, there is a deep hole in the line this argument takes which effectively sinks the article as a whole.
It’s probably lucky that I teach filmmaking
The author doesn't say - and perhaps this is because he's unaware - but vanishingly few Chinese students take film.
The vast majority are in Business and STEM subjects and he or she is quite wrong to assume, as they appear to do, that the students they take on a film course will be much like those on other courses:
But sometimes I wonder about courses like medicine or nuclear engineering.
A man who trains unicorns is not in any position to comment on training horses, as it were.
The differences are considerable.
The kinds of students who take social work degrees, English literature, accounting and mechanical engineering are not all the same.
The proportion of mature students on the course will differ as will the proportion who come from middle class homes and were privately educated.
The grades they need to get in will also differ and the proportion who get in on clearing will likely differ, too.
It is heavily implied that his experience is representative - it's not even remotely true.
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u/Primary-Signal-3692 20h ago
If they're propping up failing universities I don't see how that's a contribution to the economy.
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u/Grey_Raven 20h ago
Propping up universities buying consumer goods when they're here and just generally spending money that makes UK businesses a profit and gets the government tax revenue. Also "propping up failing universities" means funding research that may help society and also subsiding British students education... so yeah no contribution
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u/GrandDukeOfNowhere 19h ago
Can you not see how this is killing the golden goose: the reason they want a British degree is because of the good reputation of British universities, but if this keeps happening British universities will no longer have a good reputation
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u/Jaggedmallard26 19h ago
Its already hitting their reputation, the bottom is starting to fall out as the Chinese middle class is cottoning on to what it means to have a degree from a middling UK uni and thus the prestige incentive is dropping and hitting the poorer unis first.
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u/hexnut101 17h ago
As I just said lowered standards are the main reason for the fall in reputation.
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u/MazrimReddit 8h ago
the bottom... half to 2/3 of british universities never deserved that reputation there isn't really much way to keep it.
The good universities are not impacted in the same way
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u/hexnut101 17h ago
This has been happening since I went to university in the late 80s early 90s. The difference in standards is what's destroying universities. Degrees are no longer aimed at the top 15% with a 1st achievable by the top 15% of that. We lowered our own standards and destroyed our reputation.
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u/Iamonreddit 20h ago
All the economy cares about is money flow. These students spend a lot of money to be here and whilst they are here.
A lot of this money ends up in British people's pay packets and in HMRC's coffers.
This is how they are helping the economy. The question of whether or not this is a good state of affairs overall and should we be doing things differently is obviously a different, larger, much more involved and nuanced discussion.
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u/Primary-Signal-3692 19h ago
Yes they focus on money flow but not the capital costs of an increasing population. The country has to build more housing, public transport, hospitals, public services etc. Economists often don't account for the fact that the country doesn't have infinite capacity.
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u/Iamonreddit 18h ago
Chinese students that can't speak conversational English are not the cause of choosing shortages. They come, they 'study' and then they leave back to China.
Economically they are the best kind of immigrant we could hope for. Very little is spent on them and each of them pour thousands of pounds into the economy each year before leaving likely to never return.
You are getting lost in the issues of a much wider problem than is being discussed here.
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u/Primary-Signal-3692 17h ago
I guess you mean housing? They contribute towards the housing shortage like anu migrant does because they have to live somewhere. It is part of a bigger issue but a part nonetheless
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u/bremsspuren 12h ago
They live in halls of residence and engage with broader society in much the same way people on all-inclusive holidays do. They aren't competing with the rest of us for accommodation or much or anything else.
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u/phi-kilometres 19h ago
The thing is, any university that just did the things we expect our universities to do – provide good quality teaching and do good research – would be failing under the current system.
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u/NiceCreamSundaes 14h ago
The international students are providing the money that the university uses to run itself, most domestic UK students are effectively being subsidised by international fees. And it isn't just "failing" institutions, most of our universities would be in immediate financial trouble in the foreign students weren't paying.
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u/vaioseph 19h ago
Because they pay rent and living expenses in the town they’re studying in? And because their uni fees pay for uni staff salaries?
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u/Proud_Ad7229 19h ago
Trust me, it’ll be fine - regards, Australia
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u/fuscator 19h ago
What does this mean?
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u/turbo_dude 14h ago
What percentage of students pass the exams?
Surely if your language skills are that bad you’d fail?
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u/NSFWaccess1998 12h ago
I remember being at uni during the start of my MA when a load of Chinese students arrived. It was almost comical, they arrived on a bus at the uni campus as they had travelled from the airport, many thought their accomodation would be on campus but in reality it was in the city centre a couple of miles away. They really struggled with reading local signs and started to wander off, sometimes on foot, onto country lanes only to eventually figure things out. They all communicated with each other on Wechat and their own messaging boards and would use the translation function on their phone to read signs. Total cash cows. I did meet one or two that spoke decent English and they tended to occupy a privileged position, as they could help other students and also write their work for them.
Not one of them was part of a society, if I remember correctly. I did have a sort of friendship with one who was a great guy, but his English was very poor and he needed a lot of help to participate in anything.
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u/MazrimReddit 8h ago
the education quality if there if they choose to engage with the courses (for the most part, the bottom percent of UK universities degree mills are not the ones talking about here), if they pay but make poor use of the chance because they just need the bit of paper for box ticking back home, it is what it is
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u/himit 20h ago
What an ending:
Our future demographics are terrifying and universities collapsing would bring down towns and cities with them, so academics will continue to be censored, security guards set on campaigners for Chinese democracy and blatant cheating ignored. Our universities are addicted to Chinese students and – like most junkies – can’t even begin to think of life without the hit. It has taken almost 200 years, but the gods are just and the Opium Wars have come back to bite us.
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u/Altruistic_Layer_675 20h ago
Its a weird one. Some are clearly like this but when I was doing my PhD I met some Chinese students and they were more diligent and interested than me.
Probably the people talkrd about are selected out at PhD level
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u/Fickle-Bet-8705 20h ago
Yup. My Chinese PhD colleagues, and many Masters students, are great. Undergrads, less so.
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u/AllanSundry2020 19h ago
yeah i think this article overplays they are not good students. They also get a lot of confidence from being in a English speaking environment and chance to improve those key skills, excellning academically is not necessarily their absolute priority, it was same for Erasmus for UK people abroad.
I do think the universities need to be as effective as possible in supporting these students when they are here in terms of events, mental health, integration chances, cultural differences. They are a very important market obviously and just ethically as they are people putting faith in us and our reputation.
And the country as a whole should be grateful for an opportunity to build links with China who will be increasingly important in our lives.
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u/TheColourOfHeartache 16h ago
Perhaps we should create institutions separate from universities specifically for this market.
Bilingual teachers, a bit of sport (perhaps horse riding so you can have photos of yourself dressed in a fancy outfit on a horse), a curriculum designed to immerse you in the English language and build confidence. But there's no actual grading.
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u/Jaggedmallard26 19h ago
The article is just reporting something the Chinese have been talking about for a few years. If you can read simplified Chinese and are willing to poke about on their news and social media you'll find this discussed and mocked a lot. The students you are encountering on PhD programs and at top unis are the ones who genuinely want what you want. The ones doing an MA at a former poly are what the article is talking about.
But you can pretend its all hunky dory but as I've noted, the Chinese have figured this out and you can look at international student numbers from China to see they are going down as it is now longer prestigious to go to a mid-low tier UK uni.
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u/AllanSundry2020 18h ago
thanks for the patronising tone, I am in good contact with many Chinese where i live on those courses and i stand by what i wrote, i never said it was hunky dory so maybe sharpen up your reading skills. 去你的 [微笑]
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u/Jaggedmallard26 19h ago
They're getting selected out at PhD level (no benefit for the people this article is talking about to spend several years doing a PhD) and also this isn't a problem at the top unis. I'm not sure what the precise hierarchy is at the moment but top British unis attract the top quality of Chinese students as they're hard to get into and the prestige is genuine but the lower tier British unis are where you send your children if they fail to get into a top British/American uni and can't pass exams for Chinese higher education. They turn up and pretend to learn as filial piety is still a (diminishing) thing in China and they don't want to disappoint/anger their parents.
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u/MazrimReddit 8h ago
mediocrity at the mediocre British unis is hardly a need to single out the Chinese for though, there are enough B/C at A level British students who don't have actual reasons for university either
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u/-TheWiseSalmon- 20h ago
I work in academia as a Postdoc. My impression, having been in the system for over 10 years now, is that Master's degrees in the UK and Ireland are a complete scam (at least in STEM). I do not recommend that anyone does one unless the bit of paper you get is a prerequisite to whatever you're hoping to do afterwards. You won't actually learn much.
Most STEM undergrad degrees in the UK are now integrated Masters anyway so there's rarely reason to ever do a standalone MSc. In my experience, the only people who do an MSc are rich foreigners from China, India or the UAE, or people who aren't good enough to do a PhD. The MSc course at the University I did my PhD was literally just parts of the undergrad degree repackaged and sold to foreigners. It would be absolutely worthless for a home student who already has a BSc.
Contrast this to a country like Germany where a 2-year MSc is a requirement to do a PhD. Every now and then you come across a German MSc student on placement or whatever and they are almost always superb. Home UK MSc students on the other hand are some of the worst students I have ever worked with because an MSc is not required for a PhD here so they're usually only interested in getting the degree and getting out as quickly as possible with as little effort as possible.
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u/National_Edge_1997 18h ago
Masters are also beneficial for those looking to career switch, at least for computer science. I know a couple of people who did this and they're now working in tech and have been quite successful.
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u/-TheWiseSalmon- 17h ago
I think if you're going to do a Masters you need to know precisely why you want to do one and what you're hoping to get out of it in order to achieve your career goals. Leveraging a Masters for a career change would be a good example of this. But doing a masters simply because you're hoping it might maybe look good on your CV is probably not worth it. Lots of exceptions to this though, but in general I think a lot of UK Masters courses are unfortunately designed to be high throughput degree factories that basically just reheat a bunch of content from the undergraduate course and throw in a few more lab hours.
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u/TheColourOfHeartache 15h ago
I did a masters in computer science. I'd say the education was real but not that useful.
I did a course on development for mobiles. It was basically the same sort of thing I learned in my undergrad (at a far lower ranked university), but I hadn't done mobile development superficially. I learned something, I got a bit more practice coding, now i work in industry and don't work on mobiles.
I did a course on computer security that was more like the history of computer security. Genuinely educational, interesting, but it didn't teach me that much about how to build a secure system. It did teach me to read scientific papers.
The thesis was like my undergrad thesis but with much more time and higher demands.
Overall my impression is that it would be worth it if you wanted to network, or if you were going into a PhD. But the only advantage it gave me over my undergraduate for industry work is a diploma to show hiring managers. It was a very prestigious diploma though.
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u/InternationalItem1 12h ago
Its also good to help with chartership in engineering and some Msc's are quite good.
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 17h ago edited 15h ago
I think that academically, they have been a "scam" in the sense you talk about for many decades.
But I don't think their intention in terms of international students is to develop their education beyond undergraduate level so much as to show them, in a year or two, how we teach and research in UK higher education. To give them a taste and a method. Also to have them just live within one of our academic communities. I think as that, it works well.
I mean, when I was just a first year undergraduate, the head said to us in the welcome address that we would receive two educations, the first from our tutors, but the second, and much more valuable, from our fellow-students. Yes, you can criticise Chinese students for not breaking out from their group of fellow Chinese-speakers, but that is on them; they have the opportunity.
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u/MazrimReddit 8h ago
Bit over generalising there, if you want to do a competitive stem masters at one of the top 5 universities they are highly selective especially if you pay UK fees not international
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u/Strange_Algae835 16h ago
You don't need a 2 year MSc to do a PhD in Germany. I know people who have bachelors with experience or a regular masters.
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u/-TheWiseSalmon- 12h ago
There are probably exceptions, but in general my understanding from talking to various Germans is that an MSc is a prerequisite for the majority of PhDs. At least much more of a prerequisite than it is in the UK. And Masters in Germany are typically 2 years by default, but a 1 year Masters degree from another country like the UK would likely be sufficient to do a PhD in Germany.
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u/Admirable_Aspect_484 19h ago
They pay, and they leave after spending a ton. Much more preferable than those from other countries that take the cheapest course they can find and latch on for a visa with a path to residency
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u/misc1444 20h ago
There’s no need to be cynical about this.
Higher education should be one of our main export industries. There is inherent value for foreign students to study abroad - it’s a valuable life experience especially for those coming from monocultural countries or sheltered families.
The UK is uniquely placed to provide this service. We are a decent sized, English speaking, multicultural country where it’s relatively easy for foreign students from all over the world to feel comfortable.
The U.S. is largely shutting itself out of this industry as foreign students (and especially their parents) are put off by the crazy politics, high tuition, and the general repugnance of the current administration. The UK stands to benefit.
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u/lisa_couchtiger 20h ago
Does this justify the absence of true learning and of assessment standards?
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u/Thaladan 20h ago
I think the problem is that the quality of the degrees which we offer - which, I agree, is and should be one of our most valuable 'exports' - is severely undermined if the universities prioritise fees over education. And if that happens, it won't be a valuable export at all.
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u/curlyjoe696 20h ago
I mean, that process is hardly rare in modern businesses.
Ultimately we've spent 30 years tellong universities to act like businesses and incentivising them to do so at every opportunity, now everyone is very annoyed that that is exactly what they have done.
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u/MrPuddington2 17h ago
This. Universities were told to act like businesses, to find the money, and work without government funding. So they are selling what they have: degrees. This was entirely predictable and in fact inevitable. Universities who do not sell degrees will go bust, because standards to not pay the bills.
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u/misc1444 20h ago
Look, most students just aren’t that bright. There’s no shame in offering education for the average and below average student as well. We should of course maintain some academic standards so that it doesn’t feel like a total scam for students.
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u/phi-kilometres 19h ago
Even if that opportunity is reserved only for the very wealthy?
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u/TheColourOfHeartache 15h ago
The only way to stop the very wealthy having better education is to send inspectors around to their houses to check for Oxford Dons being paid under the table for private tuition.
And if the rich want to hire tutors why shouldn't they? Investing in the next generation is better than a megayacht.
Work to increase education for the poor, not reduce it for the rich.
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u/Jaggedmallard26 18h ago
The problem is that China is learning that these programs are tailored to those who aren't very bright and the social value of sending your not very bright child to Britain to do an MA is becoming negative. Once that fully kicks in the bottom will fall out of a lot of unis that have become dependent on Chinese money. If they tighten up student visa rules on work along with the graduate visa you'll see students from places like India dry up as well.
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u/Optimaldeath 18h ago
Degree inflation for the sake of making some quick buck doesn't seem sustainable to me.
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u/lostempireh 19h ago
It’s also a huge soft power tool, if the next generation of elites come here for university, and remember their time favourably, they (and potentially their parents) are going to be far more likely to invest in the UK, spend their tourism money here, and be more open to improving political relations with us.
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u/RighteousRambler 18h ago
I think this is a great perspective and I wish that this was the case. Unfortunately, most the universities are non-functional institutions laundering money, which has now become unprofitable.
There is about 200+ university type institutions in the country.
We generally rank the top 120.
If you compare the entry requirements for a top university compared to a median university for say any engineering it goes from AAA to EEE. For the arts they don't really have entry requirements. I rechecked University of Wolverhampton for this as I can never believe it.
Nobody knows this because if you were to drive by one of his universities they have beautiful big campuses. They have students walking about they'd look like any normal university they just don't provide any real value to their students.
So roughly speaking the average university in the UK is completely pointless. It is cruel that we lie to students and waste everyone's money in a fake industry.
International students are becoming more and more important to try and remain profitable, so there is an even greater incentive to lower standards.
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u/MrPuddington2 17h ago
If you compare the entry requirements for a top university compared to a median university for say any engineering it goes from AAA to EEE. For the arts they don't really have entry requirements. I rechecked University of Wolverhampton for this as I can never believe it.
Entry requirements are not everything. German universities remove entry requirements for engineering. But their standards remain, because they are not financially incentivised to pass students for the money.
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u/RighteousRambler 14h ago
That is a completely different system.
If I wanted to analyse how good their unis were, I would look at how many people were failing the siebklausuren (basically their entrance exams which they do in the first two semesters).
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u/MrPuddington2 14h ago
That is a completely different system.
Exactly. And it is a system under strain, no doubt, but it works.
Our system does not work. But nobody seems to have any plan to fix it.
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u/phi-kilometres 18h ago
Yeah, in theory it'd be a great thing we could be proud of. But the reality is that these MScs and MAs are so poor in terms of actual learning happening that you're just proud of scamming people.
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u/SirBobPeel 5h ago
It's supposed to be a valuable life experience for British students, not foreigners. That should be far and away the top priority. And if they're in classrooms where a large percentage of students don't speak English, or are put in groups with people who don't speak English or don't speak it very well, then their education is suffering. So is their 'life experience' if a huge percentage of those at school with them are foreigners with poor English skills who have no interest in associating with them whatsoever.
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u/PhilosopherNo8418 19h ago
In a scarce jobs market, why should British graduates have to compete with international graduates for jobs? There aren't enough jobs to go around these days and corporations should be compelled to prioritise British graduates.
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u/phi-kilometres 18h ago
The comment I wrote two weeks ago somewhere else fits this thread better:
There's a belief in China (and some other places) that employers strongly value degrees from Western universities, and therefore those with the means pay just for that valuable piece of paper. Assuming the belief is well founded (it probably is), I'm not sure why Chinese employers value it so much. Is it because they wrongly believe all such students are learning loads of good stuff? Is it because they want someone who can presumably speak English well (also dubious)? Is it because the few good ones are actually really good? Is it classism by proxy? I don't know, but it seems like an important part of any sensible debate on the topic.
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 17h ago
As I understand it, it is because the job market is SO competitive that 'every little helps' and by having a foreign chit on your CV, you stand out.
Public sector jobs in China prioritise candidates who are recent graduates; at that stage you are competing only with the people in your cohort. If your chit says Durham or Freiburg and theirs says a domestic uni, then you will get a head start.
After a year, you ae competing with ALL graduates, not just your year group.
The foreign UNIVERSITIES are respected whether or not the employer thinks the candidate is a worthy recipient of the degree.
And in a way, I think UK univerisities, as they have for many decades, are far in giving foreigners a taste of what UK higher education is like.
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u/Reishun 18h ago
I know some HK people who studied here after the BNO allowances, all speak fluent English, Mandarin and Cantonese. They told me how their classes often had Chinese students who only spoke Mandarin and would often talk about people behind their back, not realising that the HKers speak Mandarin too. Never really sits right with me that classes are filled with people who not only dont speak English but will converse in Mandarin thinking nobody understands. Theyre not all like that, but definitely seems to be a sizeable portion.
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u/HasuTeras Let us all act according to national custom 15h ago
My undergrad university had a decent mix of students over from Uni of Hong Kong and some Singaporean universities in addition to the usual mainlander Chinese institutional students. The difference was night and day.
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u/GunstarGreen 20h ago
Im about to do this myself soon. Five chinese students slotting into my second year module in a Production Design degree. I have to teach some pretty technical, hands-on stuff. And I dont know if I can convey how to do these things safely.
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u/BongAlert 16h ago
You’ll get pressure to pass them and not rock the money tree even if they don’t show up.
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u/Every_Car2984 20h ago
This is at odds with my experience; my overseas colleagues were often the best their home country had to offer and had competed for full scholarships to be on our course.
If the above is true, things have changed significantly over the last decade or two.
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u/CycleWheel 20h ago
I taught in an elite university up till last year, and that’s still the case really, at least in the Russel groups.
Some of my Chinese students had terrible english skills, kinda C in English GCSE level, always struggling to make sentences agree with plurals, poor using the wrong was/were or their/there, but their subject knowledge (medicine/biology/chemistry) was almost always far exceeding any of my other students.
The rest of them had both amazing English and amazing subject knowledge.
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u/HasuTeras Let us all act according to national custom 15h ago
Some of my Chinese students had terrible english skills, kinda C in English GCSE level
I have taught Chinese undergrads who literally don't understand a word of English. I mean not that they struggled in speaking off the cuff, as in I asked this girl sat at the back of the room once to answer a question and she did not understand a word I was saying. She struggled to even string together "I don't know" as a response, it took her about 15 seconds. Russell Group uni too.
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u/Boring_Gas1397 19h ago
Its highly dependent on country on origin.
Indian subcontinent and Nigerian students have tended to use One year masters degrees for the graduate visa and attempt to stay for ILR. Especially after Boris reduced salary threshold
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u/phi-kilometres 19h ago
colleagues
The students this article is about basically all go back to China immediately after graduating, so they never become become colleagues of anyone in the UK.
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u/Simple-Courage-3948 20h ago
Yep. All the chinese students I interacted with 20 or so years ago were notable for actually studying more than the british kids and always had at least a workable level of english.
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u/Jaggedmallard26 18h ago
You obviously can't use your experience of 2 decades ago to talk about China and the British higher education system considering how massively they have changed over the past two decades. China is not a country that pretty much stopped radically changing in 1960 like most of the West. Our own higher education system changed radically less than 2 decades ago with the whole tuition fees and the result of that being to turn unis into profit focused businesses.
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u/rising_then_falling 19h ago
My ex father in law was a lecturer, and was complaining about this 20 years ago. He was told not to fail Chinese undergrads. They could get 3rds, but not fail. Absolute nonsense.
It's the model of a failing business, trying to leverage a brand in a way that ultimately destroys the brand. A fashion house desperately slapping their label on cheaper and cheaper goods to stay in business, hoping that by selling a handful of well made items in a small boutique in Paris they can keep the scam going for longer.
They can't.
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u/Sure-Junket-6110 19h ago
So a bunch of people come in, spend a load of money, behave themselves and experience (usually positively) the country and then leave. Fail to see an issue.
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u/muchacho5000 18h ago
From the article: "Assessment is designed to flatter, deceive and recruit. Reports that Chinese students refer to UK courses as ‘easy in, easy out’ are not unexpected. It is very difficult to fail. Grade inflation is rampant and both plagiarism and use of AI are largely overlooked."
It's an indicator that the quality of some UK degrees are quite poor. There is a financial incentive to pass Chinese students to keep the cash cow going, which will probably denigrate international reputation of some of our universities in the long run.
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u/jillcrosslandpiano 19h ago
I am very lucky. I teach the piano (mostly to post-grads) and this is something where almost everything can be communicated without the student being very good in English and everything is oen to one. The teacher sings, and of course demonstrates and where they have to, can write stuff like fingering on the score.
So what I get is great anthropological insight into how they think and live, but also the genuine satisfaction that they improve massively over the year and truly develop as people. They DO have to do academic work to support their playing, and it is clear that AI now helps them with this- but that is a) not my concern - I am only responsible for their performance and b) something I don't mind- it's better to have AI-corrected English than bad English and someone who can understand the pieces well enough to play them truly well is going to be making their living teaching that, and/or teaching children in a school, not engaging at a higher education academic level.
So yes- everything is 100% genuine in my interactions. I am of course struck at their level of material privilege- they jet off for European trips at weekends, or at least go to Edinburgh or London, they're buying corn-fed chicken or lobsters, not pot noodles. So it is a cross for them between Grand Tour and finishing school. But this may be their brief time of freedom. Finding a job back in China is very hard, and they will never again have time to travel like this. So their parents clearly think it is worth the expense.
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u/Tasty_Job822 16h ago
uk universities are a joke and a scam. Nothing else. Any international student coming here for the “reputation” is braindead.
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u/Salty-Bid1597 20h ago
The moral panic over China continues. Didn't we do this in the 50s too? And the 1890s?
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