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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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It doesn't take a genius to figure this one out. The West has been cutting costs in its education system for years, while China has continuously invested billions. Seems pretty obvious who'll come out on top. Cutting China from the West will only lead to Western technology becoming obsolete. I wonder how long until the West is forced to start copying and reverse engineering China's electronics. It'll also be interesting to see how these racist societies will rationalize this.
good strong take
This point is one that I'll disagree with. The capability of a country to develop technology isn't dependent on basic education but on higher education. In that regard, US education has seen record high expenses... The problem is, of course, that the costs are passed on and are also at record high.
But how is American academic expenditure actually applied? Pay raises for administration and shiny new buildings cost a lot but aren't actually productive. A Chinese university could spend $50m on a new lab while an American school could plow $100m into a new football stadium. Looking at the expenditure alone you'd expect the American school to come out ahead academically, yet that obviously isn't the casem
To some extent I agree, but at the same time American funding for research at universities is astonishingly high. There's a reason that international experts still widely regard US research to be more impactful - there's more funding, more economic incentive, and more students.
China is experiencing a sort of brain drain where all it's brightest STEM majors are going to MIT/Stanford/CalTech/Berkeley rather than staying in the country.
isn't the brain drain already reversing? as in more students are staying in China, i mean.
To some extent, but not really? At the bachelor's level I'd agree but at the doctorate level I really don't think so... And honestly? That's probably a good thing. Diversity of thought is important for innovation, but the problem is that these people leave and few return because the job market at the doctorate level is still superior in the US than it is in China.