Three-year universities VS Four-year universities

In the United States’ educational system, all universities generally design students to acquire a bachelor degree in four years. However, across the Atlantic Ocean, the United Kingdom’s universities generally require students to spend three years for undergraduate programs only. The same bachelor degree which earns world-wide recognition, but the requirements and syllabus mark such a big difference. Which one is a preferable one?

Using Economics major as an example; in United States, students generally need to take a series of lower division prerequisite courses before applying to the major. At the same time, student in United States also need to take a series of general education subjects which cover all aspects, including quantitative analysis, English composition skills, art and humanities, social science, physical science and biological science classes. On the other hand, students in UK do not have such explicit division between lower and upper level courses. Economics departments in UK design a series of classes that students are required to take. The whole path of acquiring a degree is generally scheduled and planned by the first day the students enroll. They do not have much choice to choose but to follow the prescript path to earn their degree.

Therefore, personally, I would prefer the US one rather the UK’s. First, students are given a larger degree of freedom to design their own path to acquire their desired bachelor degrees. Higher level of freedom to choose classes nurture students with the quality of independence. Moreover, this practice gives students a sense of controlling their own study and future.

Second, students under the US system would take more general education subjects than the UK’s one. Although many general education subjects are totally unrelated to students’ majors, this is indeed a very good preparation for students to understand more about this world in different disciplines before they graduate. Moreover, I assume university education is not like those vocational training which consists only the technical knowledge around students’ major. University education should equip the students to be all-rounded; this is the most effective way to prepare undergraduate students for the outside world.

Third, under the US system, students who realize their original majors are unsuitable or unattainable could switch to other major in the first two years. However, in UK, students could hardly switch major without losing a lot of credits, and it usually takes the students an additional year to complete their bachelor degree. I actually had a friend who studies sociology in UK. After the first year of study, he realized that he like business study more. Eventually, switching the major took him more than one extra year to complete his degree.

I am not concerning about how fast students in different systems can graduate, but I do really concern about the differences in degree of flexibility between the US and the UK system. In the US model, students play a more active role in deciding their educational path; in the UK model, students’ role is passive. Overall, I believe the four-year university education is a more preferable one; at least, this is very true to me.

Extension of the Blog Environment

Over the whole quarter, our Honor English class has been talking about the rise of the blog culture and how this latest culture helps to better our world. Indubitably, we are sure Eportfolio and blog culture helps to promote a better communicative society. Through blogging on web, people are able to share their view and ideas with one another; hence, both parties will be benefited. However, in our modern society, can Eportfolio or blog able to overcome the obstacles and serve its mission?

Our modern society is an era with prominent technological advancement and therefore, many electronic devices are invented to serve to improve the way people communicate. However, we are ironically performing poor jobs to establish good communication and relationship with people, especially our family members. What is the reason that drifts people apart with better communication devices? Aren’t those electronic devices helping? I believe, the problem lies in the people’s attitude towards an establishment of a communication system in their families. No matter how many convenience technological devices are made, if we still do not feel convenient to share our genuine feeling to our family members, nothing could help. Luckily, we can surely achieve something through blogging.

Many teenagers or even many parents have a habit to write their thoughts in dairies, and I am sure everyone wishes the thoughts in their dairies keep secret. People like to write down their emotion on pieces of papers and keep the feeling open only to themselves; on the other hand, people do always complain about insufficient care from family. Here comes the problem, we would like to express but we do not like to share. Okay, we may actually like to share, but in most cases we surely feel embarrass to share. Hence, familial communication remains inadequate.

Therefore, I suggest every family member should set up a blog to share their inexpressible emotion there and make it available for their family members. Through this way, teenagers can write their experience in school: how do they deal with problems, deal with friends and deal with the problems from the family. Parents should also share their thoughts about work, life, financial matter and their expectation on blog and make it available to their children. Both parties can type their thoughts down through a subtle way, and try to tell as much as they can that something they just cannot share face to face.

I wish this is a good move for many families to start sharing emotion and ideas. Try to engage the family into different topic of discussion on blog, and make the children feeling easy to share their views to the parents. Of course, simple blogging is not enough to make the bonding firm, further face to face communication is required. However, I make this suggestion to establish a base for every family to develop an easy ground to speak and share. These are the problems I had when I was in middle school and high school; I could not feel easy to tell my ideas at first since it became quite embarrassing for a teenager to share some in-depth emotion. But still, I would this to share. Therefore, we may really need an indirect way (like blog) to make discussion available first, and then we can have a loving, caring and easy environment for families to communicate.

How to compile the concept, “an ePorfolio for every citizen”, into our educational system?

When I was responding to an interesting post of Dr. Lankford’s research diary, I was enchanted by the phrase, “an ePorfolio for every citizen”. Before discussing the possibility of bringing this concept into the educational system, I will try to state its background and the urges for this concept to take place.

Especially in the science of economics, many researchers spend years and years of drafting solution to combat the issue of asymmetric information in our society. Because of the problem of unparallel information distribute into the society, people need to pay extra cost and time to get everything on the right track by the real, true information. This problem happens when immigrants are under evaluation of their immigration approval check, when students are trying to gain admission into any desire colleges and the employers are trying to find the best person for the best task. Attribute to this inefficiency, the concept of “an ePorfolio for every citizen” is put under the limelight and people hopes that the invention of this concept will save them money and time costs.

What exactly is “an ePorfolio for every citizen”? The concept is simply enough to say, we need everyone in our society to create a digital portfolio to themselves and try to update everything more frequently. Grades, figures, subjective comments and just one or two pieces of personal statements do not clearly show to any future employers or evaluators who you actually are. Being stunned into the transfer application process, I am very anxious about many of my friends try to cheat or to hide their parts when submitting the application forms. Here comes the problem; most people try to hide themselves or to give wrong information to the evaluators, and those poor evaluators are based on everything the applicants submit and to make unconvincing decisions. Even one or two personal statements dose not help to really understand any individuals, people can easily make use of flowering words to cover themselves, or they can simply ask or employ other professional writers to perfect their essays. Therefore, an ePorfolio for every citizen is a concept which allows evaluators to look at every applicant’s qualification and performance for a rather long period, this process helps people to make better decisions.

I suggest that colleges, high schools or even middle schools start to implement this concept into their syllabuses, and make precise judgment on the growth of students. Starting early to create a personal blog and to write down our thoughts every time they have inspiration, teachers and counselors can understand the students more thoroughly. Even when the students promote to or change schools, the personal blog follows them. This process also makes any articulation easier: transferring from one place to another, evaluators need to see what level of achievements or knowledge the students in and to place them differently. If everyone keeps an ePortfolio like this, the cost of asymmetric information will be reduced. This is an ePortfolio every student makes; they are totally free to insert anything on it and edit anything if they do not feel comfortable. After reading all thoughts the students make, evaluators can ask for the credentials according to their achievements and awards, and to look what they wrote is accurate or not. I hope, through promoting the concept of an ePorfolio for every citizen, evaluators can make better judgment on every applicant, and more importantly, rely less on the credentials like grades and awards.

Perhaps we can rephrase the concept as “writing a life-long application for colleges, jobs and everything.”

The corporate America and the corporate schooling system

During this week, I am reading Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and I have a lot of thoughts about out corporate culture and our education system. From the book, I realize how much the impact of the fast food companies are expanding in the society, and the schools become the latest target for the lucrative businessmen. Fast food is most appealing to the youngsters in the elementary schools and middle schools. Therefore, most fast food companies see it as an opportunity to make a big fortune from the vulnerable elementary school students.

According to the data form the book, I can see that McDonald’s, Pepsi and Coca Cola have generated a large sum from penetrating into the schooling system. At the beginning of their strategy, the fast food companies arrived as a timely rain to the drought land, many state government experienced serious budget deficit and decided to cut schools’ budget; this action invited the fast food companies to step in and provide the necessary money for schools to run. The companies helped by sponsoring the schools or the schools’ reading programs. For example, both McDonald’s and Pizza Hut have had similar reading programs for elementary and middle schools’ students: whenever the students read a certain required amount of books or articles, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut would give the student coupons of free drinks or free hamburgers. This program looks very favorably to many students and eventually, students spend extra money and time on McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. However, as this commercial cooperation between the fast food companies and schools become more popular, the companies always push the schools to promote their products and sometimes, they might have a power in deciding programs in schools.

The increasing numbers of participants in the commercial contracts have shown that there are benefits for schools to allow the corporate culture to penetrate into the system. The biggest benefits of the program must be the large amount of money. In facing continuous budget cuts from the state government, most public schools are desperate need the money offered from the fast food industry. The money helps many teachers from losing their jobs by the school districts as a result of budget deficits. In some schools, new sports facilities and computer labs are built during the poor budget period through the support of McDonald’s, KFC, Pepsi or Coca Cola. Moreover, the fast food companies have established many sophisticated strategies to gain acceptance by the schools, students and the parents. The companies know to draft many favorable study programs and appeal to many parents that the fast food companies are indeed supporting their children, their well-drafted study programs help to save many teachers’ time.

However, everyone should know that the undesirable effects are more fatal and unbearable to the schools and students. In many cases, as the fast food companies know that schools are dependent on their money; they give a lot of pressure to the school trustee and urge them for a better promotion of their products. They sometimes even intervene in the policy-making process and make decisions mainly for their benefits, but not for the students’. Nowadays, we can see that our students’ health are getting poorer and the school’s independence is getting worse, we, as a responsible member from the community, should stand up and raise our voice to stop the lucrative giants further moves.

From the Fast Food Nation, we, as honors students, should bear in mind that the corporate culture is penetrating our educational system, and more importantly, damaging the integrity of the academic field. Although this consequence sounds rather exaggerated; however, my experience in Hong Kong has taught me lessons. During the 11^th grade in high school, and I was organizing a Chinese cultural event to show the Chinese literature and history. We were sponsored by one traditional Chinese tea company for the event; admittedly, we received more-than-sufficient financial help from the corporation; however, one requirement for their funding was to mention the company’s history in our project. I found this lucrative behavior annoying since it literally altered our focus to promote the company in stead of Chinese culture in tea. My experience is coincident with one story Eric Schlosser mentions in his book, the Fast Food Nation. Schlosser talks about a high school student yelled his penchant for Pepsi Coke in the annual event in his high school, which was severely funded by Coca Cola. Afterwards, the “alien” high school student was dismissed by the school trustee. From the above examples, we should really concern about the expansion of corporation into our school system. If this trend is not checked, our integrity of academic study will surely be under attacked.

To what extent does the technology help the students to learn?

During this week’s research assignment and seminar homework, I have exposed to a variety of technological sources, and my mind have suffered seriously to think about how technology could effectively help the students to learn. This problem is definitely an everlasting debate we can hardly find any conclusion. Why is the debate so difficult to go to a conclusion? It is because we are not sure whether the contemporary students are learning better than the older one.

To approach to this debate, I will first evaluate the older learning method and to make a comparison between the old and the new learning system. When I was in high school, there were many high school alumni came and had a talk to the students. They always claimed that their learning experience was difficult but fruitful, and they sometimes complain the current culture that too much technology and entertainment have ruined our education experience and hence, students’ qualities are falling. I started to wonder, why the more modern the society is, the less capable the students are. I felt offended every time I heard the alumni saying these words.

However, I have observed that most of my schoolmates spend more than 4 or 5 hours a day online, but most of them do not learn much through the process, and there was a time I read through the old school-year-books, I finally realize that the writing quality and academic achievement of current students are indeed declining. But why, the phenomenon is not just making sense, we have better technology and information system, and there should have no reason we are learning worse. After many readings and discussion, I jump to a conclusion: the degree that students learn better or worse lies not mainly on the level of technology, but the level of motivation and engagement. In Pensky’s presentation about his educational perspectives, he suggests that motivation and engagement are the keys to success.

My parents told me I am growing in a peaceful and prosperous period that everything comes too easily, and that’s why our generation does not possess much motivation to learn. Admittedly, many youngsters in our generation have not faced any big adversities in our lives. We are not so desperate to better our lives through education or some other things. However, the prior generations are from the Second World War, Vietnam War, Cold War and some other uncertain situations. It was really hard to have a chance to go to colleges and be educated. Once the chance came, they would treasure the opportunities and learn so desperately even though they may not have the high-tech facilities as we do.

In short, we do not know how much technology help us to learn. The matter of achievement form learning lies on the degree the people are motivated to learn, not mainly on the technological level. However, we know that technology does really help a lot if we fully utilize it. In any case, if we possess the same or higher motivation as the prior generation do, we can have the best learning experience with the help of technological advancement.

Have our education philosophy twisted?

Education is a common vocabulary in society; you would find no difficulties to hear this word from the media, politicians, teachers, students and parents. Apart from the popularity of this word, how do the public interpret education? How important education is in a society. Is education simply a means for people to success? Or education is only a step in people’s lives?

A few days ago, I had a long chat with my father over the phone. He told me when he went to school at his time, approximately 30 to 40 years ago, all schools emphasized moral standard heavily and most schools had physical science and liberal arts subjects only. His words inspired me and urged me to think how education policies and philosophy changed in these years.

Contrasting to the old society, nowadays, our schools emphasize more on technical knowledge and less on moral teaching. Business Administration and hotel management are the best examples of the educational trend change. In the old days, fewer schools offer business management majors. However, business majors are easily found everywhere and are the most competitive majors in college. I am not writing to offend any person who pursues this major or to dishonor this major. I still believe these majors evolve with the society needs, but I concern with what the society look at education’s role.

From talking with many of my friends, I realize that many of them value education is a path for them to earn more money in the future; therefore, no matter where their real interests are, they choose business as their major. This is also true from many parents’ mind. Especially the Asian parents, they believe that better business major is the main reason they spend a lot of money financing their children here in the United States. From the observation above, one small conclusion has been made in my mind: our society is just getting more and more materialistic and this problem is seriously affecting our educational system.

I always believe that education is a higher level of creation which should never simply follow the society’s trends. There are too many faults and problems in our society, drugs, gambling, alcohol…etc. Even thought many parts of our society might compromise with these issues, I believe education should not. I could still remember when I was in grade 12 in Hong Kong; I organized a strike against the Hong Kong government in high school. At that time, Hong Kong government decided to legalize various gambling activities on sports. This issue aroused a heated discussion in the Hong Kong society. The pros side argues this legalization could reduce the government’s budget deficit; the cons side believes that this legalization would degrade the standard of our society and raise more and more other social problems. Unfortunately, in the legislative voting process, some education representatives voted to support the legalization. Their acts annoyed me and I started to realize the materialistic pressure is penetrating our educational system and philosophy.

Like the problem in Hong Kong, many companies have started to spread their influence in schools through financing various fast foods and sportswear in schools. Michael Moore gave a name to this phenomenon “cooperates America”. I write this entry aims not to denounce any major, but to raise our awareness of how materialistic pressure is penetrating our minds and degrading the educational system.

Blog or e-portfolio?

As I browse many classmates’ blog this morning, I found the topic of differentiating between blog and e-portfolio intriguing. Therefore, I would like to leave some of my thoughts on these topics.

Some of the students claim that blog is more personal and for fun, whereas the e-portfolio is more serious and scholarly. I am not really sure about these differences between two. However, I believe and I wish, these two can be the same thing. I always believe blogs or e-portfolios are good ways to nurture scholarly exchange, wild discussions and most importantly, a good way to freely tell your thoughts to people. Therefore, if we really have to set a line between two and make one of them more serious and make the other one more relaxing, I worry the free ideas would no longer produced.

Admittedly, many people think that e-portfolio is more serious and for employers to look at. However, if we actually make the e-portfolio this serious, what are the differences between the e-portfolio and a paper written portfolio? The reason we promote e-portfolio is that we want (or the employers want) to see what the others really think. We want to see the process, not simply the result. For example, people can have great grades and learn nothing as they only take easy classes or cheat on exams. However, the college admission officers do not know how the people arrive to this grade. Therefore, to make our decision more accurate, we look at the e-portfolios; we look at the process; we look at how the people growth intellectually.

No matter blogs or e-portfolios are good ways for people to make scholarly and intriguing ideas exchange. The reason that we want to leave our thoughts here in stead of telling people face-to-face or in other formal ways is because of its informal setting. People do not have to care about any consequence and rules to follow. I worry that if we actually setting more rules to this creation, we may lose its great advantage one day.