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Philosophy Students from China

Brian Leiter

An American philosopher writes:

Many of us in US colleges and universities have received requests from Chinese MA or PhD students asking for permission for a year of study in our program in the US. The request is often "I have received funding from the government for a year of study in the United States. However, I need to be admitted to a good program first. Can you please admit me to your program?" I have recently learned that very few students have received such funding from the government. However, if they can get admitted to a program, the government will supply the funding. There is no merit-based, government-directed scholarship program in China for study in the US. This program is entirely driven by the ambition of certain, not necessarily well-qualified, students, and the gullibility of US professors. I wonder if those of us who have hosted such students would be willing to share their experiences. My purpose in writing is not to lessen opportunities for Chinese students to study in the US. In fact, I'd like to see an increase in these opportunities. But I think we should think together about how to attract highly qualified Chinese students who could profit from a year or two of study in the US, and return to China to make a contribution to China's philosophical development.
Thoughts from others with pertinent experiences on this front?
 

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17 responses to “Philosophy Students from China”

  1. mark

    I don't know anything at all about this subject, and I'm posting because I am confused about what the situation is. Does the Chinese government fund philosophy students who want to visit the US for a year, provided only that they are "admitted" as visitors? Or is it that they give one year of funding to students who are admitted into a regular 5-year Ph.D. program in the US? If the latter, it sort of seems like a waste of money since students in these programs already get funding from American universities. Still, hurray for the Chinese government. If the former, it's truly amazing that they are so generous, and it doesn't seem to me that these ambitious students are being particularly dishonest except in that they are suggesting that they got the funding they have by beating out others in some kind of competition when in fact it is available to everyone.

    Reply
  2. Donghui Han

    I am a professor of top department of philosophy in China. As I know, there are two kinds of government funding for students. One is joint cultivition for one or two years, the other is for Ph.D. program. Many students applied for the former, because they felt they haven’t been well prepared for the latter. I don’t know how about students of other specialties, but as for students of philosphy, I admitt that many of our students are not so well-qualified as the professor hopes, but they really want to get opportunities for better philosophical trainning in US as well as UK (and some Continental universities, especially in Germany). Most of them work hard, because they are eager to improve their abilities in philosophical reading, arguing, and writing. US departments of philosophy are their dreamland, even one or two years study are golden opportunity. Government funding gives good opportunities to students whose families are not rich. I really hope US departments give considerable opportunities for those students without, of course, lowering their standards.

    Reply
  3. Donghui Han

    "cultivition" in my last comment should be "cultivation". Please correct it.

    Reply
  4. jw

    I suppose that these students who claim that they have received funding from government are not really lying, but because of the mechanism of funding in China is very different from US. Usually in China the student's advisor could secure the student this kind of fellowship from Chinese government as long as the student is admitted as a visiting student in a good US university, since the application procedure is not really that important (probably it is a misfortune that someone's advisor is powerful enough to guarantee the student such funding). So these students could confidently say that "I will get these funding as long as I get admitted as a visiting student." That may seem ridiculous from the point of view of an American.

    Reply
  5. Hilary Kornblith

    I am currently working with a Chinese student here at UMass who is in a Ph.D. program at a very strong university in China. He will be here for a year before returning to China to complete his Ph.D. I was approached first by his supervisor, who himself spent a year at Berkeley, so his supervisor is not only someone with a strong interest in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, but someone with more than just a passing knowledge of it as well. On the recommendation of his supervisor, the department here agreed to have this student as a one-year visitor.
    It is working out extremely well. This student has a solid background in epistemology, and there is no question that his being here will afford him a variety of opportunities for understanding the state of play in the field which he just could not get in China right now. More than that, there is a growing interest in China in not only understanding contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, but in becoming active participants in the field. This seems to me to be a good thing, and something we should welcome and aid.
    I am sure that many of the students who seek to visit American and UK programs will not have the background which many other applicants do, and they will also, in many cases, at least initially have some difficulties with spoken English. But what we are talking about here is not accepting students into a Ph.D. program who do not meet standard requirements. Rather, these students wish to spend a year as visiting students in order to better understand what is going on philosophically in the English speaking world so that they may bring this improved understanding back to China. I'm very pleased to be able to help with this sort of thing, and it has been a rewarding experience for me. I expect it would be so for many others as well.

    Reply
  6. Brian Laetz

    I do wonder what the professor posting this question would consider a "highly qualified Chinese student"? Would he or she judge them by the same standards as, say, an American student applying for graduate study? If so, I guess that would probably mean, among other things, that the student has a solid background in analytic philosophy. But the vast majority of Chinese students do not have this, and obviously it would be rather myopic to dismiss a prospective visitor on those grounds. I suspect they would grant as much though. So, perhaps they would just require that the student has fundamental skills, like "knowing how to write a paper." But often what we consider a fundamental skill is, in practice, inextricably tied to the analytic tradition. In Anglo departments, knowing how to write a paper usually means knowing how to employ the various writing strategies of Bertrand Russell or philosophers he influenced. Again, this is something one only learns through serious study of analytic philosophy, and, again, it would seem a rather parochial standard to employ (especially since it would imply virtually no one prior to the 20th century knew how to write a philosophical essay, but surely Kant would make a good visiting student, right?). But maybe they just want to know where to find the best Chinese students. Presumably, at the best Chinese universities. Surely, there must be rankings out there somewhere.

    Reply
  7. Manyul Im

    A few thoughts: First, I think, as Hilary Kornblith's experience shows, it is possible to view the program as providing potentially good opportunities that have to be negotiated case by case, rather than with suspicion. The goodness of the opportunities may be institutionally or professionally self-serving, or it may be more altruistically construed–though I would urge people not to think of it as something like providing the goodness of philosophy to the unwashed heathens (see next point). Second, even if the nature or style of philosophical training at a highly ranked Chinese university does not entirely or neatly fit into categories of "analytic," "continental," and so forth, the fact that someone at such a university chose Philosophy as a program of study indicates that, in all likelihood, he or she will have been trained much more in Western philosophical traditions, history, and texts than anything else. (In fact, Chinese philosophy, for example, is probably less studied or studied about as little in China as in the U.S. and Europe, *within Philosophy departments*.)

    To follow up on Brian Laetz's last point, here is a link to the Times Higher Education – Quacquarelli Symonds (THE-QS) World University Rankings: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/hybrid.asp?typeCode=431&pubCode=1&navcode=148. Asian universities are included.

    Reply
  8. Z. Tang

    I don't see the point of this post. Is the suggestion that some under-qualified Chinese students are trying to persuade American departments to get them admitted as visiting students so it's advisable to keep an eye on them? But, obviously we keep an eye on every applicant to our visiting programs as well as PhD ones–the applicants may be under-qualified, make exaggerations about themselves or even make false claims. It's the admission committee or advisor's job, based on the application materials, to tell who should be admitted and who should not. What's particularly wrong with Chinese applicants?

    Or maybe the idea is that Chinese students tend to "cheat" about their applications, more often or more pervasively than average students from other places. If so I don't see any argument or evidence to support this, at least in this post. Is the Chinese student in the quotation cheating, simply by saying that in order to get government funding s/he needs to be admitted "first"? I don't get it.

    Reply
  9. Chris Fraser

    If I understand the original inquiry, the writer worries that his/her department may be deceived into granted one-year visiting status to a relatively unqualified student, when there may be more qualified students out there who would benefit more.

    Like JW, above, I doubt that a student who phrases a request for admission this way is intending to deceive. The student is probably just unclear about the most appropriate way to indicate, in English, that government funding is available, contingent on acceptance at a reputable institution. (The source of funding might be the China Scholarship Council, and this is indeed how it works.)

    As to the students' qualifications, I'd urge departments to assess these applicants on the basis of their perceived potential (which may be strong), rather than actual achievements (which may not). Ask them for letters of recommendation and two or three short writing samples. Speak with them on the telephone for fifteen minutes about what they've written and their intellectual interests and plans. Then just use your own judgment as to whether they are prepared enough to benefit from your program. As several previous comments emphasize, they are not asking for admission to a Ph.D. program, only for a chance to experience how philosophy is taught and practiced in an English-speaking country. That experience will be extremely valuable, both for them and for their future students in China.

    The OP is right that there is no strictly merit-based scholarship program in China. But even if there were, such a program's standards might diverge from those of many Western philosophers. The winners of such scholarships might or might not be the students we would prefer to admit.

    Reply
  10. Nathaniel Sharadin

    I am also confused by this post. The original author says:

    "The request is often "I have received funding from the government for a year of study in the United States. However, I need to be admitted to a good program first. Can you please admit me to your program?" "

    And then immediately says:

    "I have recently learned that very few students have received such funding from the government. However, if they can get admitted to a program, the government will supply the funding"

    as if this is somehow not what the student was representing. But that's just how I read it, and it can plausibly be read so (though other readings are available). (After all, the student includes the remark containing "first" in his statement.)

    In any case, if this is a post asking how to attract highly qualified Chinese students, the answer is simple: be a welcoming, well-functioning, quality department. If it's a post asking how to distinguish bad students who are Chinese from good students who are Chinese, the answer is even simpler: the same way you would distinguish bad students (tout court) from good students (tout court).

    Reply
  11. Kelly James Clark

    I direct a program which brings Chinese students to the US and I sympathize with the original posting. From what I have learned over the past decade is that top Chinese universities admit up to 300 students to their MA programs and also very large numbers of students to their PhD programs. Many of those students have no background in philosophy at all and most have no interest in pursuing a career in philosophy (yet most programs have a 100% graduation rate). Chinese profs have told me candidly that most students simply want an advanced degree so they can earn more money later. Nearly all of these students would love a year in the US. While we first relied on reputation of school and recommendations for student selection, we quickly determined that we needed to use an examination and interview to help us find the best candidates.

    Granted, we may have culturally-biased understandings of "best candidates" but student success in our program (as judged by professors in the classes they take) has dramatically increased. In addition, some are now gaining admittance to US PhD programs. They have all attributed this success to the year spent developing their analytical and writings skills in our program.

    If US programs want to see the year of study used to help future professors in China, then there must be a better way than letting Chinese students self-select.

    Reply
  12. AC

    If you want a Chinese student fresh out of undergrad degree or even master degree to have solid foundation in analytic philosophy, that’s almost impossible. My friend did her masters in philosophy at Fudan, which you can see high up in the ranking, and then got into an unknown state uni of NY. When applying, she rang up the potential supervisor again and again just to explain her transcript, coz they thought her courses were ‘suspicious’ – lots of ‘important things’ missing. Luckily she knows the difference between ‘philosophies’ and they got her probably becoz she made great efforts to stigmatise continental philo and Chinese philo departments, lol. Not surprisingly, since she’s always been a big fan of modern Anglo-American philosophy, she’s doing very well now.

    If this funding mentioned by Brian does exist, it’s an awesome thing for future Chinese students! No more confusion – when those ppl go back to China, the next generation will know what exactly it is – know what exactly they want to do – and know exactly what the so-called ‘philosopher’ means in the states/uk/Canada/Australia/NZ. They’ll not repeat my tragedy…

    As to the selection of visiting students, I think some of your old tools would work equally for them: Why do they contact you? – Hopefully you’re not the chair/head/director/…, and if one contacts a lecturer who’s not the head, presumably he’s interested in your works, so a few related questions will tell you if he’s genuine.

    But don’t assess them only by essay or recommendation letters, unless the recommenders have a whole degree (bachelor, master 2 yrs at least, or PhD/DPhil) received in some western countries. Recommendation letters from many Chinese lecturers can be very problematic – my rec letters for undergrad application were written by myself and signed by the teachers. Even the uni lecturers tend not to understand how serious this letter is. As to essay, emmm… unless they’re last PhD candidates and still… the way of academic writing is just a skill to learn and it doesn’t give you any brilliant idea. My first essay got 75% for my ideas and the lecturer warned me of the structure and my language (though I was a top student in English at school), but my latest essay got 95% the highest mark in my class, and it was an template while my fellow native-speaker students would make grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and more appallingly adding an apostrophe between the word and the plural mark ‘s’. So talk to/email them and see if they’re smart and have ideas (esp. if they’re doing masters or first-year PhD), if you don’t want someone who can only pile up words correctly.

    I really hope more Chinese philosophers can be trained in the states. Even today, I talked to academic kids in China and they still believe that since I’m reading Plato in its original, I’d have no problem with any western philosophy stuff. Oh, blind youth.

    Reply
  13. Mark Engleson

    I wonder what is meant in the letter mentioned in the initial posting by a "good" department. Does the Chinese government have any sort of list of approved programs? It would be useful to know if the students can only get this funding for "good" American PhD programs, or if they can get it if they are for a year of study at any US PhD program.

    I find it strangely curious that the Chinese government goes to such great lengths to censor media, information, and academia within their country, yet is willing to provide funds to send students to the United States for a year of graduate study in philosophy. Surely, they cannot be so completely unaware of what goes in philosophy. They must know that these students will be engaged in both a sort of critical thinking that students sent to study the sciences/engineering/etc. will not, and that they may directly engage in study of moral and political philosophy that will lead to reflective engagement about their own culture and government.

    This is a chance not only to produce better scholars and to improve the discipline in China, but for the discipline to something that can have an effect on the world.

    I don't think we should blindly take Chinese students, by any means. We have to find ways to sort out the applicants. There's all the usual matters of student quality, fit with departments, etc. As I mentioned at the beginning of my post, we don't even know just where the Chinese government will fund students. If we could get more of than information, that would be helpful in establishing some suggestions for Chinese students on applying to US programs.

    Reply
  14. Ric Otte

    I had an undergraduate Chinese student contact me before the beginning of Fall quarter, who needed to be let into certain classes in order to study here with govt support. I was initially quite skeptical, but after some email correspondence I agreed to let her in. When she got here I found out she had absolutely no background in analytic philosophy and didn't intend to buy the book for the class (evidently her funds were very limited). I became very worried about her chances of success in the class, but after talking to her she seemed willing to work very hard; so I gave her a copy of the book and kept in close contact with her. I'm pleased to say that she is now doing quite well, better than most of the class, but I do not think this would have happened if in the beginning I had not made it clear to her how hard she would have to work. I have been very pleased to see her do so well, but I think we need to be realistic about the training such students will have, as well as the extra work they require on our part. Just as we know little about the educational system in China, some of them may know little about what they are getting into when they attend school here.

    Reply
  15. Andrei Buckareff

    Regarding AC's comments, there are programs in China where students can get significant exposure to analytic philosophy. Whether or not Fudan is one such place or not, I do not know. But from my limited experience in China, I can say that graduate students at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou are working on theses and dissertations on topics and figures in analytic philosophy and are working with some faculty who not only have been trained as analytic philosophers but regularly publish in leading Anglophone analytic philosophy journals (Jing Zhu comes to mind most immediately). Moreover, they have regular exposure to leading analytic philosophers from departments in North America and Australasia (Owen Flanagan was visiting while I was there). I found many of the students I met when I was visiting there to be well-trained, thoughtful, and excited to talk about topics in analytic philosophy. I hope I can return there in the future.

    I would encourage those who may have the opportunity to work with students from China to take the time to familiarize themselves with the departments in China and use the opportunity to work with students from China to build bridges with department in China.

    For a nice piece on analytic philosophy in China see the recent essay by Yi Jiang and Tongdong Bai in Synthese (among the online first papers and part of a forthcoming special issue of Synthese on analytic philosophy in China): http://www.springerlink.com/content/x125t0g4405v8314/

    Reply
  16. Matthew Kramer

    I've hosted several postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students from China — for varying lengths of time — under the auspices of the Cambridge Forum for Legal & Political Philosophy. Most of them have had some familiarity with analytic legal or political philosophy upon their arrival, but two of them had a very limited command of English. (The e-mail messages from those two must have been written by somebody else, because the prose in their messages gave no grounds whatsoever for suspecting that they barely knew English at all.) I now ask for hard evidence of proficiency in English. So long as a visitor is possessed of such proficiency, his or her sojourn in an Anglo-American philosophy department is generally very valuable for everyone concerned.

    Reply
  17. Huaping Lu-Adler

    The situation of philosophy in China is changing rapidly, just as everything else in that country has been. A friend of mine just got her Ph.D in History of Philosophy (ancient) from Renmin University in Beijing. She is having tough time finding a job. She told me: "Now they all want people who do analytic philosophy." To what extent that is the case I don't know. But I won't be surprised if analytic philosophy is quickly becoming a trend there.

    Reply

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