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Chinese Universities Have at Least 11,000 Indian Students in Medical Programs

July 8, 2011, 2:13 pm

As many as 11,000 Indian students are pursuing medical degrees in China because the schools are cheaper than in India, where there is a huge shortage of medical seats and where aspirants also have to pay bribes—called “donations” or “capitation fees”—to get admission, reports the Financial Chronicle Web site. “While in a private medical college in India, a student has to pay more than 20 lakh rupees [$45,454], for the entire course, the course would cost something around Rs 1.5 lakh [$3,409], a year in China,” said Zhang Lizhong, consul general of China in Kolkata. Realizing that India faces a shortage of a million doctors by 2013, more than 20 Chinese universities have since 2004 started to aggressively woo Indian students even though a Chinese medical degree is still not recognized in India. The two governments are discussing ways to harmonize their education systems.

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  • wittseek7

    Valiant most definitely deserves this honor. However, it is a large exaggeration to suggest that he proposes a mathematical model of the entire mind. This is akin to saying that IBM will eventually launch a version of Watson capable of imagination and intuition. Dial back the rhetoric; Valiant is extraordinary without dramatic false hype.

  • gzerovnik

    It would be interesting to see how the comments correspond to the ages of the commenters, were it possible to get the data. I suspect there would be a correlation between age and whether the comment is pro or con, along some rough generational divide of Boomers mostly con, X-ers about split, but somewhat more pro, and of course any 31-year-olds (or younger) being thoroughly pro. This is of course purely speculative on my part.

    While I’m at it, let me fan the flames a bit more. Ask the commenters how they feel about face-to-face versus online education. I would expect little difference.

  • larryjohnson

    I have to chuckle a bit as I proceed through my last semester before retirement from my university after forty years, having also retired several years ago from forty years of service as an Army Reserve officer, having attained the rank of major general through my successful shaping of the units under me over the years. Early in that schizophrenic history, I simultaneously was viewed as the University’s “residdent fascist” and the officer corps’ “token hippie” when in fact in both environments I was carefully, and with increasing effectiveness, learning how to avoid any automatic use of either stance.

  • wmartin46

    > It would be interesting to see how the comments
    > correspond to the ages of the commenters

    Good point. 

    It would not be a good idea to require that people reveal
    their ages to post on this web-site, but maybe if a topic might reveal a
    polarization in the readers, based on age, the article’s author might ask people
    to voluntarily indicate their ages in their responses.

  • johnskm

    Those of us in the assessment business (and in my case, faculty development assessment) know that initially when presented with two seemingly contradictory options like these,  careful parsing reveals that these camps share more ideas about (good or bad) teaching than they do in opposition.  I surmise that the disparate languages our colleagues employ render meaning on issues unintelligible to some, head-noddingly affirmative to others. Also, the words WE as developers use often produce these kinds of effects. That said, I enjoy the kinds of mayhem a shotgun blast of a query like this can produce.  Thanks for following up the initial post!  

  • robjenkins

    Are you saying that you think younger faculty members are more likely to fall on the libertarian side? I don’t know. At 50, I’m in the older generation, and I’ve been teaching for 26 years. Although I was never particularly authoritarian, I’ve gotten progressively more libertarian over the years–more “live and let live.” And some of the most authoritarian teachers I’ve had to deal with, when I was a department chair, were the young people right out of grad school.

    That said, there might be some sort of general correlation. It would be interesting to know.

    Rob

  • wchristie

    I think it would be interesting to know how consistent people are in their approaches.  I was always fairly strict with my freshmen because my experience had shown me that they weren’t quite ready to handle too much freedom.  But then I was thoroughly libertarian with my seniors and (especially) my graduate students.  That mix of approaches seemed to serve pretty well.

  • johnw86

    Wow, that last paragraph took a left turn.  As an administrator who clearly stands in the libertarian camp, I really don’t care how faculty manage their classrooms, as long as they’re fair to students, clearly explain their expectations, follow college policies, and don’t send students to my office for minor infractions of instructor-specific policies.

  • robjenkins

    A left turn indeed.

    I admire and appreciate the kind of administrator you describe. I’ve known a few of them. I tried to behave that way when I was an administrator. But sadly, I don’t believe most administators fit into that category. I’ve seen too much evidence to the contrary.

    Best,
    Rob

  • lithead

    I also see the same division about whether to have no distribution requirements or many. It seems to me, based entirely on a nonscientific sample, that those who are more invested in education theory want fewer requirements/rules.  But I’ve come to see the tension itself as a useful one, partly so that we can explore the ways the sides are the same, as johnskm suggests.  But I believe it’s useful for students to experience different types of classroom management. 
    My experience with deans and other academic-focused administrators is that they often feel (I think overly) worried about precedent, but also are sympathetic to faculty and student challenges in the classroom, which makes me feel they are less authoritarian.

  • shoelessjoe1980

    I agree with the Rob and will add an additional cause. Younger professors often feel like they have to get respect from their students because of their closeness in age; thus, they often use the authoritarian approach in order to let their students know “whose the boss.” Then, as they get older they loosen up a bit.

    Regarding the main article, I would say that the numbers are not fairly approached statistically for a representative model because you are not accounting for a significant factor. The reason you had 2/3 Authoritarian and 1/3 Lib is that your article was Lib and thus, they were responding to it. If your article had been promoting an A model, you would have probably gotten twice as many L responses in order to combat the “privileged” voice posted on the Chronicle.

  • robjenkins

    Maybe you’re right, shoelessjoe. I’m no expert on statistical analysis. But I’ve written on other topics from a particular point of view and had most commenters agree with me.

    Rob

  • proftowanda

    Agreed; in response to the first reply above, it’s less about the age of the professor than the age of the students.  Many of my “13th-graders” transitioning from high school ask for clear, concise rules and boundaries, but my juniors and seniors like to push beyond those to some extent and are ready to be the “grown ups” that they are, as are grad students.

    This also may be because of my type of campus, a public commuter campus with fairly open admission standards.  I also have taught at large public and private campuses with far higher admission standards, where students arrived ready to take more responsibility and did not plead for less flexibility.  Again:  Thus, this may be more about them than about us.

  • jamesebryan

    Well, in my junior and senior level classes (we don’t have graduate students yet, but will next year) I frequently allow my students some input as to what details of the topics we have been covering are most important and therefore most appropriate for testing, subject to my amendment or veto.  As I always explain to the students, my classroom isn’t a democracy, it’s a benevolent dictatorship.  I value their input and want to get them to invest in what they are learning, but if they already knew enough about the topic to be completely in charge they wouldn’t need to be in school taking a class on it.  On the other hand, in graduate school I was treated almost as a colleague by my instructors, and plan to allow much greater freedom with my grad students, while expecting much more from them.

  • deller

    I’m naturally quite “libertarian,” but have gotten myself into trouble at times. I notice when I have ignored the people texting in class that others are distracted by it. Occasionally I would just stop the class and wait for the student[s] to realize they were disrupting our process. But I get kind of like a worn-out parent. As long as it’s not too distracting, I ignore them. I just don’t think it’s my job to make college students pay attention. I try to engage people the best I can, with interesting approaches, enthusiasm, variety, and active in-class work, but some people you just can’t hook. Coercion [fear - punishment, disapproval, etc.] always makes me feel like a jailer. That’s not the job I signed up for [but to some degree, has at times been the job I've had]. I should say that maintaining high standards in terms of classroom conduct is important, is not the same as being a jailer. But I do feel like many students seem poorly socialized – they don’t seem to know what appropriate semi-formal public behavior is [don't put your feet in chairs where other people sit, don't bring Big Macs to eat in class, don't ignore what is going on in class - i.e. don't hold private conversations. Weird stuff, to me]. So we have to “teach” that too. Don’t know what they had been doing the 12 years prior.

    I’ll add that I am taking a class now myself which meets in a computer lab. At any given time, probably 50% of the students [8 of 16] are surfing or reading facebook, and ignoring the instructor. But they are not disruptive, and their inattention doesn’t seem to bother him – the other 6-8 people make up for those in orbit. People daydreamed in class before cell phones [though you couldn't always tell...].

  • jamesebryan

    The thing is, the daydreamers didn’t bother anybody else the way the websurfers distract their neighbors.  Moreover, since the daydreamers weren’t overtly ignoring their teachers (at least not as long as they kept their eyes open), they weren’t overtly being rude.  Now some people don’t mind when others are habitually, openly rude to them, but others, like me, won’t put up with it.

  • robjenkins

    Let’s face it: we’re competing for students’ attention. They can daydream, they can do their math homework, they can surf the web surreptitiously on their iPhones and we’re unlikely to catch them at it.

    So compete. Make the class interesting and compelling. Choose relevant readings, relate the course material to current events, and stimulate great discussions. Then focus on the students who are doing what they should–thereby rewarding them for their behavior with your attention–rather than on those who aren’t. This is a classroom management technique that my wife learned when she was studying early grades education, and I’ve found that it also works well in a college classroom.

    Rob

  • yellow1

    I agree. I am not knocking instructors, but if you simply lecture to your students every class, you better be really entertaining. I ignored those instructors when I was an undergrad for sure, probably some in grad school too come to think of it, and this was before cell phone competition, cell phones with data plans for sure, computers in classrooms, every other student with a laptop (and all rooms wi-fi), etc. My best instructors made me do something every day in class besides sit/listen/take notes. I tried to model that, authoritarian or libertarian. Group work every meeting, applied work every meeting, writing every meeting, and…some notes.  

  • tardigrade

    It doesn’t matter how much you know.  Unless a school is benevolent enough to allow a demonstrastion of equivalent*** competency, the students still need that credit for the all-important degree.

    *** – not “exact” competency – given the abundance of examples which
    could be used on a test only a real expert could be guaranteed to pass any
    test.

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