Results tagged “harvard”

A new documentary film comparing six high school students from China, the U.S. and India calls for reform of the U.S. education system in favor of the more rigorous Asian education systems. Two Million Minutes, a film developed by American venture capitalist Bob Compton, points out that students in China and India work much harder than those in the U.S., score consistently better than American students on international student comparisons, and now pose a threat to American students' job prospects in the U.S. In the movie's trailer, one American high school student gabs about sororities while her Chinese counterpart is featured fiercely practicing her violin.

By JFK Miller

Chronic pain. Debilitating illness. There's little fun to be had from these subjects. So hats off to Shanghai Daily and its over zealous/under zealous/possibly nonexistent subs' desk for throwing a hyperbole cherry bomb in to the toilet bowl of one individual's suffering. The following, which featured in Friday's paper, is best if you imagine it's being read by Peter Cushing: STABBING. Gnawing. Burning. Severe pain can rip your life apart and make you pray for...

Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU) has released its fifth annual Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) which saw American universities take eight of the top ten spots. Harvard University emerged right on top, followed by Stanford University and University of California-Berkeley. Britain's Oxford and Cambridge -- the only two non-American universities to make it to the top ten -- secured the fourth and tenth positions respectively. The top university in Asia was the University of Tokyo, edging in at the twentieth spot.

Female voice: Bye

It's not the New York Times and it is certainly a bit slanted towards Beijing by the nature of its source, but the list of top ten books noted by users of book club site Douban.com is a whimsical glimpse into what young, plugged-in Chinese are reading offline these days. Here is the list as it stands today:

And there's no reason that feeling should only be the province of a hyper-educated elite. Ever since studying abroad was reintroduced in the 1980s, Chinese people have had a major jones for Harvard and the rest of the Ivies. There are tons of books with Harvard as the subject, and especially popular among those are ones that tell about how a Chinese student managed to get in or raise a kid that got into Harvard.

This has nothing to do with Shanghai, or China for that matter. But we can't get enough of these Japanese television commercials for Suntory Boss coffee drink featuring Oscar-winner and Harvard-grad Tommy Lee Jones. Jones has been appearing in Boss ads for a year now, we think, but we first learned of the campaign recently after a friend returned to Shanghai from Japan confused about the billboards he saw all over the place featuring huge, and not particularly flattering, head shots of the craggy-faced Mr. Jones.

Compiled by Peijin Chen and Dan Washburn

Many American private universities have huge endowments, which are something like a trust fund, or more colloquially a "nest egg," sometimes worth billions of dollars that the universities use for whatever purposes they see fit. The size of the endowment (stop snickering now) is in no small way related to the reputation of the university. For example, Harvard University's is worth a whopping $22.6 billion (second only to the Gates foundation in net worth among non-profits). Of course, you don't get this kind of money by letting it sit in the bank -- you use all the investment tools and expertise at your disposal to make more money.

Remember back in late 2004 when plans for a Playboy "lifestyle club" in Shanghai were announced and then halted over the span of a couple days? Well, a look at the minutes from a recent Playboy conference call with investors shows there is still hope for the Bunnies to hop over the Huangpu:

So it seems that Shanghaiist is not the only weblogger in Shanghai.

There is some debate locally about a house cleaning company's plan to employ college students to clean the dorm rooms of other students who elect to pay for the service: