We spent our fifth day in Shanghai at an urbanization museum and in lectures about the environment and higher education. I have been interested in education reform in the U.S. for a number of years so I was interested in what education policy looks like here in China. I leaned that going to university here is quite inexpensive– a semester’s tuition is about three-hundred dollars. That being said, in order to get to the top schools, students in China have to spend a lot of money on personal tutors in order to prepare for the standardized admissions exams. I asked our speaker a question about universities’ social responsibility to accept students of all economic backgrounds and learned that the familial income is not a consideration when universities are accepting students. There are schools in the U.S. that do the same thing, this schools classify themselves as need-blind. There are, however, universities that look at a student’s economic background when determining who will be accepted. I was hoping to get an understanding of the economic diversity top universities in China display, but don’t have a clear answer yet. Our lecturer did mention, however, the various scholarships students are awarded upon admission. There are both need-based and merit-based scholarships available to students. Unlike like U.S. Chinese universities admit athletes after they have finished their careers. Yao Ming, for example, is a student at the university we visited. These students follow specialized degree programs to cater to their needs and abilities, and are welcomed to the university as what U.S. schools would call “non-traditional” students. I think it’s great that Chinese schools have programs that promote education even after many have found great success in their careers.
Tags: Air Polluttion, China, Education, Environment, Shanghai