China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master’s degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.
These are real cases in a struggling economy - and it is not hard to find more like them.
I don’t know that this is a bad thing, firstly the people themselves have richer intellectual lives because of it. Society is similarly enriched by extension and the country has a reserve pool of highly educated people it can draw upon as needed. There are only so many academic jobs available at any time but providing for and allowing everyone access to higher education is utopian and to be commended. It shows good planning for an ever more technical world.
Was coming to say this.
It’s a very… anglo conservative view to see education as a financial investment to get a job (and a working class person with an education as a waste of resources).
There’s an argument to be made about the labor market in China and how its working class is remunerated in an economy designed for cheap exports, but this framing is probably not it.
So you’re trying to tell me that the Chinese don’t see education as a financial investment and they just do it because it’s cool?
I’m not Chinese, so I can’t answer that.
I can tell you that’s absolutely not how or why I got my own degree. For which I paid barely anything, so hard to picture it as an investment. And it didn’t seem to be much of an “investment” for my classmates, many of whom paid nothing or were paid to do it.
We did think it was cool, though. Got to meet very smart people, both as professors and as classmates, some of whom I keep in touch to this day. Got to learn stuff I hadn’t even considered and access technical means I couldn’t have afforded otherwise. Zero regrets, even if my degree is only very tangentially related to my current job.
So… does that answer the question?
Sorry, but that’s just an absolutely snobbish way of looking at education.
Of course it’s an investment, you spent years of your life, took exams, wrote theses, sat in boring lectures because a person in their late teens and early 20s has nothing better to do than that? Yeah, sorry, that’s bullshit and you know it.
In some countries you don’t pay for education and many people absolutely love the lectures. You can study something because you love the subject. I myself enjoyed every single lecture I had and I often attended even lectures that I didn’t need in my curriculum, just for the delight of learning things. I understand there are people that study just to get a degree and employability and don’t really like their specialisation that much. That’s ok. But studying what you’re passionate about can be very fulfilling and it’s ok too, nothing snobbish about it.
And that is utter bullshit.
You can’t be that dense to seriously say you enjoyed every single lecture. That’s a lie, and you know it.
BTW, I’m from one of those “some countries”. And no, nobody, not a single person enjoyed everything. That’s not how reality works.
Who are you trying to impress here?
I’m just telling you about my anecdotal experience. You don’t have to believe me. It changes nothing - I loved my lectures to bits. For me, it was such an improvement from high school where I was often bored! At uni, I studied what I was really interested in and even could choose from different lectures. Not every lecturer was good, so I sometimes got bored because of that, but not because I wouldn’t like the subjects they were teaching - I enjoyed every bit of information I learned about at uni. I’m sorry it was so different for you that you can’t believe this could be real for someone.
Edit: I think I found a better way to explain myself: Imagine a nerd learning all the nerd stuff. That was me.
