China Digital Times (CDT) » Tag: Chinese students

Two Chinese Students Shot Dead in LA

josh rudolph — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:35:59 +0000

Ming Qu and Ying Wu, two graduate students studying electrical engineering at USC, were killed today in the West Adams district of Los Angeles. Reuters reports:

Two international students from China were shot dead on Wednesday in a “gang-infested” area near the University of Southern California, Los Angeles police said.
Police described the students as a man and woman, both Chinese USC students in their 20s, and said they found the woman shot dead inside a BMW parked at a curb in a Los Angeles neighborhood not far from the private university. The man was found outside the car.
“Apparently he tried to get out of the car,” police spokesman Richard French said. He described the area as “gang-infested.”
The Los Angeles Times reported carjacking as a possible motive, but police said the motive was under investigation.

An AP has more details from the scene of the crime:

Ying Wu and Ming Qu were sitting in the luxury car at about 1 a.m. when the gunman fired, shattering the windows. Qu was wounded but managed to run to a nearby home, where he pounded on the door pleading for help, police said.
[...]Police said the shooting may have been a robbery or a carjacking attempt of the dark-colored, $60,000 BMW. Witnesses said the car was in the roadway, not at the curb, at the time of the shooting.
[...]Qu managed to get out of the car and run to a nearby home, where he pounded on the door, police Cmdr. Andrew Smith said. It wasn’t known if anyone answered the door before the man collapsed.
[...]Beatriz Moreno, who lives across the street with her family from where the shooting occurred, said the neighborhood has been cleaned up. She said the last shooting she could remember on her street was in 2003.”We used to see this every day,” she said. “There are mostly families here. This is not normal.”

Another AP article, via HuffPost, mentions the growing trend to study abroad amongst China’s financially able, and how this occurrence might make parents uneasy about sending their children to the U.S.:

At USC, the international student presence is enormous – it has the largest number of any university in the U.S. Roughly 19 percent of the school’s 38,000 students are from overseas, including 2,500 from China.
And some students said the shooting could be a cautionary tale for others who want to study overseas.
“If parents hear about this in China, it might affect their decision,” said Chrissy Yao, a Chinese-American who moved to the U.S. when she was 10 and is a senior engineering student. “Since two lives were lost, I think concerns will remain for quite a while.”

The Los Angeles Times quotes an email from USC officials to students:

In an email to USC students and staff Wednesday about the slaying of two graduate students near campus, university officials said they are “saddened and outraged by this callous and meaningless act” and they were “working aggressively” to solve the crime.
[...]“This incident occurred outside the neighborhood areas where over the past several years we have steadily increased our security presence, adding dozens of security and license plate recognition cameras, uniformed officers, and yellow-jacketed security ambassadors,” said the email from Michael L. Jackson, vice president of student affairs, and Todd Dickey, senior vice president of administration.
“However, tragedies such as this morning’s remind us that we all need to be continuously vigilant about safety and security,” it continued.
[...]Officials said they are offering counseling for students and will provide information on remembrances for the slain students.

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Post tags: Chinese students, crime, Los Angeles, murder, overseas Chinese students
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Lure of Chinese Tuition Squeezes Out Asian-American Students

zhoushuren — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:20:16 +0000

Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that admittance of international students, many from China, has been increasing dramatically in recent years at the University of California. Among those in competition with international students are Asian-American students whose enrollments have been dropping.

In 2009, University of California administrators told the San Diego campus to reduce its number of in-state freshmen by 500 to about 3,400 and fill the spots with out-of-state and international students, said Mae Brown, the school’s admissions director. California residents pay $13,234 in annual tuition while nonresidents pay $22,878.
As a result, almost 200 freshmen from China enrolled in 2011, up from 16 in 2009, a 12-fold increase. At the same time, the number of Asian-American Californians enrolled fell 29 percent to 1,230, from 1,723 in 2009. The 2009 figure is from the UC system’s office because San Diego didn’t have it available.
While the San Diego campus is accepting more Chinese students, the decline in Asian-American enrollment may be a result of the total drop in California resident admissions, and two years’ data doesn’t reflect a trend, said Christine Clark, a university spokeswoman.
“UC San Diego is committed to admitting and enrolling talented students from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds,” Clark said in an e-mailed statement.

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Post tags: asian-american students, Chinese students, overseas Chinese, study abroad, tuition, U.S. universities
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Chinese Scholars Return to NZ

cschultz — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:38:00 +0000

The numbers of Chinese students studying in New Zealand is increasing:

Education New Zealand chief executive Robert Stevens said the export education industry was worth almost $2.5 billion to the New Zealand economy last year, and was expected to climb by more than $250 million this year alone… Education NZ was aiming for an “ambitious” 10 per cent growth in the money generated by overseas students this year. The figure was closely tied to incoming student numbers and would be the highest growth since the early nineties.
Mr Stevens said New Zealand had been aggressively marketing itself in China. A $2m government funding boost for Education NZ in last year’s Budget had almost doubled the agency’s marketing spend.
New Zealand’s other export education markets had been growing for years, but Chinese student numbers plummeted after the 2002-03 financial year…China remained New Zealand’s dominant export education market. There were 20,579 Chinese students in New Zealand in 2008, with 17,189 from South Korea and 10,676 from Japan.

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Post tags: Chinese students, New Zealand
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China Expects a Sharp Drop in Number Seeking College Degree

dwang — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:02:58 +0000

Chinese education officials expect a nationwide drop in the number of students sitting for the college entrance exams this year. From Xinhua:

China expects fewer students to participate in the upcoming three-day annual college entrance exam this year, according to Sunday version of China Daily.
[...]Minister of Education Zhou Ji had predicted that the overall number of applicants would exceed 10 million — last year’s total was 10.5 million — but figures from local governments suggest the number of students taking part may be far fewer, the newspaper said.
[...]“Since the financial crisis last year, the grim employment situation has broken the ‘employment myth’ for those with a college degree. Some students changed their minds about getting a good job through higher education. They simply quit (from taking the exam),” an anonymous recruitment officer with the Beijing Institute of Technology was quoted as saying.

Mark at Mark’s China Blog is unsurprised by this phenomenon, and points out that a similar disenchantment with higher education is underway in the U.S.:

This kind of news isn’t surprising. I hear all the time from young people in Xi’an about graduates from last year’s university class who still can’t find work. There are about to be several more million fresh graduates entering the job market in a few weeks also looking for jobs. Times are looking bleak for educated Chinese young people trying to find work doing what they studied at university.
This phenomenon of people questioning the value of high-level education is not limited to China. America is currently undergoing a similar debate.
An article from last week’s New York Times’ Magazine – “The Case for Working With Your Hands” – does a great job talking about the more academic life young Americans have been molded for and the more labor intensive jobs that they are told to avoid.

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Post tags: Chinese students, college entrance exam, college graduate joblessness, financial crisis 2008-2009, unemployment
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China Jails Teachers and Parents for Hi-Tech Exam Cheating

dwang — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:53:23 +0000

China has jailed eight parents and teachers after uncovering elaborate schemes to help students pass the college entrance exams, tests which often determine the socioeconomic fate of young people and their future dependents in China today. From The Guardian:

Eight parents and teachers have been jailed on state secret charges after using hi-tech communication devices to help pupils cheat in college entrance exams, Chinese media reported today.
The conspirators used scanners and wireless earpieces to transmit exam answers, indicating the lengths to which people go to ensure success in the make-or-break “gaokao”, which determines the future of 10 million 18-year-olds each year.
[...]The two-day exams are key to social mobility in China, and determine whether teenagers will enter university and which institution they can attend. Success or failure can shape their lives, and those of their families, who may depend on their future earnings.

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Post tags: Chinese students, collegeentrance exam, education, parents, teachers
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China’s Wen Reassures Students on Jobs Amid Crisis

Paulina Hartono — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 06:32:14 +0000

Wen Jiabao visited Peking (Beijing) University to reassure students facing employment difficulties. From Reuters, via The Guardian:

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, in a surprise visit to a Beijing university, tried reassuring students they would be able to find jobs amid the current global economic woes, and promised more unspecified steps to help the economy.
Rising unemployment has fed Beijing’s fears of unrest as forecasts for China’s growth next year fall below 8 percent, seen as a minimum needed to create jobs and maintain social stability after years of double-digit expansion.
Students, who lead pro-democracy protests in 1989 which the government brutally put down, are a particular cause for concern.
“Students, please rest at ease, we are putting the problem of graduate employment first,” Wen was quoted as saying on Saturday to students at a Beijing university by the semi-official China News Service. “Your difficulties are my difficulties, and if you are worried then I am more worried than you,” Wen added.

Student anxieties over job prospects is a hot topic on the Internet. The blog chinaSMACK has posts on netizen responses to news of 1,300 graduate students competing to sell pork and 150,000 graduates at a Shenzhen career fair.

chinaSMACK’s summary of a Sina report:

The financial crisis makes it hard to find a job. People used to be shocked if “a good student at Beijing University sold pork.” However, more and more college graduates accept this reality now.
Recently, there was a pork retail chain store in Guangzhou looking to hire 30 employees to sell pork, and the annual salary would be 80,000 to 100,000 RMB. More than 1,300 graduate students showed up to apply. Those graduate students just graduated from different universities including Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, and South China University of Technology.
People who were in charge of the hiring said that this year was a good time to hire. 35 graduate students got their jobs as pork sellers.

chinaSMACK on a Netease post on the Shenzhen career fair:

Parked buses fill up a road near the Shenzhen Convention Center. Among them are many buses from other provinces [of China]. According to statistics, of the 150,000 graduates this time, over 70% are from universities outside of Guangdong province. Compared with last year’s job fair, this year’s attendance has reached new heights, but the number of employment positions available is still 20,000. Considering that many enterises are unable to recruit all the recent graduates they originally planned to, there are in reality less than 20,000 employment positions, causing the competition amongst graduate job-seekers to be even more intense.

Students at Shenzhen career fair (chinaSMACK)

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Post tags: Chinese students, college students, unemployment
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Lecturer sacked from Beijing University

Li Xiaorong — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 19:22:34 +0000

The Age and the BBC reported on the recent dismissal of journalism professor Jiao Guobiao from Beijing University. In a press release, Reporters Without Borders today condemned the sacking of Jiao Guobiao and called on the government to restore him to his post and stop restricting Internet discussion forums.

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Post tags: Beijing University, Chinese students, freedom of expression, jiao guobiao
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