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A Quick Study - Fake degrees in China
- excuse-me 14y ago“A diploma is worth actual money, whereas an education is not.” Don't developing countries grow up so fast these days. It's taken a century of cynicism for most American colleges to recognize this and the Chinese have reached the point in only a few years.
- eumenides1 14y agoCynicism is something the Chinese have in spades. The thing is that I know that Americans will eventually realize that education is what's important and not the diploma. But the Chinese, they will latch on to the concept of a "diploma" forever.
- Alex3917 14y ago"But the Chinese, they will latch on to the concept of a 'diploma' forever." Actually, the Chinese are the ones who invented 'meritocracy'.
- gaius 14y agoYou mean Confucious' notions of the bureaucratic class? Because you were still born into it. And then there's the whole business of imperial dynasties...
- Alex3917 14y ago"Because you were still born into it." That's no different than college today. That's why I put meritocracy in quotes: it's basically a scam that's designed to perpetuate the ruling class and keep down minorities while appearing fair on the superficial level.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoTo be fair, there were times duing the Sui, Tang, and even Ming dynasties where the imperial exam was taken seriously and quite an innovation against current practices, where at least you could move up the social rank if you could do well on the test.
- JDShu 14y agoI think what the grandparent was implying is that only landowner families would have had the means to take the exam and become a government official, so it wasn't a fully meritocratic society. Of course, these things are all relative and there was probably more social mobility in this system than other contemporary nations.
- JDShu 14y agoOK, I have to ask. Where are you getting your confidence from?
- eumenides1 14y agoCynicism is something the Chinese have in spades. The thing is that I know that Americans will eventually realize that education is what's important and not the diploma. But the Chinese, they will latch on to the concept of a "diploma" forever.
- stupandaus 14y agoWhile this is certainly a significant issue, I will say that experience has a significantly larger impact than a diploma in China. Specifically, when multinational companies hire in China, they value work experience much more than the diploma, as the diploma itself is not worth as much in China. For example, a 4 year US engineering degree is considered by our HR group to be equivalent to a 4 year Chinese degree + 3-4 years experience.
- yen223 14y agoI'm guessing those companies have been burnt so much by fake qualifications that they simply choose to ignore them.
- yaix 14y agoThat is all pretty common in China. I know a number of people victims of various such scams. Building the economy on copying western and japanese stuff fires back when it creates a society where everything is acceptable as long as it makes money.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- nodrama 14y agowell have a look at this then: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/academic-panel-rules-romanian-prime-minister-plagiarized-recommends-his-doctorate-is-revoked/2012/06/29/gJQAYuBbBW_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/academic-panel-ru...