Stanford Research

We were picking up our daughter from a summer camp program there at Stanford University today when two Chinese girls somewhere between 18 and 21 years of age wanted us to fill out a research questionnaire that were students there at Stanford.

The research questionnaire was based upon why people choose their majors at college in the U.S.
The girls were trying to understand the differences between the choices people make here from the choices people make in China. They told us, for example, that in China most people do what their parents tell them to do rather than to choose something they are actually interested in. I said, "Well. A person is much more likely to become successful in the U.S. if they are interested in what they are studying than if they are not." They wanted to know more about how Americans choose their majors especially when both my wife and I said we chose our majors only through what we were actually interested in.

The other thing that I thought was interesting was that they thought the average income in the U.S. was below $10,000 per year. When we told them the average income was likely around $50,000 or more for a family of 4 with 2 people working and that many 2 partner families working made $100,000 or more a year they were surprised. I thought that possibly though they both spoke English very well that this might be their first summer session of College or their first year here in the U.S.

I also mentioned that people before the 1930s and 1940s in the U.S. often chose careers more from what their parents said just like China now. However, starting with World War II this began to change and further accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s in the U.S. Then the "Free Speech" Movement at UC Berkeley in California began a series of movements in California, Boston, and New York and various other places that began to create the social revolution during the 1960s and 1970s throughout the U.S. and the whole world. I told them that this social revolution also influenced to some degree the cultural revolution in China during the 1960s as well.

I wasn't really interested that much in doing this questionnaire but my wife wanted us to participate because she did stuff a lot like this in college too. In fact, when I thought about it I was involved in Social Science Research at one of my colleges too. We found out some really embarrassing things for that college at that time because many of the registered students we found were actually dead and since this was a state college it got kind of strange. But we still gave our findings at a symposium at a large university but I think our research likely was swept under the carpet by the college I was attending because it embarrassed whoever was registering all those dead people for state money.

Hopefully, the research these Chinese girls are doing will help them and others to rethink how and what they study. But as we all know cultural changes often take a lot of time, especially because of all the Social and Governmental upheaval in Chinese culture the last 100 years or so.