Thoughts on policies of Chinese unversities

I don't know exactly when it became a tacit rule that Chinese universities hold military training for freshmen students before the class begins. The duration of training ranges from 6 days to 2 months. But I personally have opinion to this. During the military training, students are forced to behave like soldiers, but I have to say that the military atmosphere is so unique that it has little to do with campus life and future career life. Even if students can form the habit of getting up early, running everyday, I don't think most of them will continue these habits after the training. (Actually, most of my friends in Chinese universities agree with my opinion: they merely regard the training as homework, the thing they have to overcome.) The possible reason is that there lacks a continuous incentive for students to keep the habit. This reminded me of the first conversation we had last semester during your office hour: you told me communism disregards incentives, socialist countries can produce a great laptop under the mandatory order, but cannot make all the laptops usable and of good quality.

One of the biggest reasons I don't go to Chinese universities is that it's hard to change majors. In China, the result of college entrance exam is everything. The score decides which universities you go to, which major you can choose. For example, your favorite major is econ, and the second favorite is physics. The score requirement of econ major is 560 and the requirement of physics is 555. If you scored 559 in the exam, you can only go to study physics, and it's nearly impossible for you to change the major in the future. I really don't know who judge the relative price of various majors: in my opinion every major has its advantage. People are ignorant, only on different subjects, and now the behavior of university officials means that majors are classified as superior or inferior according to the fucking single test score. It's bullshit. The paternalism seems to dominate the world right now, but I really hope at least in universities we can have some real freedom to choose what we want.