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At 63, Zhou had not yet reached the retirement age for a full minister, which is 65 years old. As there is another CCP deputy secretary at the CAE, who is also 63 and serves as the executive vice president of the academy, Zhou is unlikely to become the president. This means that Zhou was simply fired from his job. And his loss of position has been applauded.
Zhou has been criticized for incompetence and underperformance, and especially for the damage that has been done to China’s higher education. Since 1999, higher education has been transformed from an elite to a mass education system, with more than 20 percent of China’s high school graduates now being able to attend college. By comparison, the figure in 1980 was only 2 percent.
Students have to pay to receive a higher education, but sometimes tuition and fees are not affordable. Also, as an unintended consequence of the expansion of higher education, unemployment among college graduates has been skyrocketing. Even in Beijing, China’s capital, some 12 percent of the 2008 college graduates could not find a job six months after graduation. The situation in other cities definitely has been worse.
Therefore, measures that temporarily relieved the employment pressure for high school graduates could become a time bomb for social unrest. Zhou, as the minister of education, was at least partially responsible for this, although the expansion was initiated prior to his appointment.
Almost none of China’s leading universities has been immune to academic misconduct. The problem is that the Ministry of Education, under Zhou’s leadership, has not even investigated notorious cases involving university presidents to the satisfaction of the academic community.
While China has replaced the United States as the number one country in the world in conferring doctoral degrees, it is an open secret that a significant number of such degrees have gone to officials at various levels, including some at the top of the government hierarchy. Many of them were given the degrees after putting little or no effort into the process.
Recently, Ji Baocheng, president of the People’s University of China, remarked that China’s doctoral degree holders are clustered in the government. Apparently, Zhou’s Ministry of Education did not play the role of gatekeeper, therefore not only making “real” doctoral degrees fake but also tarnishing universities’ academic integrity.
Not only do Chinese universities carry an administrative rank, their presidents are appointed by the CCP, so that political loyalty is at least as important as merit. Unfortunately, some of the presidents could not do their jobs properly, some have been discovered engaging in academic misconduct, and some have been arrested for corruption. Calls to abolish this ill-conceived practice have fallen on deaf ears.
Although many of the problems identified here predate Zhou’s appointment as education minister six years ago, or have nothing to do with him, Zhou has been singled out as all these negative things were widely publicized when he was in charge of education in China.
Education has even been named as one of the new “three mountains” in China, along with housing and healthcare. The so-called “three mountains” referred to imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism that existed in Nationalist China, for which the old regime was overthrown by the Communist revolution.
When the NPC met last year to vote in a new Cabinet, Zhou Ji received the highest number of negative votes of any minister. In fact, Qian Xuesen, the “father” of China’s missile and space programs, who died one day after Zhou’s dismissal, cast votes of no confidence against China’s education and its leadership as early as 2005.
Qian told Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that one important reason China has not turned out outstanding talent is that the nation does not have even one university that genuinely follows the model of nurturing scientific and creative talent and encouraging unique innovation.
Now, the second year into his new term, Zhou Ji was let go. But it remains to be seen whether the new minister can transform Chinese education rather than becoming another scapegoat.
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(Cong Cao is a senior research associate with the Neil D. Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce at the State University of New York. He received his PhD in sociology from Columbia University in 1997 and has worked at the University of Oregon and the National University of Singapore. Dr. Cao is interested in the social studies of science and technology with a focus on China. ©Copyright Cong Cao.)
