The Independence of Education

A recent article in The Economist July 15th argues that the independence for schools has worked in the last decade. It studied charter schools who are publicly funded, but largely independent of the local educational bureaucracies and the teachers' union, and concluded that these schools, controversial as they are, have been functioning very well in several states with "right" monitoring, regulation and safeguard. Similar result was found in Britain, whose "Free Schools", though too young to be judged, have improved the results of their GCSEs (the exams pupils take at 15 or 16) twice as fast as others. 


"Right" is a tricky word. People are always told that they'd get good results if they get the way right. But here the author made it quite clear that "right" means independence: the independence for schools to allocate regional educational resources efficiently by closing down the worst-performing ones, and the support from local governments which helps schools resist the pressures from teachers's union and protect the independent decisions of the schools, and of course the maintenance of self-discipline of local governments to stay away from inappropriate monitoring or regulation which undermines schools' independence. When the governments keep hands off education, market will get things right. Even though education does not provide identical products due to different teaching styles and textbooks, the results from different schools are still comparable by standards such as exam results and student ratings. In this sense, charter schools provide some ideas on how to improve public education, especially for the poor population.


On contrary, another report on university/tertiary education in China revealed that the number of Master candidates in China has doubled in the past decade but their employment rates after graduation are now lower than Bachelor's. The reporter argued that the low employment rate of this well educated population is due to a continuous enrollment expansion, which was not supported by any research but an arbitrary order from the government. I assume when the Ministry of Education made this regrettable decision, it could either be the result of an unrealistic expectation for the growing of labor market in China in the coming decade, or the result of rushing to complete some "political achievements" of certain ministerial leaders. Regardless of which motivation it is, this arrogant and ignorant decision costs thousands of hundreds of Chinese youth their time, efforts and the worst, their hope. When the economy is opening, with commodities and money flowing, my government is still trying to plan the labor supply. How desperately stupid!


Educators (I mean real educators, not those government officials who pretend to know education) understand what the market needs, and what education should be provided to students. But if schools and universities are not independent, and unable to decide its own curriculum, let alone its opening or chose-up, students are prevented from learning what they want, and teachers are not able to teach what they are good at. How ridiculous it is that in the world's second biggest economy, students in its top universities are still required to take courses on Mao Tse-tung Thoughts and Jiang Zemin's Three Representatives, whose only purpose it to keep them politically right. These are bad enough, I don't even want to bother talking about how much resource has been wasted in the erratic merging and splitting of universities and schools in the last half-century.

The M.P.A. program at Princeton, challenging as it is, did give me a flavor of independent education. Academia is independent of politics as professors make fun of political leaders, bankers, and even the public in the class, and so do we. Students are independent of the school as I was able to start a new course to my interests as long as I found a professor to teach it. Education is independent of ideologies as I was not obliged to take any course on "superiority of capitalism" to graduate (actually there is no such class). And the only non-independent thing is that the coursework is not independent of the real world, and I came across cases in which I could apply the skills acquired from the coursework. 


Enough complaints. I'm terribly sorry for Chinese students who are suffering from unnecessary suffers, me included. But you know, all men, good or evil, rarely treat their own children badly. So please take a quick look at where Chinese government officials and businessmen send their children for education, you'd understand what sort of education they really applaud and where is the best place for you to go as well.