I recently hired a Beijing University graduate as a translator. Beijing (Beida) and Qinghua are the Harvard and MIT of China, and when you do the math in terms of the number of students vying to be in these top institutions, you are dealing with the upper .001 percent of the students of their year.
This was surprisingly easy to do, as about half of the graduating class is still looking for jobs. In a previous post, the problem students are having getting jobs due to lack of experience was discussed.
This post is about the perspective of the Chinese students themselves, and a couple of interesting things come to mind.
In talking to my new translator, it was indicated that: the top third of the class was confident that they would be picked up by a large foreign national company where they would rise through the ranks to become an important part of the company’s future in China. This would include a generous compensation package, access to the corporate fast track and probably grueling hours for a number of years.
The middle third planed to continue their education abroad at the best academic institutions they could find and hope to be recruited at some point in the future, preferably by a company in a foreign country where life and work would be much more agreeable than the long hours and slow advancement that would be the norm at a large Chinese company.
The bottom third planned to join the government, not as an avocation, but as a career advancement strategy. Their hope is to use their educational credentials and the large network of other Beijing graduates to rise quickly to positions of power where they might be able to find an economic opportunity that would allow them to jump to the private sector.
Anecdotally, I was told, when a professor asked what the future held for them; the answers were confident but not overly patriotic. One individual, who indicated he was interested in public service as a means of serving his country, was derided as naive.
Interestingly, none felt that they owed anything to the system that had put them in Beijing. Rather, they seemed bitter that the government had not provided the kind of opportunities they believed they were entitled to after years sacrificed to studying for the college entrance exam.
I asked if it seemed ironic that, on one hand they had little desire to serve in the public sector, but believed it was the public sector’s duty to provide for them. The answer was that everything they had accomplished was according to the rules the government laid out, so having completed the maze, they were entitled to the proverbial cheese.
I asked if the system they were part of was capable of producing the technicians and leaders China needs as it enters the global stage. My translator’s sense was that this was not part of the students’ thought processes, and that in most instances they would rather go abroad, so the issue was moot.
I asked, given the global slowdown and the apparent long-term economic troubles, why did the class think there would be more opportunities in the West than in East? The answer was that while there would be issues at the middle and bottom of the Western economic pyramid, those who were able to get to the top would continue to enjoy massive power and wealth. They have a strong sense that having mastered China’s educational maze, they would be able to the same abroad.
I asked what particular things had they learned that qualified them to be productive parts of the organizations they wished to join. The answer was that they had mastered their studies, but that these areas were not stressed by their professors. Most classes consisted of lectures, with no opportunity for questions. Study was a solitary affair involving cramming all of the information from their textbooks and lectures in preparation for regurgitating on the day of the test. Knowledge and the ability to calculate answers using the formulas was stressed, rather than abstract problem-solving, and working in teams was not part of the curriculum.
I also asked my translator to meet me at an office across town. This turned out to be a matter of much consternation, as it was pointed out to me that no one had said exactly how to get there.
