Read carefully about American universities - (Revised Edition)

Author: Cheng Xing / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: In China, attending university is called "reading" university. When you tell someone you're at Peking University, you say, "I'm studying at Peking University." Going to university is inherently about reading at a university. Ancients compared reading ten thousand books with traveling ten thousand miles, showing the importance of reading. The saying "A scholar doesn't need to leave his door to know the world" also emphasizes the unity between the world in books and the real world, suggesting that even life experiences can be read from books. Chinese people have long regarded going to school and reading as synonymous, so the experience of attending university largely overlaps with reading. In the 1980s, a sudden wave of studying abroad swept across China, and for a time, going to the United States "to read" became the highest ideal for ambitious youth. Over the past two decades, at least three to five hundred thousand contemporary Chinese have "read" at some American university, and it seems the mysterious veil of American universities in the eyes of young Chinese has long been lifted. But in reality, while American universities have provided a rare environment for many elites in contemporary Chinese society to read, few people have actually treated the universities themselves as a large book and studied them thoroughly. Otherwise, how do you explain that after one generation's efforts, American lifestyles—from cars and burgers to Hollywood blockbusters, from home hot water and villas to highways—have all entered China, sometimes even surpassing the original versions, yet Chinese universities still fail to join the ranks of the world's best.
To say that those who were fortunate enough to study abroad and travel around have not fulfilled their duty to introduce American universities to China is not entirely accurate. If you visit a bookstore in China in recent years, you'll find that books about American universities are extremely popular. The "Harvard Girl" and "Yale Student" are displayed alongside CEOs of Microsoft and General Electric, forming a spectacular sight. Higher education has long been a focal point of attention in Chinese society. But how do the authors of these books introduce American universities? Have they, like their peers who came to the U.S. to study engineering, brought back the secrets of how American universities operate and applied them domestically? I doubt it. But it's not that they haven't tried—it's simply that achieving this is incredibly difficult.
Imagine if you came to the U.S. to study engineering. Two years for a master's, three for a doctorate, plus several years of experiments or internships, and you'll master your field to a reasonable degree. When you return to lead a project, consulting with a few professors from your past, achieving or surpassing world-class standards isn't too difficult. But if you come to the U.S. to study higher education management and want to serve your country afterward, your path will be much longer than that of your engineering peers. First, two years for a master's, three for a doctorate. After graduation, if you immediately pack your bags and return to China, your knowledge of how American universities operate will still be theoretical, and you'll know little about how a department head manages a department in the U.S. If you want to gain some practical experience in American universities before returning, well, you'll have to start as an assistant professor. After six or seven years of smooth progress, you'll finally "complete your apprenticeship"—receiving tenure.
What comes next is not just about your efforts. If you want to advance from department head to dean to president, fine, work hard and wait. In the U.S., exceptional promotions are not common; any mid-level or higher position must be publicly recruited, and the prerequisite for any position is "experience." Thus, you enter a chicken-and-egg paradox: you need experience to get a position, but you need a position to gain experience. After going through this cycle several times, you finally achieve success and can return to serve your country. But wait, by then you're almost in your mid-forties, and according to the circumstances in China, you're nearly at the age of retirement! Sometimes I think, no wonder, after more than two decades, China has made great progress in all aspects, and the lives of Chinese people have undergone earth-shaking changes, yet the long queues of ambitious young Chinese at U.S. consulates for visas have not decreased. That's when I decided to write this book. P1-2