A BBC report (proxy needed) talks about the Confucian schools that are now thriving across China. And why are parents sending their kids to such schools?:
"Traditional culture has many advantages that cannot be learned by modern education," says Yu Fang, the mother of a three-year-old pupil. "It emphasises virtues like kindness and self-discipline. It is very good for my son and very good for Chinese society as well." Another mother, Wang Ching, agrees: "This is a material world, people want a higher standard of living and they are focused on material things, not spiritual ones." Modern China, with its headlong rush for growth, needs more balance and more of the social order and courtesy extolled by Confucius, she says. Confucianism and Communism have never been happy bedfellows... [read more]
Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post (subscription) paints a bleak picture for the increasing number of students graduating from the university only to find there is no job for them out there:
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Blue Book on Social Development said about 1 million of last year's 4.7 million graduates had been unable to find a job months after they left school. The government should pay greater attention to the problem, the report said. University authorities have been criticised for blindly pursuing expansion in the past few years at the expense of teaching quality. Families have been forced to pay tens of thousands of yuan for four-year degrees, but many graduates have been unable to find jobs for months and even years. Yang Yiyong, of the National Development and Reform Commission, said more graduates were failing to find jobs. "The students are not to blame; rather it's the way they've been taught on campus," Professor Yang said. "To improve the higher learning system, more emphasis should be put on how to teach students to be more entrepreneurial." [read more]
All that surplus of graduates is not good for any of them. Starting pay is continuing to fall. But which university's graduates are worth the most? China Daily tells us:
This year, the number of graduates will reach 5.59 million nationally, an increase of about 12.9 percent over the last year. But according to reports from human resources agencies, new employees' expectations in 2007 were still below 2,000 yuan a month. Unlike average university students, graduates from elite colleges (mostly those among the "State 211 project", the nation's largest education project for top universities) are more confident and lucky as their average median pay half a year after employment is 2,500 yuan, 500 yuan more than those from ordinary universities, a survey conducted by Gallup China showed. Graduates from Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University and Beijing Foreign Studies University earn most in the country for half a year of employment after graduation as their average median salaries all reach 4,000 yuan... [read more]
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