There is a lot of data manipulation and outright fraud in American universities, too. Every organization should know that if you judge people by a metric, then they will optimize that metric. At one time, we trusted university leadership to make judgments, but they are absolutely distrusted now, so some measure has to be chosen. I agree that this system selects against innovation. Keynes published little in his lifetime, but his two books were revolutionary. In literature, Tolkien published few "academic" papers, choosing to focus on real substance. Such people would not be welcome in academia today.
US universities rank higher in percent of papers in the top 10% cited? Huh?
Given Chinese universities rank higher in total top 10% papers, it means US universities are unproductive.
Chinese researchers produce top 10% papers as well as follow on research. 🤷♂️
Just FYI, top Chinese students going to US grad schools has collapsed. My son is graduating Tsinghua this year and has chosen to 保研 over acceptances at Ivies and UCs.
I will be very surprised if there is a "reckoning" with Chinese plagiarism in China.
Many Chinese Communist bosses themselves have fake degrees, based on plagiarised dissertations. Some have been exposed, but even the exposing was quickly shut down.
The whole of Chinese society under CCP rule is corrupt, there is no free press to expose it, so the likelihood is that there's simply more coverups... indefinitely.
We need to distinguish between fake research (lying) and marginal paper factory behaviour (research that seemingly fails to move the knowledge needle definitively). Publication mania is certainly a problem in China and everywhere else in the world. But it's hard to tell from this post whether the difference in complaints about the mania coming from China and coming from the rich countries is one of degree or kind. Furthermore, making originality / novelty THE standard for quality research seems like not only goalpost shifting but also a bad argument. In fact, novelty has been claimed as a possible mechanism underlying fake research by one philosopher, see 👉🏾 youtube.com/watch?v=mNs1sumAT68
The statement that "a common malaise in global higher education" is totally correct. Most research in the US and Europe is BS and just churning for BS papers with virtualy no meaning but for padding resumes. China has merely joined the rot that now masquerades as "science" in the West. Rational minded idealistic and objective scientists who pursue science have been pushed out by politician wanna-have-a-PhDs publishing garbage as a world wide problem. The scientific enterprise is basically dead everywhere, being mostly replaced by politics. True scientists, who are not accepted in major universities unless they are excellent politicians, are needed to help us find reality in a world taken over by hallucinogenic internet slop. The nature of science should change now that most of the low hanging fruit has been discovered.
To a certain extent this problem is intractable, a result of the incommensurability between academic freedom and modern society's insistence on measurement of performance through metrics (which is in many cases useful). The seriousness with which it manifests in China seems to be simply a function of China's much greater scale; there are many more professors and PhD students in China, so competition is much more fierce, leading to an increase in underhanded methods to game metrics.
But I actually have a partial solution to it, to extract the "signal from the noise", identify the very best scholars, and shelter them from the tyranny of these metrics so that they can carry out high quality basic research. I call it the All Souls Model, after All Souls College at the University of Oxford. All Soul's is unique in Oxford having no students, only academics, and admitting those academics through what is called "the hardest exam in the world", a written essay on a single word, extremely vague prompt (e.g. "water", "harmony") that tests academics' creativity. If they are successful they are free to pursue whatever research they see fit, without publication or teaching obligations. The "All Soul's" model could seek to replicate this by creating ultra-elite research institutions within top universities' with admission decided by a similar written exam, open to anyone with a PhD and with submissions totally anonymised to prevent people with connections gaming the system. Successful applicants could be asked to develop a research proposal to ensure that they are actually going to be engaged in useful basic research, but other than that I think selecting for truly brilliant individuals in this way would ensure the creation of groups of researchers dedicated to genuinely pushing science forward, rather than worrying about academic prestige or publication metrics.
Sounds pretty garbage. For all the faults in China’s academia, its surge into research prominence broadly maps to its economic success, dominating industry after industry.
Oxbridge can have all the Souls it likes and get itself top ranked by the Times Higher Education rankings, but the UK has been a shitshow for about two decades.
There is a lot of data manipulation and outright fraud in American universities, too. Every organization should know that if you judge people by a metric, then they will optimize that metric. At one time, we trusted university leadership to make judgments, but they are absolutely distrusted now, so some measure has to be chosen. I agree that this system selects against innovation. Keynes published little in his lifetime, but his two books were revolutionary. In literature, Tolkien published few "academic" papers, choosing to focus on real substance. Such people would not be welcome in academia today.
US universities rank higher in percent of papers in the top 10% cited? Huh?
Given Chinese universities rank higher in total top 10% papers, it means US universities are unproductive.
Chinese researchers produce top 10% papers as well as follow on research. 🤷♂️
Just FYI, top Chinese students going to US grad schools has collapsed. My son is graduating Tsinghua this year and has chosen to 保研 over acceptances at Ivies and UCs.
I will be very surprised if there is a "reckoning" with Chinese plagiarism in China.
Many Chinese Communist bosses themselves have fake degrees, based on plagiarised dissertations. Some have been exposed, but even the exposing was quickly shut down.
The whole of Chinese society under CCP rule is corrupt, there is no free press to expose it, so the likelihood is that there's simply more coverups... indefinitely.
We need to distinguish between fake research (lying) and marginal paper factory behaviour (research that seemingly fails to move the knowledge needle definitively). Publication mania is certainly a problem in China and everywhere else in the world. But it's hard to tell from this post whether the difference in complaints about the mania coming from China and coming from the rich countries is one of degree or kind. Furthermore, making originality / novelty THE standard for quality research seems like not only goalpost shifting but also a bad argument. In fact, novelty has been claimed as a possible mechanism underlying fake research by one philosopher, see 👉🏾 youtube.com/watch?v=mNs1sumAT68
Re: university teaching life of expats in China, I recommend my short story "Roof in a Foreign Land" in my book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Under-Thunderous-Skies-Meeting-Non-China/dp/9888273337/
Also published as "Krov u tropima" in "Antidepresiv" short story collection, Belgrade, Serbia, 2011, ISBN 9788684371173
The statement that "a common malaise in global higher education" is totally correct. Most research in the US and Europe is BS and just churning for BS papers with virtualy no meaning but for padding resumes. China has merely joined the rot that now masquerades as "science" in the West. Rational minded idealistic and objective scientists who pursue science have been pushed out by politician wanna-have-a-PhDs publishing garbage as a world wide problem. The scientific enterprise is basically dead everywhere, being mostly replaced by politics. True scientists, who are not accepted in major universities unless they are excellent politicians, are needed to help us find reality in a world taken over by hallucinogenic internet slop. The nature of science should change now that most of the low hanging fruit has been discovered.
To a certain extent this problem is intractable, a result of the incommensurability between academic freedom and modern society's insistence on measurement of performance through metrics (which is in many cases useful). The seriousness with which it manifests in China seems to be simply a function of China's much greater scale; there are many more professors and PhD students in China, so competition is much more fierce, leading to an increase in underhanded methods to game metrics.
But I actually have a partial solution to it, to extract the "signal from the noise", identify the very best scholars, and shelter them from the tyranny of these metrics so that they can carry out high quality basic research. I call it the All Souls Model, after All Souls College at the University of Oxford. All Soul's is unique in Oxford having no students, only academics, and admitting those academics through what is called "the hardest exam in the world", a written essay on a single word, extremely vague prompt (e.g. "water", "harmony") that tests academics' creativity. If they are successful they are free to pursue whatever research they see fit, without publication or teaching obligations. The "All Soul's" model could seek to replicate this by creating ultra-elite research institutions within top universities' with admission decided by a similar written exam, open to anyone with a PhD and with submissions totally anonymised to prevent people with connections gaming the system. Successful applicants could be asked to develop a research proposal to ensure that they are actually going to be engaged in useful basic research, but other than that I think selecting for truly brilliant individuals in this way would ensure the creation of groups of researchers dedicated to genuinely pushing science forward, rather than worrying about academic prestige or publication metrics.
Sounds pretty garbage. For all the faults in China’s academia, its surge into research prominence broadly maps to its economic success, dominating industry after industry.
Oxbridge can have all the Souls it likes and get itself top ranked by the Times Higher Education rankings, but the UK has been a shitshow for about two decades.