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In China, Betting It All on a Child in College

nytimes.com

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Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College

#41

Post by venus »

fosap wrote: post #34
kamaal wrote: post #23

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 dire…

I think China has an advantage here. While most Chinese have only one (or maximum two) children to support, the average number of children is higher in India. It chinese parents can afford to spend more money per child on education and I think on the long term this will result in a higher education for the average person.

That's a good point, but I think that present advantage will turn against China later on when all those only children find themselves having to support two elderly parents, a situation permeating the society on a massive scale.

As they say, China's the first country to "get old before it got rich".

Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College

#42

Post by eqreqeq »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #33
vixen99 wrote: post #31

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.

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.

>>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 ...

Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College

#43

Post by ttflee »

gbog wrote: post #10
wisty wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

Many of these subtitles were poorly translated/mistranslated.

Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College

#44

Post by jacquesm »

potatolicious wrote: post #14
EduardoBautista wrote: post #11

Am 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…

> In traditional Chinese society each generation cares for the one before it.

That goes for almost every society! Pensions a typically paid out from the earnings of the current generation to the previous one, it's quite rare to have pension funds hold on to 'your' money long enough that it gets paid back out to you. Instead they pay it out immediately and when it is your turn you get it from someone that earned that money the month before.

If only pension funds would be required to be able to pay out at a minimum what you put in then the world would be in lots better shape.

Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College

#45

Post by anoncow »

arihant wrote: post #17
trxblazr wrote: post #5

"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.

government run colleges better and cheaper than private run money-machines? That is a system working as expected.

Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College

#46

Post by jiggy2011 »

eqreqeq wrote: post #42
jiggy2011 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>>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…

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.

Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College

#47

Post by newsign »

kamaal wrote: post #23

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 dire…

>> 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 ...

Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College

#48

Post by giardini »

potatolicious wrote: post #14
EduardoBautista wrote: post #11

Am 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…

Despite the very strong Chinese cultural meme that encourages care of the parents, such care usually does little to continue one's genes. In contrast expending that same effort aiding the child usually increases the likely continuation of one's genes.

China will have a serious problem with their largely-unsupported elderly.

Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College

#49

Post by pm90 »

newsign wrote: post #47
kamaal wrote: post #23

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 dire…

>> 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…

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.

Re: In China, Betting It All on a Child in College

#50

Post by pm90 »

anoncow wrote: post #45
arihant wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

government run colleges better and cheaper than private run money-machines? That is a system working as expected.

They are definetly cheaper due to govt. subsidy, but apart from IIT's and a few NIT's they aren't much different from private counterparts.

Remember that in India universities are not judged by the quality of their research, but solely on the "success" of their alumni. Since govt. colleges are cheaper, even though they might not be good, they do attract smart students. One thing that the Indian govt. did do right was to have a highly meritocratic system of admission, although that has recently suffered many setbacks

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