China Speakers Bureau: Room for improvement in China's education

Shaun Rein by Fantake via Flickr

Education is lagging in China, warn Shaun Rein, who sees a country that is too content with its current achievements and stalls much needed reforms, he tells in Forbes.
Some of the faculty are becoming world class and much money is being spent, but that is not enough, it has to deliver graduates that can Chinese editions of Google and Apple:

By that measure, China's universities aren't succeeding. Too many multinational corporations can't find enough highly skilled white-collar workers in the country. In interviews my firm, theChina Market Research Group, conducts every year with senior executives at foreign companies in China, we hear a common complaint that younger workers just don't think analytically enough, despite being intelligent and earnest. It's incredible, when you consider that the number of university graduates has risen from 1 million a year a decade ago to more than 6 million this year.

Too little has changed for the majority of China's university students, Rein writes:

Finally, China's universities should make more effort to teach students to think critically. Too much learning is done by rote, and by taking in lectures and reading assignments with little or no discussion. Too many classes are graded solely on the basis of large multiple-choice exams, and there is little classroom interaction.

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Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your conference, do get in touch. Rein also contributed to our recently released book A Changing China.