
In China, Betting It All on a Child in College - awk
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/business/in-china-families-bet-it-all-on-a-child-in-college.html?pagewanted=4&ref=business&pagewanted=all
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kamaal
Very common here in India too. At least when I was studying it was all about,
"Get your kid to do Engineering/Medicine and then every thing will take care
of itself".

There is a big reason for this. Uneducated people get played for easily and
there is that huge disadvantage in non-knowledge driven based jobs. Take for
example the job of a cab/bus driver. Or some body like mason, the problem the
money you earn is directly related to number or hours/quantity of work you get
delivered. And since quantity is largely related to a physical activity in
this case. It means you will do a lot of physical labor to earn more money.
This is not scalable and becomes blatantly clear to a lot of people involved
in this. Add to this that these kinds of jobs don't get much social respect.

My dad was a bus driver. And I know what it was for me as a kid. It was always
to study my ass off or be doomed. And yes all other standard social problems
apply. You are always considered poor and assumed to remain such till
eternity. No one likes knowing that he being a educated white collar knowledge
worker, his kids and the kids of a bus driver ultimately get the same destiny.
I even had problems getting married. Coming from a low financial background
creates big problems. People find it hard to accept if you win, and pass
sympathies if you don't.

So the only way remains: Study and fight your way out of the situation.

My teenage through early 20's was the most stressful phase of my life. Because
failure was not an option. No money to do business, So if I fail it will going
back to same life.

I'm not saying life is rosy as a programmer. It has its own problems both
financial and in other aspects of life. But yet its far better than what I saw
in early parts of my life(Nothing I will tell you, can explain you what it
feels to be in that place- I only hope no other kid goes through that). I
don't feel sad that I can't buy an iPhone. But rather its satisfying to know I
don't have break my back just to eat, wear clothes and live under a roof.

Its still same here in India for a large number of people. Education and a
white collar job doesn't fix all problems. But it does fix enough problems in
your life to make it livable.

~~~
newsign
>> Nothing I will tell you, can explain you what it feels to be in that place-
I only hope no other kid goes through that ..

I can understand what you're trying to say, the problems, issues and
challenges are on so many levels and there are so many layers that unless you
experience it yourself there is no way you can put words to it ...

\- first of all, parents are uneducated and to motivate them to educate their
kids is the biggest challenge of all ...

\- then double it with lack of resources (this includes time, money, energy,
good schools, good teachers etc.)

\- triple this with no free schooling in india, not even primary , there may
be few government schools which are like good for nothing (although there
might be an exception like one in million)

\- then there is peer pressure for parents whose kids are not earning but
spending time in school.

\- then there is huge corruption and bureaucracy

\- then there are other family responsibilities like getting your sister
married (when u dont even have money for your kids school fees or even worst
when you cant provide proper food, clothing and shelter) OR taking care of
your elderly parents when you cant afford medicines OR someone died in the
family and you have to burden the burial cost etc etc etc..

And the list goes on and on.....

SO I SALUTE to all those parents who won uphill battle by going against the
tide and made sure that their kids are well educated ...

~~~
pm90
One of the very interesting aspects of Indian culture is that there is (or
used to be) a very high social respect for a "well-educated" person. So if you
have a PhD, then even if you don't make a ton of money, you get the same
social status as a wealthy businessman. I don't know why this is so, but it
has led to nearly everyone desiring their children to have a better education
than they did and escape from the grips of poverty.

There is a paragraph in Richard Feynman's "What do you care what other people
think?" where a carribean cab driver asks Feynman how is it that his Indian
neighbor (presumably of the same economic standing) has a son studying
medicine at Maryland? Which is when Feynman explains this hypothesis.

~~~
sdqali
There are still parts of India where there is tremendous social respect for
"well educated" people. This can be easily seen if you observe Matrimonial
ads. It would be clearly mentioned that people are looking for someone with
college degrees, post graduate degrees etc.

On a tangential, I have always found matrimonial ads a very interesting mirror
on the Indian society. The way these ads show people's ambitions and fears is
amazing.

------
trxblazr
"Youths from poor and rural families consistently end up paying much higher
tuition in China than children from affluent and urban families. Yet they
attend considerably worse institutions, education finance specialists
say...The reason is that few children from poor families earn top marks on the
national exams. So they are shunted to lower-quality schools that receive the
smallest government subsidies. The result is that higher education is rapidly
losing its role as a social leveler in China and as a safety valve for
talented but poor youths to escape poverty."

So that's certainly true in America, and perhaps even more so in China. I
think platforms like Coursera/Udacity can start leveling the playing field
again for two reasons: first, if the technology is good enough (from personal
experience, I would say so) and remains free, the studying-resources gap
between rich and poor shrinks; second, even if you can't squeeze your way into
a top school, you can still get a top-notch education for free. At the end of
the day, i'm grossly oversimplifying things (i.e. the weight of credentials in
Chinese society probably still far outweight actual demonstrated skill-set; or
consider for a moment whether a family that lives on rice and a few vegetables
a day can realistically afford a computer+internet-connection for their
kids...), but i still think there's a sizable impact in here somewhere.

~~~
wisty
> or consider for a moment whether a family that lives on rice and a few
> vegetables a day can realistically afford a computer+internet-connection for
> their kids...

Only the absolute poorest Chinese won't be able to get internet access and a
computer. The computer might cost ~1000 RMB (2 month's salary, for an
extremely poor household). Maybe less, if they can put up with an old P4
getting tossed out by an internet cafe, which is now the color of a smoker's
lungs. Internet will be ~50 to 100 RMB a month, and that's entertainment (and
information) for the whole family. Getting access to online courses (which
might rely on YouTube, which is blocked) might be tricky, as is the language
barrier, but I'm sure China will have localised versions of the course. It's a
major cost, but Chinese aren't starving, just poor. Once you have more than $2
a day, food isn't the only priority; healthcare and education is.

Migrant workers might be worse off than the poorest peasants, though, as they
may not have a stable abode. You can't get your kid a computer if you're
sharing a shanty-town room with 2 other families. Plus, getting a connection
might not be possible. That's probably why migrant workers often leave their
kids with grandma.

And yes, credentialism is an issue.

~~~
gbog
> language barrier [for online courses]

Well, not really, there is a huge part of online courses translated/subtitled
to Chinese. That's my wife's job actually.

~~~
Surio
On behalf of all _non-native speakers from all over the World_ , who are
trying their best to catch up with this whirlwind of booms-bust cycles, forced
obsolescence, eroding of ways of life, and many other hardships that I cannot
remember right away, just to try to make a [better] life [if not for
themselves] for their loved ones, I would like to thank people like your wife
for helping them in whatever manner possible.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Well, they (the Chinese) already crowd sourcing their own subtitles for
entertainment shows like Big Bang Theory. I don't see why that wouldn't happen
in the courseware space as well, it is one of those things in China that is
truly a creative commons.

------
contingencies
Here in rural China (on and off ~11 years), honestly the most educated and
worldly person I spoke to in the last week or so was an exotic dancer from
another province who had picked up some foreign language and was evidently far
more intelligent and motivated than the majority of downtrodden graduates. She
said she didn't finish high school. I thought to myself: "that's probably
causation not just correlation".

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> was an exotic dancer from another province

Do you mean rural china or a second/third tier city? I'm not sure what an
exotic dancer would be doing in a village.

~~~
jhancock
I was at a small Sichuan mountain village wedding a few weeks back. Several
"exotic" dancers and the village drag queen and a magician. All locals. Great
performances. The most fun I've had at a Chinese weeding ;)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Was it a Han or Zang area? Sounds very interesting.

------
gbog
I can confirm this from my experience in China (~9 years), but would be a
little more positive on the outcome for the graduates. It is still relatively
easy to find a job and turn-over is high. In the companies where I have
worked, in the university I have attended, I have seen some of these employees
coming from very poor families: most are hard-working and clever, and usually
can make their way into the higher strates of society (up to a level).

~~~
dakimov
I've never understood that notion of social stratification applied to modern
socities. What kind of classes are we talking about? Isn't it just a plain
linear function of your income?

~~~
gbog
Why, no, certainly not. A scholar or a writer or an artist might be able to
kiss a queen on the cheeks while having very low income.

~~~
dakimov
The queen is just a humorous tradition in any modern civilized country. Your
argument is quite stupid.

~~~
pm90
Humorous, but very real in some. Since the queen is at the zenith of social
standing, his statement is quite correct

~~~
dakimov
This is the current human mentality: no lower boundary for sanity. Any
nonsense may be considered correct if it has support from stereotypes or
prejudices.

~~~
gbog
To me using income as social scale is insane. It would give a very high
position to cartel bosses, and these guys should be on the bottom.

If you'd need a social scale for some l practical reason, I suppose the only
workable one is education level. it ids not fair to everyone but I think it is
the last horrible.

------
austenallred
I would be interested to see some analysis as far as what these students are
studying, not just in this article, but in all articles that attempt to
account for career placement of college students in any way. Studying
electrical engineering will provide a completely different likelihood of
graduate employment than will studying humanities.

In this particular article these statistics I assume, would move the needle. I
hope it's not considered "racist" of me to say so, but from my experience
living in China and cross-studying in the humanities and computer science,
Chinese students tend to study the hard sciences (engineering, science,
accounting), whereas I never even saw a Chinese student in any of my
humanities classes.

~~~
alanctgardner2
They point out in the article that these courses tend to be more like
community college courses - in practical topics like logistics. You're looking
at this from the Western point of view, where students are encourages to take
absolutely any topic, just so long as they get a BA.

~~~
austenallred
As did the article. There were a lot of stats about grad rates, but nothing
specific to Chinese immigrants/students.

------
robinho364
When I click this link to read, the page turns out to be not avaliable…… I
should get access to it by ssh, I suddenly remind that I am just a junior
studying in China.

------
dm8
What will happen when countries will start producing tons of graduates but not
enough white collar jobs? I fear it will create very unhealthy dynamics in the
society.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Rumours tell what's what happened in Cambodia before Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge.

Too many liberal arts & french classical literature graduates, no viable
agriculture to feed the country without external help, help being cut.

~~~
sgt101
I've never heard this before. I think that pre Khmer Rouge Cambodia had a tiny
graduate population <1% and had no issue of agricultural production apart from
the intrinsic vulnerability of subsistence farming to crop failure and famine.
The disaster of year 0 was not the result of either external aid or poor
education, rather it was a political decision supported by regional powers for
geo-political ends.

~~~
guard-of-terra
<http://arkhip.livejournal.com/341078.html> This is where I took this from
(You can use some translation service) And it states that most of Pol Pot's
cabinet were graduates of universities, more than half of them Sorbonne.

And then it tells about previous ruler investing in education heavily without
then caring about employment of graduates, all this on top of population
surge.

------
rdl
I wonder how effective either MOOCs or peer to peer (Chinese person chatting
online with a native English speaker) could be for language skills.

------
vixen99
They describe a sub-project examining the DNA of people with IQ > 160? On the
basis of 'one fact can slay a theory', I would suggest that the example of
Richard Feynman (IQ at 124) indicates that this study may garner a rather
small return on investment. Of course it depends on exactly what they are
looking for.

~~~
jiggy2011
According to wikipedia that figure for Feynman seems to be based on 1 IQ test
he did in high school.

I'm assuming IQ testing practises have improved since then, it is also
possible that his IQ raised significantly as he got older due to extensive
study as it is also possible that his IQ test was simply poorly administered
for whatever reason.

~~~
eqreqeq
>>t is also possible that his IQ raised significantly as he got older due to
extensive study as it is also possible that his IQ test was simply poorly
administered for whatever reason.

Which is why an IQ is useless. If it can rise then it is not really measuring
intelligence. Rather it is measuring what you know so far. Which explains why
kids from better income families have better IQs.

And yet people treat IQ as a constant. Glad I decided never to let a single
number define me. To all you that believe the IQ is important I say ...

~~~
jiggy2011
I'm not an IQ expert by any stretch but I doubt that it fluctuates that much
(in the population in general). Based on the limited reading I have done your
IQ will tend to rise as you get older, however in general people will stay in
roughly the same position relative to others.

Whilst you can probably influence your IQ by working your brain really hard
every day or lower it by doing a lot of drugs I doubt it is really that
meaningless as it does tend to correlate well with success.

However I'd be curious to know how it correlates with lifetime income once you
control for family income. I assume this has been researched.

~~~
eqreqeq
Since we are making anecdotal observations I'll posit that you could
significantly increase your IQ if you focused on it. Just like if you wanted
to play an instrument. You can increase your playing ability by focusing on
it, or more specifically, by practicing. That is how I see IQ, as something
that you can get better at by practicing, nothing more, nothing less.

------
kkwok
Really recommend watching The Last Train Home. It's a documentary about a
family that works in Guangzhou in order to pay for their children's education
in their rural village. Deals with many of these same issues. And is a
haunting and fantastic documentary. Also it's available on netflix

~~~
inoop
For those who cannot access netflix: <http://documentarylovers.net/last-train-
home/>

------
EduardoBautista
Am I the only who feels like the parents mostly only care about themselves
than their daughter? It sounded like that to me.

~~~
potatolicious
In traditional Chinese society each generation cares for the one before it.
This assumes many forms - from mere social expectation to actual tithes of
your income to your parents.

There is some incentive to maximize a child's success in order to ensure your
own retirement - after all, if they can't make ends meet, you're even worse
off.

This may seem strange by western standards, but I'd caution against
extrapolating this to mean that the parents don't care for their child. The
parent-child relationship in Chinese society is different than it is modern
American society, but parents universally care deeply about the well-being of
their children.

A big caveat to all of the above is that modern, urban Chinese society is
_very_ rapidly shedding this model. There remains a sticky issue of there
being a massive "lost generation" who suffered financially caring for their
own parents, but due to shifting societal mores, cannot expect the same from
their own children.

~~~
einhverfr
> This may seem strange by western standards, but I'd caution against
> extrapolating this to mean that the parents don't care for their child.

It shouldn't be strange by Western standards. It was the way it was in the US
before WWII or so. It also works very well because it frees up what might
otherwise go into retirement savings, and this gets spent on helping the kids
get established instead.

I am not in China, but my wife is Chinese-Indonesian and her mother is
starting to get closer to retirement, and that system, while it has
transformed in urban environments like Jakarta, is still very much alive at
least among the Chinese diaspora here.

------
sasanrose
Right now, after the sanctions, in Iran a software engineer earns 500$ a month
(It is a good salary right now in Iran). So seems china is not bad at all
comparing to Iran.

~~~
staz
You can't really compare salary without taking into account the cost of living
there

~~~
megablast
It is amazing how many people do not understand this.

~~~
sasanrose
Believe me, I live in Iran and I understand this. First, cost of living in
Iran is now really a pain in the ass. Prices in Iran are now raising with the
speed of light but salaries in Iran are decreasing. I know people who can not
afford their food in Iran. I understood the article and I completely
understand people in china. I just saw that in the article, and it was just
amazing for myself to compare economy in China with Iran. In Iran parents also
work so hard to provide their children's cost of education. A term in a
college in Iran costs about 400$ and a normal salary here is about 250$ a
month. When you are living in a country with the one of the worst economies in
the world, these things in an article gather your attention.

------
beefsack
This seems a little off-topic for HN.

~~~
trxblazr
Not really. There's an education bubble: too many applicants; not enough
resources. Coursera/Udacity...etc may change that significantly over time.
This may significantly impact the very people this article talks about. I
think it's good for HN to perceive from time to time the tangential impact of
technology on everyday life.

