What kind of students are being produced in China’s university Education system, which in recent years has dramatically strengthened political science classes and increased emphasis by university administrators on following the Party and obeying the political mandates given by the Party?
A test sponsored by institutions in the United States, China, Russia, and India found that Chinese students’ critical thinking skills and academic skill levels deteriorate after college study, the American Overseas Press reported.
Chirikov, a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley, who participated in the study, said, “Chinese college students have extremely high skill levels when they enter school, but this level declines over the course of their college studies. This is true both in physics, mathematics and critical thinking. We have observed this at both elite universities and large universities, albeit to varying degrees. It may be because undergraduate education in China emphasizes lectures and does not require as many instructors as in Russia and India.”
The results provide insight into how the future computer science and electrical engineering professionals of the aforementioned countries will fare in a globally competitive market, the research institute concluded.
The study is called Supertest and the test was sponsored by Stanford University, HSE University Moscow, Educational Testing Service (ETS) and partner universities in China and India. It is a large-scale study of the academic performance of engineering students in Russia, China, India and the United States, tracking for the first Time statistics on the progress of computer science and electrical engineering students in the areas of physics, mathematics and critical thinking skills, and comparing the results of the study across the four countries. An article about the study was published in Nature Human Behavior.
More than 30,000 undergraduate students participated in the study. The researchers collected a sample of students from elite universities and large universities in each country, with roughly equal numbers of students in each country, and the test measured the students’ skill development three times – when they entered university, at the end of their second year of study and when they graduated.
Supertest showed that at the beginning of their studies, Russian students scored lower in math and physics than Chinese students, but higher in math than Indian students. After two years of study, the gap between the Russian and Chinese students narrowed, while the Indian students caught up with the Russian students in math.
A notable finding of this study relates to the critical thinking skills of engineering students.
After initially entering university, Russian engineering students outperformed Indian students, but underperformed Chinese students. All three countries underperformed U.S. students in terms of developing skills in the learning process. Chirikov said, “‘We found that as students progressed in their studies, the critical thinking skills of Russian and Indian students remained roughly the same, but Chinese students showed a decline, and instead American students showed progress.” This is a serious problem, the researchers noted, because technology is changing rapidly, and in order to be able to master new technologies, students need to have a solid grasp not only of their subject area knowledge but also of new technologies.
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