The Next Step of the 9.33 Million Fighters

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

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)

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?

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!

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

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

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!