More serious for China's long-term prospects is that the expansion was so fast, and the pressures to pay off the debts so intense, that many of the schools turned into diploma mills, churning out poorly qualified students. Mr. Zhang got his degree from a school of traditional Chinese medicine with no history of teaching computer sciences. He looks back ruefully, recalling overcrowded classrooms and a lack of materials: "I wonder if this education was of any value?"
It sounds like there is a huge opportunity here. If open-sourced course materials (such as MIT's OCW) could be combined with a degree-granting mechanism that had credibility with employers, then ad hoc schools, study groups, online communities, and even lone inviduals could succeed where these hastily retooled "universities" seem to have failed.
Comments
This also reminds me of a quote from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=582698 that has been on my mind:
More serious for China's long-term prospects is that the expansion was so fast, and the pressures to pay off the debts so intense, that many of the schools turned into diploma mills, churning out poorly qualified students. Mr. Zhang got his degree from a school of traditional Chinese medicine with no history of teaching computer sciences. He looks back ruefully, recalling overcrowded classrooms and a lack of materials: "I wonder if this education was of any value?"
It sounds like there is a huge opportunity here. If open-sourced course materials (such as MIT's OCW) could be combined with a degree-granting mechanism that had credibility with employers, then ad hoc schools, study groups, online communities, and even lone inviduals could succeed where these hastily retooled "universities" seem to have failed.
open-sourced course materials (such as MIT's OCW)
This is already taking place: http://www.core.org.cn/en/