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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (17656)	12/5/2004 1:24:29 AM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

mklein responds to Wendy Nice post, Wendy. Just a comment which is a little off your main topic. I've been a manager (before my "investment" career:-) at various levels in the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley. I think what you say about the subject-focused education is accurate, and I will admit right off that most engineering jobs will go to the subject-focused people. But in my case I looked for a more general smartness -- knowing the fundamentals in numerous subject areas and an ability to solve problems they haven't seen before. Because, simply, after a year or two on the job, enough changes so that if you can't start solving different problems, you slowly move toward irrelevance. Change might be as simple as a reorganization or someone from the group leaving and their tasks needing to be reassigned. In my experience -- strictly my own, not a statistical sample -- those educated in Western countries from high school equivalent and up, generally stood well above the rest in this aspect. And this is in general, not to the last person, but it was certainly a consistent observation over the years. Clearly there will be exceptions, etc. But in reflecting on the overall educational experience -- the subject-focused approach turns out people knowing today's subjects extremely well, but who will likely fall further and further behind over time against those who were more broadly educated. Strategically one approach or the other might work better under specific needs and circumstances, I'm not making a judgment call on that. That is 100% my opinion based on personal observations and no scientific basis. -Mike (mklein9)

To: mishedlo who wrote (17656)	12/5/2004 11:04:04 AM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

>>First, a smaller proportion of the population gets a higher education. Selection is highly competitive. Young students are highly motivated to succeed. << This was true, but now, the population getting higher education is increasing fast. Each year there are 2-3 million college graduates in China now, comparing to <0.5 million 15 years ago. And plenty of college students do not study as hard after they entered the universities now either, sad but true. 30-40 years ago, the ratio bet. those who entered college and those who took the college entrance exams was 1:40 or higher. 15-20 years ago, the ratio declined to 1:15 or so, now the ratio is about 1:5. >>Chinese society has tested, honored and rewarded scholarship, for many hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The civil service system of mandarins was supplied by students who passed a competitive exam. << This is still true. But it also has its drawback. One of the biggest drawbacks is to curb people’s spirit of entrepreneurship. >>Even if the Chinese are, statistically, exactly as smart as Americans, they have 5 times the population, so they can take the cut farther out on the bell curve, if their university population is less than 5 times that of the U.S.<< Agree, there is a much bigger pool in China. >>Does China have an institutionalized affirmative action program, to admit inferior students over superior ones?<< Only for some minority ethnic groups (like Tibetans, or Muslims from XinJiang…), there is this type of affirmative action (usually, their scores can be 20 points lower than Han to be admitted by the same major in the same university). But not all minority students entered the college due to the treatment, just like not all black students entered the US college due to the affirmative action either. And in terms of number of this group in Chinese universities, it is small. BTW, a lot of universities, after adopting the market economy in 1980s, require female students to have 20 points higher score than male students in order to go to the same major in the same university, very unfair but wide-spread unofficial rule. Sex discrimination in China is open and wide spread now. One big difference for the high school system bet. the US and China: US – usually start “tracking system” from high school, which is very stupid methink. China does not have such tracking system, so the students do not have to choose to go social or physical science until after graduate from high school. The major benefit of this is students have to learn both social and physical science until the last day in high school. By comparison, in the US, many high school students who “track” to social science will not learn high school level calculus. >>Second, Chinese education focuses the student on the subject, not a broadly based curriculum. Engineers study engineering in depth.<< This is the case for some, but not for others. The focus starts only from college. In Chinese history, many famous scientists also have very deep literature/music/art/history knowledge and background. Recently, I have read quite a few good Chinese novels written by the laid off Chinese software engineers in Silicon Valley. And I can tell they have a wide range of knowledge in many fields, and pretty broad. Generally speaking, Chinese high school students have a broadly based curriculum than the US students. Students cannot select any class in Chinese high school. All the students have to take all the class. Yeah, unlike some US high school students who choose to, none of Chinese high school students ever take baby sitting class<g> or cooking class. >>American-born engineering and science graduates are diminishing, their places filled by more-serious foreign students, at U.S. universities. << 30%-50% computer science Ph.D graduated from the US universities are foreign born.