The Chinese Student - American College Cash Cow?

At the beginning of the week, I went to visit another school in Shanghai, a very famous school that caters almost solely to Chinese students but administers the IB curriculum, the SAT and the TOEFL in preparation for North American (and a very small number of Australian and British) Colleges and Universities:  Shanghai World Foreign Language Academy.  The academy is the brainchild of businessman Wang Junjin, chairman of the JuneYao Group, whose personal philosophy you can read about here. JuneYao is a huge Chinese corporation that owns a big domestic airline, food services (they were a concessions supplier to both the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai World Expo) and is currently in partnership with Disney to bring Disneyland to Shanghai next year.  They are investing in what they call "Chinese-American" education, which they feel will pay off in the long run.  Their school is brand new, a sparkling building only a few years old, that makes DaJing look like a Soviet-era dump (which it isn't, by the way!)

Shanghai World Foreign Language Academy

I think the tuition for this school is around 10,000 USD a year, which isn't really that much compared to, say, Northwest School.  Sharron tells me it's about average for international schools in China - it might even be on the low side.  But it's a "long term investment" for the JuneYao company, and eventually they expect to see a profit.  I asked Mr. Luo and the other DaJing teachers why a big Chinese corporation would want to invest in a school.  They all thought maybe it was for publicity, for gaining more investments from the parents of the kids who were sent here.  Lots of Chinese parents want an "American education" for their kids, but they either can't afford to send them all the way across the ocean to schools like mine, or they think their kids are too young to go that far away from them for so long.  I tend to agree, honestly.  It boggles my mind how the parents of my ESL kids can send their kids that far away from home for four years. 

IB Banner outside the school

The Chinese education system is very different from the American (at least private) or International school system.  There is a focus on "getting the right answer," however you do that.  There are a lot of blanks to fill in, a lot of things to memorize and regurgitate, a lot of multiple choice type questions.  At many American independent schools, the focus is more on the process of learning, teaching kids to "think and act with integrity" and gain "global perspective."  Yes, I stole those from Northwest's mission statement, but you can look at any independent school in our association and see similar ideas. Independent schools are always talking about "experiencing education" and "creating lifelong learners."  Here's the sign proclaiming the International Baccalaureate program, with the word "Inquirers" first.  To me, an inquirer is someone who wants to know an answer for himself or herself, who asks questions, assesses sources of information and, most of all, someone who develops a unique perspective on the information based on a combination of experience, creativity and some sort of value system. At Northwest, we even add the aspiration that students will believe they can have a positive impact on the world.  This can be a challenge for Chinese students, because there is so much pressure on them to "know the right answer" and not to fail.  And it can be dangerous, in China, to speak up with real integrity or to try to make an impact if your opinions go against the government.  The Chinese concept of wu wei, or going with the flow, is very much practiced here.  The JuneYao group may praise the spirit of entrepreneurship, but their government (that is, Party) connections have gotten them a long way.

Last year, the SAT scores from SWFLA were thrown out because of widespread cheating.  Apparently, agents sell the exam answers from across the ocean, since the time zones are so different.  Students in Mainland China can purchase the entire set of answers to gain a perfect score on the SAT or even the TOEFL.  Since the test is not administered in China, students must travel to Hong Kong, Taiwan or father afield to take the SAT, and many students will go to a country like Vietnam or Cambodia, where it is apparently easy to purchase the answers, and/or have someone take the test for you.  Bribes are rife, and it's pretty easy to obtain a perfect score if you have the cash and the wherewithal.  This year, one of the teachers told me, the answers were leaked again.  She lectured her students again and again about integrity and honesty, but still this kind of cheating happened.  It's just more important to have the right answers than it is to be honest.  At lunch, I heard other anecdotes: students paying agents to write superbly crafted college entrance essays for them, thousands of dollars in bribes to college admissions officials, students purchasing answers and projects and essays from the internet - of course, these are just anecdotes, but the teachers were full of them. Because the emphasis in the Chinese education system has been on memorization and regurgitation, there is always a "right answer" to be found - and in many cases, purchased.  In the words of Deng Xiaoping, "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice."

Over the past three years, more than 8000 Chinese students were expelled from American universities and colleges, for plagiarism, cheating and poor academic performance.  Did they get a refund on their tuition?  I think not.  Read the Newsweek article here Chinese students want to go to college in the US, but oftentimes their high schools can't prepare them adequately for the language barrier they face, or the cultural differences between the two education systems. Tuition for international students at independent schools in the US (mine included) is much more than the 10,000 dollars per year they spend at  SWFLA, and more than the tuition that "domestic" students pay at the same school.  There is rarely financial aid for these wealthy Chinese students.  Many American independent high schools could fill the entire school with Chinese foreign students.  I know that at my school, we try as hard as we can to have some diversity in the international student body, but it's a challenge - a vast majority come from greater China.  Interestingly, the students who speak the best English are the ones involved in extracurricular activities like sports and community service, where they have the opportunity to really talk and listen to native English speakers.

I enjoyed the time I spent observing classes at the SWFLA.  It reminded me a lot of the ESL Humanities classes I teach at Northwest, nothing like the classes at DaJing.  Class sizes were small, with 10-12 students in each.  Although there were some remnants of the Chinese education system, such as uniforms and the flag-raising ceremony, there were no calisthenics, no rote memorization and repetition, no kids sitting bent over in rows with their heads down.  Teachers were making appointments with students to have writing conferences.  Students were giving oral presentations, making posters, learning about power structures and reading American short stories like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."  They were following the IB curriculum.

The students I talked to wanted to go to art schools like Parsons in New York or small liberal arts colleges like Clark University in Oregon.  I saw application materials and posters for places like Penn State and Western Michigan University on the bulletin boards.

And yet, according to some of the teachers I talked to, it was all somewhat of a facade.  Yes, the kids were going through the motions of an American-style education, but they were not learning for the sake of learning, not growing personally or intellectually, but just waiting to get through as best they could (some kids' English was great; others' was almost nonexistent) until they made it into the American university system.  But then what?  Will they have been prepared well enough, or will they just be dumped into an apartheid-type system where all the Chinese students hang together (like they do at the University of Washington), speak Chinese to each other, and try to get their American college degree so they can enter the world of business?  Or worse, be expelled from the college they select because they are not prepared academically?

I asked Ben Lee about this, and he said no Northwest School graduate from our international program has ever been expelled from college for cheating or poor performance.  I do think we do a pretty darned good job of teaching kids about academic integrity, about the whole person, about what education means to us, even though not all of their parents may understand.  I remember when a former student of mine was made captain of the Basketball Team and a student RA at the dorm.  He was very proud, as were his teachers and classmates.  But when he called his parents, they just wanted to know how his grades were.  There is still a huge cultural divide in terms of education between the US and China, despite the inroads we are making.  On the other hand, parents like the Mas (with whom I spent the weekend) are enthusiastic about the type of education we offer at Northwest and other independent schools.  They say that their son was prepared very well for his small liberal arts college and is loving it.  He is taking a variety of classes, including a debate class where he had to do a lot of  research and construct his own arguments.  It is his favorite class and he is getting an A so far.  They are very pleased, not only at the grades, but at the independent, creative thought he is displaying and the enjoyment he is getting from the learning.  They get it.

I just wonder sometimes about conflict of interest.  Chinese students aren't eligible for financial aid, either at independent high schools or in colleges, so they are an important source of income for the school.  It might be tempting to be complacent about letting kids just "pass through" when they are such a source of income, not to care about them as individuals.  I'm not saying anyone does this, (although some may remember a comment that was made a looong time ago about "warm bodies") but it seems a shame that these kids end up unprepared for the American system sometimes.  China is such a gold mine right now (even with a slight downturn in the economy), and no matter how much you talk about values and integrity and character education, in a capitalist system, making money is usually going to be number one, for both the Chinese and the schools who seek to educate them.  Of course, when I was discussing this with the SWFLA teachers, they said this sort of money-driven private education is nothing new; just look at the way many independent schools and colleges have handled terrible students whose parents donated a lot of money.

This past week, Presidents Ma and Xi met and shook hands.  It was a momentous occasion for both countries after years of frosty relations.  And guess what people in Taiwan look forward to most?  Investing in Chinese businesses! 1.3 billion people to buy their products!  Wait till Disney comes here.  There is such an huge (and still largely untapped) source of revenue in China - while Americans were celebrating Veterans Day, in China we were celebrating "singles day," the biggest online shopping day in the history of the world.  Singles Day makes Black Friday look like pretty small potatoes.

After visiting Shanghai, I think it's more important than ever to have Chinese students in my classes.  I think for the most part we do a good job of opening their eyes to a lot of realities they haven't known before. Even if we don't teach them anything else, we are at least trying to teach environmental stewardship. Every day, more than 5 million tons of raw sewage and industrial waste are dumped into the mouth of the Yangtze River.  Every. Day. When I think of education that will "pay off in the long run," I think of education about this kind of issue.

Moreover (to use a word that Chinese students use all the time in essays), our mission works because we are trying to educate all the students, domestic and international, in the same way.  Which is worse, living under the sway of a government that curtails your free speech and free thought?  Or living under a government that supposedly allows free speech and free thought, and not exercising that freedom?  What's the good of being able to question the government, being able to participate in the political process, to peaceably assemble, if nobody does it because they are too busy buying a bunch of crap online after watching commercial television?  

After leaving the SWFLS, I took the subway over to the old French Concession, one of the most trendy shopping areas in the city, but also the site of the original founding of the Chinese Communist Party.  I visited the former home of Zhou EnLai, with its Spartan furniture and walls bare of any decadent capitalist decorations.

 Comrade Zhou carried the same small suitcase with him for 20 years.  It's in this picture, if you look carefully, on the little table next to his bed.  He carried all his stuff in that one suitcase, and never bought a new one.  Walking out of his house, just a few blocks away, I came to the most high end shops, the most expensive restaurants, slim young men in Gucci loafers lounging with their cellphones, smart coiffed women having cocktails, hotel spas promising "princess pampering" treatments.   What would Premier Zhou think of  "Singles Day?"  I can't even imagine.  The school Zhou went to, however, Nankai Middle School, was a very unusual school in China, modeled after Phillips Exeter Academy in the US.  He traveled in Europe and at one point supposedly attempted to enroll in Edinburgh University.  Did his exposure to non-traditional education help him to become one of the most influential (and most beloved) figures in the Chinese revolution?  I don't know, but one of his famous slogans is inscribed on a wall here in Shanghai: "Study for the Rise of China."

I assume this is what Wang Junjin has in mind when he talks about "long term investment."  And I hope (and believe) that even as our students do this, we can help them to graduate with global perspective, enable them to think and act with integrity, and to have a positive impact on both their home countries and the world we all live in.