I suppose he thinks education is a right! Goddam' bleedin' heart leftie!

Tonyoad, Haali is closer to what I meant. It is expensive commodities that favor the economic elite.

@Alien: What is your point? China has 9 years "free" education, the US 12 years. Where does the commodity issue come in?

The economic elite always have a favored economic position. This is more obvious in poor under developed countries.

The College Board said on Thursday that it canceled the administration of the SAT this Saturday at all 45 testing centers in China and Macau after the company learned some students were privy to the exam.

blogs.wsj.com/[...]

Things are getting tougher for the would be Chinese international student.

Commodity issue comes in in various ways - pretty obvious when we talk about special schools run privately to send kids abroad.

Your point about the economic elite is spot on!

Having taught at schools for the economic elites, yearly cost per student 100K¥ and up, it is clear that these programs transcend being a service and such education is a commodity. Sadly, most promoters, and many teachers, get caught up in the need to satisfy the consumer.

The need to generate revenues results in some pretty unethical practices and a pass them any way possible situation.

I taught at one school where the headmaster earned a PhD and lectured at Cambridge. He balanced education and the business to produce students more likely to succeed in Western universities. He makes a good living off economic elites and the students do well.

Well paid teachers, foreign and Chinese were paid the same, shared the experience of high standards and highly motivated parents and students.

The economic elites paid through the nose, but they could afford it.

Many students don't even know this but they have the option to choose from more languages (English, Japanese, German, French, Spanish) for the Gao Kao Unfortunately, most schools only offer English courses. Developing an access to a wider variety of languages would provide students with many more options worldwide.

Sorry wrong topic.

Totally off topic if you've got blinkered vision. Other languages need some attention to break away from the obsession with English speaking establishments and the competition to get in them it causes. It's not all ielts, toefl and sat out there. Many great opportunities for Chinese students learning any other language than English. And other than nnoble, I haven't seen any comments on here blaming the ones at fault and where the book stops for the poor quality of Chinese students abroad. You can blame the students, their parents, the fraudster schools all you like but at the end of the day it's the universities themselves that let them in in the first place. Maybe if they weren't so money driven and hell bent on getting Chinese students in cause they generate more cash than domestic and started turning them down after a simple assessment, people might start getting the idea

@vicar
American and British schools may be greedy.

But even in places where greedy schools are not an issue and when kiddo's have the right [and non fake] exams they still suck. It has to do with the way of learning and thinking. e.g. selfdirected learning.

Coz if the greed of schools is the main problem why suffer Chinese students all over the place, even in Germany, where your German level has to be close to genius, if you want to enroll into a university.

And there is no rotten Chinese middle man who can help you.

the language tests are all run by the state.

Note college is free, or dirt cheap in Germany and many other European countries.

For comparison.
when I enrolled into Chinese college my tuition fee was 1000% of a local student. A public university but a very specific course.

We got the worst teachers, a local student told us. They were sending SMS all day, didn't care about our progress. Only mocked the foreigners, xenophobic remarks, and abolutely no consultation unless we paid 400 RMB per 30min consultation.

Not surprisingly that was the foundation course, and you were required to stay in there for two years, otherwise you were not allowed to follow up any further course, in Universities all over China.

Foreign Uni. may be greedy but only a molecular fragment of the greed that persists in China. And at least in the West you may get the exact same treatment than local students get.

I don't think that they expel foreign students into special classes. So they can overprice the course and send in the worst teachers.

I get your point, I am also not a friend of greed [anywhere] but comparing something bad [West] with the worst [China].

Show me any course that is [relatively ; price/quality/value/job perspective after graduation] cheaper for foreign students in China than in the West.