Am I the only who feels like the parents mostly only care about themselves than their daughter? It sounded like that to me.
In China, Betting It All on a Child in College
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Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College
#12What 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.
You mean like in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia etc?
* http://www.imf.org/external/np/vc/2012/061312.htm
* http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2011021...
Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College
#13I 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.
Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College
#14Am I the only who feels like the parents mostly only care about themselves than their daughter? It sounded like that to me.
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.
Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College
#15Am I the only who feels like the parents mostly only care about themselves than their daughter? It sounded like that to me.
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…
Alright, that helps me look at it from a different perspective. Thanks.
Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 ca…
> 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.
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.
Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College
#17"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 i…
That is true for India too. If one does not make top ranks to get into IITs, NITs or any other government subsidized college, they are forced to attend lower tier private institutions (Yeah, in India private colleges are at lower end) which cost at least 5-10x more than IITs.
Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College
#18What 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.
The linked article mentions how that's already happening in China ("young college graduates in China are four times as likely to be unemployed as young people who attended only elementary school, because factory jobs are more plentiful than office jobs"), and this earlier article goes into more detail: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/business/as-graduates-rise...
Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College
#19Am I the only who feels like the parents mostly only care about themselves than their daughter? It sounded like that to me.
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 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.
Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College
#20I 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 stra…
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?