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.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
Hands Off Please, Mr. Minister
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
China's College Entrance Exam--A Good Business?
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?
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?
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Educational Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship
Good findings on a newly published HBR article on educational innovations.
Educational Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship
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.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
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.
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.
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