Yao Zhang's Blog

Tiger Mothers and the Dictatorship of Talent

2011-11-15T12:07:00.001-05:00

[This is the final version published today on Hechinger Report's Lessons from Abroad. ]

Chinese mothers living in America are often torn over whether to send their children to schools that drill them in hopes of producing good test-takers, or to embrace a less rigid education. It’s a conflict that pits the cultural values shaped by the two-millennia-old Chinese exam system against the view that ultimately creativity leads to success.

The debate is evident in online forums for Chinese mothers, as they discuss the pros and cons of the so-called “tiger mother” approach to raising children: snuffing out a child’s desire for a normal social life—no sleepovers, play dates, school plays or sports, and certainly no computer games or TV—and an expectation of straight A+s on all tests. Recently, one of the leading forums, spurred on by a New York Times article, featured a debate about whether the Waldorf approach to education can produce “real tigers in the future.”

Waldorf schools, according to the description in The Times, emphasize teaching students through activities like knitting socks and slicing food while minimizing the use of computer devices and technology-assisted learning in their classrooms. This unique pedagogy is “focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans.” One parent, employed by a high-tech start-up, echoes this philosophy when explaining to The Times why he sent his three children to a Waldorf school: “Engagement is about human contact, the contact with the teacher, the contact with their peers.”

It is the key word “engagement” that interests me more than the debate over the plusses and minuses of educational technology. Because of an absence of engagement, China—the world’s largest educational system—faces great difficulties in fostering innovation. The United States will likely retain its strength as the world’s leader in innovation thanks to a system that builds upon this notion.

Last fall and spring, I gave an overview of China’s education system to a broad audience at the China Scope Conference at MIT and Columbia, focusing on China’s long history of using nothing but exam results to select bureaucrats and determine the size of cohorts—which resulted in tremendous competition for social mobility. Schooling became essentially a competition among families rather than individual students. All of this still holds true today. Chinese students—who are often treated like assembly-line products in schools that only teach to the test—graduate from college only to find themselves unemployed.

David Brooks of The New York Times wrote in 2007 that such problems were the result of a “dictatorship of talent.” Brooks made his observations during a trip to Shanghai, which last December attained the highest PISA scores in the world.

Brooks borrowed the concept of “meritocratic paternalism”—elites ruling a society can make the best decisions for their people, like fathers have traditionally done within families—from one of his Chinese friends who argued for and defended the advantages of the Chinese way, using examples of the country’s economic success over the last 30 years. Ironically, it is the same economic development that makes American education accessible and affordable for many Chinese families, who send their children to study in the United States to nurture the “merits” in them. Yet increasingly, the students returning to China take government jobs and become part of the Chinese elite rather than striking out as entrepreneurs. Their career paths might be a clear sign of how little U.S. education altered the deeply rooted Chinese philosophy in such students.

It is neither rare nor regrettable that many leading scholars who achieved great distinction in their fields have returned to China and become governmental officials. Internationally renowned mechanical engineer Dr. Wan Gang and economist Dr. Yi Gang—who now head China’s Ministry of Science and Technology and Bureau of Foreign Reserves, respectively—and many others have exhibited impressive leadership. However, more and more parents prefer to see their children earn $300 per month in bureaucratic government jobs (after they obtain degrees abroad) simply because of the stability—and likelihood of under-the-table benefits—that such positions afford.

We might all agree logically that it is next “to impossible for a top-down memorization-based elite to organize a flexible, innovative information economy, no matter how brilliant its members are.” Maybe a truly game-changing reform is to replace the “dictatorship of talent” with a “democracy of talent,” the center of which would emphasize engagement and peer interactions rather than obedience of fatherly know-it-all teachers. Efforts in this direction have been made by educators and policymakers in China since 1998, but students and parents have largely resisted the engagement, children-centered campaign. Instead, students and parents have doubled-down on the exam-centered approach. Chinese education companies such as the New Oriental Group, Ambow and Xue-Er have made huge revenues in the test-prep business driven students and parents desirous of higher scores.

The offspring of “tiger mothers” in China are not going to take over the world as some American parents have worried. American schools and parents have the upper hand. People in Silicon Valley have been truly driving innovation and the world’s economic growth. As long as we all pay attention to what they believe about education, the momentum—the continuous wave of creative ideas—will be sustained by the children who are in schools that foster their creativity. After all, the Valley’s success has grown out of a democracy of talent, so let us hope American schools—whether Waldorf or not—can keep students engaged in learning and critical thinking to maintain the seeds of success in tomorrow’s global competition.

Democracy of Talent?

2011-10-25T15:42:00.003-04:00

The discussion or rather self-reflections about the "tiger mothers" and "paper tiger kids" phenomena has never faded away from the headlines of Chinese expat forums. Recently, a hot debate on one the leading forums is whether the "Waldorf Approach" to education can make sure to produce "real tigers" in the future.

If you google "Waldorf education", you will notice a most-emailed-article on NYTimes this month. It is about one of Waldorf Schools, which is located in Silicon Valley, that emphasizes on teaching students knitting socks and fractioning cakes while minimizing the trace of computer devices and technology-assisted learning in their classrooms. This unique pedagogy is to "focus on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans." A Microsoft engineer-parent echoes with this philosophy when explaining why he sent his three children to Waldorf, "Engagement is about human contact, the contact with the teacher, the contact with their peers (computers are distractions)".

This article aroused wide disagreements among readers, which you can glance in the comment section. However, it is the core word, "engagement", that interests me more than the debates over the effects and potential harms of educational technology. Because the negligence of such a component is leading the world's largest educational system, China, to face great difficulties in fostering innovation; while the US will retain its strength as the world's innovation leader thanks to the system that builds upon this notion.

Last fall and this spring, I gave an overview about China's education system to a broad audience at the China Scope Conference at MIT and Columbia. While there were many issues to cover, in the talks, I focused on China's thousand-years-old exam history to select bureaucrats, the size of cohorts and thus tremendous competition for upward mobility, and essentially a competition for life among families other than individual students, which all hold true till today. And those issues, by the end of day when a Chinese student graduates from college, unfortunately means unemployment and un-employability of the "assembly-line products" through schools teaching for tests.

Op-ed columnist David Brooks carefully coined those problems as "The Dictatorship of Talent". Although his observation was done in 2007 during a trip to Shanghai, the city which topped PISA's test earlier this year, my presentations indeed walked through the same issues as those mentioned in his article.

One of the issues that tearing the Chinese expat mothers living in America apart is whether to send their kids to a school that drills students heavily to prepare them as good test-takers, or to embrace a Waldorf-like schooling. And this mental conflict rises between the cultural genes shaped in the 2000-years-old Chinese exam system, and to the view that creativity will lead to ultimate success in information area.

Brooks borrowed the concept "meritocratic paternalism" from one of his Chinese friends who argued for and defended the advantages of Chinese way, using many evidences of economic success of the country in recent thirty years. It is the same economic development that turns American education accessible and affordable for many Chinese families, who send their children to study here to nurture "merits" in them; at the same time, the increasing wave of students returning to China and becoming part of the "paternalism elites" of Chinese society might be a clear indication of how little the American education shifted the deep-rooted Chinese philosophy in those students.

So all of us might agree logically that it is close to impossible for a top-down memorization-based elite to organize a flexible, innovative information economy, no matter how brilliant its members are. Maybe a truly game-change reform is to replace the "dictatorship of talent" with a "democracy of talent", the center to which is the emphasizing of "engagement and peer interaction", not "obeying to a father-like, know-all teacher". Efforts have been made by educators and policy makers in China on this direction since 1998, but it was the students and parents that were resisting the "engagement, children-centered" campaign. Instead, students even worked harder ever since then with exam-centered approach.

In other worlds, kids of "tiger mothers" in China are not going to take over the world as American parents worried. The card of the game is at the hand of American schools and parents. People in Silicon Valley have been truly driving the innovation and growth of our world, so as long as we all pay attention to what they believe about education, the momentum, the continues spell of creative ideas coming up from the Valley will be carried on by the kids who are in schools that preserve their creativity. After all, the Valley's success has grown out of democracy of talent, so let us hope American schools, whether Waldorf ones or public ones, can keep students engaged in learning and critical thinking.

Where is the next Steve Jobs?

2011-10-07T23:43:00.004-04:00

The whole world is mourning the passing-away of the great visionary of our times. While Apple's stockholders wondering about the company's future, people are trying to measure the impact of the loss of Jobs from different perspectives (many articles on this topic on major media).

Joy Chen, former vice mayor of Los Angles, who is now a head-hunter and has been maintaining a good blog site to teach young people about how to cultivate the best out of themselves and prepare them for global competition. Ms. Chen's new blog raised a good call with such a title, "Now Your Turn, Create Something", to guide the younger generation to see how we can learn from the achievement of Steve Jobs.

Although she mentioned that "creativity is any act of creating something new", which I strongly agree, I think we could never underestimate the harms of a rigid, exam-oriented education system could do to our children, current students and future builders of the world.

Prof. Wadhwa just did his testimony at Capital Hill on how to stop the brain drain that US is facing potentially. The war for not only "the next Steve Jobs" but the next patches of minds that can foster the emergence of great ideas like PC, iPad, etc. is now. Hopefully we can see some interesting government responses from China/India about the new labor and immigration related bills here in the US, which might show us some hints about the future map of global distribution of "intelligence treasures" like Steve-Jobs-es.

Posts to come...

2011-09-19T23:09:00.003-04:00

Recently, from a book talk at B&N's on "The Submission" by NYTimes regional director, to the speech of the designer, Michael Arad, of the World Trade Center's memorial site at Columbia's Avery Hall, till today's Cafe Social Science series at the PicNic by Prof. Peter Bearman on documentary collective memories about 9-11 with oral history method, and many other events, I have had several thoughts that I would like to share here from my own perspective as we co-lived through this period of history. Will write on:

- The day of 9-11, very last day of the military camp for freshmen of my college and very first day of our college life.

- Reactions of my fellow students in China on that day, and now after 10 years, their changes.

- How the event reshaped many values about life, belief, peace, rights, tolerance, globalization, etc. of the younger generation of China.

- Some impacts noticeably different of 9-11 on my generation in China and my peers in the US and what it means for our world today.

A little piled up with my research projects but I have had so many thoughts lining up in my mind to be written, stay tuned.

Imagination Beyond Tumbling Markets

2011-08-09T22:28:00.005-04:00

Stock markets globally had experienced the most volatile week recently since 2008. You can almost smell the fear on the real street: the fear from a blurred vision about the world's future, and biased frustration from the weak economic indicators.

Sometimes, we need a little reaffirmed confidence about our species' boundless imagination: the eternal ignite for growth.

Like this one--- HBR's frequent contributor, life science philosopher & entrepreneur, Juan Enriquez, in his talk at TED on Genomics and the great scientific economic, public-health, cultural potentials there if our societies master the new language about life and if we accumulate more knowledge about the coding embedded in genomes.

Another really good episode I found on TED today was a speech by Jay Walker, the "Edison in the new era" and founder of priceline.com and a series of great ventures. His introduction on the wonderful personal collection in his "Library of Human Imagination" definitely is not a placebo but a vivid and powerful evidence of the ability of human capacity for continuous advancement, as long as we keep embracing what he believes: there is infinite power in our brain.

Hands Off Please, Mr. Minister

2011-08-05T11:56:00.005-04:00

After following @USEdGov for a while, I noticed that Mr. Duncan and his colleagues travel a lot, as much as their counterparts in China, I would say. You can check here to see all the visits of federal edu administrators national trips and their agenda.

Now let us do a little mind work, imagine the settings below for a new trip Mr. Duncan has to do:

1. The US Ed Min decided to do a national evaluation of all higher ed institutions' qualities (on teaching, researching, internal management, services, etc.). All institutions, private or public, 2 year or 4 year, on/offline, all mandated to participate in this campaign and the funding and federal aid their students can get depends on their final rankings.

2. Given the funding incentive above, all institutions are "forced" to respond to this upcoming check.

3. A committee is formed at the federal level with "experts" on educational assessment, they will be traveling around and check out each institute's status.

Now, assume there is a university X, they have 3 different dining halls on campus, all outsourced to professional catering services, all priced their average meal at $5. This is what is gonna happen when a ranking-related "national check" is coming:

1. Someone heard that the baseline score on "services to students/ dining" is $3/meal available on campus, the more expensive the meal, the less score you get.

2. After learning about the above "insider information" about the benchmark for ranking, University X decided to end the contract with one of the three catering companies, so that they take one dining hall back for the university to run on their own. They hired staff, purchased equipment, assigned accounting/cleaning/security services. --> all action is to CREATE a "$3/meal" dining hall available on campus.

3. But the $3/meal dining hall's capacity is limited, it can't host every student. So the university assigned that only Class 2008 and 2009 with their ID could dine there, other students have to go to the other two $5/meal dining places.

4. As every student might respond, they will sneak into the cheap dining hall with borrowing a friend's ID, or "bribe" the security guy "Sam" who checks IDs. As long as Sam accepts bribes less than $2, students will be motivated to do so.
--> After a month, this dining hall is over-crowded.

5. So the university decided to add one more security guy to work with Sam together, to double check each other's performances. Gradually, they became friends, and students bribe them together.... Then, the 3rd, the 4th, 5th..... security personnels.

6. Eventually, this dining hall is providing meals with a very bad quality that is less than $3 value, and the university is paying a very high operational cost on it, and no student is happy with it about its restrictions on fair access, its quality, etc.

Now, imagine that all academics respond in the same way. Faculty members abandoned their own syllabus, but have to teach according to a "national curriculum" accurately, even about which questions to ask in a mid-term...

No academic freedom.
No innovation.
No ideas' exchanges.
All started from a bad decision the Ed Min made at the Federal Gov, which they believe comes from a good intention that to make sure of the quality of education nationwide.

Luckily, all the above stories are hypothetical, Mr. Duncan and his team works with one of the most decentralized school system in the world and they are not able, constitutionally, to carry out such "mandatory evaluations" and link its results with federal funding to institutions that "obey" the federal curriculum.

But unfortunately, all the above story happened in China. The more national money available to the ed min, the more frequent such policies are carried out. I borrowed the story on Price Regulations and Its Consequences from here, to discuss how disastrous a bad government policy on education could be.

China's College Entrance Exam--A Good Business?

2011-06-29T11:03:00.004-04:00

So the final scores of the college entrance exam in China is out. Assisted with computerized scoring system, many college junior and senior students, as well as graduate students, helped with tens of thousands of teachers nationwide on evaluating the tests in different subjects.

9.63 million exam takers, means 9.33 million students* 4 subjects (Chinese, English, Math, Sciences/ Humanities) per student * 20 min on evaluating each exam book = 12.32 Million working hours needed to grade the tests.

12.32 million hours, if teachers and test grader assistants are paid on average $3 per hour, the total cost of just on graders, is $37 million.

As far as I know from my family relatives and friends' personal experiences of helping with the grading, the pay is most of the time on the range of 30RMB to 50 RMB per hour, which equals to $4.62 to $7.7, with really sweet subsidies on hotel accommodations, food, snacks, etc.

That is just the manpower part. The cost of forces focused on security for the grading process is another big expense item. During the grading, all test graders, whether you are a high school teacher or part-time assistant, everyone is "quarantined" in buildings that serves as both working zone and accommodation zone. Existing and reentering will be like passing the security of CIA building (my assumptions from these spy movies!), several rounds of checks to be done and paper work to sign.

Let us give a "facility overhead multiplier" of 0.15 to the man power part, which will make the total cost of grading the CEE so far reaching $37/3*5 * 1.15 = $71 million.

I searched and found that on average the fees paid by exam takers per person is roughly 130RMB, or, $20. So the total fees collected from students are $ 186.6 million.

I know that making student final test score/results available online and via telephone system also costs a lot, but whether it can justify the $110million surplus?

It seems that running a test business is really a sweet business, no doubt ETS, College Board, IB, etc. are all spending so extravagantly on advertising. Don't know who will be the first ice-breaking dealer and get a share from the National Edu Board ministered CEE in China?

The Next Step of the 9.33 Million Fighters

2011-06-21T11:54:00.005-04:00

The Hechinger Report followed up with me after the China Scope NYC Conference in March 2011, and they produced a chart of better quality than my own ppt illustrations to demonstrate the hours Chinese students spend on studying by stages of a student when s/he is climbing up along the school system.

And then the big days came for the 9.33 million fighters on Jun 7th to 9th: Gao Kao-- the college entrance exam. This year, according to the Chinese Education Ministry's University Recruiting Plan, 72% of the exam takes, or, 6.72 million freshmen students will enroll to college in September. Would the exam-kungfu-warriors be expecting that a lot of them will spend a significant amount of their precious college years "meditating" in classrooms like this?

Especially when the graduates from college this year hits a historical peak 7.58 million, with a 89% employment rate after 6 months of searching , I hope the class of 2011 will not have to fight again as how they did through their K-12 years when they will go to the labor market in 2015. After all, a scene like the one below is not encouraging to anyone who believes that "education makes a difference" when they know the crowds are fighting for jobs which pays less than $300/month.

Educational Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship

2011-03-17T15:25:00.000-04:00

Good findings on a newly published HBR article on educational innovations.

Educational Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship

Whom Should You Hire at a Startup? (Attitude over Aptitude)

2011-03-17T15:12:00.002-04:00

I definitely wanted to talk a lot more about the tips given by this TechCrunch article from my personal experiences of running my own company in the past 4 years. I agree with his hiring rules on "A Players", "motivators", and the kind of people who shares and enhances the company culture. Would touch on this topic when I can.

Is History Revisiting?

2011-02-01T00:02:00.002-05:00

You can hear shouts, beeping into your eardrum, "freedom, jobs, hope, etc.", these luminous words, breaking the silence of the blinding glare of the African continent under the sun, trenching the banks of the Nile.

They said, "Tian'anmen Square is coming back to Tahrir Square"; no, no bullets please, no massacre please, people in the other parts of the world pray while the protesters forged ahead, piercing into the immense tense of the curfew.

I wasn't there in Beijing in 1989, nor at Cairo in the early spring of 2011. But I can still recall the scary snapshots from the news, in the suffocating summer of 1989, when my dad picked me up from school and riding by the square of my hometown, a 2nd tier city in north China, I remembered the faces of the starve-striking young college students. I also remembered my parents trying to cover my eyes when the 7pm CCTV Daily News was broadcasting the aftermath of a conflict in Beijing (among who?) in that June and a young solder, lying next to the body of another young man, both dead, with the solder's belly cut open and his intestines hanging out of his body, smoked, with flies roaring above...

I linked an emotional disgust to any kind of violence since then. I know that the progress of history needs blood sacrifice sometimes. But what if history does not swirls up, but revisits again and again?

There are many ways to interpret the motivations, institutional reasons and historical perspectives of the protests going on in the Middle East now. Although I am personally very interested to know the relationship of the level of social capital and human capital of one nation to its people's requests for more rights and democracy, but for now, I only hope that NO VIOLENCE toward people will happen, ever.

Hello 2011!

2011-01-26T17:20:00.002-05:00

Another 7 months faded since I published my last blog article on this site and 2011 is here. In the last 7 months, I was not totally washed into my own research, I do have lots of thoughts to share but somehow producing research papers in English made blog writing in Chinese more attractive so I did write for my Chinese site, which is more about life and cultural experiences than here.

Anyways, I am not finding an excuse for abandoning here. Instead, I felt the calls from inside my mind about doing a better job in cultivating my little garden here diligently and deliberately. I have been consuming too much good knowledge products in English and I feel so obligated to return some outputs of my own. Time for resuming my responsibilities.

As a natural "bridge" linking my productivity in Chinese writing and English writing, it might be appropriate to cite a recent Chinese article of mine here. It contains lots of recent thoughts about the hot debates ignited by the Battle Hymns of the Tiger Mother, China's topping the PISA test and President Obama's call for actions from the American people to win the future for the nation.

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看《虎妈的战歌》，追着看了更有意思的美国人民的各式评论和生活在这边的华人父母的回应，一下子就凌晨1点多了。接着，顺手点开了一些和中国教育相关的英语博文，人们会谈到上个月上海被抽出来的学生代表中国的“平均水平”在OECD的PISA考试中拿到了三项世界第一，谈到新的“Sputnik Competition”和美国的危机，谈到最近的胡奥会和百亿百亿的订单。Bloomberg Business上，有一位美籍印度裔的专栏作家，曾经的start-up企业家、现在的UCBerkeley研究员、哈佛客座教授Vivek Wadhwa看问题比较准，他说，US Schools are Still Ahead–Way Ahead. 相信大批送子留洋用脚投票的家长们不会不同意Wadhwa的观点。一个例证是，上周四参加一个China Institute的一个早餐论坛，讲中国教育市场对美国投资者的机遇；一位前硅谷创投人士、在北京继续创业成功的深蕴中国教育体系的美国人Tom Melcher激动而又坚定地描述大洋那边的那个巨大的国际教育市场，他说，每年在美国留学的国际学生（其中将近30%来自中国，2010年）为美国带来的整体收益是20 Billion，200亿美元，这是什么概念呢？这是波音历史上对华最大单、胡主席送给奥总统的超级大礼的最重要的一项，200架飞机的价值，可能要5年才能交付完毕。

上文提到的Vivek和Tom两个人的背景都是让我眼前一亮的那种。Vivek的主页上，他的研究领域的关键字：

Entrepreneurship
Global engineering education
Immigration and the reverse brain drain
Workforce development
Globalization of research and development/innovation/outsourcing
而Tom, 先是花了数十年在McKinsey学功夫，然后一口气在硅谷创业成功5家公司，为了让孩子学好中文，举家搬迁到北京，先用2年的工夫创业搞了四个网站一家公司打包卖给了一家纽交所的上市公司；之后一直盯紧了中国的人才政策和教育市场，不仅出了一本大中国大卖的关于留学美国的畅销书，投了几家不错的公司，现在全力以赴在做Zinch中国一个新兴的帮学生申请学校的社交网络“媒体”。

我眼前一亮，是因为，这些内容庞杂在很多人看来没有关联但是一直吸引着我的兴趣的乱七八糟的关键词、被这些勤奋的人在亲身实践，我就可以“踩在他们的肩膀上”吸取他们的经验和智慧来更好的理解这个市场和human capital accumulation & creativity的主题。

×××××××××××××××这里要打岔和插播广告×××××××××××××××××

国内一个很著名的海归科普记者兼作家“土摩托”老师，他的博客，一方面是绝对的科学理性派，同时，他总会在博文的结尾介绍一篇他喜欢的音乐。我听歌不多，对各式的流行音乐的兴趣和修养也不够；但是，我喜欢古典，喜欢爵士，喜欢BBC、PBS，喜欢各种内容丰富体现“科学哲学素养”的记录篇，这几年看了很多，所以，打算在我的中文博客里每篇的末尾，介绍那些宝贵的知识产品。

另：提到中文博客，是因为我的确曾经认真、而且继续认真地要经营好我的英文博客。当我在云端之上长长的旅行途中、阳光温暖的下午或者是心情静好的夜晚，在大量阅读的喜悦或者怅然或者沉重之后，总有一个声音在提醒自己—尽管我心里没有一个具象的神驻扎，但是，写作是我的救赎和感恩的方式，它帮我明智。我一个非常饭仪式感的人，应该做好每日的作业，write。

又：我真的认为，写作是一件私事，所以，各位看官不要有评论或者回复的压力。自我对话本身的快感和日后有意或者无意再次翻阅自己的话的乐趣，就是我在happy地敲字的意义。

×××××××××××××× 今天的第一篇Documentary××××××××××××

Geldof in Africa。

“The first thing you notice, is the light.

L ight everywhere.

Brightness everywhere.

This is not a dark continent Europe used to call, at all…

This luminens continent, drenched by sun, pounded by heat, shimmering its blinding glare…”

歌手、诗人、社会活动家Bob Geldof这样开篇。看了不下二十个版本的关于非洲自然、文化、宗教、食物、社会发展各个方面的纪录片。但是Bob Geldof这个版本还是在开篇10秒内，就让我认定其为最好的（之一）。这里可以免费在线观看。

好，因为你看到的不是“这里是非洲的X国，生活着这些和那些民族，他们能歌善舞，XXXX”。你看到的和听到的，都是赞美发自内心的爱。

In Search of a Right Topic

2010-05-26T16:11:00.004-04:00

Recently, in different scenarios I have revealed some level of anxieties to my friends who were very kind and willing to listen to my complaints about hurdles here and there toward getting my dissertation done.

Prof. Don Davis of Columbia University has an interesting and very insightful little essay for Econ Ph.D students on how to start the Ph.D dissertation research. He listed out all the important strategies to keep in mind for a student to discover his/her own "right topic". Although my previous 4+ years of experiences in studying and conducting research almost coincidentally yet strictly followed his advices, such as "read theory and empirics as much, find research frontier, go to weekly seminar in my interested field, read NBER working papers and best journals selectively, Talk! Talk! and Write! and Write!", I definitely also made some big mistakes in terms of allocating time and resources on some wrong directions, which were warned by Don. I spent WAY too much time attending classes in not just all econ subjects, but also in Sociology, Law, Education, Psychology, etc. My motivation was, to truly understand the comparative advantages and disadvantages of both quantitative and qualitative researches methods and to learn as much as knowledge about institutions that backs up our economic phenomena.

So now, on the third day of the summer of 2010 where I am dedicated to a daily routine of conducting research, what strategies should I take to pick up on what I am doing and make the type of progress that I am expecting efficiently? In other words, Don gave a lot of great ideas to students to "start" their very first research project, but how do I "resume" upon what I have done before and have outstanding achievements?

I would like to go back to the very 2nd question Don suggested students to ask---How do I know if I have an interesting topic? In my last blog article, I listed all the topics that I am going to write upon in this coming year, covering a broad range of topics from educational system in Asian countries to entrepreneurship in the ed field to human capital theories, etc. But, now the question for myself is: which topic (or the more detailed subfield questions)on my list, is an important problem with real-world counterparts and that matter in substantive terms and moreover that my approach to the problem is new? Which part that I am working on will make the readers, who are familiar with the literature, after reading my paper, will be able to see the world differently? (Almost like all the high emotions I felt when I just enrolled to the doctoral program and started to read some brilliantly done papers, especially the ones about marriage institutions!)?

So now, looking back to the fields that I have ever worked on in the past 4 years, which fields I gained the most intellectual excitement when doing my own research? Human capital and economic growth, program evaluations, teacher's pay, university internationalization, gender econ, labor econ, even, cognitive sciences/ test scores/ the production function of education? Which one did I have the most ideas pouring out of my mind when I was taking classes, participating discussions and writing models? Which one did I write some models that later on I found that some scholars had already done so and obtained high reputation of the work, which, shows myself where my talents outbursted?

Basically, there are two types of econ researches: theoretical and empirical.
For theoretical ones, you can do a entirely new theory, or you can improve the current existing theories, or you can disapprove the current ones, "break the old and establish the new". For empirics, you can do an analysis, under certain theoretical framework, with a new dataset that no one else ever looked at it (but given the scarcity of good quality datasets, this direction, I would say, although may come with good policy implications by providing more knowledge about something we ingored before, but most of the time lacks academic rigorousness.) Empirics can also be in the form of adding some variables to current existing estimation strategies and thus improves both statistical but also economic significance of the discussion. Another type of empirics can be about using a very innovative methodology to look at some old or new issues and reach to some compelling conclusion.

I don't think I am writing an entirely new theory about one institutional dimension of human life. So, theoretical wise, I need to immerse more into the entire literature of my interested field and come up with new ideas on HOW I CAN IMPROVE the current existing theoretical and analytical framework.

Empirically, I also have a strong reluctance in only using some "untouched" dataset (e.g. something collected from field studies in China) to run a routine regression and claims novelty. Given the amount of training I have in econometrics, (besides my international mathematical contest gold medal, what else did I spiraled up these years mathematically?), I do not think that I am going to develop or invent some new econometric strategies. So, the most feasible way for me to thrive empirically will be conducting analysis using some sophisticated, large scale dataset to address some results that will make my theoretical analysis more convincing. Many discussions in recent decades about structural model and other estimation strategies in empirical studies might also conclude that my strength is in combined theoretical modeling plus some smart empirical evidence--- of course, this is more of what I WANT to pursue, because it is undoubtedly desired by most economists.

So, now the direction is much clearer, my applied field is about education, using applied theories of economics, I want to develop some innovative models based upon existing, well-established ones, to address one important question that has a real-world counterparts, and I should also work at making sure of some robust empirical evidence.

I should go back to the literature now again: to figure out, on human capital theory the most updated model, is there anything I can do about polishing its implications about gender roles and parental choices in education?

2 years, 100+ ideas, blogging plans for the year

2010-04-18T23:31:00.005-04:00

My research projects and two educational ventures (Minds Abroad, Impact Abroad) have brought me to several conferences in the last two years: Association for Institutional Researches (AIR), University Technology Transfer Conference, Education and Venture Capital Summit (the first one was in Stanford in 2009 and it will be held in NYC this year by Berkery Noyes), NAFSA, ACTFL, etc. These several events were eye-opening and the discussions there I had with people different background were thought provoking.

Although it has been the last stage of my dissertation writing, I would like to come back here and write down what I have been learning from the real world every day. Some thoughts from the above mentioned conference experiences and also my investment experience in the past two years, cover a broad topic, while I will try to elaborate on each of them and develop them into blog writings here to share with my readers like you.

So here is the list of topics I am going to cover, in probably this coming year of writing:

1. Educational Entrepreneurship:

- How to define this newly popular concept?
- What matrix should we use for evaluation?
- What are the best practices I have seen so far in this field?
- Some experiences to share from my own investment.
- Whether and how VC funds want to tap on opportunities in this field?

2. Human Capital and the Growth of a Nation:
(This is about my own research so I have to make sure I am talking too much about this topic here)

- A unique face of globalization---international trade of "human" capital, brain drain, immigration and tech policies
- After Gary Becker, anything new in our understanding about human capital theory?
- Marriage, gender role, and the formation of human capital (yes mother is important!)

3. The Making of a New University

- "Is Harvard Replicable?" I hosted a table discussion with 20+ professors in the field of institutional research and presented a paper about this topic from an organizational development perspective in 2009, AIR conference.

- So many outdoor billboard advertisement about private universities in India, what does it mean? What does the India 2010 Foreign Investment in Higher Education Bill mean for India and for us?

- Chinese gov also published the new "National Policy" after the congressional meeting of 2010 about "opening educational field for foreign and private investment", what is happening now about this policy and what a market we will be seeing?

- With the presence of Google, Youtube, Ipod/Ipad, Twitter, and Ted, what kind of learning experiences are made for the 21st century college students? What will maintain in the old-style classroom teaching and what will change? What does a college education mean in the time of cloud computation?

4. China, India, Morocco, a Colombia? :

- With the expansion of my projects in China and India (doing business in this two countries is exciting and having staff in this two countries is rewarding! They are EXCELLENT!), and the new projects in Morocco and maybe very soon in Colombia, what kind of global citizenship am I obtaining?

- With the declining and even disappearing of the "demographic dividend" in China, what will happen in its educational market, labor market and what does it means for China's international role?

- What does the exam system work in China and when we see a student from China studying in the US, what does it mean? Who s/he is? What does s/he have gone through? I think the many NAFSAers might be interested to know the Chinese students that they have never seen, those who never got to come to study abroad in the US.

- Investing in China v.s. India (and managing the team there) lessons and tips to share

- Outside of the growth gravity center (OECD and BRIC countries), but where different civilizations meet each other (Morocco, and Colombia in some sense), do the principles we learned here (about market mechanism, parental investment behavior in children, ROI of education, peer effect, matching issues in labor market, etc.) apply to people's life there?

- And many more other thoughts under a comparative perspective.

When I feel "emotional" sometimes, I might share some photos, music, poems, or some bad jokes. My figures are crossed for myself to not come here but only complain too much about how stressful it is to work on a doctoral dissertation!

2008-10-05T12:02:00.001-04:00

Can kids teach themselves?

2008-09-20T17:11:00.002-04:00

Y=f(Knowledge)=H(Human Capital)?

2008-09-14T12:44:00.002-04:00

A legendary physicist spoke up why Knowledge is Everything. This philosophical belief is also the foundation of my great interest in education, the incubator of knowledge.

Finding the smart way of living

2008-07-30T23:52:00.008-04:00

An NYTimes article about Mr. Obama's teaching experience in UChicago Law School really made me believe that he IS smart. He knows how to test ideas with a "lay low" attitude and to be safe. He got the right place---university classrooms.

It is good to think loud and make others hear your belief such as "I have a dream..." by Dr. King. The place where you can do this is sexy. I have been tangoing with many great opportunities presented in my life and trial with different career path but I found the road sign at all crossings pointing to the same direction---classrooms.

Dr. Zhan Gao, the CEO of www.haoyisheng.com, a very wise and successful entrepreneur told me that all routines are tedious, nobody would enjoy it if working like a machine, however the job satisfaction really came from the impact you would make after completing the routine work. I agree with him.

I can imagine myself loving the interaction with students and facilitating debates over controversial topics. No moments will be tedious with a career you deem as an essential part of life itself. It is not something you pay your labor to earn a living. It is the way of living, a smart way.

Data Incarnated

2008-07-23T02:36:00.002-04:00

"US urban public high school drop-out rates are 50% and nation-wide almost one third cannot graduate from high school within 4 years. " I was trying to get some insights from the National Center of Education and the Economy about building up a competitive workforce. The data hit me again, although I had read about it many times. I know the statistical descriptions about individual and school characteristics of those drop-outs, low social economic status, minority background, problematic community, low parental education, new immigrants, etc.

However I want to hear some personal stories to give myself a vivid image about this group. Driven by curiosity, I turned to my fellow intern, a junior from GWU. He was so astonished when I told him the data, "Sorry, I couldn't think any one that I know dropped out from high school. High school? You sure it is high school?". "I know those drop-outs are from low SES, maybe they are still attending schools somewhere, say, juvenile rehab maybe?", I tried to get something out of his "common sense" at least. "Ohh, rehab, I don't know, maybe it is like a school, but, I have no idea who gonna be there and how is the life in there." I couldn't bother him with more questions. This boy went to private schools all the way up. Problematic adolescents are really not part of his "common sense".

Then I checked similar data of other countries. Japan, high school enrollment rate is over 120%, seems very compulsory; college enrollment, 60%. China, high school enrollment 60%, and college level 25%; US, high school enrollment 83% but you see the drop-out rate, college attendance, 80%, but half are in community colleges and half of which will never get the degree.

Who gonna have the most competitive workforce in the global economy and how? Each country have to figure out the question for themselves.

Holier-than-thou?

2008-07-18T03:20:00.000-04:00

Histories revisits. And echoes.
An Economist article about India and its pollutions today stirred almost exactly the same reaction among India and western/rational readers as months ago while the Tibet and China was the center of debate.
As a Chinese, "over-sensitive" as once described by one American friend, occasionally feeling offended while confronting with overture "holier-than-thou" attitudes, I felt a very complicated sentiment reading the readers' comments in the India article. On the one hand, I basically share the same idea with those "western" readers that I believe India has problems in their system and they should accept the facts and try to improve them; on the other hand, a strong curiosity urges me to seek an opportunity to visit India, be in the country, experience it, and see whether the experience will bring me a conclusion on whether there is a "holier-than-thou" tone in this Economist article.

A wild guess: US to be the manufacture center again?

2008-07-09T22:49:00.002-04:00

In Prof. Mankiw's new blog, he said a Boston Globe article reminded him that he is actually "working in an export industry". A wild thought jumped into my mind when I finished reading the article---

* if the Higher Education system in the US is so competitive (almost like a pure oligopoly) in the global market,
* assume it will, and is able to, maintain its advantage for a long time,
* assume the market provides mechanism to allow higher ed institutions commercialize their services worldwide, which means, the profit they make from both domestic and international students will be enough to survive them and make them grow,
* assume the US Homeland Security Department invented a new background check system to allow real students can get to the US freely as long as they pass the check,

Will US be the manufacture center of the world producing all post-secondary students?

Cognito, ergo sum

2008-06-25T23:06:00.005-04:00

Shanghai is very beautiful after 20 days plum-rains. I love the afternoon tea break, have a cup of jasmine tea, sip its aroma, ponder on the day or just look at the sky view outside my office---you really don't have to do anything. That is the moment to be "being".

Take a breath, and be "being" here.

One world. Many worlds.

2008-06-25T03:05:00.001-04:00

Scene 1:

[Shanghai, a workplace lunch, a group of summer interns in a leading local company]

Xiaoming=a Tsinghua student, Dagang=a Peking U student

Xiaoming: Hey so what do you think of the first year in Beida?
Dagang: Ahh! It is tough! Though I got the 1st prize in international Olympia Math Competition, I still have to study till midnight all the time to do my 1st year math homework. And it is so hard to get a seat in the libraries, even though I get up at 5:30 am every day, no seats left! I heard Tsinghua has more studying spaces for students, ohh, I envy you....

[New York, workplace lunch, a group of summer interns in a Forbes 100 Co. ]
Jim=a UPenn student, Danis=a Harvard student
Jim: Hey so how is your first year in Harvard?
Danis: Ahh! Harvard is not for us! It is for older guys! You know you have to live in single sex dorms, and the best sports clubs sometimes are not open for freshmen! So hard to get girls....

Scene 2:

"My mom yelled at me again for my stubborn insistence on staying in Astrophysics. She wanted me to work as a programmer for a bank. I don't know what I am supposed to do now... As an Astrophysicist, it is really hard to make lots of money to attract girls... " [This is the theme of 99% of the posts on a Physics Ph.D online forum in China. ]

"I rejected the VC because I am very confident in the profitability of my idea. I wouldn't let go of my deserved share. I have planned to leave academia to run my own business after I finish the NASA Chandra project." [Quote from an audience, an Astrophysicist to be, at an East-cost VC competition. ]

Scene 3:

I have to take special classes to improve my English this summer, or my parents won't buy me the Coach purse for my bday". --- A 20 y/o Shanghai girl.

I do "Coachsurfing". It is cool. I plan to use 6 to 8 weeks to explore China's west, then Burma, India, Turkey, Spain, Morocco... I am expecting to end my vacation on the beach of Morocco!"---A 20 y/o chicago boy.

A different future?

2008-06-25T02:25:00.002-04:00

Why education quality matters to the business community?---A report by AmCham said that "None of the top 10 jobs that will exist in 2010 exist today, and these jobs will employ technology that hasn't been invented to solve problems we haven't yet imagined." So, as innovation changes the necessary workplace knowledge and skills, businesses need to find employees who are qualified for 21st century jobs. The idea is widely endorsed by companies such as IBM, GlaxoSmithKine, Marriott Int'l, Oracle, State Farm Insurance, etc. with their actions to improve education in the US. The same report is also frequently cited by think tanks and consulting firms to make strategic long-term decisions for their clients.

However when the same group of economists start to talk about "the 21st century economy" of China or India, they will have another tune: "a lack of formal education doesn't constrain the ability of the developing world's workforce to sustainably improve productivity for the foreseeable future." The urgent problem is to solve the problem--the looming shortage of "offshore service talents", to learn how to "play in the global arena", etc.. My feeling is that long-term forecast for these countries are not seeing beyond "long" enough---who knows whether the 25 billion (maybe 30bn) of people would be "offshore" forever?

China makes everything. Who is making China?

2008-06-19T02:31:00.001-04:00

It is almost the NO. 1 question I asked myself very often recently. And I believe the answer lays in education. Human capital accumulation and technology advancement all depends on education (even R&D units in industries are functioned by school-produced researchers).

In terms of import and export, China is manufacturing everything the world is consuming in daily life, from socks and shoes to computers and cars (well, I put it here as an aspiration for the next 10 years). But, from entrepreneurs who come up with ideas to incubate new market and engine the growth, to all types of workforce supporting the economy, what factors are producing them?

Labor economists have done intensive work, tried to capture the best method to quantify the measurement of ability, skills, the add-on effects of education, and value of experiences. We all would not deny that all human are born equal. In the scale of a nation, Chinese babies are not doing better than babies in any other countries in terms of genetic IQs. So, it is those add-ons that matters how the economy will develop. Now, education. But what is education? How much comes from schools, how much from parental influences (family education), how much the community (cultural factors?)?

I have done courses in development econ, labor econ, sociology and educational philosophy. Still no idea where to start the huge project to answer: Who is making China?

I will try to narrow down my thoughts and try to formulate at least an outline to exhibit the facts in a structured way.

More Thoughts to Come

2008-06-11T23:41:00.000-04:00

Organizational failure or born to fail in nature? The question is always in my mind when I read about school system reforms, or, more general, that of education. Economists are not giving effective enough solutions, neither do professional practitioners. Then how about any form of R&D, which has been fueling sustainable growth of all other sectors facing same transitional challenges? Is educational R&D, integrating IT developments, the way leading to a better future? Does the key, how to conduct Ed R&D, lay in our head or some external factors?

Being lucky enough, being a Ph. D student in Economics and Education, (though, coincidentally, "failing" too), I can explore potential answers from within economic researches, which are imperial in social science realms nowadays; I also got many precious exposures to strategic smart heads who share the same concerns over education. No need to brag at all, it matters significantly about the future of mankind.