

China to cancel college majors that don't pay - BlackJack
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/11/23/china-to-cancel-college-majors-that-dont-pay/

======
est
As a native Chinese who graduated from a 211 & 985 college in China just few
years ago, I think there are really some media manipulation going on here.

It's not they are _going_ to do this, the Ministry already started this rule
in as early as 2004-12-10.

The problem it trying to solve is that, there are too many low-level buzz-word
fancy term majors created in Chinese universities, like "nanotech", "earth
science", or "life science".

These majors often only covers a superficial fraction of the subject, and
allows quick rote learning only on some intro theory, then quickly issue a
diploma. The hardcore part of knowledge is hard thus left to other traditional
majors

Why do Chinese have diploma greed? Because diploma is a hyper-inflation
profitable industry in China. Nearly every bullshit job requires a BS degree,
they employer just want to make the company staff looks "better educated"

These "hot" majors are not really teaching any knowledge, but an easy way to
grab a degree, so the students can gain their entry to various job titles. The
college make lots of money by expanding cheap majors.

But the students learns too few to start a serious career, so in a competitive
job markets these students have much higher failure rate than similar harder
majors.

In fact, corrupted officials/businessman can order famous univ. to create a
special, private major for themselves, their daughters and sons. They don't
even have to spend full 4 year time school to get a very high degree.

In addition, "new & new" majors" name is very similar to other authentic ones
(aka ShanZhai majors) but requires a lot less effort to accomplish.

So the Ministry started to ban major frauds, under the name of "low employment
rate".

Are they going to cancel or stop funding traditional liberal arts majors? I
don't think they are really that stupid. Are there humanities majors effected
by this rule? Sure.

~~~
mladenkovacevic
I've lived in a communist country for 10 years of my life so perhaps I am
biased, but I've had a similar suspicion that there's a media war going on
against China and their policies (whether intentional or as a side-effect of
stereotyping).

Certainly there are some Chinese policies which deserve serious criticism,
which is why I get really suspicious when numerous articles mockingly talk
about about other, less-relevant flaws in China's society such as imitation
(fake Apple stores, imitation American jets and cars), developing advanced
tech in a careless, half-assed way (high-speed train crashes), or carelessness
about the environment (3 Gorges Dam) and then applying this mindless, careless
progress as something unique to China.. or dare I say communism. The truth is
if you looked at the advancement of any modern superpower you will see nothing
but the same kinds of flaws. I'm not saying this kind of crude, unstoppable
progress is a good thing.. but passing it as something that's just part of the
Chinese mentality is probably a poor representation of the true values of the
culture as a whole.

~~~
est
In this specific piece, Chinese domestic media started the bias first. The
Chinese media (including the State-run ones) industry always bend things to a
most ridiculous dramatic angle.

------
Tsagadai
Yeah, all those arts graduates filling prisons with dissidents. There are
already calls in the comments for a similar system in other countries. Why
should university be about getting a job? Shouldn't university be about
learning, and being recognised for learning. A history major or a poetry
degree may not be the best way to get a job but I would prefer to live in a
society with poets and historians.

Jobless, educated young people are copping a lot of flak from the media
everywhere at the moment. They are a drain on the economy, "they are the 99%",
they are having Arab springs where spring lasts all year, they are making
molotovs in Greece. They are agents for changing society.

The underlying current of this idea in education is that we should all be
happy little workers. Universities have been commercialised away from being
the places that brought about the Enlightenment to places for turning out more
advanced labourers. Universities are becoming (some have already become) an
extension of the standard school system.

I found university to be a cacophony of ideas and viewpoints that until that
point I had never really experienced. It introduced me to thoughts and ideas I
may have never of experienced if I stayed in a small country town. Degree-
mills rarely ever have this sort of environment and if all universities are
reduced to churning out technical apprentices the world will be a worse place
for it.

~~~
Radim
I didn't see any mentions of banning "poets and historians" in the article
(though I just skimmed to be fair). What I saw was China cutting public
funding for some majors.

If someone wants to be a poet, or a historian, or anything else, more power to
him. Why on everyone else's money, though?

To be honest, if your calling to become a poet is stopped by a government's
funding decision, you wouldn't have made much of a poet anyway.

~~~
ceol
How do you quantify the importance of a major compared to another? Certainly
poets, historians, artists, and writers have more than a monetary importance
in society. How do you measure the inspiration a great writer generates? How
do you objectively compare the societal benefit of a mathematician versus a
historian so that you can mete their funding accordingly?

I see a lot of "bootstraps" comments in the tech field— specifically about the
liberal arts— and it's a shame. I wouldn't be in this field if it weren't for
some of those "worthless" degrees like English (great writing helps the
learning process) and Design (people are attracted to good-looking websites).

My apologies if I got a little ranty. It just irks me to see someone putting
down another field of study as though they're a drain on society.

~~~
GHFigs
_How do you objectively compare the societal benefit of a mathematician versus
a historian so that you can mete their funding accordingly?_

From the article: _The government will soon start evaluating college majors by
their employment rates, downsizing or cutting those studies in which less than
60% of graduates fail for two consecutive years to find work._

Setting aside the question of whether that is a particularly good method, I'd
like to suggest that it's at least more objective and quantifiable than just
presuming that a degree in any given subject is equally the cause of or
prerequisite to greatness in a given field, and therefore of equal value.
Great art doesn't depend on art degrees to the same extent that great science
depends on science degrees.

~~~
jiggy2011
The problem surely is that your evaluating by employment rates _right now_ ,
this will not necessarily be so in the future and the govt probably isn't the
best at predicting future demand. Geography is also a factor here.

What you risk doing is grossly over subscribing 'boom' fields and driving down
salaries of competent people within those fields.

------
_delirium
I was going to try participating in this discussion, but instead I'm just
going to say:

Wow, as a computer scientist, most of the comments in these kinds of
discussions leave me disheartened and embarrassed with the arrogance
("useless", etc.) of my fellow technical folks. A discussion about where to
allocate graduates makes sense, but the kind of unjustifiably arrogant
invective here doesn't.

I think people might want to look at whether their house is made of glass a
bit more as well, before denigrating "useless" historians and throwing around
phrases like "contributes to the country's advancement". Is the webapp you're
working on _really_ a great contribution to society? Is Zynga producing value
that will move our civilization forward?

------
ChuckMcM
I am really glad the Chinese are doing this. Not because I think it is a good
idea, it is an astonishingly bad idea, but because in doing it they will
demonstrate just how bad an idea it is.

I am very much a free market type person, I think anyone should be able to get
any degree they want. And I think that people should understand that just
_any_ degree doesn't mean they will be employable after they graduate. But we
do need folks who are passionate about lots of different things, and take
those passions rigorously to the highest level.

The Chinese may find that someone who would excel in Art History and who would
have, had they been allowed to, enabled others to develop deeper insights into
their culture by looking at the art that their culture has created, may be
really crappy business majors, or science majors. And making it harder for
businesses to discern between people who wanted to be in business and those
who were 'forced' into it, also harder which will make those businesses less
efficient at employing folks.

I hope at that point everyone will look back and go "Gee that was a stupid
idea." and we won't have to debate hypothetical 'what if' type arguments.

~~~
Volpe
Why was the sibling comment from sinope [1] down voted to death, when it was
highly relevant, and factually more correct than those around it.

Seriously HN, do you want to share knowledge and discuss things, or filter out
people with differing views?

Edit: added link for clarity.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3276199>

~~~
18pfsmt
FYI, that comment was not down-voted; the account is hell-banned.

------
keiferski
It doesn't get much more short-sighted than this. What happens in 20 years if
engineers are everywhere and can't get work?

Instead, let's make liberal arts degrees cheaper. There's no reason why a
Philosophy or English degree needs to cost 15k+ a year. It's been said before,
and it needs said again: a liberal arts _education_ is just as valuable today
as it was 300 years ago. The current problem is one of cost, not of value.

~~~
seagaia
I've wondered how necessary it is for colleges to force a $50k tuition on
students. Where does the money actually go? I'm skeptical. The administration
at university just seems like one big, disgusting fraud.

~~~
mmc
I was curious too, so I dug around and found this report from the Delta Cost
Project, a nonprofit that studies this question (for US universities):
[http://deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/trendsissuehighlig...](http://deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/trendsissuehighlights.pdf)

That is just the summary, there is a more complete report available too. The
high points for me was that employee compensation accounts for 60-70% of
costs, with increases there being driven by benefits (I assume this means
health insurance costs rising), and that only 30-40% of that 60-70 is spent on
instructional staff.

------
tryitnow
I would like to see the US government stop subsidizing majors and colleges
that don't get results for their graduates.

Now there arises the problem of inadequate funding for the liberal arts
majors. But as it is way too many people major in liberal arts and other
impractical subjects. Lib arts should be a highly selective group, limited to
scholarship recipients and any rich kid whose family has the money.

Treating all majors the same really hurts kids who come from working class
backgrounds and might not know how society really works. Rarely will you be
rewarded for learning for learning's sake. Major in engineering, accounting,
nursing, etc. Then your future is pretty solid. Let's stop kidding ourselves
about how our society values education.

~~~
noblethrasher
As I and other have pointed out
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3197437>), it's the liberal arts majors
that subsidize the STEM programs at the undergraduate level because the per-
credit tuition is roughly the same but it's cheaper to educate historians than
molecular geneticists.

On another note, it's pretty distressing to see all these calls to drastically
overhaul the university system when we're not even five years away from what
was essentially an economic singularity (no pun intended).

~~~
yummyfajitas
You completely ignore the fact that STEM brings in research grants, which the
university loots in the name of "overhead". I pointed this out also in a
similar discussion. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2799626>

At every university I've attended, STEM grants are used to subsidize
university operations.

~~~
noblethrasher
Addressed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3197531>

(btw, it's an honor to cross swords. You're one of the people I most
frequently CTRL-F on any threads even vaguely related to economics or finance)

~~~
yummyfajitas
Delirium makes interesting points, but he neglects the fact that universities
wildly overcharge for overhead.

The university basically provides two services in return for overhead:
commercial real estate and outsourced HR. They vastly overcharge for both, and
the excess beyond market rates for these services goes directly into the
university budget.

Some real numbers (I was the grad student): a professor gets a $50k grant
which he spends on a graduate student to be a research fellow for 1 year. The
grad student gets $20k + benefits (roughly another $10k).

The university pockets the remaining $20k for incidentals and overhead. You
seriously think loading the grad student into the HR system and making 24
direct deposits costs $20k?

------
gtz65
way too many people think that the only purpose of education is to earn money.
It isn't. Education has intrinsic value.

~~~
KevinEldon
Education's general value is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Once
you have learned to critically study and learn a subject of your choosing the
value of education is mostly related to the value of what you produce from
what you've learned. A hermit who learns the secrets of the universe and
doesn't share is of no real value. A history (or engineering) major who
doesn't learn how to apply what they've studied is of little use. I think it's
just generally easier for engineering majors, or business majors to apply what
they've learned.

------
teyc
Someone should start a website to anonymously survey the following for US
grads:

1\. Years since graduation 2\. Major 3\. University 4\. Employed/Unemployed in
related field 5\. GPA

At least this way, there could be some basis in informed decision making by
potential students.

~~~
simonbrown
There is a WSJ table that lists data for majors, but not universities.

<http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/>

There's a website listing more detailed data on UK grads.

<http://unistats.direct.gov.uk/>

------
markbao
This is a little disheartening. It'll prevent people from expanding their mind
in the subject area that they _want_ , and instead, they're told that they
should be studying sciences, engineering, business, or something else that'll
be more "useful."

Undoubtedly, I can see why China's doing it. It's utilitarian. College is
already (wrongly) seen as "job training," and this will deepen that. But the
number of jobs filled is one of many measures of "useful," and this threatens
to make it the only one. Nobody can predict what will come of that. Telling
people that they can only pursue a certain set of majors because they're
useful, and if they don't like any of them, then _too bad_ , seems a little
nearsighted.

------
ams6110
From the piece:

 _Chinese have questioned whether someone like Apple founder Steve Jobs could
ever emerge from an education system that seeks to push down students who
stand out from the crowd._

Do they not realize Jobs was a dropout??

~~~
rsanchez1
Sounds like they're looking for a system where the Steve Jobs' of the world
have what they need in school to become successful. There are probably a lot
of Steve Jobs' who do drop out, but going through years of college drained
their enthusiasm.

~~~
CamperBob
What Jobs needed to become successful was to drop out, start a company, get
kicked out of said company, hit bottom, and wander around in India for awhile.
None of that requires a degree.

Woz also lacked any sort of degree when he worked for HP and Apple. He only
went back for his BSEE after he'd already made his mark.

------
PakG1
I think the most interesting question here will be how will they account for
people who don't end up working in the subject area they studied. There are
tons of those in the west, I can't imagine it's very different in the east.
How would those stats be calculated and would it hurt or help certain majors?
Sadly, not a lot of info available.

------
DavidChouinard
This graph (linked to from the article) on majors and
popularity/salary/unemployment rate is quite interesting:
<http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/#term=>

------
afterburner
est's comment (which may be true) notwithstanding, this does not surprise me.
China is a communist country of the Cold War mold, if not in all the
particulars, then at least in some of its centralist, autocratic ways.
Communist countries of this type have outright told people what they should
study, to fill particular state needs. That there is freedom to choose in
China is a sign of course that this is 2011, not 1970, but still... it makes
this kind of thing not at all shocking.

------
jdietrich
Every day, I see more and more evidence that the Chinese economy is going to
_eat us alive_.

------
wavephorm
I think more industries need to adopt the tradesmen style apprenticeship
before allowing someone to pursue post-secondary education. They should also
be forced to employ apprentices before being able to hire someone with a
degree -- too many students exit university with no real-world experience or
any idea what their work will be like once their degree is complete.

If you really, really want to do a 3 year philosophy degree, I think should at
least have to do a year as an apprentice philosopher.

------
klbarry
I would love if the United States modified and did this. Do the research on
what majors pay and lead to what outcomes - and then shove those results in
high school senior's faces often (instead of forcing the majors closed).

~~~
unshift
why? college is not a job training facility and shouldn't be treated like one.
high school's goal is to provide a broad education so a graduate can have the
basic knowledge necessary to function in society. not everyone goes to
college.

~~~
Scaevolus
In the US, people are encouraged to go to college so that they can get higher-
paying jobs. It's seen as a job training facility.

~~~
tryitnow
This discussion reveals one of the problems with our system of higher
education: for some people it's one thing, for others it's something else.

Colleges are like companies that are trying to do two very different things at
once: broad education and job training.

In the world of startups we know what to do when that happens: Choose one
direction and go with it, stop trying to be all things to all people. Blended
business models rarely work.

My guess is that something similar will eventually happen in education. Some
institutions will specialize in getting you a paycheck and others will
specialize in broader education.

I view purely academic coursework in the same category as other luxury goods:
it's something some people find fun and exciting and if they want to pay for
it, so be it, but society should not foot the bill.

Whereas practical "get a job" coursework I view as something that just about
everybody needs and maybe there's a good argument for public subsidies or
other policies that encourage it.

------
jluan
Market forces aren't good enough for them :P

