China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master’s degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.
These are real cases in a struggling economy - and it is not hard to find more like them.
Was coming to say this.
It’s a very… anglo conservative view to see education as a financial investment to get a job (and a working class person with an education as a waste of resources).
There’s an argument to be made about the labor market in China and how its working class is remunerated in an economy designed for cheap exports, but this framing is probably not it.
So you’re trying to tell me that the Chinese don’t see education as a financial investment and they just do it because it’s cool?
I’m not Chinese, so I can’t answer that.
I can tell you that’s absolutely not how or why I got my own degree. For which I paid barely anything, so hard to picture it as an investment. And it didn’t seem to be much of an “investment” for my classmates, many of whom paid nothing or were paid to do it.
We did think it was cool, though. Got to meet very smart people, both as professors and as classmates, some of which I keep in touch to this day. Got to learn stuff I hadn’t even considered and access technical means I couldn’t have afforded. Zero regrets, even if my degree is only very tangentially related to my current job.
So… does that answer the question?
Any argument that begins with “So you’re trying to tell me” is being made by a person who is NOT, in fact, being told what they say they are.