nick’s (n)-line life

Over the past few months there have been posters all over the HKU campus advertising for the CBL China International Law School. I must say that at first, I thought the idea was rather neat. Here’s their blurb:

English speaking students get the opportunity to study Chinese and International business law during the three-week course. No previous study of law is necessary. Students of all fields can take part, especially students of law, Asian-studies, business or political science. The students will attend Corporate law, IP law, Investment law, tax law, ADR, Commercial and Constitutional law courses and will analyze various case studies.

Academics, lawyers and managers will also discuss with the participants areas of law and business practices that are essential for every economic activity in China. Additionally, the main features of the Chinese and Asian arbitrage will be described.

Furthermore, there will be visits to foreign-owned small businesses, multi-national corporations, international law firms, excursions in and around Shanghai and Beijing as well as an introduction to the Chinese language and culture.

I was tempted… Sure the Chinese classes will be useless to me and the law is gonna be super-simplistic, but I kinda have a thing for attending classes like this to try and build up a broad overview of topics which are useful and related to my discipline. In any case, so I reasoned, I’m going to be in the mainland in June/July so it can’t hurt to catch a few interesting lectures and meet a few China-focused students in the process.

Then I noticed the price-tag: freaking US$2,580 (RMB19,000 / GBP£1,300). Ouch!

I suddenly lost my enthusiasm… that is a lot of money for a 3-week programme, particularly one in the Mainland where the cost of living and education are both cheap. A quick calculation puts the weekly cost at US$860 / RMB6,000! Yet more maths tells me that’s about US$30,000 if converted into an effective cost of a 35-week academic year. My masters degree (taught in the UK and China) is, by comparison, a cut-price US$8,000.

The issue got me thinking about the whole ‘China band-wagon‘ phenomenon. It’s really quite interesting when you thing about it. Right now, there are people all over the world trying to study both China and Chinese and taking short courses, just like this one, in order to try and get ahead; everyone is going crazy for China and the market is rising to meet demand.

More so, people want to get the knowledge now in cheap and cheerful bite-size pieces, without anything as unpleasant as hard work and graft. Ah, you’ve gotta hand it to Beijing; things are turning out swimmingly and very much in tune with the general theme of the controversial Confucius Institutes (2). Just consider the moves towards Mandarin teaching in the UK for further evidence of the trend.

Back to the topic in hand. Even with all of the goodies that thrown into the pot (trips on the Huangpu, visits to Beijing, and such like) I can’t help but think what is being offered is very overpriced and that riles me somewhat. It doesn’t seem quite right to be benefiting from the newbies’ lack of local knowledge in this way. Sure the course is likely to be fun, sure it is an interesting topic, but can it really be said to represent good value? Can it possible meet the advertising? Does it really represent good value?

Let me put it this way: the few classes offered during the 3-weeks can’t possible teach students much more than ‘你好-level’ Chinese. At the same time, realistically, how much law and business can be taught in this period to those with no prior knowledge of the fields (it’s open to such people, after all)? It seems to me that chances are students would do better to put the money towards a 6 or 8-week intensive Mandarin course instead.