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do unit students work hard??

927 (11 posts) • +1

I do think it's a meaningless question for an university teacher.In China,any college weather it is good or not all try to teach student well.But the current situation is that each student just finished a very long and very stressful school career before unversity.When students finally get into college,they will feel that a heaven appears but the fact is the students just arrive in a place where they learn a really useful knowlege.Without parents' and teachers' day-by-day warning,an undergraduate student can only learn by his own consciousness.The unfortunate truth is only 10% students even less can be in control of themselves so that they can get better education than others.In university,a student work hard or not depend on himself not on teacher or school.There are about 80% students waste 2 or 3 years on other things such as palying games,having fun with friends and joining in association activities.And in the last 1 or 2 years,they begin to study very hard to pass the final examination.Generally,most of them can get a graduation certificate.And the remaining 10%,I think they just give up studying and they only dawdle.

Alien (3819 posts) • 0

@927: I wonder how often local undergraduate university students really get interested in their subjects, or are inspired by teachers. When I was an undergraduate university student I had better- than-average marks, but I wasn't really good - I got very interested in some courses, largely thanks to good teachers, but if the teacher himself was not particularly interesting I didn't get interested and perhaps didn't work very hard in that particular course. It was only several years later, when I had been away from university, that I really became deeply interested in certain things, and when I went back to study at a postgraduate level I worked very hard, read everything even suggested about my subject, whether I thought the particular professor was interesting or not. And this had little to do with any hope of, or primary interest in, getting a good job later, etc. - it was a matter of real enthusiasm for learning what I wanted to know, for its own sake.
Two things: first, in my experience anyway, many undergraduate students (such as myself) seemed to require a really good professor before he/she could get interested in the subject matter; this is largely about the immaturity of undergrad students, and also because 20-year-olds have plenty of other things to think about - only later I found that certain fields of study were, to me, fascinating, at which point I would do a very great deal of work whether the instructor was interesting or not.
My impression is that, thanks to China's examination-driven educational system and the emphasis on future career and money-making (not that these are absent in other countries), Chinese students are perhaps better than I was at forcing themselves to do the required work because they want to pass the exams; but I wonder how often students are really inspired by their instructors, or the material that they must learn.
It's not everybody who is going to, or needs to, get deeply interested in academic material, but some sorts of knowledge and thinking are necessary for most people if society is going to work well, in China or anywhere. Who, or what, is at fault here - or is there no problem, or is no one at fault? Anyway, what could or should be done? Opinions?

michael2015 (784 posts) • 0

@"927
Thanks for your input (although not really within the scope of the topic). I'm glad to hear students take the time to enjoy college life after 12+ years of continuous inhuman studying.

@alien
We're old. Millenials are rather "different". They seek shorter term satisfaction and generally aren't willing to invest in longer-term projects.

GoK Moderator (5096 posts) • 0

I think that one big difference here, is that the universities are morel likely to find ways to pass an undergraduate student, except for those universities with international standing (Peking, Tongji, Fudan, etc).

If there is a real threat of being kicked out, then students are more likely to knuckle down on their own. In the UK about 25% of students leave after one year, many being asked to go by the university.

As I have written on another thread, Chinese academics do complain about students' lack of work/study ethic. In one Kunming University's satellite college, I was asked not to fail any of my students, including one who got 9%. No realistic threat of realistic sanctions means low motivation and interest. In one university, I even had one student tell me that I must give her 92%, as she needed the grades to go to Cambridge.
As an aside, one other cause for lack of interest, perhaps 927 and others can confirm this is still the case, the university will choose the major for the student. Places on courses are allocated by administration and many students are not on a major they would have chosen themselves. Out of 60 Foreign Trade majors who attended my classes, only 4 were in the least bit interested in the subject/field.
I have had high school students that were overworked, but I have never had a university student that seemed overworked.

Alien (3819 posts) • 0

Not sure if this is to the point, but I've also heard that the idea of university in Japan is also 'Hard in, easy out' (i.e., easy to graduate) - or at least that it was some years ago.

vicar (817 posts) • +3

Not over worked rather overwhelmed with the task of having to think independently having just graduated from total teacher/textbook orientated classes that only ever prepared them to pass tests. Left brain scholastics being the intention. The universities would be out of business if all realistically accurate grades were given.

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