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OMMUNITY NEWS
University Education in China:
Meeting the Nation's 21ST
Century Challenge?
By the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI)
INSIGHTS Universities contribute to economic growth
and national competitiveness by equipping
China's students students with critical thinking and academic
scored similarly to U.S. skills. In order to build a more innovative
freshmen at the beginning economy, China has invested heavily in
of college in measures of university science, technology, engineering,
critical thinking. and mathematics (STEM) education. But little
China's students exhibit is known about how the critical thinking and
either no increases STEM skills of China’s university students
or marked declines in compare to those of peers in other countries.
critical thinking and The data.
STEM abilities over Researchers collected internationally
the course of their standardized assessment data on critical
undergraduate years. thinking and STEM skills from nationally
Declining skill levels representative samples of tens of thousands of
overall call into computer science and electrical engineering
question whether China's undergraduates in China, India, and Russia,
universities are equipping which produce about half the STEM graduates
their students with higher- in the world. By using large-scale, representative
level skills critical for samples from each country, this study is the
national competitiveness. first of its kind. Researchers also expanded the
dataset by including information on critical
thinking skills of U.S. STEM students collected
by Educational Testing Service (ETS).
The study measured two areas of skills
acquisition: (1) STEM learning based on student
performance in mathematics and physics tests;
and (2) critical thinking skills based on tools
23 AMCHAM SOUTH CHINA
University Education in China:
Meeting the Nation's 21ST
Century Challenge?
By the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI)
INSIGHTS Universities contribute to economic growth
and national competitiveness by equipping
China's students students with critical thinking and academic
scored similarly to U.S. skills. In order to build a more innovative
freshmen at the beginning economy, China has invested heavily in
of college in measures of university science, technology, engineering,
critical thinking. and mathematics (STEM) education. But little
China's students exhibit is known about how the critical thinking and
either no increases STEM skills of China’s university students
or marked declines in compare to those of peers in other countries.
critical thinking and The data.
STEM abilities over Researchers collected internationally
the course of their standardized assessment data on critical
undergraduate years. thinking and STEM skills from nationally
Declining skill levels representative samples of tens of thousands of
overall call into computer science and electrical engineering
question whether China's undergraduates in China, India, and Russia,
universities are equipping which produce about half the STEM graduates
their students with higher- in the world. By using large-scale, representative
level skills critical for samples from each country, this study is the
national competitiveness. first of its kind. Researchers also expanded the
dataset by including information on critical
thinking skills of U.S. STEM students collected
by Educational Testing Service (ETS).
The study measured two areas of skills
acquisition: (1) STEM learning based on student
performance in mathematics and physics tests;
and (2) critical thinking skills based on tools
23 AMCHAM SOUTH CHINA
