education

Guest blog: Chinese student questions about nCoV

I want to say my deep thanks for today’s guest blogger, who looks at the questions that Chinese middle school students have about nCoV in China:

Rachael G.

Middle School Teacher

Hangzhou, China

Resident in China since 2017

My CoN experience started prior to leaving Hangzhou in January. Reports were filtering out over WeChat concerning a virus in Wuhan similar to SARS. While I wasn’t overly concerned, I did pay attention to the news as I had been planning to travel to China prior to the SARS epidemic and had also been in the Middle East a year or so after the MERS outbreak. Suffice to say, these diseases were on my radar.

While visiting Portland during Chinese New Year, I was kept abreast of the situation by my school, the US Consulate in Shanghai, and news coming out of China and the Western news media. As the days progressed, my concerns grew and led to questions as to whether I would be able to return let alone whether I should return. After assessing the Chinese response to the outbreak, I made the decision to return based on many factors, including the seriousness with which the Chinese government was working to mitigate the spread and help Wuhan.

I am neither naïve nor uneducated. I know that my access to the internet and information is more limited in China due to a variety of factors I will not be addressing here. What I’d like to focus on at present is my students’ questions in response to the CoN. I teach grades 7 through 9 at a private school here in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. Our students come from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds as entrance to the school is based on entrance exams and not the ability to afford tuition.

Prior to my return, my middle school head of department sent out these questions that the students were asking in regards to the Con outbreak.

Student Questions:

  1. Why can’t the medical supplies get to the hospital?
  2. Where does my money go?
  3. Why can’t we go out for walks or to appreciate nature in unoccupied areas?
  4. Did the closure of Wuhan really isolate the disease? Is closure good or bad?
  5. How can Chinese people help during this time?
  6. What will be the impact on those who left the city hours before or after the closure?
  7. Should the city have been closed or not?
  8. Should foreign countries open their doors to China during this time?
  9. How can we continue eat wild animals without getting sick?
  10. Why did it spread quicker than SARS?
  11. Why are there so many false statements being circulated?
  12. How will this affect our country’s economy and international status after it is fully resolved?
  13. How many people are likely to lose their jobs after this?

These questions led me to think about what is being said on the media the students have access to, what their parents might be sharing, the freedom they felt in inquiring, and their understanding of how the CoN affects not only themselves but their country as a whole and its place in the global community. These questions posed by 12-14 year old students range from concrete to abstract thinking.

Our biggest issue at present aside from fighting the CoN is fighting erroneous information. My students are asking in-depth questions. The country is fighting rumors and inflammatory news reporting, none of which help people get the accurate information they need to avoid transmission or understand the situation. This is not unique to China, as we see it in the Western world as well. Our biggest obstacles are fear and greed.

The cost of education globally

Years ago I lectured in Germany at the University of Trier. While I was there these German students asked me about the cost of tuition at my school, a public institution in Oregon. At the time, my university had by far the lowest tuition rate in the state. But when I told my students what a year at my institution would cost students in tuition they were horrified. Many of them started laughing. They all gathered around me to tell me how outrageous that charge was.

In Germany at that time (about a decade ago) individual states set tuition policies. In most states tuition was free. In others there would be very low; perhaps as little as two hundred dollars. Of course the university was starved for funds. But the students were exceptional, and received an immense amount of hands-on time with their faculty. The program was rigorous, even though funding levels were much less that an American institution.

Now when I talk to my American students the subject of their student debt is always there. It shapes the majors they choose, and their career plans afterwards. Twenty years ago I would ask students in my “Introduction to International Studies” class what career path they preferred. Ninety percent of my students or more would raise their hands when I said “non-profits.” Only one or two would say business. Now that is reversed, and easily ninety percent of my students want a career in international business when they come into my introductory class. I think that is wonderful, and I want to support their career aspirations any way I can. I supervise internships, may connections to local businesses, and encourage students to do a business minor. But I wish that the choices that students made reflected their personal interests as much as their familial and financial pressures.

It is possible to create a different system. In Quebec, Canada, the in-province tuition at Concordia University would be under $3,000 a year U.S. But even that is higher than many European institutions. James Melville recently tweeted a video about how higher education is free in Denmark, and some other European nations.

I have some colleagues who hate when I talk about university finances, because they say it is part of the “business model” for higher education. There is some truth to what they say. But it’s also the case that the way we offer education in the United States imposes incredibly high costs on both our students and their families. We need to rethink our education system from the ground up. And both state and federal governments have to stop the disinvestment in higher education that has taken place over the last twenty years. At many private universities in the United States tuition alone costs over $50,000 a year. That’s without books, fees, room and board. So it might cost a student $70,000 a year to go to a private institution.

Teaching at an institution that has a tuition perhaps less than a sixth of that cost, I know that the private institutions aren’t six times better. But higher education is not a rational market because parents often feel that they cannot discuss the cost of education with their children. At the same time the perceived differences between universities is so great that students fear going to a lower level state institution. Of course, these perceptions are often wildly inaccurate. But they reflect inequalities in funding that have been taking place over a long time.

The higher education system in the United States is highly unequal, and provides a massive disincentive to education for lower-income families. Of course, student loans help many students complete college. But these funds not only saddle these students with immense debt, but also create a huge debt bubble. Ultimately, the loan-based system is part of the problem, as it papers over the fact that the business model for higher education is bankrupt. We need as a society to create institutions that charge students a fraction of the current amount. That will entail more online programs and offerings. But it should be done with tenured faculty, who are paid a living wage. It should not be done on the backs of adjuncts, who have no job security and often teach at multiple institutions for miserable wages. Universities have to drive down costs. But I don’t think that there is any way for tuition in the U.S. to drop dramatically without returning to the funding levels for state institutions that we saw in the 1980s.

Denmark, Germany and other European nations offer higher education for free. Their schools create a highly educated citizenry and workforce, which benefits the entire society. How high do tuition costs in the United States have to go before parents and students say enough; we have to make a fundamental change? What will be most difficult is that Wall Street makes immense profits off of student loans, which have been securitized. So it will be a third rail, much like talking about the public option for health care.

When I first began my career, one of my colleagues in Joplin, Missouri told me that his student loan debts were greater than his mortgage. That was in 1995. I can only imagine the pressure that today’s graduates may face. The United States doesn’t need to become Denmark, but can we find some inspiration and ideas from these models?

If you are interested in hearing more about global topics, please listen to my podcast, Dispatch 7. You can find it on Spotify here, or by searching whichever podcast platform you prefer.

Shawn Smallman, 2019

 

International Students avoiding US

International Students. By Vrenibean (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
One aspect of cultural globalization is the movement of students amongst countries. Over the last few years I have noticed a strong trend as more of my undergraduate students ask me for letters of recommendation to apply to graduate programs in Latin America, Europe, South Africa and New Zealand. In part, I believe that the rising relative cost of an education in the United States drives this trend. At the same time, just under a quarter of the students in our International and Global Studies department at Portland State University are international students. In my program, a discussion concerning migration will be shaped by the fact that there is often someone in the class who is either a refugee, or the child of refugees. This exchange is part of what makes higher education in the United States a cosmopolitan world.

I am very concerned that the travel ban and anti-immigrant rhetoric in the United States changes how our country is perceived as a place to study on a global level. If students are uncertain that they will be welcomed, why would they apply here instead of the University of Victoria in Canada or the University of Manchester in Britain? Sadly, we seem to be already seeing declining international enrollments at my institution, as this article by Stephanie Saul in the New York Times discusses.

Shawn Smallman, 2017

Online Education and Refugees

I love online teaching, which I believe not only promotes learner autonomy but also helps institutions to fulfill their access mission. Gordon Brown argues in a recent opinion piece that online technology also can be a key tool to allow people in conflict zones to receive education. Of course, this argument presupposes many things, such as participants’ access not only to technology, but even to electricity. It also perhaps assumes that it’s possible to take valuable but small projects and to scale them. Still, at a time when Middle Eastern governments are struggling to offer education to a huge population of Syrian refugees, Brown’s argument is intriguing.

Update: a student in my Digital Globalization recently read this article. They thought that it was hard to believe that there would wifi in the refugee camps, or that migrants would have ready access to mobile phones or tablets. They also thought that most refugees would have more pressing needs, such as access to food. In sum, there are reasons to be skeptical about this idea, until it can be demonstrated at some scale.

Shawn Smallman, 2016

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