To Love Your University

“What class are you going to?” asked one of my friends, a fellow political science major.

“I’m going to my fine arts class,” I casually replied.

“Why do you take an arts class? Are you taking it for fun?”

“Well, yes and no. I have to take it to graduate, but I also enjoy it,” I said truthfully.

“Why would you have to take an arts class? You study political science,” he said.

“Yeah, and it’s part of my general education requirements.”

“That seems errr, stupid.”

You know, as education systems go, I’ve come to the knowledge that I like and prefer mine. Though I’m sure that many, many people back home would argue this point with me, the fact that the vast majority of university students in the United States receive liberal arts educations is a competitive advantage as critical thought goes as well as important to that development of critical thought.

Now, as I can foresee, there are two points of contention that can arise from this: first that most all higher education in the United States can be called liberal arts and second that it is actually something positive and advantageous in the long run.

Let me first define liberal arts as I see fit. I understand full well that in the United States, liberal arts on the layperson’s level almost always refers to the liberal arts colleges (not universities, because they don’t confer graduate degrees), wherein professors teach small classes and instead of researching, professors just teach. As such, liberal arts colleges tend to be small themselves. They pride themselves on learning for the sake of knowledge and having knowledge for the sake of knowledge, which I can and do fully believe in.

That’s where I’m going to break it off. Though a liberal arts college teaches liberal arts, not all institutions that teach liberal arts are liberal arts colleges—in fact, the whole higher education set up of the United States is based on the liberal arts education and continues to become more and more so—and I like it.

So what exactly is a liberal arts education? In my understanding, the result is that you get a well-rounded knowledge base upon which to draw from, but what is most important is that you come up with well-rounded (profound and thoughtful) opinions and decisions, based on the fact that nothing in the world it of itself with nothing else. Philosophically speaking, the liberal arts education gives students a real-world education with the ability to analyze relations better than say someone who went to a vocational school, which trains you only for your job.

And that’s the alternative, or one of the alternatives. Vocational school in the United States refers to professions that require more technical skill over critical thought. Don’t get me wrong, because I believe that people who go to vocational school and people who hold jobs of any sort make the world go round, but vocational school is for the nitty gritty professions, like those of mechanics and plumbers.

So where do the rest of us fit in? Well, we get well-rounded educations. This means that we have general education requirements and often areas of specialization (on top of majors). In addition, general education requirements are often done in the first two years, which means that the breadth of disciplines that a student is exposed to can help him or her decide what to major in. And before you say, well, doesn’t everybody have general education requirements?, that’s a no.

As I understand, here at HKU, there are hardly any general education requirements as we would understand in the United States. They have one broad set of classes labeled “GE: General Education” but notices that the word “requirements” is left off. GEs are not required it appears. In that sense, the university curriculum (in addition to the primary and secondary school curriculums) are based heavily on the English.

In this sense, you are forced into specialization soon after you enter university, which I find bizarre. To start, their major curriculums are three years, whereas in the United States the typical time to graduate with a bachelor’s degree is supposed to be four years.

And that’s not specialization in just major—it’s more like career. Take a look at professional degrees in the United States—most are graduate degrees that require an undergraduate degree to apply for. Architecture, as one of the few fields left whose professional degree is undergraduate, might become a graduate degree soon. I recently read an article that the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards was investigating making it so, much in the same way law was made a doctorate back in the day.

Lawyers are doctors too (at least in the United States). Since the late nineteenth century, you have to earn a Juris Doctor (JD) degree to be eligible to take the bar in any state and thereby become licensed to practice. This means that you have to first get an undergraduate degree, and then go to law school for six semesters.

In England, as I understand, as well as many historically English-ruled countries, law is firmly an undergraduate (albeit professional) degree. Straight out of high school, English students can (if so accepted) go straight into law. After for studying for three years in a classroom and a doing year of practical (the substitute for the American bar), you become a fully qualified lawyer. Similarly, medical students study for five years as undergraduates (four in the United States), and then do their practical for however many years. Because of this, both physicians and lawyers start out younger in England than in the United States.

Some would say “Yay! More money for retirement!” but I think that if you spent so many fewer years on education, you’re inherently less educated than someone whose spent more. It’s like child prodigies who end up graduating college at the age of 13. They may have the same practical knowledge as a 21-year-old of the same qualifications, but do they really have an equal amount of life experience that truly enhances your education? I think not.

On a related note, in the last lecture of my Hong Kong and the World class, we had the pro-vice-chancellor of the university at our disposal as a guest speaker, and the main topic of the discussion was the education reform currently underway in Hong Kong.

As a background note, secondary education is becoming one year shorter and university education is becoming one year longer (in a timed manner). This means that in fall 2012, the nine universities of Hong Kong will be taking in two classes (for two different curriculums), or a 40% increase in students over the previous term and the previous year. The universities are all expanding their campuses as able to accommodate this increase.

Current university students overall seem to be pretty apathetic, since it’s not immediately affecting them. But in any situation like this one, students who have opinions tend to harbor strong feelings.

I love my university, and I appreciate what is being done for me. I wish that more often more people would be appreciative just of the air around them. I love my university, but besides reasons of gratitude, I couldn’t tell you why. The university isn’t a person, but a group of people, so I suppose my love would be for the environment, for (the majority of) the people.

In our last Hong Kong and the World class, one local student expressed a very strong dislike (or at least severely neutral) opinion of the University of Hong Kong. Now, HKU isn’t my university per say (though I registered with the alumni office at their request), but I see no reason not to love it. Though it is structured differently than UCSD, I can firmly see that a university is a university. I’m not so sure she can quantify her lack of affection for HKU either, much in the same way that I cannot quantify my affection for UCSD.

There are plenty of UCSD students who hate UCSD, but they tend to back up their feelings or opinions based on the liberal arts classes that they are forced to take, Making of the Modern World that one day I hope they will appreciate having taken.

In all honesty, I can’t really fully appreciate that student’s lack of affection for the university. Though I never asked her personally, she said to the pro-vice-chancellor that she believes her workload is far to heavy. (Although I have been here for only one semester, I can say that my full course load is producing far less work that I’ve had back at UCSD.)

So there’s haters everywhere I suppose, and it doesn’t matter whose grass your on. I think though that the ultimate reason why I love my university is that I’m an appreciative, positive person who tries to see everything and tries to see everything with an open mind.

And let the statement never disappear that many UCSD professors notice the difference in writing and critical thought in papers from Eleanor Roosevelt College students.

In the development of the person, it would appear that time is more important than money.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author. 

Bring Bugspray: Hong Kong, the prequel

For our country-specific orientations, we had an informal panel discussion about what to expect. Hong Kong’s was the day after Sun God and everyone seemed to have made it in one piece. From it, there were a couple things I think were worth noting.

First was the environment. I’ll be first to admit that I’ve been spoiled by beautiful California weather. Granted we still have overcast days here and there, but compared to the east coast, we have it great. In fact, during the summer and early fall, I’m told Hong Kong is similar to New York City. They are after all similar in set up with dense islands right off the mainland. So likewise, the hot and humid weather is similar too.

This is where the similarities end, though. At orientation we were informed that we would have to pay for our air conditioning. Here at UCSD we are not given air conditioning, but Hong Kong is significantly hotter, and the humidity undoubtedly makes it worse. Easy solution—get out of your room more often. I suppose the library is well conditioned and indoor spaces for convening are probably made bearable as well.

In Hong Kong, there are typhoons as well. I didn’t quite know what typhoons were, so I looked it up, and they’re basically tropical storms (precursors to hurricanes) in the northwest Pacific. During typhoons, the returning students said that they often close up the buildings and do not let people out. Although I suppose it would be for our own safety, it would also be nice to have a warning.

One unexpected item that they overwhelmingly agreed on was to bring bugspray. I do not believe that a mosquito has ever bitten me during the day, but one returnee in particular said that as soon as she stepped out of the airport, five relatively immediately attacked her.

I personally have a weird history with bugs, especially the ones that bite or sting. When I was little, I got bitten all the time. At home, especially during camping trips, it was not uncommon for me to wake up and find another two or three bites. One time, the back of my leg had this giant one that freaked everybody out in fourth grade (for I had not covered it up). Then one day, I did not get bitten any more. I guess they were tired of my blood. And that’s the way it was for years.

This last year though, the attacks came back. Though I have not yet been bitten here in La Jolla, when I go back to Thousand Oaks, I find myself in the morning with more bites here and there like when I was little.

I wonder how my blood will taste to the Hong Kong bugs.

The second item brought up is the bureaucracy that you have to deal with in the university. I was surprised to find this out because here in the United States hardly a person doesn’t have a complaint against the bureaucracy. Apparently it is worse there.

In addition, their method of registering for classes is very different than the one at UCSD. Here, we are given time slots to register for classes, based primarily on units and, consequentially, class level. Once you register for a class, you are in that class. If you get on the waitlist, it is because you didn’t or couldn’t register for classes earlier. Our system is commonly termed first-come-first-served.

The universities in Hong Kong employ a different system. According to the returnees, a typical student go to quite a few classes at first to shop around and will eventually register for about eight classes (the regular class load is five or maybe six). From those choices, the school does a lottery behind closed doors (or more likely computer automated). The students then get informed to what classes they’ve been accepted.

The last notable topic that was mentioned was housing. They all have “hall culture,” which is like school spirit for one’s hall of residence. The hall-mates do events together. They also have a few formal dinners, in the British tradition at HKU—something completely lacking at UCSD (or for that manner any UC I believe).

My host university, the University of Hong Kong is apparently short on housing. So while I hope to get in on hall culture, I may end up living off campus in university-owned or sponsored housing, having to take a short bus ride to school every day.

Fingers crossed.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.