On poor quality of academic management: I think most people don’t go to Schwarzman to focus on academics, but that said some people like Jason (whose quote is in the post) can get a fair bit out of the academics. I don’t have experience in American unis or in non-Schwarzman Chinese unis, but my impression is that academic management is better than average Chinese unis and maybe slightly worse than at American unis. This largely comes from the programme having to fulfil somewhat onerous university requirements but Schwarzman students are shielded from a lot of it.
On Schwarzman’s handling of the lockdowns: we were subject to city and uni-level restrictions like everyone else, and there were about two months where we weren’t allowed to leave campus earlier this year. Tsinghua campus is pretty huge though, so we had access to multiple convenience stores, a host of canteens and bunch of sports fields. The lockdown was difficult for those who had medical emergencies because once you left campus you could not return, this led to some friends leaving the programme early. Schwarzman admin was fairly accommodating in helping folks leave campus earlier for personal or health reasons.
On Schwarzman-Tsinghua interaction: by default you’ll interact with Tsinghua students less because classes, meals and many events are within Schwarzman College itself. There is a perception that Schwarzman is a bit of a bubble. All that said, it’s possible to get plugged into broader Tsinghua life; some friends audited Tsinghua classes, and joined Tsinghua clubs.
On foreigners getting bank accounts and relevant apps: programme helps you set up a bank account and you can get all the relevant apps.
On quality of language instruction: doesn’t sound like the language instruction you describe. Focuses a fair bit on speaking practice—you are tasked with watching videos and completing homework before class, and during class you essentially review the vocab and sentence structures from the video. Generally classes are small enough that you can get some speaking practice in but you need to put in a lot of extra effort to improve your language skills seriously during the year, the classes are far from enough.
Academic freedom
Academic freedom: within classes and in college I think pretty much anything goes. Whether your friends want to discuss certain topics because they find them sensitive is another matter but people talked about all sorts of things the past year. For thesis titles, yes, there is some censorship I’ve heard of, where students were told to change wording of their theses. That said, I know of friends who did fairly controversial topics for their theses (e.g. stuff on Xinjiang). I’m not super sure where exactly the lines are.
What you can and can’t say vis-a-vis Schwarzman’s politics: the programme isn’t a huge fan of having to deal with blowback in the media, and in that vein they are against people leaking confidential communications or writing anything very controversial in the press whilst associating themselves with the programme. People have still done it though, so it’s more a matter of how much one weighs the risk of souring relations with programme administration.
Thanks for sharing these impressions Joseph!
General China stuff
On poor quality of academic management: I think most people don’t go to Schwarzman to focus on academics, but that said some people like Jason (whose quote is in the post) can get a fair bit out of the academics. I don’t have experience in American unis or in non-Schwarzman Chinese unis, but my impression is that academic management is better than average Chinese unis and maybe slightly worse than at American unis. This largely comes from the programme having to fulfil somewhat onerous university requirements but Schwarzman students are shielded from a lot of it.
On Schwarzman’s handling of the lockdowns: we were subject to city and uni-level restrictions like everyone else, and there were about two months where we weren’t allowed to leave campus earlier this year. Tsinghua campus is pretty huge though, so we had access to multiple convenience stores, a host of canteens and bunch of sports fields. The lockdown was difficult for those who had medical emergencies because once you left campus you could not return, this led to some friends leaving the programme early. Schwarzman admin was fairly accommodating in helping folks leave campus earlier for personal or health reasons.
On Schwarzman-Tsinghua interaction: by default you’ll interact with Tsinghua students less because classes, meals and many events are within Schwarzman College itself. There is a perception that Schwarzman is a bit of a bubble. All that said, it’s possible to get plugged into broader Tsinghua life; some friends audited Tsinghua classes, and joined Tsinghua clubs.
On foreigners getting bank accounts and relevant apps: programme helps you set up a bank account and you can get all the relevant apps.
On quality of language instruction: doesn’t sound like the language instruction you describe. Focuses a fair bit on speaking practice—you are tasked with watching videos and completing homework before class, and during class you essentially review the vocab and sentence structures from the video. Generally classes are small enough that you can get some speaking practice in but you need to put in a lot of extra effort to improve your language skills seriously during the year, the classes are far from enough.
Academic freedom
Academic freedom: within classes and in college I think pretty much anything goes. Whether your friends want to discuss certain topics because they find them sensitive is another matter but people talked about all sorts of things the past year. For thesis titles, yes, there is some censorship I’ve heard of, where students were told to change wording of their theses. That said, I know of friends who did fairly controversial topics for their theses (e.g. stuff on Xinjiang). I’m not super sure where exactly the lines are.
What you can and can’t say vis-a-vis Schwarzman’s politics: the programme isn’t a huge fan of having to deal with blowback in the media, and in that vein they are against people leaking confidential communications or writing anything very controversial in the press whilst associating themselves with the programme. People have still done it though, so it’s more a matter of how much one weighs the risk of souring relations with programme administration.
Thanks for taking the time to type all that out. I really appreciate that you gave thoughtful responses. :)