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Everything you described reflects my experience with American graduates. I have only worked at "top tier" FAANG-level institutions and attended what is supposed

Everything you described reflects my experience with American graduates. I have only worked at "top tier" FAANG-level institutions and attended what is supposed to be a globally competitive so-called "elite" university. Very few students at my university and others I interacted with (who were supposed to be some of the best, given the programs I met them through) and very few employees at these institutions were actually good performers or genuinely knowledgable. I was most impressed by those from 'second tier' universities and some without degrees at all who were more obsessed with quality and rigor than they were about 'GPA', prestige, or whatever it is. I don't expect this to be different anywhere in the world, due to the nature of selection systems. That is Goodhart's Law after all. The selection systems employed by these institutions favor those who optimize for select-ability, which distorts things quite a bit. I hold very little value in a PhD from any university at this point. In fact, I'm quite weary of prestigious credentials in general, as they often translate to over-confident idiocy with power in credentialist institutions, rather than self-aware idiocy which can at least self-regulate to some degree. PG put it well when he called them "professional fakers". That being said, research output in China is quite strong. I have also learned that average people, given enough time, resources, and a little bit of good direction, will be able to accomplish quite a bit. China has made undeniable, unprecedented progress across the board in high-tech sectors. I say this having been part of competitive analysis at two of these top tier American institutions, looking at how China is overtaking our own products.

maxglute 2y ago
Basically. > Chinese domestic university education was a net negative. Is fair but not exceptional observation to PRC tertiary education. Can be generalized to most mid to shit tier western university talent as well, i.e. if you're not hiring from elite. But really also tons of low calibre all over "top tier" western institutions with academic inflation in last couple decades. IMO generalized tier list is follows: c9 league (or other PRC elite) -> self motivated / self educated go getters -> competent grads from good (not elite) institutes -> average to bottom barrel grads. Note here competent grads includes much of your expats, and foreign educated Chinese... both have some qualities of self motivation to do well because they decided to go (or return) to PRC to work instead of working/staying in west. Western educated Chinese who returns also largely falls under / prefiltered the bucket of basically not being good enought for elite/C9 but have smarts and enough resources to goto a semi decent western uni. Chinese educated in mid to shit tier comparable to same quality of medicore talent from mid to shit tier western uni. Plenty of such western educated PRC grads just chilling in the west being useless, many from fairly well ranked western institutions - plenty of useless non-Chinese grads in even well ranked western institutions bad at unstructured problems (maybe disproportionately so). Young men being < young women for skilled work force also pattern you see in west, except in west, young men aren't being pushed through tertiary at similar rates as in PRC. Also worth nothing Chinese C9 has like 400,000k enrollment (500+k if you include seven sons), vs 150k US Ivys + MIT,Standford,Caltech, good UCs, and it's maybe 250k... a big portion being non S&T.

maxglute 2y ago

Basically. > Chinese domestic university education was a net negative. Is fair but not exceptional observation to PRC tertiary education. Can be generalized to most mid to shit tier western university talent as well, i.e. if you're not hiring from elite. But really also tons of low calibre all over "top tier" western institutions with academic inflation in last couple decades. IMO generalized tier list is follows: c9 league (or other PRC elite) -> self motivated / self educated go getters -> competent grads from good (not elite) institutes -> average to bottom barrel grads. Note here competent grads includes much of your expats, and foreign educated Chinese... both have some qualities of self motivation to do well because they decided to go (or return) to PRC to work instead of working/staying in west. Western educated Chinese who returns also largely falls under / prefiltered the bucket of basically not being good enought for elite/C9 but have smarts and enough resources to goto a semi decent western uni. Chinese educated in mid to shit tier comparable to same quality of medicore talent from mid to shit tier western uni. Plenty of such western educated PRC grads just chilling in the west being useless, many from fairly well ranked western institutions - plenty of useless non-Chinese grads in even well ranked western institutions bad at unstructured problems (maybe disproportionately so). Young men being < young women for skilled work force also pattern you see in west, except in west, young men aren't being pushed through tertiary at similar rates as in PRC. Also worth nothing Chinese C9 has like 400,000k enrollment (500+k if you include seven sons), vs 150k US Ivys + MIT,Standford,Caltech, good UCs, and it's maybe 250k... a big portion being non S&T.