degree

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

They Opened the Dorms at -4°C. They Didn’t Ask the Students.
On the night of October 4, the temperature in Qilian County fell to minus four. The hotel front desk put up a No Vacancy sign. Tourists stood on the street with their suitcases. Staff from the Culture and Tourism Bureau arrived with a list and led them to two middle schools. The dormitory door opened. The matron stood to one side, a ring of keys in her hand. The culture and tourism director bent down to make the beds. The bedding was new. The bed boards had been slept on by students. Tourists said thank you. The director said it was what they should do. No one asked who used to sleep in that bed.
By Jinabout 16 hours ago in Education
I Had 10,000 English Words in My Head. Why Couldn’t I Speak?
You know the words. Reading feels like automatic doors. Then you open your mouth. The doors jam. You want to say, “Wire this into the pipeline.” What comes out is, “Put this new code into the old process.” The other person nods. You nod. The conversation moves on. You also move on, but part of you stays behind, staring at the sentence you did not say.
By Jinabout 16 hours ago in Education
AI Made Answers Free. The People Who Win Now Do 3 Things Differently.
You know the feeling. A question that once cost an afternoon now costs a sentence. The model returns a page, sometimes ten. Definitions, frameworks, examples, counterexamples, a plan you could paste into a slide deck. Answers arrive like tap water. Turn the handle, fill the glass.
By Jin3 days ago in Education
A German Textbook Tells Kids Chinese People Bow. It Also Prints Fake Chinese Characters.
A page from a German primary school German textbook has been circulating again. It comes from Klett’s Niko Sprachbuch series. The heading is “Unterwegs in China,” or “Getting Around in China.” Exercise 5 asks pupils to look at pictures, read the text, and discuss what is different in China compared with Germany.
By Jin4 days ago in Education
Who Gives Tsinghua and Peking University Their Value?
A contest-admitted student had Advanced Algebra on his desk in senior year. He did not need to take the gaokao, but he still woke at 6:30 and left the study room at 11 p.m. Some classmates had already worked in university labs. Some read English paper abstracts. Some had taught themselves general physics.
By Jin5 days ago in Education
I Chose My College Because of One Line of Poetry
When the college entrance exam scores came out, I could apply to Fudan or Nanjing University. The majors were similar. The cities were both good. I wrote Fudan first on the application form. My pen stopped. I crossed it out and wrote Nanjing University. Because of one line: “Four hundred and eighty temples of the Southern Dynasties, how many towers and terraces in mist and rain?”
By Jin5 days ago in Education
That Viral Story About a Student Using AI to Teach a Class Is Fake
The viral story is simple: at a university, the instructor of a general elective was absent repeatedly. A student could not stand it anymore, went to the podium, used AI to generate slides, and taught for an hour. It sounds like wish-fulfillment fiction. The course had already been canceled. Many students missed the notice, which is why there was an empty classroom. Even the premise that the teacher was absent repeatedly does not hold.
By Jin5 days ago in Education
The Cornell Gang Rape Case: One Night, Two Years of Silence, and a Campus Demanding Answers
I October 19, 2024, Ithaca, New York. No one can currently give a complete account, confirmed by a court, of what happened that night inside the Chi Phi fraternity house at Cornell University. What is known: a then-20-year-old Cornell female student, after drinking at a sorority, went alone to the Chi Phi house to see a male friend.
By Jin5 days ago in Education
AI Built an Algorithm That Beats Dijkstra. Then You Try to Run It.
I found the news late one night. Vals AI used 10 Claude Opus 5.5 agents. In 15 hours, they generated 289 files, built the C-HD shortest path algorithm, and passed Lean Kernel verification. The headline said: beats Dijkstra.
By Jin7 days ago in Education
Computer Science Didn't Explode. The Job Market Did.
At a job fair, the computer science booth has a line. The civil engineering booth has empty chairs. Online, people say CS is dead. In group chats, students still ask how to transfer into it. Both things are true. They are just about different problems.
By Jin7 days ago in Education
Why English Still Matters for Ordinary People
The argument over English as leverage flared again in September 2026. Supporters point to doubled salaries. Critics call it worship of a language. The surface fight is about English. The deeper question is whether ordinary people still have a low-cost way to change their situation.
By Jin8 days ago in Education
Job Corps Anniversary: 15 Years Later
September 29, 2011: a day that I'll never forget. That was the day I graduated from Ouachita Job Corps Center in Royal, Arkansas. Many people back then doubted me that I would never graduate. I refused to listen to them and focused on my goals. After graduating from high school in 2007, I took almost four years to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Then, my now estranged father told me about Job Corps. For context, I wasn't ready to step out on my own as an adult. I wanted to, but I didn't know how to become a responsible adult. So, I decided to give the program a try. I had to fill out an application, write an essay on why I wanted to be in the Job Corps program, on top of providing personal information, including copies of my high school diploma and identification card. There were two Job Corps centers that I was interested in: one in Southwest Texas and another somewhere in North Texas. Even though I was 22 years old at the time and could make my own decisions, my father said no to either one of those ideas. Instead, he forced me to attend Ouachita Job Corps Center in Arkansas. I had zero say in which Job Corps center I wanted to attend and he wanted me to go to school out of state. One thing I'll tell you about Liberian parents is that they'll use mind tactics to control their own children. I expressed to him that I wanted to attend a Job Corps center that was close to an hour away, but he objected against it, not respecting my decision. He and my toxic now estranged mother came together with a devious plan to kick me out of my own home state. The place where I grew up and made plenty of friends. I never forgave them for that. They just wanted to get rid of me. That's abusive and manipulative.
By Mark Wesley Pritchard 9 days ago in Education