degree

Degrees defined: PhD, Master, Bachelor, Associate–all about that expensive piece of paper called your degree.

I’ve Taught for 30 Years. The Teacher Crying in the Office Had It Backward.
I have taught for thirty years. Care matters. So does correction. What ruins both is a weak boundary. With a weak boundary, the action bends. Help starts to feel like control. A student’s refusal starts to feel like a verdict on the teacher.
By Jina day ago in Education
The Chinese University Name Mystery Hiding in One Missing Character
Tsinghua’s Department of Mechanical Engineering opens its history page with an older name: “The Department of Mechanical Engineering traces its origins to the Department of Mechanical Engineering Studies established in 1932 in the School of Engineering of Tsinghua University.” The current sign reads “Department of Mechanical Engineering.” The history page keeps 学; the seal does not.
By Jin3 days ago in Education
Everyone Uses AI in Research. Nobody Writes It Down.
If today's papers were re-read against the old standards, many acknowledgments pages would have to be rewritten. The old standards were generous. Early in a project, someone explains the field's open problems and results. You thank them. When the work stalls and a friend takes a walk with you, listens to your confusion, and says one sentence that opens things up. You thank them. At a conference, you corner an expert and ask a few key questions. You thank them. You read an important paper, email the author about a derivation, and get a reply explaining the details. You thank them too. Go further. Someone verifies a derivation, checks code, helps run data, or offers important input on the writing plan or the research plan. By the old ruler, that kind of help may belong in the author list.
By Jin3 days ago in Education
The Answer Sheet Jiangsu Took Ten Years to Write
On June 15, 2018, the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee held an expanded meeting of its Standing Committee. The agenda had three items: high school enrollment, gaokao reform, and gaokao question-setting. The Provincial Education Department reported first. The party secretaries of the prefecture-level cities then spoke in turn. Provincial departments, the vice governor in charge, and some Standing Committee members followed. The governor spoke. The party secretary spoke last.
By Jin12 days ago in Education
The Teacher Who Saw Me: A Story of Belief and Transformation
Author's note: I originally wrote this story several years ago for a writing competition, as a tribute to a teacher whose belief in me changed my life. Revisiting it in 2026, I wanted to return to that memory with a little more understanding of what it meant to me.
By Sergios Saropoulos15 days ago in Education
The Math AI Can’t Do for Us
Mathematical research aims to discover new mathematical knowledge. That sounds tautological, but it is often reduced to a narrower claim: the aim is to produce the first proof of an unsolved problem. These are not the same thing. A theorem proved true is an important kind of knowledge. Mathematical knowledge also includes methods, concepts, proof paths, error estimates, structural insight, the ecology of problems, and the judgment of what is worth pursuing. Proofs are the hard currency of mathematics. They are not the whole of its wealth.
By Jin16 days ago in Education
OpenAI Solved Hundreds of Math Problems. Then It Left Mathematicians to Clean Up the Mess.
OpenAI released 722 AI-generated mathematics manuscripts in October 2026. Several were retracted almost immediately after symbolic errors appeared, and more were revised or withdrawn in the following weeks. From a simple “knowledge increment” view, this looks like a windfall. Hundreds of open problems were touched. Even when a result is wrong, knowing that a path is blocked has value. The mathematical community did not react with gratitude. Terence Tao called the output “toxic waste.” Yu Deng asked a sharper question: users’ ideas had trained the model, the model then used those ideas to solve open problems, and “what do we, as users, get?” The dispute is about how OpenAI handed its output to the mathematical community, and whether that method weakens the conditions that make knowledge increment possible.
By Jin17 days ago in Education
OpenAI Proved Half of Yang-Mills. The Missing Half Is the One Pauli Would Not Drop.
In the spring of 2019, Yang Chen-Ning, then ninety-six, sat in Tsinghua and told visitors a story from 1954. He and Robert Mills had calculated a result that was “very, very beautiful,” but it contained a wound they could not close. According to their theory, there should exist a particle with charge but no mass. Nature contained no such thing. They agonized over it and decided to publish anyway. Yang gave two reasons. First, the structure was too beautiful to abandon. Second, field theory itself had not yet received a precise mathematical description. It was plagued by divergences, and yet “this did not prevent it from achieving miraculous success in the renormalization program.” Then he added: “Pauli chose not to publish.”
By Jin17 days ago in Education
The Homework Looks Fine. That’s the Problem.
At ten at night, a message landed in the parent chat: “If your child used AI for today’s essay, message me privately.” Ms. Li put the phone face down. Forty-two essays covered her desk. The top one was neat. It opened with a poem, ran three parallel paragraphs through the middle, and closed on “New Era Youth.” She underlined those last three words in red. The pen stopped. She had asked the boy why he put that phrase there. He said, “The template has it.”
By Jin17 days ago in Education
We’re Turning University Libraries Into Study Halls. We’re Losing the Accident That Makes Them Matter.
Two weeks before exam week, the line outside the library stretched from the first floor to the third. Someone arrives at 6:30, puts a bag on a chair, and then goes to buy breakfast. Someone else claims a seat but never shows up all day, leaving only a note that says “Taken.” Rows of students wear headphones, facing their computers and books, so quiet that the only sounds left are pages turning and keyboards clicking.
By Jin19 days ago in Education
The 'Cut 95% of Science' Argument Gets the Disease Right and the Cure Wrong
"Cut 95% of research and papers in academia, and it would make no difference to scientific progress." The claim circulates widely because it is half statistical fact and half emotional release. An analysis of roughly 172 million papers found that more than half have never been cited. The most common citation count for a paper is zero. Many papers are cited exactly once, by their own authors in another paper. Nobel laureate Eric Betzig put it more bluntly: if 95% of academia were abolished tomorrow, the world would notice nothing except that paper mills stopped operating. The emotional half is also real. Small modifications, repeated validations, and papers produced for graduation, promotion, and grant completion do fill journal pages. In 2026, large language models make it even easier to manufacture vast quantities of unread papers. The figure "95%" may soon be too low.
By Jin22 days ago in Education
The Secret Compartment Economy: Why Schools Cannot Win the Phone War
On e-commerce platforms, one thermos has an inner liner whose bottom unscrews into a compartment. The product page says: “Double-layer hidden compartment, metal-detector-proof.” Next to it is a storage box shaped like a fake book. Open the cover and inside is a phone-sized hollow, with the product image helpfully labeled “lockable.” Scroll further and alarm clocks, desk lamps, lunch boxes, and tissue boxes have all been remade for the same purpose: hiding phones.
By Jin25 days ago in Education